Neve can't remember a time before the meds.
But when a new patient arrives, Neve's quietly ordered world turns sour. Tiana brings rumors, secrets, and a promise to unleash Neve's dormant powers—powers Dr. Gerard told her were a figment of her imagination.
Unearthing her telekinetic abilities launches Neve into grave danger. She must leave the only home she knows, and fast, if she wants to survive.
Neve can't remember a time before the meds.
But when a new patient arrives, Neve's quietly ordered world turns sour. Tiana brings rumors, secrets, and a promise to unleash Neve's dormant powers—powers Dr. Gerard told her were a figment of her imagination.
Unearthing her telekinetic abilities launches Neve into grave danger. She must leave the only home she knows, and fast, if she wants to survive.
I slip into my healing room in the Complementary Therapies wing of the hospital, shutting the door behind me. A woman in her thirties is splayed out on her back, her eyes closed.
“Is it warm enough in here?” One of the few things I’m allowed to say.
“Just get it over with, please,” she says.
“This won’t hurt.” I suspend my hands inches above her body.
I close my eyes with my hands out, tuning in. Images of the inside of her body play like a movie in my mind, the patterns of her energies pricking my palms as I search for spikes and flow. Hot spots. Cold spots. Energy too sluggish or rapid. Places where I can realign the body’s balance. What do you need from me?
A hot, bouncy ball bobs in the energy above her neck, damming the flow of energy. I visualize the gummed-up sphere of heat and then imagine a flow of golden light coming in, engulfing it, then crushing it. The ball of heat implodes, freed energy surging past. The woman bursts into tears, jolting me out of concentration, and I pull my hands back.
“I’m sorry.” She opens her eyes as I scramble to get her a tissue. Her tears gather speed, growing to body-racking sobs.
I take a deep breath to slow the thud of my heart as I tentatively place the tissue box beside her on the table. What is protocol for this? She cries for what feels like ten minutes but is probably only a few. I slowly back toward the door, closing my fingers around the handle, contemplating my escape.
“Wait, don’t go.” She catches her breath, wiping her eyes. “Please. I’ll stop.” She holds out a hand and, when I don’t take it, beckons. I approach her, but her intense energy flows, back in balance. I’ve completed today’s task.
“You look so young,” she says, sitting up. “What are you, eighteen? You’re tiny.” I nod to be polite, but in truth I don’t know for sure. “I’ve been so curious about these Complementary Therapies. Whatever you just did—I feel amazing. I can’t remember the last time I felt this light.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you the rules?” I don’t want to be confrontational, but it’s worse to get in trouble.
“The rules?” She giggles. “Was that what I signed without reading?”Â
“We can’t talk. I’m supposed to be a shadow, in and out. No relationship.”
“Well, I don’t work like that. I talk to all my people. What’s your name? You don’t have a badge like everyone else.”
“They aren’t my rules, but I still have to follow them.” I approach the sink to signal the end of the session, even though technically she has more time.
“Yeah? What’ll they do if you don’t? Refuse to treat you? Kick you out?” she says to my back over the running faucet. I cringe. She must have read at least some of that form before she signed it. Enough to know I’m on an inpatient stay here with an undetermined discharge date. Just another inconsequential ward of the state. Too delicate, too useless, to be out in the world.
When I turn back around, she’s looking into her compact and smoothing down her perfect hair. Her makeup is undisturbed by her tears, and a giant diamond glints on her left hand in the half light of the room. She meets my eye and closes the compact, smiling with a row of perfect white teeth, making me feel even smaller in my scrubs, knitted hat and fingerless gloves.
She reaches out and cups my cheek in her hand, breaking another rule of no physical contact. I have a feeling she’s a woman used to getting what she wants.Â
“I’ll be back next week,” she says, and walks out.
#
After healing time is lunch, right at noon in the hospital cafeteria, and then classes in the common room on the unit from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Dr. Gerard Anderson, the unit physician, stops me on my way into class.
“Can we meet today?” he asks in the middle of the hallway rather than inviting me into his office first. This is it, I think, my lunch knotting in my stomach. He found out I talked to that woman, and now I’m in trouble. I don’t like standing with him out in the open, the nurses hearing my business. I feel their eyes on me, as though the severely disabled, mostly wheelchair-bound women in the Brain Injury Unit can’t be trusted. Many of these fragile women can’t even eat or breathe on their own, so I don’t understand the way they watch us. Like we might do something outrageous at any moment.
“We can talk now.”
He looks at his watch, his face only just starting to show his fifty years, his usual plaid, short-sleeved shirt open at the collar. “I’m in the middle of something right now, but I’m staying late today. Make us a pot of tea, and we’ll talk in the kitchen when you’re done with class?”Â
“I promised to help with showers today after class.” And I don’t want to worry about whether or not he’s preparing a punishment until then. The nurses always need extra help with the Friday afternoon showers for the other patients on the unit. Though boring and clearly nothing that will truly help the women get better, it is better than not being useful at all.
He pats my shoulder. “I’m sure they can handle it. I need you for something more important.”
 #
Later, when Dr. Gerard, who I’m supposed to call Dr. Anderson but I never do, plunks himself down in front of our twin white tea mugs in the unit’s kitchenette, I note the white coat shrugged over his shoulders. The coat means he’s been at meetings. He never has meetings on a Friday.
A ripple of anxiety passes through me, something clearly not my own. Normally, I can’t feel others’ emotions or energies unless I’m using all my focus to tune into a consenting person. The realization makes me pause.
The spray of showers echoes at the far end of the hall, distracting me. A useful person would be helping the nurses, not having tea. The late summer sun pours through the tall Gothic windows, falling across Dr. Gerard’s graying temples. My back is to the sun, my blue eyes so light that even waning sunlight hurts them. But even pooled within those rays, I don’t feel warm. I never feel warm.
“It’s been a day." He brings the mug to his lips.
“Sure has,” I say. What does he want? My heart does another skip. Something is off. Waves of feeling pour from an unknown source. I try to look around him at the entrance of the kitchenette to see if someone has joined us, but the entire staff is preoccupied with shower duties. He turns to see what I’m looking at, then back to me, a puzzled look on his face.
“Is something the matter?” he asks.
“I was just going to ask you the same,” I say before I think better of it. “Are you worried about something?”Â
He raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you think you’re feeling people’s energies. That’s only what you pretend you’re doing in the healing rooms. What have I told you?”
“That feeling energies and emotions isn’t real." It’s so hard to believe, no matter how many times he insists. Sure, I need to focus to get the feelings, but the images and senses I get . . . they feel real. They don’t feel like something created by my disordered mind. And I like the sense of being helpful, of finding some worth to those I pretend to heal. Not just a regular patient who helps with monotonous caregiving and wakes up most mornings with a sense of dread she can’t place.
Gerard clears his throat. “We have a new admit coming tonight, and I’d like you to help her get settled.”
“On a Friday night? It’s a half hour to dinner, and we must be done with that by five for meds, then lights out at eight. When is there time to get a new girl started?”
“That’s why I’m staying late tonight,” he says, taking a long drink of his tea. “And caffeinating.”
“I always help. You don’t need to ask.” Because I don’t want to just be a patient.
“This one might be a little different.”
“Different how?”
As if on cue, the metal door to the unit bursts open and slams into the wall behind it. A girl about my age, clad in street clothes, stands between two orderlies. But she shouldn’t be standing. Every patient arrives in a wheelchair, already dressed in the worn, stamped scrubs, making our bodies easy to access. Making it clear where we belong. Did protocol change for a special case like this?
I stare at the orderlies, trying to discern if they are new. But no, I recognize their faces. They should know better. The worry, the wrongness, from before squeezes my throat as I take the patient in, her dark eyes locking with my blue ones. She is the source of the anxiety I’ve been experiencing. Which makes sense. Of course she’s overwhelmed. They’re doing everything wrong. They haven’t even shaved her head, a strict rule for every patient, and her tresses fly in every direction. The bigger of the two orderlies grabs her arm so hard they tumble forward, nearly crashing to the floor. Dr. Gerard leaps up from the table, running over to them.
“Unhand her!” he cries, extracting her from his grasp. “What are you doing? Why isn’t she prepared?”
“She’s a fighter,” one of them says.Â
“She’s a fighter if you aren’t following new admit protocol. It’s there for a reason.”Â
I can’t look away from her now, her ample curves and beautiful dark skin, as tendrils of her fear reach out to me across the kitchen. It’s hard enough to get used to a new place even when they follow protocol. I don’t want her to start off on the wrong foot because of the staff’s mistakes.
“Should I get her a hat?” I ask, approaching them. Her chest heaves under her street clothes. “I’m Neve, by the way.”
A horrible sound. A wet glob lands on my cheek.
She spit in my face.
#
The next morning, as I’m helping the nurse with the mind-numbing task of cleaning up the girls after breakfast, I’m shocked to see Dr. Gerard walk into the kitchen.
“You don’t work Saturdays,” I comment, gingerly wiping a pair of pale cheeks.Â
“I agreed to help Tiana get adjusted this weekend.”
“Is that her name?” I rinse my cloth in the sink and move on to the next face. “Why did you bring her up on a weekend?” I place the cloth in the next girl’s hand, close her fingers around it, and steady it as we wipe her face together.
“I told you yesterday I need your help getting her started here,” he says to my back. I take off the girl’s bib and set it on the table to go down to the laundry. “Just because you don’t like her doesn’t mean she should be treated any differently than every other new admit.”
I turn to face him. “I liked her just fine until she spit in my face."Â
“That happens sometimes when people are scared. It doesn’t make us any less helpful.” There it was: the familiar don’t-mess-with-me tone. I bet his adult daughters, still at home, knew it well too. “Unless you’d like me to choose a new girl to give Tiana her tour today. Maybe Ursula?”
“Fine. I’ll help.” I indicate the girl in the chair with the newly cleaned face. Her wide eyes are beautiful but heartbreaking in their vacancy. “Does she need a blanket?” I ask. It could reach a hundred degrees outside, but the cold, shiny surfaces in here stayed cool, heat gathering in the arches of the high ceilings. The scrubs never felt exactly warm, either. The doctor had told me that putting on weight would help keep me warm, and it wasn’t like I tried to keep my knobby knees and bony hips, but they just didn’t fill out the same as I saw on others.
“Yes, she probably needs one today. And turn up her oxygen. I’ll be in Tiana’s room when you’re ready.”
I’m not sure which room is Tiana’s. I figure she’s directly across from the nurses’ station, but when I enter that room, it’s empty. I step back into the hall, suddenly hearing the doctor’s voice in the next room over. His low tones mix with another, one I assume is Tiana’s, and I stop just outside the door.
“Neve isn’t as doped up as you think.” It sounds like Dr. Gerard. Doped up? I take medications every day for seizures and migraines. I never feel sleepy from them.
“You mean you found her like that? She was all goody when you got her from wherever you got her? Are you feeding her? She’s so skinny.”Â
Gerard shushes her. “Leave her care to us.”
“Care? Is that what you call it? There’s no way she can do the stuff you make me do.”
“I’m sure she’s capable of more than you think.”
“How do you even know what she can do? How many pink pills is she getting?”
“You listen to me,” Gerard snaps, his words muted like he’s talking through clenched teeth. “I don’t know who in your previous facility told you all of this, but there will be consequences if you interfere with Neve. Leave her to us. You could end up like the others here—too injured to feed themselves. Is that what you want? She’s coming in, we’re going on a tour, and if you don’t behave—”
My heart pounds in my chest. What have I stumbled upon? Before I can even guess at an answer, a shove from behind sends me tripping forward into the room. I turn around to see the head nurse, Bev, looming over me.
“Looking for the doctor, Neve?” Her voice fakes sweetness.
Tiana is splayed out on the bed, her wrists strapped to the metal posts, rust blooming in spots. The room is bright and too hot, Tiana’s raw body odor crawling up my nose. I gulp despite the closeness of the room. The first girl I’ve ever seen in restraints. Can our creaky old beds even hold her? They’d somehow clothed her in a set of too-big scrubs that draped over her body, and I doubt the knitted hat I twisted in my hands would fit on her unshaven head. What if she tried to spit in my face again? And how have I never noticed how sunny this room gets?
“You ladies got off on the wrong foot yesterday.” The doctor perches on her bed, the scene so like a normal patient visit. “Neve, this is Tiana. Tiana, this is Neve.”
“You told me that yesterday,” she says, setting her dark eyes on the pair of us.Â
“Welcome.” I try to keep my voice steady. “I brought you a hat.”
She rolls her eyes.Â
“Go ahead,” Gerard says, nodding. “Put it on her.”
“Really?” My heart hammers.
“She can’t put it on herself.”
“She can’t put it on herself,” Tiana repeats in an openly mocking tone. I smile, but only on the inside. She has some backbone to her, if the conversation I overheard was any indication. This girl might be fun. I look at the doctor to see what he would do.Â
“Go on.”
I cross the tiny hospital room as slowly as I can, standing as far away as possible to pull the yellow hat over her head. It feels strange being physically close to her, like intermittent sparks leaping off her skin to mine. I don’t feel the anxiety from last night. There’s a grogginess instead, a smoke concealing a fire beneath. Why am I feeling this girl’s emotions so easily? What’s different about her? The hat quickly recedes from her hair and sits in a limp pile in the forest atop her scalp.
“I remember spitting in your face last night." She locks eyes with me, then glances down at my stomach. “You haven’t eaten yet.”
“Neve, get something from the kitchen before we go down,” Gerard says, opening Tiana’s restraints with a loud rip. She jerks her wrist free and rotates it, the anger under the grogginess turning to relief. The hat drops from her head, hitting the floor without a sound.
 #
Gerard, Tiana, and I step into the elevator to begin our tour.
“This hospital was originally built in the 1800s,” I say as we stand behind Gerard, the doors closing. “You’re going to notice—” A zap of electricity scorches my hand. “Ow!” I say, jumping back.
Gerard looks at us.Â
Tiana shrugs. “Have you checked her for phantom pain lately?”Â
“You pinched me!” I yell. “I’m not doing this unless Tiana is back in restraints.”
Gerard’s eyes flash in a way I’ve never seen them flash before.
“I didn’t even touch her,” Tiana insists, but a tiny ripple of panic rises inside her. Gerard steps back and stands between us.
“Proceed,” he says as the elevator dings and opens onto the lobby.
I have mixed feelings about being in the beige lobby, the families and patients constantly moving through automatic doors, swirling around the giant half-moon reception desk dotted with prim ladies in pink answering phones and giving directions, people ducking in and out of the gift shop. I love the flow of life here, unlike most of my day. These people can live useful, productive lives, while I’m locked away, pretending to help.Â
I lead them over to a row of chairs decorated to hide their utilitarian purpose and sit down, fascinated like always with the flow of people—fewer today because it’s Saturday.
“You’re going to notice that the rest of this hospital has been upgraded,” I say, “but our ward hasn’t been upgraded yet. When the hospital was new, our ward was the nicest because it housed the psychiatric patients whose families paid for long-term care." It’s awkward talking to her around the doctor, who sits still, as if he isn’t even there. I wish he’d chime in. Tiana faces forward, her gaze focusing on the automatic doors, refusing to acknowledge my words. “Now it is the charity wing, for us who have nowhere else to go and no one to take care of us. It’s a safe haven." Almost imperceptibly, Tiana scoffs. “We live in the part of the hospital that makes it special." I stood. “We’ll go to the cafeteria next, which has just finished renovation.”
After the cafeteria, as we make our way to the healing rooms where we do our work, Dr. Thorpe, the CEO of the hospital, meets up with Gerard in the hallway.
“Doctor, can I have a moment?” Thorpe asks.
Gerard shoots one of us, or both of us, a warning look.
“Can I trust you to tour the healing rooms without any problems?” His tone is thick with warning.Â
“O-Of course?” I stammer.Â
“We’ll be fine.” Tiana gives a huge smile that I wouldn’t have trusted for a moment. She links my arm with hers, sending a gentle current of electricity all the way to my shoulder. My heart thumps. Are there really electrical currents passing between us? For the first time, I wish I was back on the ward immersed in my usual Saturday duties, giving baking lessons to the other girls on the unit. And by baking lessons, I mean making things in front of them while explaining what I was doing. Understanding rarely flickers in their vacant expressions. It’s depressing and entirely hopeless, but at least it’s predictable.Â
Tiana tries to drag me in the wrong direction, but I pull her back on course. As soon as we turned the corner, she let go of my arm. My skin still buzzes from her touch, my hairs standing up.
The Complementary Therapies wing is dark—no patients were seen there on Saturdays, so I turn on the lights down the hall.
“This is what we do during the day to keep us busy,” I say. “The few of us who are healthy enough. We do an energy healing ritual on regular outpatients. Not all the patients here have to stay, like we do.” I push open the door of the room I’m more than familiar with, with tan walls and a bed set on the cot with softer, warmer sheets than the scratchy, threadbare sheets issued on the unit. A lower ceiling, no windows, and much warmer than my living quarters. “I’m assuming you’ll be healing too.”
I turn to see Tiana smirk, but I press on. She can’t convince me to end the tour early; it isn’t worth getting in trouble. “It’s really more about helping us to feel useful than it is about the people who let us work on their energies. Dr. Gerard tells us to accept being walking placebos. Like, maybe they just want it to work and we want to feel useful, so it somehow does work." Tiana snorts, and I put my hands on my hips. “What?”
“What is wrong with you? Really. Let’s just get this out of the way.” She pinches her lips together as if I’m blocking her from the last piece of cake.
I back up to the cot and lean on it, face warming over. “I had a stroke and woke up here. I don’t have any memory of my life before that, if that’s what you want to know.”
“But are you a total fool too?” she asks, tipping up her chin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She assumes a mock inquisitive tone, fingers tapping her chin, gaze upward. “What actual symptoms do you have?”
“Well . . .” I feel like I have to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth to speak. “I have migraines. I can seize if I get too stressed out. And the no memories thing. You know, typical brain injury stuff.” And how is any of that your business?
“You seem fine and yet you believe all of this. You believe you are brain damaged and powerless. You may not have your memories, but you aren’t powerless. Maybe a fool, but not a powerless fool. And why are you the only one who wears those fingerless gloves?”
“I like them. They keep me warm and they’re fun to knit." And they cover scars I don’t want to explain.
She rolls her eyes. “So they tell you the healing isn’t real? That you aren’t useful?”
“It isn’t real healing. You’ll see what I mean when you come down with us.”
“I’m not here to pretend I am healing people.” She laughs mirthlessly. “That’s not what I am here to do at all.”
“Then what are you here for?” My hands clench at my sides.Â
“Do they give you pink pills every day?”
I shrug. “I guess. I take a lot of pills every day.”
“I’m going to blame the pills for your idiocy then.” Her fingers tap at her chin again, mocking me.Â
“They’re making me stupid?” I try to relax my hands. Do I look stupid?
She throws up her hands in exasperation. “They’re dulling your power.”
“What power?” I blink. Now I really do look stupid.
Suddenly the door to the wing opens with a loud swoosh. “Girls, where are you?” Gerard calls. He appears in the doorway where I was still leaning on the cot. He had buttoned his collar, I notice. “Almost done?” he asks.
“I haven’t gone over the rules yet,” I say. Or learned what she means about my having power.
“She can learn the rules later,” he says, waving a hand. “Enough tour for today.”
Tiana grins when Gerard turns his back. She points a chubby index finger at my palm again, and this time a strip of light passes between us. I jump back from the sting.
“You zapped me again!” I howl.
Gerard turns once more. “Do I have to walk behind you guys?”
“It’s the ugly carpets in here,” Tiana says. “They must have extra static electricity.”
Neve is around eighteen, she thinks. She woke up in a hospital two years ago, her memory gone after she suffered a severe stroke. She now suffers from debilitating migraines and seizures - a result of the damage to her brain as a result of the stroke. She's not sure of much, but what she is sure of is that she's the best patient in the facility. Until Tiana comes onto the ward; a whirlwind which will destroy Neve's entire world.
Filled with intrigue and nefarious characters Dichotomy Girls is a thrilling read that will grab you from its very first sentence. Neve narrates her life in the hospital, from her knitting hats for her fellow patients, to baking cookies and even cooking Thanksgiving Dinner. She also helps out within the hospital at large - offering what she believes to be placebo effect healing sessions. She follows the rules and especially looks forward to her regular chats with the doctor in charge of the ward - Dr Gerard.
Baha has created a frighteningly vivid and realistic world, where vulnerable young adults are effectively kidnapped from the streets and then gaslighted by the medical professionals in charge of their care. They're forced to undergo invasive procedures that can somehow wipe their memories, and they are forced to shave their heads - the reason why Neve knits colourful hats so regularly. Baha also manages to discuss the fragile topic of mental health without tiptoeing around it on eggshells. She discusses suicidal ideations, and that it is not always a symptom of depression.
Dichotomy Girls is at times, quite a bleak novel. But that doesn't mean it's not an excellent read. There are sections of the book that are so beautifully written, with so much empathy; there are some funny passages, some somber, some bone chillingly scary. But all of it is brilliant.
With its dark, gothic setting, Dichotomy Girls is perfect for lovers of young adult, supernatural thrillers.
S. A.