Seven Out of Ten

"They give you an hour to prepare. That's almost generous—most performances, you get minutes at best before the curtain rises."

They gave me an hour.

An hour to lie there under the fluorescent lights, to catalogue the damage, to prepare. I used every minute of it. By the time the curtain moved again, I knew exactly who I needed to be—the woman who had made a terrible mistake, who understood the gravity of what she'd done, who was grateful to be alive and eager to engage with whatever help they offered. Cooperative but not passive. Remorseful but not unstable. Insightful but not so insightful that they wondered how someone with such clear understanding of their own psychology had ended up here.

It was a delicate balance. I'd learned it the first time, in that hospital in Adelaide where they'd kept me for three weeks after Mack was born. Learned which answers triggered concern and which ones satisfied. Learned to read the faces of assessors, to adjust my performance based on their reactions, to give them just enough truth to seem honest while concealing the parts that would keep me locked away.

The curtain pulled back.

She wasn't what I'd expected. Younger than Dr Harris, maybe late thirties, with auburn hair pulled back in a practical ponytail and the kind of direct gaze that suggested she didn't miss much. She wore a lanyard with a hospital ID badge—Dr R. Price, Psychiatric Registrar—and carried a folder that presumably contained everything they'd collected about me so far. The call log from the ambulance. The toxicology results. Whatever Dr Harris had noted after our conversation.

"Mrs Smith? I'm Dr Price. I'm from the mental health team." She pulled the chair from the corner and positioned it beside the bed—close enough to seem approachable, far enough to maintain professional distance. "Do you mind if we have a chat?"

A chat. As if this were a casual conversation, as if she hadn't come to decide whether I was sane enough to return to my life or broken enough to require intervention. I appreciated the attempt at informality even as I recognised it for what it was—a technique, designed to put patients at ease so they'd reveal more than they intended.

"Of course," I said. I pushed myself up slightly against the pillows, wincing as the movement pulled at the IV in my arm. "I've been expecting someone."

Dr Price nodded, settling into the chair with her folder balanced on her knee. "How are you feeling? Physically, I mean. Any nausea? Headache?"

"A bit foggy," I admitted. This was safe to acknowledge—they knew what I'd taken, knew what the after-effects would be. "And my feet hurt."

"The cuts are superficial, mostly. A few deeper ones that needed attention, but they should heal well." She opened the folder, glanced at something inside it. "You were walking on broken glass. Do you remember that?"

I remembered. The mirror shattering, the shards scattering across the floor like stars, my feet moving through them as if the pain didn't matter, as if my body had become something separate from me, something I was operating from a great distance. But I couldn't say that. Couldn't describe the dissociation, the detachment, the way I'd watched myself fall apart as if I were observing a stranger.

"Some of it," I said. "It's patchy. The night is... there are gaps."

Dr Price made a note. I couldn't see what she wrote, but I could imagine—patient reports memory gaps, possible dissociative symptoms. Every word I said was being translated into clinical language, assessed for what it revealed about my mental state.

"That's common after what you've been through," she said. "The medications you took can affect memory formation. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong." A small reassurance, offered like a gift. I recognised the technique—build rapport, make the patient feel safe, then move to the harder questions.

"Can you tell me about yesterday?" she asked. "Start wherever feels comfortable."

Yesterday. Was it only yesterday? The café with Denise felt like weeks ago, the conversation with Gertrude at the fence like something from another lifetime. I tried to construct a timeline that would make sense, that would present the events in a way that minimised their significance.

"I was having a difficult day," I said. "My husband and I—we'd had an argument. A few days ago. He left to stay with family, to give us both some space. I thought that was fine, I thought I was handling it, but..." I let my voice trail off, inviting her to fill in the gaps with her own assumptions.

"But?" Dr Price prompted.

"I wasn't sleeping. I'd been awake for—I don't know how long. Two nights, maybe? I kept trying to call him, to talk things through, but he wasn't answering. I started to spiral. The thoughts just kept coming, faster and faster, and I couldn't make them stop."

"What kind of thoughts?"

The question was casual, but I heard the edge beneath it. This was where it mattered—where the line between anxiety and something more serious was drawn, where the difference between a woman who couldn't sleep and a woman who was a danger to herself would be determined.

"Worried thoughts," I said carefully. "About my marriage. About what would happen if he didn't come back. About the children—they're staying with my mother, they don't know what's going on. I kept imagining all the ways things could go wrong. I couldn't turn it off."

"Were you having any thoughts of harming yourself?"

There it was. The question that would shape everything that followed.

"No," I said, meeting her eyes directly. "I wasn't trying to hurt myself, Dr Price. I know how this looks. I know what you must be thinking. But I was just trying to sleep. I took my regular medication—Temazepam, I have a prescription—and it wasn't working. So I took more. And then I found the other pills, the Quetiapine, from years ago, and I thought maybe they would help. I wasn't thinking clearly. I wasn't counting. I just wanted the noise to stop."

"The noise?"

"In my head. The thoughts. They were so loud, and they wouldn't stop, and I just wanted—" I let my voice crack slightly, let the genuine exhaustion show through. "I just wanted to rest. That's all. I made a terrible mistake and I'm very lucky to be here, but I wasn't trying to die."

Dr Price was watching me closely, her expression neutral but attentive. I couldn't tell if she believed me. Couldn't tell if my performance was landing or if she was seeing through it, cataloguing my tells, noting the places where my story didn't quite hold together.

"Tell me about the Quetiapine," she said. "You mentioned it was from years ago. Can you tell me more about that?"

The trap I'd been expecting. They'd seen the date on the bottle—2010—and they'd want to know the history, want to understand whether this was an isolated incident or part of a pattern. I'd prepared for this. Had decided exactly how much to reveal.

"After my son was born, I had some difficulties," I said. "Postpartum depression. It was quite severe. I needed some help—some time in hospital—to get stabilised. They put me on a few medications, including the Quetiapine. I took it for about six months, and then I was fine. I've been fine ever since."

"Until now."

"Until now," I agreed. "But this is different. This isn't—I'm not having a breakdown, Dr Price. I'm having a crisis. My marriage is falling apart, I haven't slept in days, I made a stupid decision about medication. That's not the same thing."

Dr Price nodded slowly, making another note. "Can you tell me more about the hospitalisation? Which hospital was it? How long were you there?"

"It was in Adelaide. A private clinic—I don't remember the name." A lie. I remembered everything about that place—the pale green walls, the communal dining room, the therapy sessions where they'd made me talk about things I'd never told anyone. But I wasn't going to give her a trail to follow, records to request, ammunition to use against me.

"And you said you were there for how long?"

"A few weeks. Maybe three? It was eight years ago. I've tried not to dwell on it."

"Were you admitted voluntarily, or—"

"Voluntarily." Another lie, or at least a selective truth. I'd signed the papers, technically. But I'd signed them because Dawn and Paul had made it clear there was no other option, that if I didn't agree they would pursue the alternative, that refusing would only make things worse. The choice had been mine in name only.

Dr Price leaned back slightly in her chair, her pen hovering over the page. "Claire—can I call you Claire?"

"Of course."

"Claire, I want to be honest with you about why I'm here and what I'm trying to understand. When someone comes into the emergency department after taking an overdose, we have to assess whether they're safe. Whether they're at risk of harming themselves again. That's my job—to figure out what kind of support you need and how best to provide it."

"I understand."

"So I need to ask you some questions that might feel intrusive or uncomfortable. And I need you to be as honest as you can with me, even if the answers are difficult. Can you do that?"

I nodded, arranging my face into an expression of earnest cooperation. This was the dance—the appearance of transparency while carefully controlling what was actually revealed. I'd done it before. I could do it again.

"When you took the pills last night," Dr Price said, "did you think about what might happen? Did you consider that you might not wake up?"

The question landed somewhere soft, somewhere I'd been trying not to look. Had I considered it? In the studio, with the glass shattering and the phone sailing through the air and my body moving through a dance I hadn't chosen—had some part of me known what I was doing? Had some part of me wanted it?

"No," I said. The word came out too quickly, and I saw Dr Price register it. I forced myself to slow down, to seem thoughtful rather than defensive. "I mean—I wasn't thinking about consequences at all. I wasn't thinking about anything except making the pain stop. Not physical pain—emotional pain. The panic, the racing thoughts, the feeling that everything was falling apart. I just wanted it to end."

"When you say you wanted it to end—"

"The feeling," I clarified quickly. "I wanted the feeling to end. Not my life. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

The question caught me off guard. It was more direct than I'd expected, more confrontational. Dr Price wasn't just going through the motions—she was probing, testing, looking for the cracks.

"Yes," I said firmly. "There is. I have two children, Dr Price. Mack is ten and Rose is six. They need their mother. I would never—" I let my voice break again, let the emotion surface. This part, at least, was genuine. "I would never deliberately leave them. No matter how bad things got."

"Where are they now? Your children?"

"With my mother. Here in Broken Hill. They're on school holidays—they've been staying with her so my husband and I could have some time to work through our issues." The story flowing easily now, the narrative I'd been constructing since I woke up. Reasonable parents making reasonable decisions about childcare. Nothing to suggest chaos, crisis, a mother who had forgotten her children existed while she obsessively called a number that couldn't be connected.

"Have you spoken to them? Since coming into hospital?"

"Not yet. I didn't want to worry them. They don't know anything's wrong."

Dr Price made another note. "And your husband? We've been trying to reach him."

The mention of Paul sent something cold sliding through my chest. "He's away," I said. "With his family. In Adelaide. He's—we're having some problems. Communication problems. I don't know if you'll be able to reach him."

"Our social worker has been trying. She said his phone goes to voicemail."

Voicemail.

The word didn't compute at first. I'd heard the message so many times last night—the number you have called cannot be connected—that the idea of a voicemail, of his voice on the other end of the line promising to get back to you, seemed impossible. A hallucination. Something my damaged brain had invented.

"Voicemail?" I heard myself say.

"Yes. She left a message, explaining the situation, asking him to call back. Is there another number we should try? A work phone, or—"

"No." I was struggling to process this, to fit it into the narrative I'd been building. Last night, his phone had been disconnected. The number you have called cannot be connected. I'd heard it over and over, dozens of times, the automated voice telling me he was gone, unreachable, erased. And now—voicemail? How was that possible?

"Claire? Are you all right?"

I realised I'd gone somewhere—drifted away from the conversation into the dark waters of my own confusion. Dr Price was watching me with renewed attention, her pen poised over the page.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm still a bit foggy. You were saying—the social worker left a message?"

"That's right. We're required to contact next of kin in situations like this. Is there a reason your husband might not be answering?"

A reason. I could give her a dozen reasons—the argument, the window, the bag he'd packed before we even started fighting. The fact that he'd chosen to disappear rather than face me, that he'd removed himself so completely that even his phone had become unreachable. Except apparently it wasn't unreachable anymore. Apparently it was accepting calls, recording voicemails, functioning exactly as a phone should function.

Had I imagined it?

The possibility opened up like a hole in the floor. What if the disconnection message had never been real? What if I'd been so far gone, so lost in exhaustion and medication, that I'd hallucinated the whole thing? What if Paul's phone had been working the entire time, and I'd simply been too damaged to hear it correctly?

"We're having some difficulties," I said finally. "He might need time before he calls back. It's—it's complicated."

Dr Price nodded as if this made sense, as if marriages falling apart while women overdosed in dance studios were perfectly ordinary occurrences. Maybe they were, in her line of work.

"Let's talk about your support network," she said, moving on. "You mentioned your mother is looking after the children. Are you close with her?"

"Close enough." The truth was more complicated—Dawn and I had never quite recovered from what had happened after Mack was born, from the decisions she'd made on my behalf, from the weeks I'd spent in that clinic while she raised my son in my absence. But I couldn't explain that to Dr Price without revealing exactly how bad things had gotten, exactly how broken I'd been.

"Is there anyone else? Friends? Other family members?"

I thought of Denise in the waiting room, the woman I'd gently confronted at the café, who had found me on the floor of my studio surrounded by blood and glass. Denise, who knew. Denise, who could destroy everything if she chose to talk.

"Not really," I said. "I have colleagues—I run a dance school—but we're not close. I tend to keep to myself."

"That can be difficult, when you're going through a crisis. Isolation can make things worse."

"I know." I made myself look contrite, receptive. "I know I need to do better. To reach out more. To ask for help when I need it instead of trying to handle everything alone."

The words tasted like script, like lines I'd memorised for exactly this purpose. Dr Price probably heard versions of this speech every day—the sudden insight, the commitment to change, the promises that would evaporate the moment the patient walked out the door. But she wrote them down anyway, because that was her job, because documenting my stated intentions was part of the process.

"Tell me about the dance school," she said. "How long have you been running it?"

The question surprised me—it seemed tangential, irrelevant to the assessment of my mental state. But I recognised the technique. She was looking for protective factors now, for things that anchored me to life, reasons I might have to stay alive.

"Twelve years," I said. "I started it before I had children. It's my passion. My purpose."

"How has it been going? Any stress there?"

I thought of the studio floor covered in glass and blood, the mirror shattered, the damage that would need to be repaired before anyone could see it.

"It's fine," I said. "Term break at the moment. Classes resume next week."

"Do you feel capable of going back to work?"

The question contained its own trap. If I said yes too eagerly, I'd seem to be minimising. If I hesitated too long, I'd seem to be acknowledging I wasn't stable enough to function.

"I want to," I said. "The structure is good for me. Having something to focus on, something outside my own head. But I know I need to take care of myself first. Make sure I'm ready."

Dr Price nodded, making another note. We'd been talking for—how long? Twenty minutes? Thirty? The fluorescent lights buzzed on, indifferent to time, and I could feel the medication wearing off, the fog lifting, my mind becoming sharper even as my body remained exhausted.

"Claire, I want to ask you something, and I want you to think carefully before you answer." Dr Price set her pen down, giving me her full attention. "On a scale of one to ten, with one being not at all and ten being absolutely certain, how safe do you feel right now?"

Another trap, but a familiar one. The scaling questions were standard—they gave the assessor a number to write down, something concrete to point to when justifying their decisions. Too low, and you were a risk. Too high, and you seemed to be in denial.

"Seven," I said. "Maybe eight. I feel shaken. Scared. I know I came very close to something terrible last night, and that frightens me. But I don't feel like I want to hurt myself. I feel like I want to get better. To go home to my children. To fix the things that are broken."

"And if you started to feel worse? If the thoughts came back, the racing thoughts, the feeling of things falling apart—what would you do?"

"I'd ask for help." I made myself hold her gaze, project sincerity. "I'd call someone. My mother. Or—" I hesitated, as if working through the options. "I could call a helpline. Or come back here. I know I can't handle it alone. I've learned that now."

Dr Price studied me for a long moment. I couldn't read her expression—couldn't tell if she believed me or was simply cataloguing my responses for later analysis. The silence stretched between us, filled only by the beeping of the machines and the ever-present hum of the lights.

"I'm going to be honest with you," she said finally. "Based on what you've told me, and on the circumstances that brought you here, I don't think you need to be admitted to the psychiatric unit. You're oriented, you're coherent, you're expressing appropriate remorse and insight. You have protective factors—your children, your work—and you're willing to engage with support."

Relief flooded through me, so intense it was almost dizzying. Not admitted. Not locked away. Not subjected to the weeks of observation and medication adjustment and group therapy that had consumed me eight years ago.

"However," Dr Price continued, and the relief curdled into something colder, "we do need to keep you here for observation. At least overnight, possibly longer. We need to monitor you medically—make sure there are no complications from the overdose—and I'd like you to see our social worker, talk about what happens when you leave. Discharge planning. Follow-up appointments. That sort of thing."

"Of course." I kept my voice steady, grateful. "Whatever you think is best."

"And I want you to understand something." Dr Price leaned forward slightly, her expression serious. "What happened last night was dangerous. The combination of medications you took—it could have killed you. It very nearly did. I believe you when you say you weren't trying to end your life, but intent doesn't always determine outcome. If Denise hadn't found you when she did—"

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

"I know," I said. My voice came out smaller than I intended, the performance slipping just slightly. "I know how lucky I am."

"Do you have someone who can stay with you when you're discharged? I don't think you should be alone for the first few days."

I thought of my empty house. Paul's empty chair. The studio with its shattered mirror and blood-streaked floor.

"My mother," I said. "I'm sure she'll—I can ask her."

Dr Price nodded, making a final note in her folder. "Good. I'll check in with you again before I leave for the day, and someone from the night team will be available if you need anything. Do you have any questions for me?"

Questions. I had a thousand questions—about Paul's phone, about what I might have said while unconscious, about how I was going to explain this to Dawn and Denise and everyone else who would inevitably find out. But those weren't questions for Dr Price. Those were questions I'd have to answer myself.

"Just one," I said. "The woman who found me—Denise. Is she still here?"

"I believe so. She's been quite worried about you. Would you like to see her?"

The thought made my stomach clench. Denise had seen me at my worst—had seen the glass and the blood and the collapsed woman who couldn't even lift her head. She knew things now that could destroy me, could spread through the town like wildfire, could end the careful reputation I'd spent years building.

I needed to see her. Needed to manage the situation before it spiralled out of my control.

"Yes," I said. "I think—yes. I'd like to see her."

Dr Price stood, tucking her folder under her arm. "I'll let the nursing staff know. And Claire—" She paused at the curtain, her expression softening just slightly. "I know this feels overwhelming right now. But people do recover from crises like this. It doesn't have to define you."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

She left.

I lay there in the silence she'd left behind, the fluorescent lights buzzing their endless accompaniment, and let myself feel the full weight of what had just happened. I'd passed. I'd performed well enough to avoid being admitted, well enough to be classified as someone who needed observation rather than intervention, well enough to retain at least some control over what happened next.

But the victory felt hollow.

Because Dr Price had believed me, or had at least believed me enough, and I wasn't entirely sure I'd been telling the truth. The question she'd asked—did you think about what might happen?—kept circling back, demanding an answer I wasn't ready to give. In the studio, with the glass shattering and the pills dissolving in my bloodstream, had some part of me known? Had some part of me wanted it?

I didn't know.

And that uncertainty—that dark space where intention blurred into accident and accident blurred into something else entirely—was more frightening than anything Dr Price could have said.