Someone knocked on the door and pushed it open.
“Good morning, Agatha, my name is Colin.” He carried a breakfast tray and his white uniform seemed to glow against his black skin. The tray had toast and scrambled eggs made with lots of parsley and a dollop of cream.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You’re in hospital.”
“Am I sick?”
“Your mind needs fixing.”
Later they let me go to the lounge, where the staff had put up a Christmas tree with brightly colored baubles and twinkling lights and an angel perched at the very top. I looked out the window, which had vertical bars, and I saw the winter outside.
In the afternoon I had a visitor—a nice man named Cyrus who let me hold his hand as I told him about my life. Nobody has ever listened to me like that—not my mother, or my stepfather, or Mr. Bowler, or Nicky, or Hayden, or the fertility doctors, or random men I took home and fucked, hoping to fall pregnant.
“Have you ever been to Tahiti?” I asked him.
“No. Have you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I go there all the time.”
“Tell me about your other babies.”
“You’ll never understand.”
“I’d like to try.”
That evening I sat in a wheelchair in front of the TV, listening to a choir sing Christmas carols, and I was glad that I didn’t die.
“What would you like to do tomorrow, Agatha?” asked Colin. “We have yoga and Pilates, or you could do some planting in the greenhouse.”
“Oh, I can’t do that,” I said. “My daughter is coming to visit. She’s driving all the way from Leeds.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know, but she’s very pretty and clever and she’ll tell me her name when she gets here.”
On the morning after I killed myself . . . and the next morning . . . and the one after that, which was Christmas Day. . . I learned how to wait.