-A random snippet of the memoir I haven’t got around to writing yet. 

      You know, I never realized how slow my heart can beat until I find myself coloring a black and white giraffe at the arts and crafts table inside a psych ward. 

      In normal situations, like grocery shopping or walking the halls of my high school, my heart’s beating fast, faster, alive. Every small movement, every small gesture, leads to the impending speed of a million stampedes inside my chest, right behind my rib cage. 

      But now, with a maroon colored crayon in my right hand, my pulse is slow. Almost non-existent. 

      Thump… thump… thump. 

      I turn to my right and try to smile at the girl sitting next to me. Her name is Ellie and she just turned twelve. She’s coloring a happy-looking dog, but her frown is big and her dark, almond eyes are scanning the paper rapidly, as if the animal on the page were real and about to break free and bite her face off. 

      I want to speak to her, compliment her choice of colors- rainbow- but the words get stuck in my throat. Or, maybe they just die out halfway. I’m not sure, but that tends to happen a lot in here. The words slide their way down to my chest and burrow themselves there, because they’re cold and hopeless and tired. That’s probably why my heartbeat’s so slow- it’s backed up from all the failed and shivering sentences.

      “Can you pass me the blue, please?” Ellie asks, her eyes still set on her artwork. I nod quickly even though she isn’t looking at me and comply. She makes a small noise of thanks and goes back to coloring again.

      A few more minutes pass by like that, all mute except for the sound of maniacal scribbling, until I decide to go back to my room. 

    I pass my roommate on the way, and she shoots me a grimace. I sigh back, feeling especially sad for her. She’s on on-to-one because she tried to hang herself from the bathroom door last night. An older nurse now has to follow her around everyday, constantly. She even watches her sleep and use the bathroom.

   I think, if that were me, I’d might die. 

   I continue my journey down the hall. The fluorescent lights hurt my head, and I wonder if they actually want to burn us alive. I nod a hello to Alex, who’s standing stoic in the doorway of his room. He grins back at me and passes me a handful of putty. I catch it and wince at how warm and wet it is. 

    “I made it,” he says, proudly. I try to let out a small, “cool,” but the word snags at the inside of my throat and falls down, down, down before I can.

    “Hey,” he says, and I raise an eyebrow in question. “You okay?” He squints a little in concern and I feel my slow-beating heart tug. 

     “I will be,” I answer, even though I’ve been here a month without any changes at all. 

     Alex smiles sadly, like he understands, and he squeezes my shoulder. “I got your back, kid.”

     “Thanks.” 

     I walk away without mentioning he’s a year younger than me. I’ve never really met anyone like Alex before. He’s too good for this, I know it, yet this is his sixth visit. He’s only fourteen but I can tell he’s lived and loved more than most people. There’s this twinkle in his eye whenever he laughs and it reminds me of the way the sun rises in the morning- bright and blinding and everything warm. Even with the scars up and down both of his arms, he’s so gentle. I wonder if we’d be friends on the outside. 

   God, it sounds like I’m in prison. 

   (It sort of feels like it sometimes.) 

   I’m halfway through my mid afternoon nap when a woman walks in. The first thing I notice about her is that she’s blonde. Very, very blond, with all of her hair tied back in a fancy bun. She’s also tall and I honestly don’t know why she’s wearing heels if she’s already got the height. 

    “Kaylie?”

    She peers around my room, looking for me. My roommate’s not here, and I guess she can’t see me since I’m bundled up in all my blankets. I get the courage to muster up, “I’m here,” in a such a small voice that I’m not sure if she's heard me. But her eyes finally meet mine and her entire face lights up, sort of like a child’s on Christmas morning. I can’t fathom why, though. I’m not a gift; I’m a curse. 

    “Did I wake you?” 

    Yes. “No! You’re good,” I say, although every fiber of my being wants to slam the door in this lady’s face and make her go away. 

    “Can I sit here with you for a bit?” she asks, her eyes as wide as an owl’s. “I’m a med student from the community college around the corner, and I wanted to visit here to get a glimpse of what being a psychiatric nurse is like.” 

    “Uh… yeah. Sure,” I say. She pulls the chair from my desk and places it next to my bed. Now that she’s up close, I can really get a good look at her.  And, let me just say, she is gorgeous. Greek-statue worthy, I think. She’s young, and she reminds me of one of those supermodels you see in magazines- blue eyes, thin face. I wonder why she wants to spend her time in here when she could be out and about doing literally anything else. 

    She holds out her hand, I take it. I realize how sweaty my palms are and try to pull back, but her grip is firm and strong.

     “I’m Brittany,” she says. “And you’re Kaylie, I presume?” She stares at me with a hint of curiosity and I feel myself blush. 

     “Yeah, I’m Kaylie.”

     “Is it alright if I ask you a few questions, sweetheart?” she asks. She has a strange lull in her voice, but I like it. She brightens when I nod and pulls a clipboard into her lap. 

      “Great! Okay, so, how do you like it here?” 

      I snort. I don’t mean to, but it just comes out. She looks surprised for a second but then smirks, her lips tugging up at the corners

       “Not too good, huh?” Her question doesn’t seem like question but more like a fact. 

       “That’s the understatement of the century,” I say, scrunching up my nose in mild disgust.

       She giggles, but then stops and looks at me seriously. The way her eyes meet mine makes me want to look away. She’s studying me, all of me, and it’s the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever experienced. I fumble with the ends of my cardigan. 

        “Why are you here?”  

        I look up from where my fingers pull on loose string and shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, honestly. “Depression, I guess.”

        “It must be bad,” she replies, to which I nod. Another understatement of the century.

        “It is. They say it’s severe. Like, medication severe.” Lexapro mixed with Abilify mixed with something else all make up the concoction of pills I have to take every morning. An old nurse hobbles over to me with her huge machine and makes me swallow them with apple-juice. She’s sweet and her eyes are kind. She always asks me how I’m doing, to which I reply, eh.

       “Can these questions get a little more personal?” Brittany asks suddenly, and I want to say no but the way she holds my gaze, steady and sure, makes me nod my head yes.

       “What happened, love?” Her voice is as soft and sticky as honey, and I feel it drip down from her lips. Her colds hands take mine again, but this time they trail down my wrist and over my left arm, smoothing over my bandages. I feel my face burn hot as I realize what she’s referring to. 

      “You can probably guess,” I mutter. 

      She sucks in a sharp breath and closes her eyes, nodding her head up and down slowly. She looks… concerned? Disappointed, maybe. I can’t tell, but I want to reach out and hug her.     

      “Did you feel alone when you did it? Like nobody was there for you?” 

       “Yeah.” My voice is bare and stripped of anything loud or wistful; it’s just quiet, now- so quiet that you can hear the beating of my heart. It’s not slow anymore, it’s fast, almost like it’s screaming for someone to hear it. I think Brittany does, eventually, because she wraps her fingers  around my hand and squeezes, just once, and very softly, like I’m the most delicate thing in the world. 

      “Look at me,” she whispers, and when I bring my eyes up to hers, I see that they’re glassy. “You’re so special- more special than you know. You have this wonderful life ahead of you and I know you’re gonna do great things.”

      I sigh and bite the corner of my lip so hard it bleeds onto my tongue. “But you don’t know that. You can’t know that. You don’t even know me.” I don’t mean to snap at this poor woman but it just shoots out like bile from my bloody mouth. She doesn’t even look taken aback, she just looks thoughtful, like I’m some sort of messed-up science experiment and she’s trying to find its source of error.

     “I’m gonna tell you a story,” she says, finally, after a moment of suspended silence. “It’s about this teenage girl who hates her parents, isn’t doing well in school, and wishes she were someone else entirely.” 

     I just stare at her. 

     Thump thump thump thump.

    “She gets on her knees and prays to a God she doesn’t even believe in every night and begs him to let her sleep for forever,” she continues. “She just... doesn’t wanna wake up. Every day is a different battle, a steeper hill to climb.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I interrupt her, my pulse racing and beating against the hollow cavity of my chest. She smiles sadly and shrugs, her shoulders brushing her dangly earrings. 

     “We all got scars, okay?” she says, lifting the sleeve of her red turtleneck to reveal a row of identical white lines, somewhat faded but not quite, on her wrist. They remind me of miniature ghosts- not alive and bleeding anymore, but still there to haunt you. 

     “I’ve got them, you’ve got them. It doesn’t mean, well, it doesn’t mean shit. I’m thirty-two years old and I’ve made a life for myself despite everything I did when I was your age.” She stares at me for a moment, and laughs lightly. “Get out of here and write a book. Travel to a different country. Take up knitting. Do something.” A pause, a breath. “Just don’t do this, okay?”

    I’m about to respond when her phone buzzes in her pocket. She takes it out and glances at it for a moment. Her breathy sigh tells all- she has to go. 

    There’s a lump in my throat because I don’t want her to, which makes no sense since I just met her an hour ago. But, honestly, I feel like she was meant to tell me this. To tell me she’s alive today even though she didn’t want to be. I shut my eyes and try to quell the renewed, stronger beating of my heart. Because I will fight. And I will win.

    I say a quick thank you, and she hugs me so tight. Maybe she doesn’t exist at all. Maybe- God- maybe I’m hallucinating and she’s all in my head. But even so, I’m grateful. 

    I watch her walk out the door, and I know that guardian angels really are real, and that I just met mine.