“You’re here voluntarily?” Natasha raises her eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. I have bipolar disorder. Got diagnosed a few years ago after I was running around naked on Peachtree Street and screaming I’d be a queen someday. They had to restrain me and stick a needle in my ass and put me in my own room here. It traumatized me so much that I’ll do anything to make sure I don’t go through that again.”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry you went through that,” Natasha says. Hearing her role model discuss her mental illness so matter-of-factly gives Natasha an unexpected sense of comfort. Maybe she isn’t defective. Maybe it’s okay to be struggling.

“It’s okay. I’m in a better place now . . . well, not now, but in general,” Alexis says. “I know myself better than I did back then. I know when to warn the people in my life that I’m not doing well.”

“Are your parents supportive about everything you’re dealing with?” Natasha asks, careful to not give away just how much she’s researched Alexis’s life. From Alexis’s references to them in her YouTube comedy sketches and the pictures on social media, they don’t strike Natasha as the let’s-discuss-our-mental-health types.

“It took awhile and there are still days they don’t get it. Which I expected, them being conservative and Mexican and believing you just deal with whatever happens to you,” Alexis says. “But every month gets easier. My dad was super depressed after my parents came to America. He never got any help for it, but I think he and my mom now realize how much it affected their marriage, my childhood, our entire lives, really. But they’ve also always lived in neighborhoods with people who understood them and spoke the same language and ate the same food. I didn’t have that.”

“Yeah, I totally get that,” Natasha says, finding comfort in relating to Alexis even more than she realized was possible.

“So what happened with you?” Alexis asks.

Natasha gives Alexis a summary of the past day. It’s a smoother version of the one she provided for the nurses and Dr. Chan. Telling the story gets easier each time.

“Jeez.” Alexis shakes her head. “That really sucks. All of it.”

Natasha shrugs. Something about sharing the Karan part makes her feel especially pathetic. She’s supposed to be working to be a serious comedian, a woman she’s proud of.

“When are you going to leave?” Natasha asks.

“I’ll let the team decide that,” Alexis says. Her voice is coated with nonchalance, as though she’s simply deciding what to order at a restaurant, not considering how long she’ll stay locked up on a psych ward.

“They just decide when you’re ready?” Natasha asks in disbelief. How is a group of people supposed to know when she can go home?