Fifty percent. Fifty percent chance that if one identical twin is diagnosed, the other will be too. That’s what the doctor whispered to my parents. They were scared to tell me this prediction, but they forgot I am a psych major. Or was a psych major. The recent revelations about Mags’s Schizophrenia (and possibly my own) had lead me to make the decision to withdraw from school. I wasn’t complaining. Freshman year was a challenging, confusing, and isolating time. Home was where I needed to be. As an identical twin, I had to follow through on the unspoken agreement me and Mags had made to each other in the womb the day our egg split into two embryos: I would never leave her in her time of need.

Leaning against the brick wall of the hospital, I nodded at a nurse as she passed by. I pulled out my lighter and lit the tip of the cigarette that was in my mouth. Gently, I hit the bud and watched as a couple of ashes swirled through the winter wind onto the ground. Placing the cigarette back into my mouth, I began to take large inhalations of tobacco. I closed my eyes and allowed the ecstasy of the drug to take over my body. Smoking was a recent habit I had developed. My older brother, Teddy, told me I was only doing it to get attention. My father and I fought about it quite often using a colorful array of language, but my mother just looked at me sympathetically. My best friend Olivia told me I was asking for a death sentence.
The problem with smoking is some people smoke slowly. They savor the taste in their mouth due to addiction or only light up on social occasions. I’m not addicted. If I wanted to stop I swear I could. The reason I smoke is different than most people. I smoke quickly, to get as much toxins into my lungs as possible. I smoke to die. I want to die to avoid my possible future; a future like Mags. A future stuck in some dumpy hospital, with no visitors, no music, no boys, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no distractions. Just my body and mind, rotting simultaneously until I am nothing but a ghost of the girl I used to be.
After I finished, I tossed the cigarette onto the ground and squished it into the sidewalk with my heavy combat boot until it was flattened. I turned my reddened face away from the cold and walked into the hospital through the sliding glass doors. The warmth was inviting, but being here still gave me a nauseous feeling in the depths of my stomach. The security desk was occupied by an aging African American man with a patchy white beard. As I approached he gave me a genuinely happy smile.

“Hey Jim,” I said.

“Hi darling, you here for your sister.”

“Yeppers,” I said shoving my hands into my coat pocket, looking around awkwardly to make sure no one I knew was near. He pulled out a guest pass, writing my name at the top. He moved to the line beneath my name, but his pen hesitated.

“Remind me your sister’s name again.”

“Maggie Calahan.”

“What unit?”

“Psychiatric, room 24,” I said as he wrote my responses in his typical chicken scratch.

“Here you go. Give your sister my best.”

“Thanks Jim. See you in a bit.”

I made my way to the shining steel elevators, and pressed the button to descend into the psych unit. I guess they preferred to keep the mentally unstable underground. The elevator began its slow decent. By the time I reached my destination I found I had subconsciously been swaying to the cheesy elevator music. The doors opened, revealing the blindingly white walls of the psychiatric unit.
Squinting because of the fluorescent lights, I made my way to the nurse’s station at the end of the hallway. Even though I was a regular, it was still customary to show them my guest pass. As I rounded the corner, I could hear one of the nurses in heated debate. Sitting in her light pink scrubs, Lydia held the phone tightly against her ear with her shoulder as she flipped through a patient’s medical chart. When she heard my boots stop in front of her she looked up to give me a smile.

“One second,” she mouthed, putting a finger up to indicate her phone call was almost over.
Various charts were scattered around in front of her, and I lifted the pages up and began reading some of them. I’d always been too curious for my own good.

“Listen, I’m sorry Mrs. Jenkins he had to be moved into the more secure unit…Well he assaulted a staff member during his bath,” as Mrs. Jenkins went off on the other end of the line, Lydia looked at me and smacked my hand, “hey you can’t look at those…oh no Mrs. Jenkins I wasn’t talking to you…”

I smiled and removed my curious eyes from the chart of Don Waters, a patient with such severe OCD he barely had any skin left on his hands from washing them so frequently.


“Yes…yes I’ll have the doctor call you as soon as he gets in. Have a good day.”
Lydia gave a long sigh and hung up the phone before Mrs. Jenkins could reply. Putting her head into her hands, she began to massage her temples with her index fingers.

“I swear, sometimes I think the real delusional people aren’t in here,” looking up again, she gave me one of her award winning smiles, “but enough about that, how you doin’ honey?”

“I’m good, just here to see Mags.”

“You’re such a good sister. Stopping by every day to see her like this. Some people in here don’t get one single visitor their entire stay with us.”

“Thanks, that’s a shame. How’s she doing today?”

“Unfortunately nothing new to report. She speaks, but only in either one word responses or random thoughts that make no sense. Her body is always limp and her face is lifeless. It’s sad. You’re both so pretty, so young. You girls don’t deserve this.”

The way Lydia was talking about both of us scared me. Did everyone know I had a chance of becoming like Mags? Was everyone so nice to me here out of pity?

“I know,” I whispered, “How long do I have to see her?”

“About forty five minutes, but if I forget,” Lydia made air quotes with her fingers, “to come in and tell you to leave probably closer to an hour.”

Forcing laughter I replied, “You’re the best Lydia. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Wait,” Lydia began to rummage through her knock of Juicy Couture pursue, “spray some of this first. You smell like a walking ash tray.”

She procured a small clear spray bottle full of light purple liquid. As I sprayed the perfume over my body I began to cough. Lilac. A scent I had never felt I was feminine enough to wear. I handed Lydia back her bottle and began walking through the maze like psych unit. Even though the walls were thick and soundproof, as I walked by patient’s rooms I could hear the distinct sounds of sobbing, hysterical laughter, and terrifying screams. I wonder if Mags could hear all this too. I wonder if it was the reason she couldn’t sleep at night.

As I passed the rooms, and the numbers began to change from 10, to 15, to 20, to 23 my heart began to pound louder and louder with each increase. Seeing Mags always made me nervous. Every day by the time I reached room 24, my heart felt as if it was trying to burst through my chest cavity. I stopped in front of her door and took a deep breath as I knocked. There was no response (as I expected) so I let myself in. Sitting on the twin bed with white cotton sheets was Mags. Or what was left of Mags. Her long blonde hair was in front of her face like a thick velvet curtain covering a stage. Her body was slumped over as if she were extremely interested in studying either the cracked, green nail polish on her toes or the oak floorboards. The skin on her arms that had once been beautifully pale was now tinted with a sickly greenish color. Looking around I saw plates of uneaten food piled up in the corner of the room. I guess that accounted for the reason she looked so fragile, all the muscle she had acquired from ballet gone. As the door shut gently behind me, Mags didn’t even bother to look up.

“Hey there Mags,” I said trying my hardest to sound enthusiastic.

She didn’t speak a word, but her head perked up and our blue eyes met one another’s. Our faces still looked exactly the same, except for Mags had become gaunter and aged. The wrinkles that had formed around her mouth from smiling were almost gone. Mags hadn’t had anything to smile about in months. Around her neck was a thick bruise, left by the rope she had tried to hang herself with two weeks ago. If my dad hadn’t walked in on time, I would be standing in front of a tombstone. When my Mom told me about Mags’s attempt, in some weird way I understood. Mags’s brain had become a constant nightmare she could not escape. Death was her only way out. The doctors said that when they asked her why she did it, Mags told them the voices in her head wanted her too. I knew those voices were with her constantly. She tried her best to fight them, but they were overpowering. I had often contemplated what I would do if my worst dream came true, and I became like Mags. Honestly, from the way Mags had deteriorated, suicide sometimes felt like a more plausible option than living a life of torture in my own mind.

The room was dark and desolate. I walked to the curtains and opened them, the bright sun spilling into the room. Taped to the window were drawings Mags must have done. They were beautiful, yet haunting. One was of the sky. Where clouds should have been there were large eyes. The eyes were crying, their tears falling onto a stormy ocean below. The only difference was, these tears were red. Blood. I shuddered, hoping that Mags had ran out of blue crayon and only had the choice of using red. But I knew that wasn’t the case.

“Mags,” I said gesturing to the pictures, “these are beautiful.”

She muttered back some indistinguishable sound. I picked another drawing up. It was a family of five. The parents were smiling and holding hands with the tallest child, a boy. Then there were two little girls, about the same height and blond. While the rest of the family looked happy and was wearing bright colors, the little girls looked demonic and dressed in all black. The eerie thing was, the house they were standing in front of looked just like ours. Mags began to speak and I jumped.

“I have to go,” she said, “Leo is expecting me at his Riviera in Italy by nightfall. I promised I would pick up some Doritos at Shoprite on the way there…”


Here we go, I thought. Word Salad. It was a characteristic of advanced schizophrenia. It just meant that Mags spewed random thoughts that made no sense to a rational person. When she did it at home my parents ignored her. I always engaged in her fantasy. After all, it was the only time we could really talk.

“Who’s Leo Mags?”

“You know who he is. We’re going to be in a movie together. I met the director yesterday he was a nice man.”

“That’s great Mags I’m super happy for you.”
As quickly as our conversation started it stopped. Mags slowly stood up and walked over to the corner of her room. She sat down in the fetal position and began to rock back and forth. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her bony shoulder. She began crying and saying “I can’t” over and over again. Whenever she got like this, Mags would turn everyone else away but me. She didn’t want me to talk or console her, she just wanted to know I was with her. We sat that way for a while, and I stroked her brittle hair as her chest rose and fell violently whenever she tried to take in air. Eventually she calmed down. She placed her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. I must have too, because sometime later, a gentle knock came from the door.
“Rhianne, it’s time to go,” Lydia said peering her head in, “Mags, Dr. Thompson will be in soon.”
I stood up, my joints creaking from sitting in one position too long. I extended my hands to help lift Mags up too her feet. I kissed her on the forehead.
“Love yah sis,” I said,

“Yuck,” Mags said wiping the traces of my kiss off her forehead.
I smiled as I left the room, but the second I closed the door I let out a sigh of relief. Visiting Mags was draining. But as long as the sun rose tomorrow and my heart was still beating, (as painful as it was) I would return to Room 24 of the psychiatric ward to see my sister; my other half. Foolishly, I hoped one day when I walked through the door she would remember me and wake up from her stupor. I was losing her, but I hadn’t just yet. And in the constant sea of worry and fear that had consumed my mind, that thought gave me some hope.