Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

Do you want to let your husband come and visit the shrink asks, because Maddy, after passing out cold at work, her boss unable to arouse her, while being carried away by paramedics with an oxygen mask over her face, pulled the mask off herself as soon as she was conscious and said, do not let my husband visit me. Okay? You hear me, and the paramedic put the oxygen mask back on her and said okay, okay, just breathe, that’s it, just breathe. No, she says to Dr. Barrabo, I absolutely do not want him here. It might be a good idea, says the shrink.

I’m too tired, she thinks, I’m tired and I can’t stop moving and I don’t know where to go, but she doesn’t say that to the big-eyed, tilted-head bitch in front of her. She says, I just need to get away from here, start over somewhere else, I’m fine, Dr. Barrabo, I want to gain weight, I do. I believe you, Maddy, says the shrink, but there are still things we should talk about. And I don’t think running away is the answer. Fine Maddy thinks, just fine for you, you stay here in the stinking awful loser town, I’ve got better places to go, but she says, I don’t want to run away, I just want to have a fresh start, that’s all. The shrink looks so serious, so cow-eyed, Maddy shivers she wants to hit her so badly, change that awful expression on her long all-eyeball face. Dr. Barrrabo says, I think moving could be a good thing, but first you should stay here and resolve some issues, so you don’t take it all with you.

Take it all? Resolve some issues? Maddy thinks, how do you resolve your life, dissolve your life, don’t take it with you? Leave it behind? Wrap it up in a nice package, put a bow on it? Why not take it with me, it’s my life, I own it. But she says, I feel resolved about things. Really I do, all the while thinking, yes sir shrinky dink, thinking God is our forty five minutes up yet and then it is and Maddy’s alone again and she hears her neighbors cough and she gets up and walks around a bit, towing her IV alongside herself. Smiling at this nurse, hello to that nurse, goes into the common room and watches TV for four hours straight, takes her meal in there because she can, because she’s such a well behaved patient, they all love her. Time for weigh in, standing in line with the other girls, pussies, she thinks, pussies all of them, except maybe that one, the really really skinny one, the one with dark hair on her face, bald patches on her head, smells bad even though you have to shower here everyday, looks like death. Maddy smiles at her on the way back from another happy weigh-in, good job Maddy, one and a half pounds today, the girl stares back without blinking, her bottom jaw sticking out in an very unattractive way.

The girl’s name is Nancy, some crazed teenager, only sixteen, looks like she’s forty going on a hundred. Maddy hears the nurses talking about Nancy, voices low, pissed-off sounding, words used to describe her are hopeless and disgusting and sad. Maddy walks by her bed and smiles at her again and again, finally, out of control, foam on the edges of her mouth, Nancy says, what the fuck are you looking at? and Maddy just laughs. Late at night Maddy walks up to her bed and she’s awake, Maddy knows it, even though she’s laying there stiff as a board not moving, Maddy walks straight up to the bed and looks at this girl, this girl with two deep sockets for eyes this girl who stinks of rot, and says, want to go smoke a cigarette? Nancy gets up without saying anything and they both go into the common room, the night nurse hasn’t found them yet, she’s still in her little lit-up box of a station at the end of the hall, the two girls go in there and Maddy produces two stale Marlboros and a pack of matches and they both sit down on a couch, right next to each other. Maddy strikes a match and lights Nancy’s first, the girl says nothing, Maddy says you’re welcome, the girl says nothing but smiles, or kind of smiles, her teeth as green as moss, her mouth open and that’s where the smell is coming from the strongest, Maddy thinks, from inside her, coming out her holes, her mouth, her ears for god’s sake. The two girls sit there and look at each other and look away, comfortable either way, sitting very close, and smoke.