Free Find Me by Laura van Den Berg Page B

six rise from their tables. They begin picking up trays and throwing them too—first their own, then others. The other Groups do not join in. There is an old Kansan saying that goes “Not our Floor Group, not our problem.”
    They pull trays away from patients who are still eating. Limp green beans stick to the white linoleum like slugs. Ketchup splats across the floor. Under the lights it takes on the color and texture of blood. Louis and I watch from our table, frozen in our orange seats. The falling trays sound like a string of firecrackers detonating.
    On my plate, there is a pile of mashed potatoes, molded into a little volcano and filled with peas. This is something Marcus and I used to do at Ms. Neuman’s. In the Hospital, I find myself reverting back.
    â€œI’m still hungry,” I call across the Dining Hall, holding the edges of my tray, but it doesn’t do any good.
    When they come for our trays, we don’t resist. I let go of mine, and we watch the red rectangles rise from the table and crash against the floor.
    Finally Groups four and six walk out of the Dining Hall, leaving behind a swamp of gooey red footprints. The staff doesn’t move. They breathe with monstrous slowness. The trays stay on the floor. The microwaves go uncleaned.
    That night, the nurses play Carrie in the Common Room. A girl with very long hair gets soaked in pig’s blood at a high school dance and uses her paranormal powers to burn the school to the ground. In the dark of the Common Room, I find myself wishing for powers like that. The lights go out at the usual time. Two Groups have broken the rules, but nothing seems to have changed.
    In the morning, the Dining Hall is somehow spotless and the patient from California is not at breakfast. No one in his Floor Group knows what’s happened to him. He was there when his roommate went to sleep; he was gone when the roommate woke. The staff tells us nothing. I walk the hallways and the stairwells, looking, like a dog on the trail of a funny scent. Not our Floor Group, not our problem, but still I don’t like the idea of people disappearing.
    In three days, he’s returned to us. At his first meal back, he sits by himself. He eats withered blueberries one at a time. He stacks trays. He snaps on cleaning gloves and fishes a green sponge from a bucket of water and wipes all the microwaves. He looks like himself, but acts like a different person—how can we be sure who he is? He never says anything about his dreams again.
    *   *   *
    In my next Internet Session, I sit down and go right to WeAreSorryForYourLoss.com. As I scroll through the names, I get hot and itchy and keep sending the cursor in the wrong direction. It’s possible I will find my mother’s name on the list and everything will go back to the way it was before.
    My list of worst mothers includes mothers who drugged their daughters with heroin and taught them to shoplift and used them to make porn and sold them and poured hot sauce in their eyes and buried them in the woods. This a list I keep to remind myself that there are worse things than leaving.
    I scroll down to the l ’s. I check three times. I do the b ’s too, just to be sure. Her name is not there. It is on another list, on the list for the living, that I find her.
    *   *   *
    One morning I wake later than usual, because no one has come for our examination. My mouth is dry and sour. Louis is still in bed, his white sheets tangled around his calves. I go into the hall, into the tunnel of fluorescence. The door to the twins’ room is flung open and I see N5 swatting at their floor with a mop. Sam and Christopher are standing in the corner, barefoot, their pale toes curled like animal claws. Their floor is coated in water.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” I ask from the doorway.
    â€œOur toilet is overflowing,” Sam says. He swallows, and the freckles jump around on