A debut family novel about four sisters growing up on the campus of the underfunded state mental hospital where their strong-willed mother serves as head of psychiatry. A richly moving story of sisterhood, loyalty, and mental health in America. The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother''s mission: they''ll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one. After an incident involving the highest-security ward, Mercy Hill faces greater scrutiny than ever, and Lisa Cross pushes each of her daughters even harder in the name of her mission. As the sisters cross into adulthood, the pressures of their isolated environment and mercurial mother set them on different--and perilous--paths. And as the battle wages on, youngest sister and narrator Denise grapples with the added responsibility that comes from being the last hope for their mother’s dreams. Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill’s fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.

Autorentext

Hannah Thurman

Leseprobe
ONE

Mimi’s branch snapped like a gunshot, and all four of us began to scream.

The magnolia had been an easy climb, and so we’d gone both high and far—­up into the canopy and also out, scooting along the smooth limbs that reached over the barbed wire fence. Eighteen feet below us was the recreation yard of highest-­security Ward C, and up until this moment, we’d had the perfect perch to spy safely on the men below. But Mimi, like always, had gone too far, out to where her bough tapered into leaves. My own arms began to shake as I watched the bough bend and then split.

I felt a great ruffling wind as she plummeted past me, arms still locked around the limb like it would save her from what came next. Then two booms: first, as the wood made contact with the razor-­wire fence, sending a wave of clanging along the chain links. Next, the thud as my sister and her tree limb landed inside the yard.

The summer air was still and wet, and the cloying scent of magnolia flower rose from the ground where Mimi’s fall had knocked down a shower of moon-­white blossoms. Paralyzed, I clung tight to the bark, staring down. Mimi’s right leg was twisted underneath her, bent back at an angle that I’d never seen before. Her face wrenched into a grimace, and even eighteen feet up, I could hear her whisper: Is he coming?

For the first time since hearing the crack, I raised my head and looked around. My other two sisters, J.J. and Caro, were already beginning to make their way down the ladderlike limbs to safety. I tried to follow them, but my hands stayed locked. I had never felt fear like this before, and my heart beat wildly, like some animal was trapped inside me.

“Denise!” Mimi called up at me, louder than before: “Is he coming?”

I looked across the yard. Unlike Ward B, whose residents were allowed passes to the commissary and the post office and the tennis courts, Ward C was surrounded by a razor-­wire fence, a fence ten-­year-­old Mimi was now trapped inside. The men inside this fence arrived on the Hill in police cars and left in prison transport vans. And yes, drawn from the shade of the building where they’d been clustered, they were now making their way toward Mimi, led by the man we all called the Scarecrow.

The Scarecrow was taller than the others, with patchy hair that stuck out in tufts around his somber face. That was why we’d given him the nickname, because you could imagine him staring off in some field for hours, flat eyes fixed on a point well beyond what you were seeing. He’d arrived at the beginning of the summer, and we’d spent the last few weeks observing him. He made even the biggest longtimers, Carl and Joe James, shy away, and we wanted to know why.

J.J. threw herself at the fence from the outside, rattling the metal. “Techs!” she yelled. “Can we get a technician?”

Usually one of the techs, big dough-­faced men with army crewcuts, would be standing in the yard with the residents. But on hot days in the summer, many called in sick to go fishing. The wards were egregiously understaffed at the best of times, and in July and August it often seemed as if no one worked there at all.

J.J. then began to call the names of the nurses: Reginald, Jamie, Noah. At thirteen, she was the oldest and tallest, but standing there against the shining fence, she didn’t even reach the midpoint.

Numbly and dumbly, I thought: I should yell too. But my mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. I stared down at Mimi, watching as red cuts like scales appeared along her hands and arms and cheek, courtesy of the razor wire. With effort, she wrenched her arms behind her back, trying to push herself up to a sitting position. By the time she was upright, the Scarecrow was close enough to touch.

J.J. and now Caro, too, pounded the fence, their voices ringing in a twisted wail. “Mom!” Mimi sobbed, staring in vain at the ward’s open, empty door. “Mom!”

This is what, more than twenty years later, chills me most to remember. Mimi was the wildest, the bravest, the one who taunted the rest of us at any sign of fear. To see her helpless sliced at my skin as if I had been the one who had toppled into the yard.

The Scarecrow crouched down. Extended a broad hand against Mimi’s face, stroking his fingers through the blood on her cheek. She stopped screaming.

He held his hand up to the light, as if it weren’t high noon in August. Blood dripped down his wrist and he sniffed at it like he was trying to place the scent.

“Hey, you!” J.J. shouted, addressing him for the first time. “She’s Dr. Cross’s daughter. You know Dr. Cross?”

The Scarecrow lowered his hand. Mimi’s blood dripped from his finger onto the sun-­fried grass. After a very long moment, he spoke, the first time I’d ever heard his voice. “You look like her,” he said.

That wasn’t surprising. We all looked like our mother: dark hair, dark eyes, narrow hips and shoulders. I felt another wave of fear shake through me. I wanted to be back on the ground, but I didn’t trust myself to let go of my chokehold on the branch. My arms began to ache.

“Please,” J.J. said, pressing her whole body against the fence. “Can you please go get her? Please go get Dr. Cross.”

The air was so thick and still I felt as if I couldn’t take in another breath. My stomach seized at the possibility of violence.

Then he turned. He walked in a broken cadence, like he could come back around at any second. But he walked nonetheless. It drove the other residents back, like a shark through a school of fish, leaving him a direct path to the dark open door of the ward. No one spoke, everything was silent.

When he stepped into the narrow shadow of the building, everything happened at once. A blue flash of men’s scrubs, the snap of plastic restraints, the Scarecrow let out a high, piercing cry and thudded to the ground. His feet thrashed as one of the techs fought to bundle his kicking legs.

Lisa Cross, MD, stepped around the warring men, white coat blinding in the midday sun. Sh…