Always Watching

shears, keeping beat with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” playing in the background—it was my therapy. But today tears dripped down my cheeks as I thought about Heather, my daughter, and Willow—all the lost girls of the world. I rubbed at my face, leaving streaks of dirt behind, and stared at the bonsai tree I’d been trying to shape. I gave up and went inside for a shower, but first I checked the cardboard box I’d left under the back steps for the cat, noticing that there was a fine coating of black hair on the blanket.
    After watching some TV for a while, I talked on the phone with Connie about how I was starting to overidentify with Heather’s emotions, which was making it harder to remain a compassionate observer. Being there when she was given the news about her parents had also reminded me of the agony of telling Lisa her father had passed. I felt more at ease by the time I went to bed. I’d grown fond of Heather over the last couple of weeks and was glad she was doing better, but it would be good for both of us when she was released.
    I read for a while, then I switched off the light. My heart started pounding, but I continued with the calming self-talk— You’re okay, just keep breathing, this won’t kill you— until the panic eased.
    Though it was still early, I drifted into a sound sleep.
    *   *   *
    Two things happened at once: There was a loud clatter like the garbage can had been knocked over, and the phone rang. I bolted up in bed, my heart crashing into my rib cage as I tried to figure out what was happening. I heard a couple of cats screeching and realized they were fighting. The phone shrilled again. I turned on the lamp and grabbed the handset on my night table, noticing it was nine forty-five.
    It was Michelle. She was trying to tell me something, but she broke off crying. Still half-asleep, I was confused for a second, thinking my worst fear was coming true, and she’d phoned to tell me Lisa was dead.
    Then Michelle gathered herself together long enough to say, “Heather Simeon committed suicide tonight.” My blood roared in my ears as Michelle tried to describe the brutal scene, but she kept dissolving into tears, and I’d only catch snippets of phrases. “There was blood everywhere—we didn’t know she was in the utility room. I called code. But it was too late. She was already dead.”
    “What happened? How did she get in there?” My own voice sounded high and strained as I tried to make sense of what I was hearing.
    Michelle, calming down a little now that she was being asked direct questions, explained that a fight had broken out among some patients on the ward when they were having their evening snack. All the nurses were needed to break it up, and the janitor, in the middle of gathering supplies, had left the utility room unlocked while he went to clean up the dining room, where some trays and drinks had been thrown. In that brief fifteen-minute span, Heather had entered the utility room and, finding a coffee-can lid on the janitor’s cart, which he’d been about to take downstairs with some other items, had slashed her wrists. Perhaps remembering that she was interrupted before completing her last attempt, she then drank cleaner. When that still didn’t work fast enough, and she’d vomited liquid, comprised of bile and tissue from her burning esophagus, all over herself, she shoved rags down her throat. She had finally suffocated to death, her body’s last struggle for air drowned out by the sounds of the fight on the floor.
    Michelle said, “Everything happened so fast—after I found her. I just saw the blood. It was awful.” Her voice changed from a frantic, shocked tone to a hushed and eerie resolve. “I’m never going in that room again.”
    *   *   *
    As soon as I got off the phone with Michelle, I pulled on some clothes and rushed to the hospital, where the nurses were trying to calm the patients down. Michelle was sitting in the nurses’ station, pale and shaking, as another nurse handed her a mug of tea. Until the coroner had finished his initial investigation, Heather’s body was still in the utility room. Noticing that the door had been left ajar, and not wanting anyone to peer inside, I went to close it. Before I got it shut all the way, my eyes were assaulted with the brutal image of Heather’s body on the floor, her back still leaning against the wall, and her thin, pale legs and arms all akimbo, like a broken doll. Her face