I am going to be spending the next thirteen hours of my life in a locked psychiatric ward.

I try not to think about that fact as I sit in the passenger seat of my

roommate Gabby’s third hand gray Toyota. (It was her dad’s, then her brother’s, and now it’s hers—any day now, it will be the junkyard’s.) She has kindly offered to give me a ride to the hospital for my night shift, which is starting in exactly twenty minutes. It feels like a countdown to my execution.

“Stop freaking out, Amy,” Gabby tells me. She’s been working on Ward D during the days for the past two weeks, and she doesn’t understand my concerns. She’s even rotated with Dr. Beck the first week and absolutely adores him. “It will be fine.”

Of course, at this moment I am freaking out a bit more about the fact that Gabby just zipped through a stop sign without so much as pausing. Gabby is probably the second-worst driver on Long Island (the first being me, of course). Then again, if Gabby wraps the car around a tree, I will have a free pass to get out of this shift. For once, I’m hoping we get in a terrible crash.

Well, maybe not terrible. But something just bad enough to require a visit to the hospital. Maybe a broken bone—an unimportant one like my pinky finger.

“Who are you on-call with tonight?” Gabby asks me. “Stephanie.”

“Oh!” She brightens. “Stephanie is awesome. That’s so perfect.”

I have to agree with her about that. Stephanie Margolis is one of my more level-headed classmates. She is the kind of person you want to be studying with the night before a test, because she always knows her stuff, but she’s not obnoxious about it. She’s a calming presence in any room. Knowing she will be with me tonight makes me feel a little better about the whole thing.

Gabby runs a hand through her tight black curls, but her hand gets stuck and for a moment, I am seriously scared I’m going to have to take the wheel and steer the car myself while she disentangles her fingers using both hands. But then she gets it under control.

My phone vibrates against my thigh. As I pull it out, I cringe at the sight of my badly chewed fingernails—I would be chewing them right now if there were anything left to chew. The name Cameron Berger is staring back at me from the screen of my phone. Followed by a text message:

Hey.

I thought nothing could make me feel worse right now, but there it is. A text message from my ex-boyfriend, who recently broke up with me in a very humiliating way.

“What is it?” Gabby asks me. “Cameron,” I say.

She makes a face. Gabby was the one handing me the tissues after our break up, and she even helped me build a little boyfriend bonfire to rid myself of all Cam’s belongings that he left behind at my place. “What does that jerk have to say?”

“He said, ‘Hey.’”

“How dare he!” She lays a hand on the horn, probably startling the guy driving the car in front of us, who is doing absolutely nothing wrong. “I hope you’re not answering him.”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just block him!” She’s right—I should block him. And I will.

Maybe tomorrow.

We turn a corner and the hospital comes into view—it’s a new structure built in a circular shape so that the inpatient units form a loop. It was built to have an ultra-modern appearance, like we’re living in the not-too-distant future. For the last two years, I’ve been taking classes at the hospital:

anatomy, physiology, pathology, microbiology, etc. But now we’re finally using the hospital for the reason it’s intended: to see patients and learn how to become doctors. This is what I have been dreaming about for my entire life.

Although I never dreamed about becoming a psychiatrist. Of all the specialties I have been considering, that is the only one that has never crossed my mind.

Gabby skids to a sickening halt in front of the busy entrance to the hospital, narrowly missing a man in a wheelchair. “Here we are!”

“Here we are,” I echo, clutching the brown paper sack on my lap, containing my American cheese sandwich and a bag of chips I found in one of our cupboards. The sack crumples under my hands.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”

“I’ll text you when I get inside.” I want to add: If you don’t hear from me every hour, send help.

“Actually…” Gabby twirls a lock of black hair around her finger. “The reception isn’t great there. It’s actually sort of… nonexistent.”

I gape at her. I didn’t think it was possible to feel worse about tonight, but there it is. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“You were already so upset. I didn’t want to make you feel worse!”

I lean my head back and pout. “At least I could have prepared myself then.”

“Look,” she says, “if you go into the staff lounge and hold the phone right up to the window—like, actually touching it—you can get a couple of bars.”

Apparently, I am going to spend most of tonight in the staff lounge, with my phone pressed against the window.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Gabby says. “Seven o’clock sharp.

We’ll go get pancakes.”

I feel bad dragging Gabby to the hospital at seven on a Saturday morning, although to be fair, it was her bright idea to attempt to carpool this year. So far, it feels like a mostly failed experiment, but we’re still trying to make it work. And anyway, the thought of jumping into Gabby’s car tomorrow morning and driving to the local diner for pancakes will give me something to look forward to.

“Okay,” I say, except I don’t get out of the car. I don’t budge from the passenger’s seat.

“Amy.” She frowns at me. “You need to calm down. What are you so worried about?”

It’s the same question Dr. Sleepy asked me. I open my mouth, wishing I could tell her everything, but also knowing that I can’t. Only one person knows the truth, and that’s Jade. I can never tell anyone else. Not my parents, not Gabby… I couldn’t even tell Cameron before I found out what a jerk he was.

“What if,” I say quietly, “at the end of the night, they get confused and think that I’m one of the patients there and they don’t let me out?”

For a moment, Gabby stares at me. But then, after a few beats, she breaks out into loud laughter. The kind of boisterous Gabby-laugh that usually makes me want to join in, but not today. “Oh my God, Amy. You are so funny.”

She thinks I’m joking.

I raise my eyes to gaze up at the fifteen-story hospital looming above me. Even though it’s July, there must be rain coming because the sun has already dropped in the sky and heavy gray clouds are forming along the roof of the hospital, giving it an ominous appearance. I’ve never dreaded anything quite so much.

But I’m just being silly. What happened was a very long time ago. It’s a distant memory, really.

This will be fine.