Eirene House was meant to be a one-year arrangement but when the year passed and no one asked her to leave, she’d stayed on. But now, Margaret told her that her bed was needed. They’d taken a look at Anne’s file and said she was more than capable of living on her own. She’d not had any sort of alarming episode in her time at Eirene, and at least part of that was because she no longer had to count out daily pills and tablets that she might choose to take or to push through one of the little holes in the drain of the women’s showers, depending on her mood. Instead, she got a monthly injection, and ever since that change she’d felt steadier, less haunted by the feeling that something bad was always about to happen.
Anne had never lived alone in her life, and when she returned to her room after their meeting, she sat on the edge of her bed, the corners neatly tucked in the military style, and tried to catch hold of the fear she felt rising in her belly. It was all right, it was okay, it was all part of what was supposed to happen. It was all right, it was okay, it was all part of what was supposed to happen. She repeated it to herself fifty times.
The studio apartment she found was small, and the two single-paned windows were no doubt drafty, and the rent would eat sixty percent of her income, but she didn’t need much. A yogurt for breakfast, an apple for lunch. Often, she was able to take food from the nursing home. The cook was always giving away the stale bread, the milk that had reached its date but was perfectly fine. Fruit cups full of sweet syrup that would have to be thrown away after they reached a resident’s tray, even if the resident hadn’t so much as touched the tinfoil tab of the seal. The studio was walking distance to her doctor’s office, though it meant a longer commute to the nursing home. A long commute seemed like something other people would mind, but Anne really didn’t. The drive to and from work gave her something to do, and it was a way of filling more of the day. A television would help but it seemed extravagant. She would wait.
Dr. Oliver was no Dr. Abbasi, but Anne liked him okay, and he said she was doing very well. Since arriving at Eirene she’d been going for a blood draw every week to make sure she wasn’t toxic, and only one single time since being discharged from the hospital, after a brutal stomach virus that left her dehydrated and weak, did she feel the familiar agitation bearing down on her. Margaret found her in the common room at three o’clock in the morning. She’d been watching a game show on TV, and when the players buzzed, Anne slapped the particleboard coffee table and shouted the answers.
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