PRESENT DAY

Hours Until Morning: 9

“You look terrible, Amy,” Jade says. “Thanks,” I mutter.

“You look like you’ve been popping Lithium.”

Whatever that means. “I’m fine. Really.”

Her features soften, and for a second, the years melt away. And she is the old Jade, the one I used to walk home with every day from school. The first person I told when anything good happened to me. My best friend. “Hey,” she says. “Can we talk?”

I don’t agree right away. As much as she sometimes looks like the old Jade, I have to remember that a lot of years have passed. I don’t know what kind of person she is anymore, except that she’s here.

Granted, I would have a better idea if I looked through her chart. But I’m not going to do that.

“I’m kind of busy,” I say.

Jade sticks out her little pink tongue. “Liar. You have absolutely nothing to do. You’re just sitting around and making sure none of us hang ourselves or something.”

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s talk.” “Not here.”

Before I can stop her, Jade has grabbed me by the arm and she’s pulling me down the hallway. We pass by room 912, where Mary is still clicking away with her knitting needles, then room 906, where the light is on and presumably Will is reading Owen Meany. Then we come to a stop at room 905.

Jade shoves open the door and raises her eyebrows at me. I take a deep breath and step inside her room. Jade won’t hurt me. At least, she won’t hurt me physically.

Once we are inside the room, Jade sits on the one chair in the room, leaving me with two options: sit on her bed or stand. I choose to stand.

“Look, Amy,” she says. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you before.”

I blink at her in surprise. I’m so surprised that I actually do sit down on her bed, which creaks threateningly under my weight. The mattress is not exactly high quality.

“You’ve got to understand.” She plays with the white laminated band around her left wrist, which gives her name, date of birth, and hospital ID number. “When I saw you, I just felt like such a loser. Here you are, basically living the life you always wanted. I mean, you’re going to be a doctor. And here I am. I’m nothing. I’m nowhere. And honestly…” She takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to do anything with my life. I couldn’t even hold down a freaking waitress job. Even my mom was able to do that.”

“I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

Jade shoots me a look. “What exactly are you basing that on? I’m hospitalized in a psychiatric unit right now. What makes you think I’m going to be okay?”

“Because you’re getting help,” I point out. “The doctors are adjusting your medications, and they’re going to fix your problems. And then you can do… whatever you want to do. You can be a fashion designer if that’s what you want.”

That’s what Jade wanted to do through most of grade school and middle school. Then when we got to high school, she had a different career aspiration what seemed like every single week, and it always seemed like she was super excited about this new future career. In retrospect, it was just her mania.

“They’re never going to get my medications right,” Jade grumbles. “They’ve been trying for the last eight years.”

“It just takes time…”

She tugs on her wristband. “There’s optimistic and there’s just plain stupid. I’d love to live in your magical happy land where this is the time they finally get it right. But after eight years, you give up hope. I don’t know if there’s any hope for me anymore. I mean, they never figured it out for my mother.”

I frown, remembering the woman who had Jade’s nose and chin, but darker eyes and bigger boobs. I never heard the details of her overdose. I wonder if Jade was the one who found her. I can’t even imagine. Jade wasn’t super close with her mother, but the two of them were very protective of each other.

Jade is only twenty-four, like me. I can’t imagine losing my mother so young. Even though she can be annoying sometimes, I don’t know what I would do without her. A girl needs her mother.

I wish I had told her I loved her before I hung up with her.

I get the sudden urge to wrap my arms around Jade in a hug. She’s been through so much, and the two of us used to be so close. But given she’s a patient here, it would be wildly inappropriate.

“So.” She lifts her blue eyes flecked with yellow. “Enough about my pathetic life. Tell me about you.”

I lift a shoulder. “Nothing to tell. I’m a medical student. That consumes every moment of my existence, from morning through night.”

“So you say.” She gives me a sly smile. “But what about that other medical student? Cameron, right? Do not even try to tell me there isn’t anything going on there. I could see the way he was looking at you.”

Jade was always insanely good at figuring these things out. “There used to be. Not anymore.”

“Why not? He’s so handsome!”

“He broke up with me. He told me he needed more time to study.”

“No!” Jade cackles with laughter. “Oh, Amy, I’m so sorry! But like I said, he isn’t even your type.”

She’s right. Cameron isn’t my type. But stupid me—I had been starting to really like him. Even though he’s a kiss-ass and he studies far too much, he can also be very sweet. Like, if we went to a restaurant, he would always hold out my chair for me. And he liked to open the car door for me too. You don’t meet many guys who are twenty-four years old and try so hard to be a gentleman.

Even if he hadn’t ended it though, it was never going to go anywhere. I never felt like Cameron was the guy I was going to end up with. Still, I didn’t want it to end.

“You should hook up with Will,” Jade says.

It takes me a second to even figure out what she’s talking about. “You mean the guy in 906?”

“Sure,” she says. “He’s your type, right? I heard the two of you bonding over the same dorky books you always liked in high school. And it’s not like either of you has anything better to do tonight. So why not?”

I stare at her. “Because he’s my patient. And he’s on a psych ward.” “Ugh, you always were such a square.”

I don’t even know what to say to that. But I can say with a hundred percent certainty, I am not hooking up with anyone tonight. Not Cam, not Will—all I want is to get out of here in one piece.

“And how are you… otherwise?” Jade asks.

There’s a subtext to her question that makes me very uneasy. “Fine,” I answer.

“Are you still…” Jade drops her voice a notch. “Seeing things?” I stare at her. “No.”

“Because you used to sometimes—”

“No, I didn’t.” I get up off the bed, my legs wobbling beneath me. I’m just about done with this conversation. “You’re mistaken.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, is that how you want to play it, Amy Brenner?” She stands up too, so she can look me in the eyes. “You don’t want anyone here to know that you’re more like us than they think.”

I grit my teeth. “I don’t want anyone to know, because it’s not true.” Jade’s lips curl. “Now, we both know that’s a bald-faced lie.”

I almost jump out of my skin at the sound of a knock on the door to Jade’s room. A second later, Ramona peeks her head into the room. “I’ve got some pills for you, Jade,” she sings out.

How long was Ramona standing outside the door to room 905? How much did she hear of our conversation? I study Ramona’s face, but it’s blank. She doesn’t seem like she had heard any part of what Jade had been accusing me of. She blinks when she notices me standing in the middle of the room.

“Amy.” Ramona scratches her chin. “Weren’t you seeing Schoenfeld in 906?”

Jade is smirking at me. “I decided to see a second patient,” I mumble. “May as well. I’ve got the whole night.”

“Good for you,” Ramona says. “Most of the students who rotate through here just want to do the bare minimum. They all think of psych as the easy rotation.”

“No,” I say. “I definitely don’t think it’s easy.”