Street Spirit

She swings her feet over the edge of the bed. I’m surrounded by sterile fluorescent lights and dead machines and perfect clockwork nurses, and the strangest thing to me is that her legs are too short to touch the floor.

A man behind me clears his throat, and I delay turning around as long as I can, watching her avoid my eyes for a few seconds more before forcing myself to twist my head over my shoulder.

"You understand, we're not thrilled about letting her go just yet, but the insurance...."

"I've got it." I open my mouth, close it, open it again. "Is there anything I should know about?" He tilts his head. "Anything to look for."

"We're going to request that you bring her in weekly for testing, but that's all we can do." He's looking at his clipboard. It has a white form on it and a pen tucked into the top. In his world, she's been reduced to checks in boxes and black typewriter print.

"Anything I can do?"

He thinks about that for a moment, and I wait for him to figure out what he can afford to trust me with. He's standing there in his lab coat with his clipboard and leather loafers and wire-frame spectacles, and I hate him for not seeing that she's more than what the insurance can or can't pay for.

"Take her to and from school, and keep her in the house, otherwise. Bolt her window if you have to."

I glance over at her precarious form on the hospital bed. She’s looking at the blank screen of the television across the room. I turn back.

"Check her arms every morning, and again when she gets home in the afternoon. Other than that."

He stops talking, but I can imagine what he’d say if he kept going.

"Call us if you need anything," he says, and his nurses are already out the door with their equipment and their sanitary blank expressions.

I try to thank him, do something to show that I'm not afraid of what's waiting for me when I get home, but he's a stranger, and I was never good with strangers.

…

She puts her feet on the dashboard as soon as we get in the car. I bite back a reprimand and twist the keys.

Five miles down the highway, and I hear a little click – she has a skinny white cigarette hanging from her pursed lips, a lighter under her thumb.

“Put that out.”

She breathes deep, exhales through her teeth.

“I said –“ I reach over, but she dodges away, and I remember that I’m driving at seventy-five miles an hour.

I put both hands on the wheel.

…

Her empty duffel bag announces her return from unpacking, tumbling cartwheels down the stairs to land in a crumpled heap at my feet. She follows, a whirl of black dress and thudding boots and the stench of tobacco.

“We need to talk.”

She walks past me, sticks her hand in the jar on the kitchen counter, wriggles her fingers around.

“Where are my keys?” she asks the silverware cabinet.

“You’ll get them back when you can prove to me that you can handle the –“

“Jesus.” She storms around me, still at the foot of the stairs, and grapples with her coat pocket. “Cell phone.”

I let the silence speak for me.

She looks me straight in the eye, and she’s no one I recognize.

“I just got home.” Her words are bitter, affronted; strange, coming from her mouth. “I’m going out.”

“No.”

Her hands curl into fists at her sides, and she grits her teeth. “Go to hell.”

I wonder how long she’s been wanting to say those words. Probably since she woke up in a white room, sober and all by herself.

“You don’t own me.” And she’s gone up the stairs, leaving a hint of smoke in the air.

…

It’s a different room, and this time the machines are alive, telling all about what’s going on inside her body, what’s working properly and what needs attention.

I pet back her hair, but she’s beyond noticing. Her skin is slick, her pupils dilated to the point that she looks manic, possessed, about to leap up and crawl onto the ceiling.

The doctor is there, looking for an explanation, but until I can fathom how we got here in the first place, her staggering through life with her sunken eyes and track marks and white pencil cigarette, any sort of fitting response is beyond me.

She’s sobering up, realizing where she is. She looks scared.

The doctor shakes his head, and I understand.

She glares at me through dirty hair, glares at the world in general for not being what she thought it was supposed to be. And it's easy to see where anyone else would look at her and take in the skinny arms dangling from the sleeves of her t-shirt, the purple rims around her tired brown eyes, the cheekbones jutting out through a smattering of childish freckles, and doubt that she was even worth her hospital bed.

Nobody sees the tiny blonde toddler playing with Elmo and Cookie Monster on the living room floor. Nobody sees the gangly girl asleep in the recliner with the lights all still on and her headphones dangling off one ear. Nobody sees the first boyfriend, the visits from college, the wedding, the grandchildren.

She reaches into the pocket of her coat on the chair by the bed and pulls out a packet of cigarettes.

I take them out of her little hand.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I just got home,” she mutters. “Wanted to see my friends.”

"They're not your friends," I say, and I've wanted to say it ever since I first found her on her floor with sweat all over her body and blood running into a little pool beside her mouth. "They're killing you, and you're done with them."

Her eyes drift out of focus for a bit, but she brings them back to my face. “You don’t know them,” she manages. “You’ve never met them. You can’t….”

"You can fight me all you want," I say, and I can tell she's not listening, but I need to say it anyway, because this isn't just about her friends or the dope or the rehab, "you're mine for two more years."

She snorts and looks away.

The doctor puts a hand on my arm. “We’re going to need to have her for a moment,” he says. “You can fill out a form for insurance outside.”

I look back to her, but her eyes are closed, and there’s no point in saying anything more.

Published in Walking Away, May 2008.