Jesus of the Ward

His name is Jesus. He prowls the white hallways stained with urine bleached by insanity, blood tinged with purpose and regret, and the sprawling trembling bodies of reckless minds. His shoes are the sun, the moon, they screech with each metallic step they take, scrape against our ears as he wraps them around the linoleum floor and paces the rooms, keeping an eye on the Disturbed Women, the Dangerous Ones, the Ones that will bite and kick and pull hair and scream if Provoked. He feels important, we can smell it. The sweat that pools under his arms and stains his white coat a dull gray reeks of importance, confidence, the smell that is supposed to tell us, “I have Power over You.” 1

So his name is Jesus. 2

We have single rooms on the Ward and I lay in mine silently, staring at the small square of window stuck to the all beside my metal bed. I hear the continuous tap and squeak as he paces the hall, clench my ears until they shut out the sound and keep watching the window, the few inches of peeling brown branch poking at my window with its delicate fingers, clutching small clusters of leaves in its claws. 3

I feel too thin. My thighs are cotton rags stringed together, the knees knobby and fragile, the ankle bone swollen and round, like an egg. I smooth my hands down my legs and feel each bone lying beneath my paper skin, easy to poke a hole through, terrifying. My fingers are sharp and thin, dry and unfamiliar at the tips, the course long nails spotted with little white dots. I no longer have breasts, my stomach has eaten itself from inside, and yet, I am not hungry. The crisp sheets of the clean bed envelope my body and sigh with my chest. My mouth is dry, but the feeling is comforting. I feel alive. Still holding on. The parasites have stopped eating my body, there is nothing left for them to devour. I am no longer their target, and so I lie in peace and embrace it. My wrists throb as the soft skin tries to heal and close itself together, to push the mountains of dried blood away and close up the rift with fresh skin. But my body has nothing to offer. I stare at the deep, jagged lines drawn like red stripes on my wrists, the blood crusty and thick, another part of my skin. 4

Jesus is still pacing. A laugh gathers in my chest and tears open my lungs and open my mouth and let it out, the shrill yelps of unnatural sound fleeing from my gaping mouth and filling the air around my room, climbing swiftly into the hallway where its taps Jesus, poking his shoulder, pointing drastically in my direction. My lungs are collapsing, my thin body soon to break under the heavy waves of irrepressible, screaming laughter, and I cannot stop. I cackle like a witch, like a hyena, my hands clasping and unclasping the course bleached sheets surrounding my convulsing body, my ankle bones pressed against each other and breaking. He stops marching. I can feel his eyes burning in my room, burning my forehead, and I laugh harder, harder, my heart slamming my chest like a falling chandelier, like a chorus of breaking dishes. Before long, the other women begin to laugh as well, tentative cackles and giggles that rise together in a smooth uneven stream of terrifying laughter. The nurses come to life, each racing to a room, but nobody comes to mine. The One who starts the chaos is the worst One, the One that will fight the most. Jesus is assigned to my room. Through my laughter I hear his invisible steps and then I feel his large hands grabbing my tense wrists, breaking the crust of blood and crushing it as it sprinkles his hands and the bed in a rain of red powder. His mouth is a line, his lips white, pressed together, as he pulls at my wrists and stands firm. I don’t struggle. He doesn’t understand that I am laughing at him, at the hospital, at the stupid idea that people could be kept in small white rooms so they would not bother normal people. I spit in his face, and he wipes it away with the sleeve of his coat, and as his arm lifts, I smell his confidence, and laugh harder. The whole Ward echoes in a chorus of screeching laughter, and the soft grunts of the little nurses as they simultaneously search for syringes and struggle with the outstretched hands of giggling women. Then, at once, everyone is pinched with a shot, and seconds later, the Ward is quiet. There is a single sigh that connects the nurses together, relief, anxiety, regret. Jesus is still holding my wrists, and I am smiling, but no sound escapes. My breath is gone. I am finished. He opens his hands and my arms fall and he turns around and leaves. His shoes begin their chorus again and I drift my eyes to the unchanged window, the silent leaves patting the barred glass. I smile. And I sleep. 5