Chapter Six: Lights Too Bright
Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing. But for her, they were another kind of stage—curtains drawn back, lights glaring, audience unseen. A theater where she was always performing, never applauding. Only this ballet had no music, just the low hum of fluorescent lights and the rustle of paper gowns. She lost count of how many acts she’d performed under that cold, relentless glow. Sometimes she entered willingly, hand in hand with someone who cared. Other times, she was carried in—by EMTs, by officers, by the heavy choreography of breakdowns. The opening scene was always the same “the intake” act. Bright lights overhead. A script she never wanted to learn. “What brings you here?” She wanted to say: Everything. Instead, she muttered her rehearsed lines, depression, anxiety, self-harm. Sometimes silence took the stage. She let the machines take her pulse while someone with a clipboard decided which part of her to erase. The lights in psych wards never dim. They buzz and flick...