โLife begins,โ Sartre once wrote, โon the other side of despair.โ It wasnโt raining any more.
She was inside and sitting in a hospital bed. She had been put on a ward and had eaten and was feeling a lot better.ย ๎ขe medical sta๏ฌย were pleased, following her physical examination.ย ๎ขe tender abdomen was to be expected, apparently. She tried to impress the doctor by telling her a fact Ash had told her, about a stomach lining renewing itself every few days.
๎ขen a nurse came and sat on her bed with a clipboard and went through reams of questions relating to her state of mind. Nora decided to keep her experience of the Midnight Library to herself because she imagined that it wouldnโt go down too well on a psychiatric evaluation form. It was safe to surmise the little-known realities of the multiverse probably werenโt yet incorporated within the care plans of the National Health Service.
๎ขe questions and answers continued for what felt like an hour.ย ๎ขey covered medication, her motherโs death, Volts, losing her job, money worries, the diagnosis of situational depression.
โHave you ever tried anything like this before?โ the nurse asked. โNot in this life.โ
โAnd how do you feel right now?โ
โI donโt know. A bit strange. But I donโt want to die any more.โ And the nurse scribbled on the form.
๎ขrough the window, a๎er the nurse had gone, she watched the treesโ gentle movements in the a๎ernoon breeze and distant rush-hour tra๏ฌc shunt slowly along Bedford ring road. It was nothing but trees and tra๏ฌc and mediocre architecture, but it was also everything.
It was life.
A little later she deleted her suicidal social media posts, and โ in a moment of sincere sentimentality โ she wrote something else instead. She titled it โAย ๎ขing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody)โ.