A gift, Hannah said after Wren described what she had seen. She’d been given an image that was a gift from the Spirit, something to help when she felt like she was plummeting. Hannah scanned the room. “I had to leave my phone and my bag at the check-in desk,” she said. “I wonder if they’ve got a Bible here somewhere.”

  Wren pointed toward low bookshelves on the far wall. “Over there, probably.” She hadn’t bothered to bring her Bible to the hospital. Reading the Word the past few months had felt like chewing cardboard. She wondered if her pastor would understand that. Or maybe, like Allie and her former small group leader, Hannah would remind her of the importance of reading the Word, especially when she didn’t feel like it. Maybe she’d remind her that when you’re sinking, you need a firm, solid place to stand. Because, she might say, if your life isn’t built on the foundation of the Word, you’ll be swallowed whole. You’ve been given the mind of Christ. You’ve got to work hard to renew it.

  But that was like commanding a quadriplegic to run a marathon. When your mind was broken and ill, you couldn’t work at much of anything.

  Hannah had retrieved a Bible from the shelf and now sat in front of her again, flipping through pages. “The image you saw reminded me of something from one of the Psalms. Thirty-four, maybe.” She skimmed the page. “No. Not that one, though that’s a good one too.” She turned a couple of pages slowly, still scanning. “Here it is. Psalm 37, verse 24. ‘Though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.’” She looked up. “That’s like what you saw. God’s hand upholding you.”

  Uphold.

  Wren liked that word. If she had her phone, she would look up the meaning and origin of it. But her phone had been confiscated too.

  “Years ago,” Hannah said, “back when I lived in Chicago, I was holding a baby before the congregation, getting ready to baptize her. And the little one had her hand wrapped around one of my fingers. From her perspective, she was the one holding me. What she didn’t see, what she couldn’t yet know, was that I was the one holding her.”

  Wren let the picture form in her mind: the tiny fist clinging, the hands and arms undergirding. “I don’t think I know how to trust that right now. I don’t even know how to ask for it, how to pray.”

  Hannah nodded. “It’s okay. You don’t need words right now. You can groan or cry or be silent. For now, let the Spirit pray for you. In you. That’s a deep kind of trusting, a deep kind of consenting prayer, saying yes to being held.”

  Wren had never heard prayer described that way before. Prayer was work. And when she was overwhelmed or anxious, she needed to pray harder. Pray harder and read more Scripture: that was the standard prescription for Christian health and maturity. Because feelings aren’t facts, a college mentor had reminded her many times, so she ought to disregard them. Master them.

  That strategy hadn’t worked. And maybe—maybe her feelings clamored more loudly because they hadn’t been regarded or heard.

  Bud was playing “Tomorrow” again. Other visitors were rising to leave as the top of the hour approached. Patients, some of them tearful, were saying their goodbyes. Hannah closed the Bible. “I’d love to come visit again if you’re up for it,” she said.

  “I wish you could. But we don’t have visiting hours again until Thursday.”

  Hannah smiled. “Special dispensation for pastors.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You let me know what time, and we can work it out for tomorrow. In fact, if you’d like, I can bring communion to you.”

  Wren was going to decline. That was the kind of ministry reserved for the sick or homebound or dying. Then she remembered where she was, confined and ill. How humbling. “Okay,” she said. “I think that would be good.”

  “Great. What time works best for you?”

  “After dinner? Maybe seven?”

  “I’ll be here,” Hannah said.

  Wren mustered half a smile. “So will I.”

  6

  While the rest of the morning group discussed mindfulness strategies—or rather, while the social worker attempted to engage them in conversation about what helped them focus on the present moment—Wren held her notebook at an angle on her lap to conceal her sketching. Hands had always been difficult for her to draw in detail, the intricacy of the fingers confounding her. She erased her third attempt and brushed the residue off her paper.

  “Do you have some thoughts, Wren?” Krystal asked.

  She felt as if she had just been caught passing notes in junior high. “No.” She shifted her foot to cover the tiny pink eraser flecks now visible on the brown vinyl floor and resumed her sketching. If Sylvia could snore and drool through the group, then she could draw. She slid her chair a few inches to the left so Sylvia’s head wouldn’t droop onto her shoulder.

  Across from her in the circle a slouching twentysomething guy glanced toward the door, nodded, and held up one finger to signal he’d be there shortly. This he did every day, in every group. As he rose, she looked him in the eye. He winked, then sauntered to the hallway.

  She wondered what he was in for.

  Did any of them wonder what she was in for?

  She tried again to sketch a thumb. But what she needed was a model sitting in front of her with a hand cupped like a nest. Casey had often modeled for her. In her apartment were sketchbooks filled with drawings of Casey with his camera or his storyboards, his gray knit “inspiration cap” pulled down over his red hair. He gave that beanie to her when he moved away. And little Theo. “Brooke can’t stand cats,” he’d said. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” Of course she would.

  The woman next to the vacated chair sat with her hands opened flat on her lap, eyes closed. She was probably trying to practice one of the breathing mantras or body scans Krystal had recommended. Cup your hand, Wren silently commanded her. C’mon. Close it just a little bit.

  The woman stretched her shoulders and leaned her head from side to side but kept her hands still. Wren peered around the circle to see if anyone was cooperating. No. No one. Drawing the hand would have to wait.

  She could draw the empty chair instead. Vincent, inspired by a painting of Dickens’ empty chair after he died, had painted a couple of chairs, his own and artist friend Gauguin’s. They were a symbol of an artist’s mortality, he wrote, a symbol of absence and the work they left behind.

  And perhaps, Wren thought, of the work left undone.

  She adjusted the angle of her notebook. She would do a blind contour drawing like Mrs. Hoffman had taught in tenth-grade art class: fix your eyes on the object and quickly sketch its outline without looking at your paper. Mrs. Hoffman said they needed to learn how to see things in their true form, which required paying close attention to the object rather than drawing what they expected to see when they heard the word desk or tree. Though the students had laughed when they shared their distorted renderings of desks, trees, chairs, and windows, the results were strangely beautiful in their abstraction.

  She fixed her gaze on the ordinary upholstered stacking chair, placed her pencil point to the left of her page, and followed the line of the top of the chair upward to the right at a slight diagonal, down and slightly curved where the back met the seat, jutting out again and then down to catch the narrow metal leg, then up straight and back to the left along the bottom of the seat, down to catch the other front leg—

  “Whatcha drawing?” Sylvia was awake again, and her loud, hoarse whisper caught the entire group’s attention. “That chair over there?”

  Wren ignored her. Her mild OCD tendencies meant she couldn’t leave the chair unfinished, even if everyone was watching. She had to close the line.

  “That’s a good chair,” Sylvia said. “Now draw mine. Draw me in my chair.”

  Krystal said, “Let’s leave the drawing for now and bring our attention back to the group.”

  Evidently, the social worker was not an artist and did not appreciate the mindfulness drawing entailed. Wren did not say this aloud.

  “Draw me,” Sylvia whispered again. “Draw me in my chair.”

  Wren closed her notebook.

  Sylvia tugged on her sleeve. “Draw me, draw me, draw me.”

  Wren inhaled through her nose, then exhaled slowly.

  Sylvia nudged her with an elbow. “Hey. Draw me.”

  “Sylvia,” Krystal said, “nobody’s going to draw right now.”

  “Later. She’s going to draw me later. Right?”

  “Okay,” Wren said. “Later.” That might keep her quiet.

  “She’s going to draw me,” Sylvia announced to the man sitting on her other side. He crossed his arms. She leaned in front of Wren, her crooked smile wide and open. “You’re going to draw me.”

  Wren pictured Phoebe, her eyes lit with anticipation and delight, and said, “Yes. I’m going to draw you.”

  Since she didn’t want to be scrutinized by others gathered in the lounge area waiting for lunch, Wren motioned to a corner near the nurses’ station. “How about standing there?”

  “Right here?”

  “Yes, that’s good. Right against the wall. And you’ll need to stand still, okay?”

  “Okay.” Sylvia wiggled her shoulders, arms, and legs as if she was dancing the hokey pokey, then suddenly went rigid as a statue. “Like this?”

  “Just like that.” Wren opened her notebook to a blank sheet of lined paper. Then she took a good look at Sylvia: round face with puffy cheeks, mouth lines carved like deep crevices from her nose, short unkempt gray hair cut in jagged bangs, double chin, and dark gaps between yellowed, misshapen teeth.

  Sylvia smiled broadly, her eyebrows rising like pointed peaks. Wren quickly drew an outline of her head, keeping her eyes on her subject as she moved her pencil. The woman hardly blinked, her smile frozen. “Like this?” Sylvia asked between clenched teeth.

  “Yes.” Lines for the eyebrows, the nose, the mouth, shading for the hair and eyes, lighter lines for the hint of shoulders, and there! Finished. She tore the page from her notebook. “Here you go.”

  Sylvia stared at it in silence, brow furrowed in concentration before exclaiming, “I’m beautiful! Look at me!” She shoved the paper in front of Wren’s nose, then scuttled toward the lounge, flourishing the portrait above her head and calling out to any who would listen, “Hey, look at me! I’m beautiful!”

  “My companions in misfortune,” Vincent had called his fellow asylum patients. The phrase had caught Wren’s attention years ago when she first read his letters to his brother Theo. Once she returned home, she would read them again, if she could manage the concentration. Her three-volume unabridged set had been a Christmas gift from her parents when she was in high school, the pages dog-eared and favorite passages underlined. Even at fourteen she had recognized within the anguished painter a kindred spirit. He kept her company now as she sat in the dining hall beneath his sunflowers, swirling her tomato soup with her spoon.

  If only she had thought to bring her Van Gogh art books with her to the hospital, she could sit in her room with the plastic vase of sunflowers and feed her soul with his drawings and paintings. But she hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. She hadn’t been thinking clearly about anything when she came to the hospital. Maybe it was a special gift that Vincent was already there, a reminder she wasn’t alone.

  Sylvia was circling every table, still holding the hastily drawn portrait next to her face. “My friend drew me. Look! Do you see me?”

  Some murmured polite praise, others ignored her completely. A few tracked her pointing finger toward Wren, who pulled her sweatshirt hood over her head and slouched lower. But it was no use hiding. Soon Sylvia was tapping her firmly on the back and saying, “Draw my friend.”

  Wren swiped her last bit of bread against the bottom of the empty bowl, then chewed it slowly, head down.

  Poke, poke, poke. “Hey! Draw my friend. She’s beautiful too.”

  Wren looked up. Beside Sylvia stood Monica, who, with a half-shrug and self-conscious smile, communicated a silent message: Sorry, will you humor her for me?

  “Oh, okay. Sure.” Wren pushed back her chair and picked up her notebook and pencil.

  “Where should I stand?” Monica asked.

  “There,” Sylvia said, pointing. “You can stand against the wall right there.”

  It was as good a place as any. Monica stood beside Vincent’s sunflowers, fidgeting with her hands.

  “You have to hold very still,” Sylvia said. “And smile. Like this.” She demonstrated a wide plastered grin.

  Monica opted for a subtler approach with lips curled slightly upward but closed. Wren made a quick observational scan of her face, trying to find the main lines so that with a few well-chosen strokes she could capture something of her essence: square face, angular jaw, high brow. Dark shoulder-length curls, two dark moles on her left temple, dark circles cushioning heavy, sad eyes. Beneath the physical features were deeper realities of despair, weariness, and longing. My companion in misfortune.

  After several minutes Monica visibly wilted under Wren’s silent concentration, her face flushing with color. “It’s okay,” Sylvia said, reaching for her hand. “You’re beautiful. You’ll see.”

  “My girls will love this,” Monica said after Wren finished shading her curls and handed her the sketch. “Thank you.”

  Sylvia bounced on the balls of her feet and clapped her hands. “I told you. See?”

  It was no Van Gogh, that was for sure. But Vincent might have said she captured a bit of Monica’s strength and dignity. He had been a master at finding beauty in the ordinary, beauty in the suffering, beauty in the broken and the poor, in the wounded and the neglected, in the forgotten and the discarded. Vincent knew how to see. Like Sylvia.

  Teach me, Wren said silently. I want to see beauty again.

  7

  Dominic was gone—there were never any explanations given for changes in case managers—and the new one, Thomas, found her in the art studio, where the afternoon therapy group had been instructed to assemble “life collages” from clipped magazine photos.

  “Sorry to take you away from your group,” he said after summoning her into the hallway, “but I’d like to go over your file with you. Is that okay?”

  She nodded, then mentally sketched him: bald head, round face, short dark beard starting to gray, dark eyes that smiled with his mouth. Congruity. Kindness.

  “There’s no one in the lounge right now. Would you like to sit there or come to the office?”

  “The lounge, please.” With most of the other patients in group sessions, the hallways were quiet too.

  “Pick a comfortable spot,” he said when they entered. Wren chose the corner where she and Hannah had sat the night before. Thomas pulled a chair forward a few inches before sitting down. “I’ve been going over your notes, and it looks like you’re making good progress, Wren. How are you feeling?”

  She shrugged. “My pastor was here last night, and that helped. I think I slept okay. That always helps.”

  “No more panic attacks?”

  “No.”

  “No other incidents with the other residents?”

  “No.” She wondered what Dominic and Dr. Browerly had recorded about that.

  He looked down at his notes again. “So, you came here a week ago, feeling overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, exhausted, feeling like you couldn’t manage your life . . .” He looked up for confirmation. Wren nodded. “You spoke about racing thoughts you couldn’t control, suicidal ideation . . .” He paused. “Sorry. I know it sounds like I’m reading a checklist, but I want to make sure I cover everything.”

  “It’s okay.” Thomas, at least, called her by the right name and appeared to care about her responses.

  “Where would you say you are with the suicidal thoughts?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Tell me more.”

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t think I would have gone through with anything, but there were dark thoughts I couldn’t turn off. And that scared me.”

  “So, no planning—”

  “No. Not like that. More like, I wouldn’t mind if I closed my eyes and went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  He nodded and scribbled a note. “And now? Do you still feel that way?”

  “Not as much. But sometimes.”

  “How frequently would you say?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. A passing thought a few times a day?”

  “But no specific plans to harm yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Or anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “And no history of chemical dependence?”

  “No.”

  “How do you feel about the medications you’re on? Does it seem like they’re helping?”

  “Yes, I think so. I mean, a couple of them I’ve been on before, and they seem to help.”

  “You understand the importance of taking them?”

  “Yes.” The despair she’d felt over the last few weeks had been enough to frighten her into committing to a disciplined regimen of therapy, medication, and pastoral support.

  “Tell me about your job, Wren. It says here you’re a social worker, that you work with domestic abuse victims.”

  “Yes, at Bethel House.”

  “That’s tough work. Stressful.”

  She nodded. It was like constantly trying to save poor disoriented whales who, no matter how hard you tried to get them out into safety, might end up stranding themselves again on the exact same beach.

  “How do you feel about going back?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I want to, but I’ve been scared the past few weeks.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “The responsibility, the pressure. I’m scared I might miss something important, that someone could be harmed if I make a mistake.”

  Thomas scribbled more notes. “Recovery is hard work. Maintaining good mental health takes a lot of energy. It might be worth thinking about some extended time off. Or even something more radical, like a job shift. Even temporarily.”