Brianna died in the room we shared.
The ends of our twin beds brushed against each other and the white walls seemed smaller when they held the both of us inside. At first, we barely spoke. We argued when we did.
“Get out so I can change,” I said.
“There’s a bathroom ten feet away,” she snapped back. “I’m reading.”
We shared a room for three weeks inside a children’s psychiatric facility. It looked and smelled like every other state-run hospital: there was screaming, crying, and small hints of laughter whenever someone told an off-colored joke.
Each patient acted like a child and an adult at the same time. They all carried history inside of them, festering and oozing like wounds left untreated. Medicated to the point of near-sedation, they sat and wilted.
I lived there for a year of my life. Brianna lived there for the rest of hers.
One night, after the nurse turned off the ward’s lights and the heavy metal doors to our bedroom swung shut, Brianna began to wail in the dark.
The sound of it was both animalistic and intimately human, her thin body tossing and turning beneath her sheets, growing more frantic with each wretched exhale.
I wanted to smash my hands over my ears and hum loudly enough to block out her sorrow, but it was impossible. Her pain hung over my head, staring into my open eyes with its own.
My decision to rise from my bed and hold her was not a conscious one; suddenly, my feet swung over my mattress and carried me three feet to where Brianna lay in hers.
“I’m here,” I told her, hesitating before plopping down beside her and wrapping my arms around her back. “You can cry. It’s okay.”
Eventually, the wailing softened to sobs, and the sobs quieted to sniffles. We breathed together. We must have fallen asleep that way.
***
We became friends. We might have recognized the futility of arguing without much of a reason other than boredom. We might have realized how vital it was to find family within each other, how thin our blood ran when no one else was there to see it—something about a tree falling, alone, in the middle of the woods.
We both liked to make noise.
Due to an onslaught of patient admissions, I moved out of our room and into another wing of the hospital. Although we no longer shared a wall, we still completed puzzles in the common area and invaded each other’s personal space, reading the same worn copy of The Stand by Stephen King that we finished in less than a week. She often asked me to twist her long hair into Dutch braids, sitting patiently beneath my feet.
She taught me how to fold origami cranes. She told me she wanted to fold one thousand so that we would have good luck forever.
“How hard can that be?” I asked. “I mean, we have a lot of time.”
So, we got to work. We folded at least fifty per day, hiding sheets of paper in our schoolbooks. I liked the feeling of holding something delicate in my hands.
The months inched by in tandem. Neither of us were allowed to step foot outside. From behind a sheer layer of plexiglass, we watched summer slowly fade to autumn.
“Do you miss your family?” she asked.
“They bring me coffee almost every day,” I said. “They’re only allowed to stay for a few minutes, though. And my sister’s too young to visit.”
She nodded. The lump in her throat bobbed up and down. “My mom’s gonna visit soon. She told me she has a surprise for my birthday.”
We sat in stillness. Neither of us mentioned the fact that her mother had not visited for four months.
We continued like that—speaking, but not addressing. We talked about books and Scrabble and puzzles. We left out the real parts of living with a disease and a diagnosis, the harsh reality of therapy sessions, and the crippling flashbacks. The scars. The lesions. The failures.
Her birthday passed. She turned sixteen. We relished sharing something as precious as an age. The staff made her a red velvet cake that tasted like cardboard, but I had never seen her so excited to be somewhere. She received a stuffed animal, a set of origami paper, and a brand-new 1,500-piece puzzle.
At the end of the day, I handed her a new copy of Anne of Green Gables. I watched her eyes widen as she opened the book, brought the pages to her nose, and smelled them.
“We’re kindred spirits,” I said. “Like Anne and Diana.”
Although her mother never did come to visit, she was happy. She laughed at jokes and beamed when we sang, our faces illuminated by the candles that we were somehow allowed to light in the ward’s kitchen.
“This is almost as good as a sweet sixteen,” she said.
I laughed. “Don’t lie.”
“You’re right,” she conceded. “But my friends are here. You’re here. So, it’s not that bad.”
***
I consider her birthday to be her last good day.
There were a few more okay days dispersed within her final months, but mostly bad days. During those, she did not get out of bed; if she did, it was to scream. More often than not, I watched four staff members drag her limp, tired body back to the room we once shared. They restrained her wrists with velcro cuffs until she fell asleep strapped to a cot.
At dinner one night, I watched Brianna lift a fork to her lips but refuse to open them. When the head nurse, Nicole, informed her that she hadn’t eaten in two days, she flung her full plate off the table. It landed with a clatter that made me jump in my chair.
After she stormed into her bedroom, I approached Nicole, who was in the middle of sweeping up the concoction of French fries and glass shards.
“What’s going on with Brianna?” I asked. “She stopped talking to me. She won’t eat. She won’t even sleep.”
Nicole frowned. I did not miss the concern etched into her expression, though she attempted to hide it with a gentle smile. “She’s just…tired,” she said. “She’s been here for two years and still has a long way to go before we send her home to her family.”
“She doesn’t even have a family,” I said. Then, I paused. “Well, she does, technically— but I haven’t seen her mom in forever.”
Nicole shook her head. “Sometimes, we have to choose the people we call our family.” She rubbed my upper arm. “And you’re a good sister.”
By the beginning of winter, I knew Brianna was exhausted. It seeped from her eyes, to her pores, to her bones. She lost nearly ten pounds, her sweatshirts hanging loosely around her shoulders.
At the same time, my medication started working. I began to smile again—fully, with rows of my crooked teeth on display. I was allowed to go home for weekend passes.
Whenever I left for the day, Brianna congratulated me and asked me to bring her back souvenirs from the outside. I bought her a journal and a new pack of Crayola markers.
“I’ll draw you a picture,” she said. “Of the vacation house I want to have someday. Maybe in Rome, or Massachusetts. We can live there together, or be neighbors. Or something like that.”
“Sisters,” I told her. “Always sisters.”
It was the last conversation we had before the day I was discharged.
On that day, before I clambered into my dad’s car, I found Brianna sitting on the rickety couch in the living room. She was watching television, but her eyes bore up into the ceiling.
Her hair began to thin at the ends, frizzy curls wrapped up in a ponytail. She’d stopped asking me to braid her hair. She’d stopped talking at all. She’d stopped making demands and cracking jokes and completing puzzles. A stack of books sat, untouched, on the top of her dresser.
“I’ll miss being kindred spirits with you,” I said.
“We still are,” she answered, her body still aimed away from mine. “But you need to get out of here. I’m happy for you.”
Without looking at me, she handed me a tiny crane. It was bent at odd angles and its left wing was torn. I took it into my cupped palms and began to cry.
Whenever I cannot fall asleep, I imagine sitting across from her at a picnic table and pouring tea into delicate mugs. I picture us laughing, bows in our hair, our dresses blowing softly in the wind. We do not have a care in the world; we are simply happy to exist together and drink tea.
***
Six years after Brianna’s death, I sit in my classroom. My high school students are packing up for the period. I sink back into my chair and watch them gather to talk about the upcoming winter break, their laughter echoing across the desks.
“Ms. Mancino.”
A student taps the papers in front of me, her smile soft and shy. When I raise an eyebrow, she holds out her hands.
“I made these for you,” she says. “I got kinda bored during your lesson.”
I start to fake a scandalized gasp, but I nearly choke on it as I accept her gift: three paper cranes, each meticulously folded.
For a few seconds, they sit in my palms. I swear I can feel them breathe.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice tight. “Yours are a lot better than mine ever were.”
“You know how to make them?”
“Of course.” I place them neatly in a row at the center of my desk, smoothing down the edges of their wings. “My sister taught me how, actually.”
She grins. “So did mine.”
With that, the bell rings. My students funnel through the open door, their footsteps growing fainter.
I stare at the cranes again. Then, I grab a sticky note and begin the work of folding, and folding, and folding.
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