Eventually, I must have achieved whatever threshold of sanity they’d been aiming for, as Meredith arrived one morning in a celebratory mood, holding a piece of paper with Dr. Patel’s sprawling signature across the bottom, informing me that he’d approved my release. I read the form closely, then set it aside.
“Isn’t that great?” Meredith asked.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. In the month that I’d been there, I’d grown accustomed to the hospital’s countless little intrusions. I felt supported by them, taken care of. Meredith’s regular visits sustained me. The prospect of stepping out of the hospital, never to see her again, wasn’t just depressing, it was terrifying.
We did our ritual with the pills and she asked if I had somewhere to go.
“Of course,” I said, although I’d written Zoe’s landlord that very week, asking him to end my rental contract and dispose of my things however he saw fit. At the time, it had felt liberating, but now, given the fact that I didn’t even have an old pair of jeans to wear, it just seemed rash. Evidently aware of my predicament, Meredith asked, “What size waist are you?”
“Thirty-four,” I said.
“And shoes?”
“Ten.”
“We should have something in the donations closet. I’ll be right back.”
She returned a minute later with an orange tracksuit and a pair of white tennis shoes, then left me alone to change. The shoes were loose, but stayed on if I laced them tight. The tracksuit fit perfectly. When Meredith swept back the curtain, I was sitting on the bed, fully dressed.
“Looking good!” she said. “You know, it’s not going to be the same around here without you.”
I blushed, even though I knew she must have said those exact words to every patient she’d ever discharged. The old man in the next bed was either deeply asleep or dead, his eyes shut, his mouth open.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” I said, panicked.
“Oh, you’re ready.” Meredith gave me a confident smile. “I’m so happy for you, Felix.”
I could feel her getting ready to leave the room. My throat clenched.
“Would you…” I said, and Meredith stopped at the door. The rest of the sentence tumbled out in a rush, like an eight-syllable word: “like to get a coffee sometime?”
The question was ludicrously bold. She was a nurse. I was a psych patient. Even under different circumstances, she’d have been too normal, too kind, too good for me. I nearly retracted the invitation before she could answer, but she seemed to actually be thinking about it: her mouth bunched up on one side, her hand on the open door, an eye on my neighbour. Then her usual sunny smile returned and she shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”
We met a few days later in a leafy neighbourhood in the suburbs, far from my old apartment, on the patio of a café filled with retired couples and trendily dressed moms. I hadn’t had a cigarette or a drink in months, and as we sat down at a small table together, I suddenly wanted both. Although my breakdown had happened in a different part of the city, any one of the people on the patio could have witnessed me naked and screaming downtown not that long before. I’d bought new clothes, but felt like an impostor in them. Meredith herself looked entirely different in street clothes—her hair teased back from her face, a generous amount of makeup rendering her almost unrecognizable. Her gently smiling face blazed across the table at me. I couldn’t make eye contact for more than a second, my body vibrating as obscene levels of cortisol pumped through it.
“Can we leave?” I asked, before we’d even had a chance to sip our drinks.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’d like to go somewhere else. Do you mind?”
Meredith seemed bemused but gamely collected her things and followed me off the patio with her paper cup.
“Tables are hard for me,” I explained as we walked down the sidewalk together. “I find it easier to talk to someone when we’re both facing the same direction.”
“I see.”
“Is it the same way for you?” I asked, hopefully.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But it’s fine.”
We carried our drinks past a strip mall and into a small park surrounded by older two-storey homes. It was starting to get dark. I wanted to tell Meredith that she didn’t have to worry, that I’d taken my medication that morning, but she looked perfectly at ease (naively so, it seemed to me) as she gazed around the park.
In the distance, a small group of boys were kicking a soccer ball around. We came to a bench and I asked if she wanted to sit.
She shrugged amiably. “All right.”
We sat facing the boys. The soccer ball flew back and forth. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Where did you say you were staying again?” Meredith asked.
“The Best Western on Fifth.”
“That’s right. Is it nice?”
“It’s okay. It has a pool.”
“Oh! Do you swim?”
“No.” I stared at the soccer players. “I’m sorry… I’m really nervous.”
“Don’t be nervous.”
“Okay.”
“It’s nice here,” Meredith said. “Don’t you think?”
I nodded, tears of self-pity welling in my eyes. I couldn’t see what she was seeing. The park didn’t look nice at all. It looked dangerous. As the sun slipped behind the trees, one of the boys fell to the ground and the others swarmed around him, kicking. Meredith was six inches away from me at most, but felt much further. She held her cup with both hands, her back perfectly straight. “I haven’t been out with a man in years,” she said, confirming that this was in fact a date for her.
“Oh?” was all I could think to say.
“I was engaged. He broke it off. Since then, there hasn’t seemed to be much of a point.”
“Jerk,” I said. “I mean, I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine that. You’re just so…” I trailed off, groping for the right superlative.
Meredith laughed. “Well, that’s kind of you, but people aren’t always the way they appear. I struggled with depression for a long time before they sorted my meds out… If there’s one thing that I’ve learned as a psych nurse it’s that none of us are immune.”
“Yeah, but I’m different. I’m really different.”
“No, Felix. You’re not. If you had a window into other people’s heads, I don’t think you’d be so hard on yourself.”
Out on the field, the fallen boy was back on his feet, unharmed and laughing. It took me a moment to realize that one of Meredith’s hands was drifting towards me, crossing the space between us in slow motion. It came to a rest on my little finger.
“Is that all right?” she asked.
I glanced over, surprised to see the shadow of something I understood pass across her face, loneliness mingled with hope. “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
We had our second date at Meredith’s house. She lived on a narrow cul-de-sac lined with ironwoods, several kilometres from my old apartment. She picked me up from the hotel in an older sedan and we ate Indian takeout on her couch, while watching a family-oriented comedy about an eccentric old married couple. Meredith laughed at nearly every punchline, not helplessly, but dutifully, as if out of consideration for the filmmaker. Halfway through the movie, I slid my hand into hers, exactly as she’d slid hers into mine in the park. I’d never actively fantasized about her. When she’d been my nurse, it had seemed ungrateful, profane. But suddenly, sex was at the forefront of my mind. The movie ended and we watched the credits roll, still holding hands.