I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 39: mais c'est la vie

             Last month's magazines lay untouched on the table beside me. Normally, I'd flip through for pages to tear out and plaster onto my walls but I haven't even got the energy for that now. Madonna judges me from the cover of Woman & Home as sweat puddles between my thighs.

"Natural ways to beat fatigue and forgetfulness", it reads. Do I appreciate the irony or become offended? I'm too dizzy for either.

My cell vibrates against my thigh and sparks a shiver up my spine.

I don't remember taking it out but now I'm staring at the screen with abject resignation. The number of unread messages, written below eleven calls and seven voicemails, changes to fifty. The digits slip out of focus soon enough.

Even when the rippling floor opens up to a black hole that rumbles as it attempts to vacuum me, I don't so much as shift my trainers back or stare into the abyss. Am I breathing?

Iya nudges me and I turn glacially to her, so arthritic and decrepit I imagine I resemble the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth. A copy of National Geographic is open in her hands though she's staring at me. Her eyes gesture to something behind me and I turn my head around to find Dr Colas waiting. How many times has she called?

I push myself up using the armrest. My jersey maxi skirt, which sports several permanent stains and I'd normally not wear out of the house, is glued to my thighs which have left sweat marks on the plastic chair.

'Do you want me to come?'

'I'm not twelve.'

But I don't take more than one step before I turn back and stare at her sandals. I can't look higher. I doubt I'd see her through the layers of grain and vignettes adhered to my pupils anyway.

'Can you?' My vocal cords break down before I can add a "please" or "merci".

She stands without complaint and greets Dr Colas like family, my aunt rather than my psychiatrist.

I cram myself as close to the armrest of the red sofa as I can and clutch the pictorial cushion before Dr Colas herself has sat down. Blinds are pulled over the windows though not shut all the way and I stare at the slivers of sky visible between them. As Iya explains everything she knows, I count the birds that fly past and mentally recite every song I've ever heard to block it out.

Dr Colas's voice breaks through, not because she speaks louder, but because she speaks so gently my defences don't pick it up until it's through them. 'Ziri, I need you to be honest with me, have you experienced any psychotic symptoms in the past six months?'

'No.' I strangle my hands into the drawstring of my skirt. 'Just small things.' Iya withholds a sigh beside me as my fingertips lose feeling. 'I didn't wanna bother anyone.'

Dr Colas doesn't torture me further. She resumes speaking to Iya. 'As we've discussed before, his tendency for rapid cycling may make him less responsive to treatment.'

I don't want to witness myself being dissected again. I don't want to be a laboratory lesson where Dr Colas demonstrates what order to sever each connection and holds up my brain to point out interesting details with the wrong end of her pen.

I'm the subject — "see how their frontal lobe has shrunk only to double its mass with the rot of disease that gathers like rust". Iya, a disgusted student who already regrets taking this class, picks and prods with her scalpel until she manages to yank my brain out. All that's left are butchered remains.

But I can't preoccupy myself. No birds fly past the window. I try to recite a dua, then a prayer, but don't remember more than three words of any of them.