two
Nico’s heard it said that time’s nothing but a construct. That it isn’t real, but rather a concept created by humans in their desperate need to manifest a type of order to their lives. Something systematic and as close to tangible as possible. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t—Nico doesn’t much care about the logistics behind (or the validity of) the yearly calendar. But if someone asked her what she thought about the whole thing, she’d tell them this: time’s impotence never seems truer when you drag through the same routine every god-forsaken day of your life.
The restlessness is chronic. She feels it buzzing in her limbs now as her fingers flutter over the thirty-six-piece sliding puzzle in the rec room. She’s worked on it no less than forty-five minutes already, and it wasn’t until half an hour into the activity that she’d finally figured out the image she’s trying to make: a long, snake-like dragon. Its body weaves throughout the wooden tiles, coiling around itself until it forms an infinity symbol. It’s an intricately detailed work of line art.
Nico slides the tiles back and forth in their frame with agitated fingers. Of the few mind-sharpening exercises the Gibborim Asylum provides their patients, she enjoys the sliding puzzles most. They allow her stir-crazy limbs just enough stimulation to keep her sane. Or, at the very least, not entirely insane.
This particular puzzle, however, is a challenge she’d give up in a heartbeat if there were anything better for her to do here. But there isn’t—there never is—so she pours over the puzzle until the image is almost completely reconstructed. Then she realizes two of the corner tiles must be switched. But she can’t, not without moving all the other tiles around them and beginning almost completely over.
“Shit,” she mutters.
“You almost had it that time.” Gert’s voice is encouraging as she peers over Nico’s shoulder. Encouraging, but not exactly helpful.
Nico chuckles dryly. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Her fingers fly over the board more quickly now, sliding the blocks with little care. Trying in vain to resurrect some semblance of order to the panels again.
“You’ve flown through pretty much all the other puzzles here,” Gert offers. “You’ve got this one in the bag too.”
“Maybe I would if this one wasn’t impossible.” Nico grits her teeth. She fights the urge to throw the puzzle across the room.
“Maybe you just need a little more patience.”
“Or maybe it’s you,” Nico says. She turns to shoot Gert a flustered scowl. “Maybe I can’t do this with you breathing down my neck.”
The ghost of a smile passes over Gert’s lips. “Performance anxiety?” she asks.
“Ha-ha.” Nico leans forward, as if pressing her nose against the puzzle will help her solve it. “I’m pretty sure they made this one impossible just to mess with me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Boredom?”
Gert chuckles this time, genuinely amused. “Nico Minoru, conspiracy theorist,” she announces to no one in particular. A girl on the other side of the room glances up at the sound, but quickly averts her gaze back to the crossword page she’s been scribbling over for the last hour.
“Yeah, forget this,” Nico says and lowers the puzzle onto her lap in surrender.
“Don’t give up on it.”
“I won’t forever, okay? It’s just that if I stare at this poor disembodied dragon another second, I’m either gonna punch a wall or blow my own head off.”
“With what?”
“Sheer will.”
Nico can feel Gert’s warm breath against her neck as she leans closer to study the puzzle. “You want help?” Gert asks.
“No. I’d be pissed if I didn’t finish this myself.”
“Oh, good!” Gert settles back in her own chair and folds her knees up to her chest. “I didn’t want to try it anyway.”
It’s Nico’s turn to smile a little. Despite her declaration, she finds her fingers continuing to fiddle with the sliding tiles, not ready to quit fidgeting just yet.
For a moment, the two girls sit quietly, side-by-side in two of the many white chairs donning the rec room. They aren’t the only patients in the room right now, but they’re the only two having a conversation. In one corner, a girl with frizzy hair had been mumbling to herself in another language for some time, but she’d since traded the activity with staring at the wall in utter silence. Her fingers tap rhythmically against her knees, and for a fleeting moment the thought occurs to Nico that maybe she’d been a pianist in her early life. Her past life. Her life before Gibborim.
Nico allows her eyes to stray toward one of the windows, and she frowns when they land on a young boy standing at an easel beside it. The white apron he wears over his patient’s garb is splashed with varying shades of acrylic blacks and grays, matching the pallet he holds. His smooth features are placid, emotionless as he sweeps the paintbrush against the canvas in small, measured movements. Mechanical.
Nico wonders for a moment if he’s painting a grayscale replica of the view out the window, but when she cranes her neck to gain a better look at his artwork, she realizes it isn’t the property outdoors he’s painting. It’s the window.
He’s captured it perfectly, down to the reflection of the sunlight against the menacing tar of the bars that sit just beyond the glass. Prison bars, Nico thinks. Little onyx monuments constructed to remind tenants that no one is to attempt climbing out the window. But it’s the idea that someone would wish to exit from the third story of a building that concerns Nico the most. It’s no secret that the patients admitted to Gibborim are mentally and emotionally unstable. But to jump from the third-floor window…
“Is it just me,” Gert begins, breaking the silence between them. “Or has he been staring at me a lot lately?”
Tearing her eyes from the boy and his painting, Nico follows Gert’s gaze toward the hall entrance on the other side of the room. Chase stands in the threshold, hands stuffed in his pockets. He isn’t the only guard in the room—quite a few have passed through since Nico and Gert had taken up shop here—but he’s the only one paying attention to them. Gert has her eyes on Nico, imploring, but Chase’s eyes are on Gert. He must sense Nico’s attention, however, because his dark gaze meets hers a second later. He turns away quickly. His stare doesn’t once leave his feet afterwards.
“Yeah, well.” Nico glances back down to the puzzle in her lap. “He was there, you know. Back when…well. You know, on…” She trails off, at a loss for words.
“Monday?”
“Depends. What’s today?”
“Wednesday.” Nico isn’t sure whether Gert truly knows the days of the week anymore or if she just thinks she does, but Nico never questions it.
Instead, she heaves a heavy sigh. “Then, yes. Monday.”
Gert’s nod is almost imperceptible. With a timid cough, she pushes against her glasses, even though they hadn’t slipped down her nose. “Oh,” she finally murmurs. “That’s embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?” Nico tightens her grip on the puzzle’s frame. “What is there to be embarrassed about?”
“I don’t know.” Nico is sure she doesn’t imagine it when Chase’s head lifts at the sound of Gert’s voice. Gert, on the other hand, has turned herself around in the chair so drastically her back now faces him. “The fact that anyone has to see that shit is humiliating.”
“Gert.”
“I don’t get it,” Gert says. Her lips draw in tightly. “I don’t get why they don’t just brand me a lost cause.”
“Gert.”
“No. Seriously, Nico. They don’t have to keep me here, do they? Keep me alive? They could put me out of my misery, show a little compassion. Instead, I’m left sitting here wondering when it’s going to happen next, fearing—” Gert’s voice falters a beat. Her tongue fishes for the right words. “—fearing literally everysingle second of my bleak existence. Cowering under the watchful eye of every nurse and security guard and patient just…studying me like I’m nothing more than a ticking time bomb revving to explode at any minute.”
“Hey.” Nico grabs ahold of Gert’s shoulders so abruptly, the puzzle slides off her lap and onto the floor. “Don’t talk like that.”
Gert’s eyes are wide. “How am I supposed to talk?”
“Not…like that.”
Gert releases a laugh bereft of amusement. “Then give me some suggestions, because I’d very much love to hear some right now.”
Nico opens her mouth to respond, but no sound is forthcoming. She doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t have any suggestions to offer. The words you can’t leave me alone sits in her throat, but she swallows them down. She can tell Gert knows she’s given up, because the other girl sits back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. Nico wants to do the same. She wonders idly if the warmth from her own self-embrace will soothe the ache in her diaphragm.
She doesn’t get the chance to find out. Before she can even move, she spots a hand reaching down to pick up the puzzle at her feet.
“Were you working on this?” The voice is low, almost airy, and vaguely familiar. Heart already beginning to race, Nico lifts her head to greet the new arrival, and suddenly the puzzle isn’t the only thing she’s dropped. Her stomach seems to plummet right out from her feet and through the floor.
She hasn’t seen this girl since Gert’s episode two days ago. In fact, Nico had all but convinced herself entirely that her mental distress had conjured the ethereal vision as some sick means of coping. But here she is again, crouching in front of Nico and holding out the puzzle as if the world hasn’t just tossed Nico’s emotions into a treacherous somersault.
The girl’s smile, so warm and inviting, falters as she glances from Nico to Gert. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Did I interrupt?”
“No.” Nico welcomes the wave of relief that washes over her when Gert responds. Her own words have lodged themselves so tightly in her throat she can barely breathe. “No, we were just…talking.”
“Oh.” The girl’s smile reappears. “I just thought maybe you’d want this back.” She nudges the puzzle closer to Nico, offering it up to her.
The words that spill out of Nico’s mouth surprise even herself. “You can keep it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m stuck on it anyway.”
“What?” Gert asks, challenging Nico. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna give up on it.”
“Yeah, well.” Nico shrugs. She hopes the action comes off as nonchalant, but guesses it leans more along the lines of stilted and hopelessly awkward. “I changed my mind.”
She watches the girl’s brow quirk downward a moment, watches her lips purse. Nico doesn’t realize she’s staring at those lips until the girl turns away to kneel beside the table. Nico lowers her gaze back to her hands folded together in her lap, fingers knotting together until her knuckles are white as the room. Conversely, she knows her ears are bright red—she can feel them burning, hot and sensitive—and it’s all she can do to hope upon hope that this stranger is too engrossed with the puzzle to notice. She can feel Gert’s penetrating stare. That’s bad enough.
The girl sets the puzzle onto the table, considering it for a moment. “What if you tried doing this?” she asks. Lifting the frame, she tugs at the corners until, one by one, they detach from their spokes.
“Wait, you’re just gonna take it apart?” Gert’s tone is critical. Nico, on the other hand, can’t seem to tear her eyes from the girl’s fingers—long and golden and graceful—as she begins manipulating the dismantled tiles now free from their box.
“You’re supposed to make it into a picture, right?” she asks.
“That’s not the point of the puzzle.” Nico can hear the stupidity in her own voice.
The girl’s smile broadens into a breathtaking grin. Challenging. “Maybe, but maybe it’s more interesting this way. See?” The girl continues to fit the tiles together with deft speed, and the dragon’s shape once again springs to life. “Usually, these pieces can’t move freely. Just within the limited space provided for them. But remove what’s restricting them, and…” The girl nudges the tip of the dragon’s tail into its rightful place. “They can finally create what they’re supposed to. To be what they’re meant to be.”
Visibly pleased with her work, the girl smiles up at Nico and Gert, who gape at her. Gert opens her mouth as if to retort some smart-alec comment, but snaps her lips shut again. Nico is so dumbfounded, she can hardly react.
The same words slip off her tongue a moment later and leave her cringing. “But, that’s not the point of the puzzle.”
The girl tilts her head back when she laughs, a pleasant, ringing sound. “Maybe that’s the point,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” Gert finally speaks up. She pushes at her glasses a second time, flustered. “Who even are you again?”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” The girl offers Gert her hand. “My name’s Karolina.”
“Karolina.” Gert repeats the name just as slowly as she shakes her hand. “And why are you here? In Gibborim, I mean.”
Karolina’s smile falters. “I…don’t actually remember,” she responds.
Three hours from now, the concerning and mysterious aspects of this answer will leave Nico more perplexed than the puzzle had. For now, however, as she continues to stare at Gibborim’s newest addition, it doesn’t even register. She’s too absorbed with the vexing yet stunning color of Karolina’s eyes, that silvery blue muted with tones of gray. Like the ocean. Only Nico doesn’t feel like she’s swimming in their waves. Instead, she feels like she’s drowning.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
The words cut into the haze clouding Nico’s mind, urging her to lift her heavy head just slightly. The first five minutes listening to the psychiatrist’s quiet, airy voice had already sent her surrendering most of her five senses—Nico had long let her eyes lose focus, granting them temporary relief as she’d shifted her attention to the throw pillow in her lap and lost herself in the sensations the tiny fibers tickled into her fingertips.
Tearing her gaze from the pillow now and up to Janet Stein’s expectant expression proves a strenuous task. “What?”
Crossing one leg over the other, Janet smooths down an imperceptible wrinkle in her gray blazer before clearing her throat. “Monday’s events,” she repeats. “The attack Ms. Yorkes suffered. Is that something you’d like to talk about?”
“Um,” Nico’s voice is hollow in her own ears. When she speaks, the words travel slowly. “I…I mean, I don’t know what I’m…supposed to say.”
Janet nods. She places the clipboard previously tucked into the crook of her arm onto her lap. “Well, I’ve heard from some of the nurses and techs that you’ve been a bit more sociable recently. It seems you and Gertrude have become friends—”
“Gert,” Nico corrects.
“—And while that’s wonderful and hugely indicative of the kinds of progress you’ve been making…” Janet pauses, her features shifting into the sympathetic expression Nico hates so much. She has a way of clasping her hands tightly in her lap when she looks at her like this—she knots her fingers together until the blood rushes to them—that puts Nico on edge every time they meet. “I can’t imagine seeing a friend suffer the way Ms. Yorkes does is very easy for you.”
“It wouldn’t be easy for anyone.”
“No, of course not.” Janet clears her throat again. “But you walked into her room amidst chaos and confusion. Helped her calm down just enough for the doctors and nurses to treat her. I have to say, I think that was very brave of you. Very selfless.”
Nico shakes her head. Averting her eyes to the window, she locks her gaze momentarily on the withering leaves still clinging desperately to the branches of a nearby tree, quivering in the cool breeze outside. Just how many seasons have passed since she’d first arrived at Gibborim, she fears she may never truly remember. “I wasn’t being selfless,” she says.
“I beg to differ.” Janet’s voice grows even quieter. “The progress you’ve been making is remarkable, and your actions Monday prove that. You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”
“Sell myself short?” Nico laughs. It’s barely more than a breath forced from her nostrils as she turns back to look at Janet. “How can I do that when I don’t even know who…myself is? You talk about progress I’ve been making. I don’t even know what I’m progressing towards. Or from.”
Janet frowns. “Now, Nico, we’ve been over this before.”
“Have we?” Nico asks. The words Karolina spoke to her in the rec room only three hours ago still echo in her mind, cutting away at something deep in the back of her consciousness she’d long forgotten how to access. Her shaking knee disrupts the pillow balancing on her lap, and she clutches at it so tightly now that her fingernails dig into the fabric. “Right. Because I forget everything.”
The frustrated tears stinging Nico’s eyes prompt her to close her mouth, send her chewing at her bottom lip just as she’d bitten down the nails scraping at her pillow. She waits for Janet to say something, to offer some empty words meant to comfort her, but she doesn’t. Not yet at least. Instead, Nico lowers her eyes to the floor to avoid that same, pitiful expression.
“You came to us about two years ago, Nico,” Janet finally speaks up. Her voice is low, tentative, but not entirely uncomforting. Nico hates it. “Something had happened, something you’ve forgotten that we haven’t been able to uncover yet. You had a psychotic breakdown. You weren’t well. Experienced anxiety, depression, and particularly frightening hallucinations. You were becoming a danger to yourself and others. Not through any fault of your own, mind you, and certainly not intentionally. Still, it warranted immediate action. Treatment. You recognized it in yourself, came here on your own accord and admitted yourself by choice.”
“About two years ago?” Nico asks.
“Yes.”
Nico swallows back the knot in her throat. “I hate that I don’t remember any of it.”
“It’s frustrating, I know,” Janet says. “But not uncommon. There are many patients here suffering from the same kind of retroactive memory gaps.”
“I met someone.” Janet’s words fling Nico back to Karolina, to the lines etched into the girl’s pretty brow as she struggled to remember what had brought her to Gibborim. “She doesn’t know why she’s here, either. Can’t remember what happened just like I can’t. Like Gert, too.”
Janet nods. “Yes.”
“So, you mean to tell me we’re all suffering the same thing?”
“Not exactly, no. The underlying causes of your admittances into the hospital are not the same, but the results have all been similar.” Releasing a heavy sigh, Janet leans forward to place her clipboard face-down onto the small table between them. “Nico,” she continues. “This specific section of the ward is designated to patients being treated specifically for acute psychogenic amnesia. Dissociative amnesia. It’s a disorder characterized by these memory gaps you’re experiencing, usually caused or catalyzed by some kind of—”
“—Trauma or stress,” Nico finishes.
Janet smiles. “You remember that.”
“It just kind of came to me.”
“And that’s okay.” Leaning forward, Janet collects her clipboard back into her hands and unclips a pen from the side. Nico finds herself equal parts comforted by the soothing sound of the ballpoint running gently over the paper and curious to discover exactly what it is the psychiatrist is writing about her. “That’s what the therapy is for. To expose you to different scenarios and images in the hopes of chipping away at the blocks your mind’s created. To try uncovering some of those lost memories.”
“Doesn’t explain why I can’t even remember my childhood,” Nico counters. “Why I can’t remember some of the experiences I’ve had here. Couldn’t have all been that bad, right?”
“Well,” Janet clasps her hands over her knees. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Right.”
“The good news is, with this specific disorder, your memories aren’t gone. They still exist somewhere, deeply buried somewhere in your psyche, cut off from the rest of you.”
Nico can’t help her sardonic tone. “That does sound like good news.”
“Unfortunately, the doctors believe your amnesia is comorbid with the nature of your psychotic episodes,” Janet continues, as though Nico hadn’t commented. “This means there is a certain level of caution they must take when conducting your therapy sessions. There are many different factors and variables they must consider, and as you uncover more and more of your memories, the doctors will be required to sift through them and attempt distinguishing between which memories are truly yours and which have been conjured by your imagination. Additionally—” Janet pauses, fishes for the right words. “—there is a danger in unlocking too many memories too quickly, as it can be…overwhelming and…potentially detrimental to a patient’s recovery.”
“So, how do we know which of my memories are real and which aren’t?” Nico asks. Something soft brushes against her finger, and she glances down to find that one of her nails has torn a hole in the throw pillow, releasing some of the cotton filling.
Janet twists her mouth to one side. “It’s hard to know for certain.”
Nico nods, slowly. Millimeter by millimeter, she allows her vice grip on the damaged pillow to slacken. Struggling to recall the information Janet’s shared with her during their past sessions, she clicks her tongue behind closed lips. “I think you told me once that…there’s no family that can help—”
“I’m afraid not, Nico. The people here at Gibborim, they’ve tried time and time again to trace you back to family members, friends, but your records also had alarming gaps in them.” Janet rubs at her nose with the back of her knuckles. “Whoever you were before you brought yourself here, Ms. Minoru, it would appear you’d cut yourself off completely from other people. I’m afraid we don’t have anyone who can help us validate the accuracy of your memories right now. But we are doing our best. The more progress we make treating your amnesia, the sooner we can begin treating your underlying conditions. The closer we get to giving you an accurate diagnosis and developing the treatment plan best for you.”
Nico nods again, more out of habit than anything else. She recalls Janet telling her this before, some time ago, but she needed to hear it again, needed to confirm to herself that her mind hadn’t once again attempted to play some sick trick on her.
“So, Gert’s missing memories too,” she says. “And that new patient. Karolina. Their memory gaps are from their own conditions? Like Gert’s illness? Her episodes?”
“I’m afraid I’m not authorized to share the details of another patient’s diagnosis with you, Nico,” Janet explains. She offers a small smile. “But I can assure you that, yes, their own dissociative amnesia is not anything out of the ordinary. The doctors here are working to help them just as hard as they are working to help you.”
Nico wants to rebut, to quiz Janet further, but the enormity of the questions still swarming in her mind renders her speechless. There’s no way for her to know whether the answers Janet gives her are correct, or simply a means of satisfying her curiosity for the time being instead. Perhaps everything is merely a ruse designed to dupe Nico into a false sense of security. Perhaps her suspicions really are warranted. Or perhaps her paranoia is simply another side effect of her psychosis. And yet, the more Nico dwells on these thoughts—the more she sits staring at her psychiatrist—the closer she grows to reaching the same conclusion she fabricates every day of her mundane and inevitable existence in Gibborim: that none of it matters. She’s stuck here either way.
Gathering the pillow into her hands, Nico leans forward and places it onto the coffee table. “Sorry I ripped it,” she says.