By Tania Mallah.

The ward was grey. In fact it was the most obscenely grey place I’d ever been in. The walls, the chairs, the tables, the signs, the clothes, really the only deviation was the dull flesh of the patient who was staring at me as I entered – looking through me as though I were glass. Like my regrets were written out across my skull. Her mouth was pulled back in a grin that tried to be welcoming, but lay just wide enough to make me afraid, and then embarrassed. I dropped my gaze like a shy dog, and walked up to the counter. The man behind thick panelled glass asked who I was here to see and I realised I’d
almost forgotten her legal name. I spoke it for the first time in years.

“Ines Nguyen”

“She’s waiting for you in the visitors area, first door to your left.”

And dear god she was a fucking beacon. Wearing my roommates orange shirt, her green hair fell flat against the sides of her head, she sat at a table with three others, all scribbling on paper with thick, blunt crayons. I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder, peering over at her drawing of an old man with huge tits. As soon as I did she turned to me, her features shifting from confusion to excitement before leaping up and crushing me in her arms.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call, I typed your number wrong” She sighed.

“They took your phone?” I questioned, pulling her off.

She looked different. Cleaner. I’d seen her first thing in the morning, straight out of the shower and she’d never looked so clean. She drew me up a chair, rubbery and large and heavy as she leaned the full weight of her frail body to slide it across the floor. She didn’t speak about the night she was put in there; when she called me crying, begging me to come over, I couldn’t hear
the fear in her voice and I said no. Of my misplaced hope that a bad night was just a bad night. Of the hole she put through her wall or the scars on her arms that were now thickly bandaged over. Peeking out from beneath orange sleeves.

No, she wanted to ask me about my week, while I’d lie about classes I couldn’t force myself to go to, and friends I kept in the dark, and pretend I wasn’t looking guilt in the fucking face.

I suggested building a card house when the others had finished drawing. The group obliged me, and – I’ve come to think – enjoyed my company that night, as I did theirs. There was a boy who looked quite young, our age and had the kind of face I’d imagine on a mormon missionary, another was a stocky middle aged woman – Vivian I think – who spoke mostly of her children which was endearing until she claimed to be a virgin. She built a damn strong house of cards.

The last person on the table was a slim older fellow, Tony. He was bald, with a smooth shaven face and the kind of eyes that make you second guess yourself. The words he spoke were enigmatic, charming, shamefully I couldn’t help but wonder how he ended up in the ward.

For the hour we played no one managed to build more than two stories before the deck would fold in on itself and the teasing and laughing and anecdotes would commence again. The few times afterwards I came to visit, Vivian and the 

boy sat alone, never with a visitor. Save for that first time though, Tony always sat across from a
petite woman with a beautiful smile, who Ines later told was his Fiance. That first visit though, while she’d gone to fetch a book from her room, he lay his hand on mine and said to me,

“You’re a good friend coming in a shithole like this and showing her a good time, showing all of us a good time, not many people in here have friends like that”

For the hours I pitied myself, and for the guilt that hung on me overnight. For the tossing and turning and what ifs that ran through my head until I stepped foot in that place. It took those words for me to know I was an asshole. That all it took was idiotic validation to know that
kindness didn’t have to look like saving her, or reversing time.

When that day it just looked like strangers meeting and a poorly built house of

cards.