Under The Overpass

The world of Denise Bertram-Fergus was wrapped so tight in the ribbons and bows of her mental illness, that it was almost impossible not to offend her changing sensibilities. When the cosmic forces aligned just right, she believed that she existed in a Bronte novel, even though it was 1970. She shifted between the two realities without warning, and seemed to live quite agreeably in both. She wasn't always so messed up, I mean she was just another kid in the neighborhood, but as she sped along the highway of her burgeoning adolescence her mind wound up on an exit ramp that dropped her dead smack in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors. It was sad really, I mean I was pretty sure that she was the only one who didn't know that she was out of her fucking mind.

By her eighteenth birthday she had spent more time at treatment facilities than anywhere else, without any real measure of success. She was bounced around from one facility to another with nothing to show for it other than a slight addiction to chlorpromazine and a deep mistrust of men with beards. Tate and I would visit her during some of her incarcerations while Farberman waited in the hallway. He insisted on joining us but he was always so worried that he might catch one thing or another, that he just couldn't go into her room. He was genuinely afraid. He was genuinely an idiot. Denise was harmless and it didn't matter who she thought she was, she was still okay. "I'm worried." Tate said as we sat beside her bed thinking she was asleep. "If it could happen to her, it could happen to us."

"There's nothing to worry about." I said. "We're already so fucked up, we're probably immune." The truth was that I was just as worried as Tate, I mean it was scary to watch her slip away and get lost in her own mind, and I suppose he could have been right. It could happen to anyone of us.

"That's funny." Denise said. "You guys always make me laugh. Did you bring the cigarettes?" It was our job, no it was our duty to bring her cigarettes every time she was admitted. It was the least we could do, I mean she was our friend and her family had all but deserted her. I suppose we would have brought her anything she wanted really, but she was quite content with the cigarettes. "I don't like it here." she added.

"I don't blame you." Tate said. "Hospitals are shitty places to be."

"I don't mean the hospital." Denise said. "I mean the here and now. I'd rather be somewhere else."

"Is that really possible?" I asked.

"I think so." she said. " I've got it all figured out. They think I'm crazy, but I'm really not. I have a plan. "

We saw her two or three times after that, and following her discharge from another in the long line of psychiatric facilities, she simply vanished. No one had any idea where she had gone and sadly, no one really bothered to look for her. Tate thought that she could very well have traveled through time and space and finally made her way to Victorian England, I mean it was what she said she wanted.

The years passed and I never really thought about Denise. I don't suppose anyone did, I mean it was like she never even existed. I heard from Tate not so long ago that she had spent the past forty years or so living beneath Gardiner Expressway, under the overpass at Shereborne St. I thought about heading down to see her, but after all of this time I didn't really have anything to say, I mean she probably wouldn't have remembered those days anyway. Over the course of about a month or so I convinced myself that I should go down there and try to find her. I didn't think she had anyone else.

"You haven't changed at all." she said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I came to see you." I said.

"You were always good that way." she said. "Did you bring cigarettes?"

"Would I let you down?" I replied as I handed her a pack. "You remember the cigarettes. I wasn't sure you'd remember me."

"It really doesn't matter if I know who you are." she said. "What's important is that you know who you are."

We talked for a while. She insisted that she was fine and that she was exactly where she wanted to be. She had grown tired of everyone trying to fix her while her life just kept passing by. She simply decided that it was time to live her life. She told me that she hadn't been hospitalized since she began living on her own terms, and couldn't understand why everyone else was so concerned about her. She was quite content with her life exactly the way it was.

"The people here are my family." she said. "We look out for one other. We take care of each other. They're also my friends. What more do I need?" There was absolutely nothing that I could have said, I mean I don't think anybody could ever have needed anything more. I was glad to see that she was alright. I suppose that we should all get to make our own choices about how we want to live our lives. I didn't feel sorry for here anymore, I mean not everybody gets to be exactly where they belong.