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you get released. It won’t be for a while.”
    â€œI have no one to talk to.”
    â€œTalk to the nurses.”
    â€œIf you want to kill me, make it so it doesn’t hurt,” I say. The doctor scribbles in a file, gets up and motions to the nurse to escort me back to the dayroom.
    My mother arrives through the metal door. We sit in the TV room. A golf tournament is on, but there is no sound.A woman paces the floor. Another smokes butts from the ash stand.
    â€œI will truly die if I stay here,” I say to my mother. She kisses me on the cheek and opens a Loblaws bag and takes out a carton of Rothmans.
    â€œThought you’d need this,” she says. We sit. She holds my hands. Her palms are moist.
    â€œAre they treating you nicely?” she asks.
    â€œI can’t stay here long. I’ll get worse.”
    â€œThe doctors know what they’re doing.”
    â€œI will truly die if I stay here.”
    â€œYou’re killing me !” she says, stands and adds, “You’re thin. You should eat.”
    â€œCould you bring me something to read next time?”
    â€œI’ll bake you some brownies,” she says.
    â€œWhen will you come back?” I ask.
    â€œNext week.”
    â€œI can’t stay here long. I’ll get worse.” We hear someone howling in the day room. She squeezes my hand, then releases it.
    The orderly unlocks the large door and my mother disappears. I hear a clack and my head turns to the pool table. A short man with shoulder-length brown hair fires the balls with a cue. He is shaking. “Fucking shit!” he shouts. Betty approaches me and orders me to take a shower. The washroom has three toilets and one shower. No bath. A heavy-set woman brushes her teeth at the sink. She movesthe brush up and down and toothpaste dribbles from the corners of her mouth. Betty hands me a white towel and a small bar of soap. The shower stall is stained and caked with dirt. The water is lukewarm. I stand and let it fall onto my skin.
    For dinner, I eat shepherd’s pie. My hands tremble and my food keeps falling off my fork. I take a soup spoon, fill it with potato, put it inside my mouth and swallow. I do this because I have to. If I don’t eat, the nurses will force the food down my throat. I saw this happen to another patient the other day. No one talks. We are sedated. I hear the clattering sounds of forks on dishes. I take my last forkful, get up slowly and sit in the dayroom on the orange vinyl rocking chair. I light a Rothmans. Sway back and forth.
    â€œHow many packs a day do you smoke?” a large woman says to me. She wears tight jeans. Her stomach hangs over her waist.
    â€œAbout ten cigarettes a day,” I say.
    â€œI roll mine. Must smoke about forty a day. Roll and smoke, that’s what I do.” I crush my cigarette into the ash stand, then drag myself down the hall to my bed and lie down. My heart does not feel a thing.
    The metal doors open. Joan walks in. I see her and jump up from the rocking chair. We embrace. I take her to the barred balcony. It is summer and hot. Joan glances around and says, “This is just like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest .” A young man rocks hard and mumbles on a chair in the corner of the concrete balcony. I tell Joan I have to get out. A nurse comes by and hands me another pill. I hesitate.
    â€œTake it,” Joan says. I swallow the pill.
    â€œI brought you something,” Joan says.
    â€œYou did?” She opens her large leather shoulder bag and takes out a long purple silk scarf.
    â€œHere.” I wrap it around my neck and stroke the shiny material with my hands.
    â€œI’m visiting a friend in Montréal. Your mother told me you were here.”
    A tall, tanned and muscular young man with a pointy nose and bushy eyebrows walks onto the balcony. He stands next to Joan.
    â€œI like blondes,” he says to her. He stares at her large breasts, larger