MAIS C'EST LA VIE

             Last month's magazines lay untouched on the table beside me. Normally, I'd flip through for pages to tear out and plaster onto my walls but I haven't even got the energy for that now. Madonna judges me from the cover of Woman & Home as sweat puddles between my thighs.

Natural ways to beat fatigue and forgetfulness, it reads. Do I appreciate the irony or become offended? I'm too dizzy for either.

My cell vibrates against my thigh and sparks a shiver up my spine. I don't remember taking it out but now I stare at the screen with abject resignation. The number of unread messages, written below eleven calls and seven voicemails, changes to fifty. The digits slip out of focus soon enough.

Even when the rippling floor opens up to a black hole that rumbles as it attempts to vacuum me, I don't so much as shift my trainers back or stare into the abyss. Am I breathing?

Iya nudges me and I turn glacially to her, so arthritic and decrepit I imagine I resemble the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth. A copy of National Geographic is open in her hands though she's staring at me. Her eyes gesture to something behind me and I rouse my neck around to find Dr Colas waiting. How many times has she called?

I push myself up using the armrest. My jersey maxi skirt, which sports several permanent stains and I'd normally not wear out of the house, is glued to my thighs which have left sweat marks on the plastic chair.

'Do you want me to come?'

'I'm not twelve.'

But I don't take more than one step before I turn back and stare at her sandals. I can't look higher. I doubt I'd see her through the layers of grain and vignettes adhered to my pupils anyway. 'Can you?' My vocal cords break down before I can add a please or merci.

She stands without complaint and greets Dr Colas like family, my aunt rather than my psychiatrist.

I cram myself as close to the armrest of the red sofa as I can and clutch the pictorial cushion before Dr Colas herself has sat down. Blinds are pulled over the windows though not shut all the way and I stare at the slivers of sky visible between them. As Iya explains everything she knows, I count the birds that fly past and mentally recite every song I've ever heard to block it out.

Dr Colas's voice breaks through, not because she speaks louder, but because she speaks so gently my defences don't pick it up until it's through them. 'Ziri, I need you to be honest with me, have you experienced any psychotic symptoms in the past six months?'

'No.' I strangle my hands into the drawstring of my skirt. 'Just small things.' Iya withholds a sigh beside me as my fingertips lose feeling. 'I didn't wanna bother anyone.'

Dr Colas doesn't torture me further. She resumes speaking to Iya. 'As we've discussed before, his tendency for rapid cycling may make him less responsive to treatment.'

I don't want to witness myself being dissected again. I don't want to be a laboratory lesson where Dr Colas demonstrates what order to sever each connection and holds up my brain to point out interesting details with the wrong end of her pen. I'm "the subject", see how their frontal lobe has shrunk only to double its mass with the rot of disease that gathers like rust. Iya, a disgusted student who already regrets taking this class, picks and prods with her scalpel until she manages to yank my brain out. All that's left are butchered remains.

But I can't preoccupy myself. No birds fly past the window. I try to recite a dua, then a prayer, but don't remember more than three words of any of them. What's the point of speaking several languages if they all leave me in my most dire time of need?

'The real issue is his comorbidities. It's near-impossible to tell which disorder is causing any given symptom, and that makes treatment difficult. SSRIs are normally what's most helpful for PTSD but, as we've seen, it's best he stays far away from those.

'I'd rather not increase his carbamazepine but we can up his lithium to 900 milligrams. And if you'd like, we can add an antipsychotic — quetiapine to start off with. That should help whether his hallucinations are caused by bipolar or PTSD.'

Iya agrees with the urgency of a contestant on Mastermind. When I remain silent, sinking further into the rough fabric of the pictorial cushion, she nudges me.

I nod. 'Okay.'

'I'd advise he resumes group at least once a week.'

I nod again, though I want to protest.

Dr Colas sits up, pressing her clipboard to her thighs. 'I'll book you in for a blood draw and if everything is fine, I'll update his prescription. I'll phone you when you can pick it up from the chemist.'

               Another forty-five minutes in another waiting room.

This one is for general practitioners on the ground floor and is filled to the brim. One child plays with a bead maze, coloured blocks knocking together with enough fury to start an earthquake, whilst another screams in their father's lap. Iya is greeted by every nurse who passes, those without a patient dawdle for longer conversations. A woman opposite me types aggressively on her Blackberry. The telly hanging from the ceiling fills in all the gaps with jingles and slogans from commercials.

Elbows jammed to my thighs, I clamp my hands over my ears but all it does is trap the cacophony inside my skull.

The room sways. I'm going to be sick.

The person next to me is called and drops a magazine on top of the rest on the table between us where it lands with a slap. I jolt as if it were a grenade. I press a hand to my sternum. Just a magazine. I can't make out the title or the celebrity.

Someone's eyes drill holes through me.

The person from the chair beside me steps away and my heart stops beating.

A boy sits on the seat behind them and stares right at me. Power blue hospital gown, no drawstring. Eyes bloodshot. Lips rough from chemical burns. Patient ID wristband. No green privileges bracelet. Head like a plucked chicken. Left inner elbow black with bruises.

He tilts his head and continues to stare at me, not with castigation, but curiosity. 'Are you dead still?'

My lips part but I manage no answer.

'Ziri.'

We snap our heads up in perfect synchrony.

Rosa, a nurse I've known since she started at Westview when I was nine, smiles at me from the edge of the waiting room. Since Iya is deep in conversation with Maxine, one of the NPs closer to her own age, I follow Rosa alone, though not without a glance back at the row of chairs.

I'm not there.

I think Rosa asks me how I'm doing and I think I answer. Fine. Thanks. Yeah, exams ended last week. Results come out in August, yeah. They went fine.

Am I dead still?

By the time I'm in the consulting room, the world is so fuzzy I barely find the chair. When I do, it provides no stability. It rocks on the pulsing floor. My fingers dig into the armrests. Everything is hazy.

Until everything is sharp.

Rosa shoves the tube into its holder, then screws it onto the needle, and at the sight of the point, a thousand of them are shoved into my occipital lobe. Searing white.

And I'm sixteen and my head is shaved and my throat is raw and I haven't seen Iya or Baba for six days and I can't shower for more than three minutes and they force me to eat when I refuse to do so myself and the world is built from pus-yellow latex paint and antiseptic and someone is always watching and there's nothing left in my veins.

I slap my hand over the bend of my elbow.

'It's just a little blood. Nothing to worry about.'

'I don't want to. I don't want to.' I tear the rubber tourniquet from my arm, fall off the chair, and crawl until I find a wall to curl up against. 'I don't want to.' The mantra pours from me, choppy and high-pitched. I grip my head and screw my eyes so tightly shut that white dots the abyss. I don't want to.

The linoleum floor evolves from ripples to rogue waves that throw me around. The wall is made of modelling clay. The best I can do is dig my fingernails into the gap under the baseboard, a tiny chasm where my sanity is crammed. I'll have to dig it out from there before someone else takes it.

Iya's scent of cocoa butter and zozoma flowers floats through the thunder. 'Ma puce, tout ira bien.'

She manages to heave me back into the chair and keeps a hand on my left cheek. The pretence is a caress but really it's a shackle to keep me from turning my head. So that I can't look at Rosa, I can't look at the needle. I can't look anywhere but her, not that I see more than a cubist portrait.

I don't want to go back, please don't make me.

Iya sings Dodo Goutte D'eau until Rosa interrupts it. 'All done.'

I bolt to my feet and fall over. My wrists take the brunt and I bite my tongue to keep quiet. Idiot. Idiot idiot idiot. It's a blood draw. A five-year-old would handle it better. Why do I have to be so difficult?

The moment the car door is shut, I sink as far as I can until my knees are crammed against the glovebox. I'm too tall; the top of my head is still visible through the window so I bury it between the two seats.

Iya slides into the driver's side without acquiescing to my urgency: rather than the car keys, she digs out a tangerine. Breaking the skin with her thumbnail, she peels it from the navel like opening the petals of a flower yet to bloom until she can pry the fruit out with the peel in one piece.

The core cracks and a fresh wave of nausea crashes over me. Knuckles and spine. I have too many bones to make noise.

She scratches off the white albedo because I'm too picky to eat it, and once done, scoops the rubbish into the small compartment in her door handle. Then drops the fruit into my hand. 'Mange.'

Though eating is the last thing I desire, I don't dare to argue. I tug one carpel from the core and place it onto my tongue to squash against the roof of my mouth. The juice slips easily down my throat. I suck it until all that's left is a clump of flavourless flesh that I force myself to chew and swallow.

She watches me eat a second piece before she pulls out of the car park.

I stare at the dandelions that line the road and don't eat a third. 'Désolé.' Tangerine juice clings to my tongue. Or is it her blood? 'I don't mean to be a problem all the time.'

'You're not a problem.'

Her tone is neutral but it sets my stomach on fire. I can't take it. The way they walk on eggshells around me and act like a bit of honesty will shatter me, as if I've been anything but shards grotesquely glued together for years.

With every inhale, the flames grow. Until they flare out of my mouth. 'But I am! We all know it. You don't want me to be like this. You probably pray I was different every night–'

'Of course, I do. You think I want my only son to be ill like this? You think it makes me happy to watch you in pain? You think I want my only son to kill himself?' Iya smacks down the blinkers and shoves the gear into second. 'You think I like being afraid every time I come home that I might find you dying again?'

Nose flaring, she wipes her tears. There's a pause when we reach the t-intersection to North Chapel Road and she has to focus on the traffic.

'Of course, I want you to be better. Mais c'est la vie.'

I turn back to the dandelions. Most have discarded their seeds and remain only as stigma poked into the side of the road. The puddle in my palm calls my attention to the tangerine and I release its erupted remains from my fist. My eyes flood. There are stains on my skirt and saccharine blood sticky between my fingers.