Everything from there I could only recount in a sort of dizziness that was colored by fluorescent lights. The first time I had clarity of mind after the car ride to the hospital was five days later when they told me that my uterus had ruptured and in order to control the bleeding they’d had to remove it in an emergency surgery. I would never be able to become pregnant again. I’d let Seth hold me as I sobbed into his shirt, and then when he’d left to take a call from work, I’d gone to the tiny bathroom in my room and attempted to slit my wrists with a metal nail file. A nurse found me bleeding on the floor, staring at the blood, perfectly calm. It was a hack job, my wrists sawed open with something dull. The scars are thick and lumpy. I’d been calm until they tried to help me, then I scratched, and bit, and screamed that they’d killed my baby and were trying to kill me. That had been the start of my first stay at Queen County. The stay that had left me barren of womb and heart.

Dr. Steinbridge says that, in my grief, I created the delusion of three wives—women who were better suited for Seth, ones who could give him what I could not. God, it’s depressing all the things that are wrong with me—even if only half of them are true.

I shuffle out of our sessions, my head ducked low, the scars on my wrists throbbing. I’m believably pathetic. He thinks I’m getting well. But in those bent-shoulder moments when I look my most humble, I am angry. Where is Seth? Why hasn’t he come? He wasn’t like this when I carried his baby—he was pandering, and catered to my every whim. Does he even feel guilty that he lied?

I’ve been jettisoned. I fume all the way back to my room, which is too cold despite the various complaints I’ve made with the nurses. My roommate is a woman in her late forties named Susan, who had a mental breakdown after she caught her husband having an affair. Weak Susan, I want to say. Try signing off on two extra marriages and being the forgotten middle wife.

Susan has no eyelashes or eyebrows. I’ve seen her searching for them when she’s anxious, thin fingers reaching up like tweezers to pluck. She has a bald spot on top of her head, too, and a scattering of long brown hairs around her bed. I imagine by the time she gets out of here she’ll be completely hairless, like one of those cats.

She’s not in the room. I lie down on the bed, my arm thrown across my eyes to block out the light because we aren’t allowed to turn off our lights during the day. I am drifting off into a semi-nap—which is the best you can do in this place—when a nurse comes in to tell me that I have a visitor.

My eyes snap open and my first thought is: I’m going to pretend not to be angry with him. That’s right. I’ll be docile and apologetic—the Suzy-homemaker type of wife he likes me to be. It won’t be so hard, will it? I’ve been pretending for years, the anger bubbling under the surface, unexplored. You’re awake, I think. Do not lose grip of your awakeness.

I stand up, alert and ready. There is no mirror to check my reflection in—mirrors are slit wrists waiting to happen—so I smooth my hair, wipe beneath my eyes. I have no idea what I look like, but I suppose the more pathetic, the better. When I run my hands down my abdomen, there is only a hollow and then two sharp knobs of hipbone that used to be buried underneath my bad habits of wine and cheesy pastas. I stick out my chest, which, thankfully, has not diminished. I have to get my husband on my side.

When I walk into the common area, it’s not Seth I see, but Lauren. I feel a sense of disappointment. This is different than what was supposed to happen. I rearrange my face, hiding what I’m really feeling to smile at pain-in-the-ass Lauren. Lauren, whom I had drinks with, and told all my secrets to. Were we friends now?

I don’t know if I’m happy to see her, but she’s certainly happy to see me. She stands up from the table where she’s been waiting and I see that she’s wearing jeans and a Seahawks sweatshirt. Her face is contorted with concern as she makes her way over to me, dodging a woman who is doing interpretive dance in the center of the room. The place between her eyebrows is pinched.

“Thursday,” she breathes, shaking her head. “What the hell?”

I like her so much in that moment that my little act of contrite humility I had ready for Seth drops away, and I latch on to her in a desperate hug. My moods, my thoughts, they’re all over the place. I’m like a spider monkey, clinging in my relief to someone I know.

Lauren lets out a little yelp and I realize I’m strangling her, so I let go. She smiles at me in the way that old friends smile after something bad has happened to you. She already believes me, I can tell. I do have a friend.

“How did you find me?” I ask, breathless with anticipation.

“Your husband called the hospital—Seth, right?—and said that you’d be taking extended time off due to an illness. I tried to get in touch with him but we don’t have a number. So, I called your mother—she’s listed on your emergency contacts—and she told me where to find you.”

I’m surprised that my mother admitted to a stranger that her daughter was in a mental hospital. Lauren had put in a lot of work to find me. I wonder if Anna’s noticed that I’ve been missing, if she’s reached out to my mother.

“Why are you here?” she says finally, once we’ve settled down in a spot by the window. The glass is streaked with water as an unusually hard rain leans east, slapping the glass and bending the trees. A woman’s hair whips around her as she runs through the garden area below. As I lean into Lauren, a mother/son duo walk toward us, eyeing the empty chairs in our circle. I shoot them a vicious look and they scoot away somewhere else. Good. Go.

I tell her about going to see Hannah, and about finding Regina online. When I get to the part about Hannah’s bruise, Lauren’s eyes bug out. Another convoluted detail to add to this story. I tell her how Seth pushed me while we were arguing.

“I confronted him about all of it. He says I attacked him, that I fell and hit my head. When I woke up, I was here. Lauren...” I say, lowering my voice. “He’s saying that I made it all up.”

Her face is horrified. Her life is a mess, but mine is messier.

“That you made what up?”

“His polygamy. He has everyone convinced I’m crazy, including my own mother.” I’m rubbing a piece of hair between my fingers and I abruptly stop, in case I look crazy.

Lauren doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes drop to the ground as she thinks.

“If everyone close to you is saying the same thing, they’ll never believe you,” she says. “You know how this stuff works.”

I know.

“What about your friends? Is there someone I can call to come in here and back you up?” Her hands are splayed flat on her knees with just the pointer finger of her right hand moving up and down in quick succession. A nervous finger, I think.

“No,” I say. “I’ve never told anyone aside from you. Not even my sister knows.”