Note: Over the next few weeks we'll be running an excerpt from Danie Radtke Keller's novel-in-progress, Suicide Circle. The excerpt is taken from the section "Contents Under Pressure--Avoid Fire, Flame and Smoking During Use," and will be run in three parts. Part One appears below.
“Dakota,” gentle shaking on my shoulder woke me with a start. I peered into the soft green eyes of Chelsea, the newest nurse. “Dakota, you have a phone call.”
She looked genuinely sorry to have woken me. I nodded my thanks, blinking a few times to wake myself.
The room was shrouded in shadow. The lights had been turned off sometime after I had drifted off. On my way out of the room I glanced at the clock. I had slept for half an hour. I clocked in before I went to the desk to answer the phone.
“This is Dakota, how may I help you?” I hoped my professionalism masked the tiredness in my voice.
“Hay girl, you sound ate the fuck up! What happened to you last night?” Arturo’s voice sounded far too perky to stand in any state.
“What do you mean?” I groaned. “I told you I was going home.”
“Baby, I know you didn’t make it. Jeremy called about an hour after you should have been there looking for you again. He called the cops, told them we were running some kind of drug house and holding you against your will.”
I wanted to bang my head against the desk, why didn’t I ever think things through. Of course he would harass Art again. That was, after all, my last known whereabouts.
“Did you,” I searched for the right phrasing, “get into any trouble?”
“They searched the apartment, not too thoroughly, they seemed to recognize your beau is full of shit. Sean and I figured he might call anyway so we cleaned up soon after you left. We gave them no reason to suspect. You had me scared though, when I learned you didn’t make it home. I thought I lost you trying to make a point.”
“I should have called.” I apologized and filled him in on everything from the moment I walked out his door.
“Oh, Kodes,” he said sorrowfully, “Tawny, baby you never have to sleep in a car. You should have let me come back for you.”
“I’m not going to regret the choices I made,” I said forcefully, willing myself to believe it too. “I don’t know how I can face him.”
I watched as a skeleton thin girl floated up to my desk. Her skin was stretched tightly across her face, exaggerating her large brown eyes. Her dishwater blonde hair hung loose in heavy, greasy waves. Thick, ropy scars crisscrossed her bony arms. She was no older than I was, and I wasn’t much further away. She stood dreamily waiting for me to end my call.
“Oops, looks like I’m going to have to start working.” I quickly dismissed him and softly laid the phone in its cradle.
“It always hurts more the next day.” Her voice was soft and high-pitched, almost child-like. She indicated the grayish brown stain on my shirt where the blister had oozed before I covered it.
I pulled my hand from the phone and held it tightly on my lap. The patients could be so perceptive, though they would never say anything to anybody but me. Just like if they saw pain in the other staff members I never heard about it.
“Is that what you came over to talk to me about?” I didn’t feel like sharing personal pain with her at the moment.
She nodded. “I used to burn my legs. If I ate too much or got a bad grade in school, I used to punish myself, too.”
She looked around the ward; her eyes had a glazed-over, drugged look. She quietly lifted up her shorts and revealed scores of cigarette burns on her tiny legs. Many had obviously been picked at in the healing stage.
“You came to talk to me about a stain on my shirt?” I asked again, more loudly this time.
“You look lost, I thought maybe I could help find you,” she said simply.
“I think I may be better off lost,” I sighed and added as an afterthought, “or I might be hiding.”
“Don’t hide so well you can’t find yourself,” she replied softly. Her demeanor aggressively changed. “Do I get grounds privileges for lunch today?”
At one time the rapid switch from such a soft-spoken voice to this raspy brisk one would have startled me. Nowadays I undauntedly looked at the schedule and informed her that the doctor still hadn’t approved it.
“You’re all fucking fascists, cock-sucking, racist bitches! This is illegal imprisonment; my fucking lawyer is going to fuck you all! You can’t do this to me!”
I turned to a ream of paperwork as a nurse led her off to her room. Her screams changed to cries of “I want my baby” as the nurse left her to act out in her room. Chelsea sat looking terrified on the other side of the station but the other nurse and I just rolled our eyes at each other. This was her fourth stay with us and she never seemed to get any better. She was back this time somewhere in the course of losing her children to child protective services.
“Thank you,” I called to him as he went off to document the incident.
I didn’t know the morning crew well. I knew Chelsea because she was eager and introduced herself to everyone she came across, from the director to the janitor and everyone in between. I was afraid to ask anyone else what their name was because they all seemed to know me. I tried to remember who was who as phone calls for them arose.
During the morning there were more calls, more visitors, and doctors going in and out of the ward. Where my shifts usually dragged, sped up only by a good book or the rare riot on floor, I barely had any time to catch my breath on this shift. Before I knew it my break had come.
I felt a surge of relief as I walked back to the staff room. I needed a breath and time to clear my head. I pulled my purse from my cubby and locked myself into the bathroom. I sat down against the tile wall across from the toilet. I kept my razor in a small pocket behind my pocket PC. Though I’d used it before it was still wrapped in its paperboard cover to maintain its sharpness and prevent accidental cuttings.
When I started cutting I used to just throw the blade into the large pocket of my backpack. All too often when I went searching for a pen I would nick a good chunk off my thumb. I’ll be damned if that didn’t hurt like a somebitch. I’m more careful now; self-injury isn’t about accidental blood. It defeats the point.
Now eight years later, I only cut when I’ve made the decision to do so. I held it in my hand the way I do when I’m not over emotional. I closed my eyes and searched for reasons not to cut, reasons why I cut, any kind of internal dialogue. I found nothing.
Through the red behind my eyelids I saw a vast empty void. The only thing I felt was exhaustion. I was empty inside. I opened my eyes in fear that if I kept exploring the void I would disappear entirely, or find I was rotting from the inside out. I firmly pressed the soft squishy inside of my arm. I remembered an orange I once bought. From the outside it had looked normal enough, a little soft maybe. When I cut it open I found that it had somehow become diseased and was nothing but brown mush inside.
I wondered frantically if it was the same with me. I could see the blue veins in my wrist; I looked normal enough. I banged my wrist against the sink a few times just to see. I felt nothing. Red marks appeared by the smile.
So there was… there was something under there. Was it real? Was it part of me? I was panicking. I needed to find out if I was real under there. I ran the razor over my wrist five times. A line of blood followed each cut. Seeing the bright red soothed me a little, there was more than decay beneath my skin. I had to find the rot and get rid of it, though. I poked around the cuts with the corner of the blade looking for the telltale signs decay, the brown black soft rot.
Each nerve soon tingled in protest, but I found nothing but soft flesh and blood.
“You’re crazy, Tawny.” I whispered to myself, grabbing a handful of toilet paper to blot my arm. I focused on each individual cut, wiping until it stopped bleeding before moving on to the next. By the time I got to the last cut it had clotted over. I scrubbed at the dried blood until the flesh around was bright pink but clean.
Danie Radtke Keller is a 28 year old para-educator working for the San Mateo Office of Education. When she isn't working or going to school for a degree in special education she enjoys writing, making jewelry, and starting--but not finishing--DIY projects. She also likes participating in NaNoWriMo, hot chocolate, pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. Danie lives in California with her husband, two cats, and five chinchillas. You can view a small amount of her jewelry work at www.damikdesigns.etsy.com, or cyberstalk her here. Click here to continue on to Part Two of this excerpt and here to read Part Three.
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