I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

Author:Joanne Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter seventeen

In the same kind of restraints as those in which Miss Coral had arrived, and with the same thrashing and profanity, the safari brought its new tigress to captivity, and, as before, the ward was laced with tension. Such arrivals always mirrored this patient’s anguish, threatened that one’s violence, and blew like a shifting wind over those to whom any change was a symbol of death. Outwardly there was little acknowledgment of the presence of new patients; many came to “D” and many went from it, but the fighting ones always bound the ward with a special kind of panic. Now Lee Miller, proud of her veteran’s status on the ward, watched with faintly amused tolerance until she looked into the face of the tigress proceeding down the hall. Then, recognizing it in the swarm of attendants, she turned, went to her bed, and lay down.

Later, when Deborah went to Lee Miller and asked her who it was (knowing that certain patients usually learned by grapevine days in advance who was coming, Name, Age, Occupation, Religion, whether Married or Single, Previous Hospitals, Shock Treatments—what kind and how many—Other Treatment, and Remarks), Lee replied, “Why ask me?” and pulled her blanket over her face.

Deborah was reduced to seeking out an attendant. “It’s a readmission,” the attendant said lightly. “Isn’t much written. Her name’s Doris Rivera.”

With a sick feeling Deborah moved back against the wall and the attendant went by her. Fear and anger, fear and vindictive joy, fear and jealousy rose in her. She began to gag with the surfeit. The great Doris Rivera had broken her back on the wheel of the world. It was proof of something. Suddenly, the envy burst out of her mouth in a great gust of bitter laughter.

“So much for Rivera, the North Star! Who did she think she was anyway!”

“Napoleon!” Lena shouted, and grabbed the heavy ashtray she was using and threw it, missing Deborah and hitting the wall beside her.

The attendant said, “Come on, now, Lena,” but there was no force in it.

Later, Deborah heard her in the nursing station saying, “Damn that Blau bitch! Mommy and Daddy are shelling out plenty on that bitch who isn’t fit for saving.” Someone else demurred, but it was only for form’s sake. Deborah turned slowly and walked past the doors of the seclusion section to the front of the closed box where Doris had been taken.

“That’s where you are, Presumptuous!” she said to the person behind the door. Who was she to have tried, challenging them all? And how dared she have failed under the grinding of the world! But there also came a long surge of pity, which was also pity for herself, and an answering terror, which was also terror for herself. So they come back; the ones who are too stubborn to accept that their nganons are poisonous and who are beaten to ruins. They come back, and slowly, they get up off the ward’s floors, shaking like the loser in

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