In Unit B, which you said stood for “best” unit, we got deck breaks three times a day. Four on weekends. The deck was a classroom-sized balcony, roofless but enclosed by glass. I never knew you could feel imprisoned outdoors.

It wasn’t all bad. There was ping pong and a net with mini basketballs that wheezed in our hands. There was the view of the Oppenheimer Tower and the monstera plants you’d pick at while you cried.

The only time I ever saw a light behind your eyes was when I told you about Switzerland.

You called me your twin. We had the same diagnosis, same medications. Neither of us ever had visitors because we’d made all the same mistakes. But my hands didn’t tremble the way yours did when you split the Uno deck, and anyway, I’d mostly been joking about Switzerland.

“How does it work?” you asked. First, you met with a doctor, who assessed whether you had “decision-making capacity.” Your motives had to be unselfish and you had to prove that your illness—or your anguish—was incurable, that you’d exhausted all other options. There was a follow-up appointment two weeks later to permit a change of heart. But if you were serious, and if the Swiss doctors declared you hopeless, medically and otherwise, they’d stick the button in your hands so you could inject yourself with sodium pentobarbital and die with dignity, on your own terms.

“This gives me hope,” you said.

There was no dignity on the ward. I’d arrived like a captured mongoose, writhing and hysterical, prickling with betrayal. I wish I hadn’t met you like that. I couldn’t believe I had to ask permission to floss, then stand there in the hallway, bloodied string draped between my fingers, waiting for Nurse Ally to return from rounds so she could watch me deposit it in her trashcan. I couldn’t believe they peeked into our rooms every fifteen minutes, barged in if we weren’t immediately visible, slapped monitors around our wrists. I couldn’t believe my own mind had brought me here. Why would it do that to me?

“First day is the worst,” you said. You dumped a puzzle in front of me and flipped the pieces over sluggishly, as if to say, don’t ever expect this to be fun.

We didn’t talk much inside. There were too many meetings: wellness group and mental health group and art therapy. I noticed that you were always sitting next to me or across from me. Even after we were herded back to our unit, I could feel your cool resignation, your empty eyes following me to my room. An invisible string ran between us, thrumming with a kind of energy that normally couldn’t survive on the ward.

You were right about the first day. I got used to the supervised flossing, to nurses spying on me while I slept. I didn’t mind so much that someone was always checking in on me. It was certainly better than battling delirium by myself, watching a parade of jeering faces march behind my eyelids, my brain exploding with tiny firecrackers. I started to make jokes while we painted our ceramic piggy banks and vases, and I talked to the others, not just to you. One day, I led all six of us in sun salutations on the deck. When Nurse Ally said I seemed “better,” I didn’t think about slapping her the way I would have when I first arrived.

You smiled too, I think. Or maybe, it was because you clung to me so closely, I just assumed you were doing better too. My twin.

When they finally gave me my exit date, you told me what you were in for.

“My fiancé left me,” you said, eyes cool and empty, voice drained of life, and you let me go on and on about cold feet and taking it slow and other fish in the sea. What you didn’t say, and what I learned later from the others in Unit B, was that Jenny didn’t leave just you. She left all of us. It wasn’t anything like Switzerland, not dignified at all.

We weren’t allowed pens, only stubby golf pencils and a few squares of graph paper, so when I gave you my number, it had already smeared. I didn’t really think you’d call. Unit B was such a hallucination that when I left, I couldn’t transpose you back onto this world, the one where I could sit in the sun for as many hours as I liked.

But then one day, there you were, calling from the ward. Asking if I still dreamed of Switzerland.

“I’m never getting out of here,” you said. I could see your droopy mouth, your eyes dulled by sadness. I could hear you peeling the print off the puzzle pieces.

“Sure you will,” I said. “Just look at me.”

I went back to work. I met up with the friends who hadn’t given up on me. Life started to feel manageable in a way it never had. Gone were the sudden plot twists, the mini-vacations from reality that sent me spiraling into delusion and regret. Why didn’t this happen for you?

We were similar, but not the same. Siblings, maybe, but not twins.

I told myself I’d always pick up whenever you called, but my reassurances started to feel hollow. I didn’t understand why you were still there in Unit B.

“You’re the only one who gets me,” you’d say.

The last time I picked up, you told me you’d been caught smiling. You were sitting at the puzzle table, staring off into space. Nurse Ally nearly tripped when she saw you. “Keep that up,” she said encouragingly, “and you’ll be out of here in no time.”

You didn’t believe her, of course, and honestly, neither did I. You’d been thinking about Jenny, you said, and how one day, one way or another, you’d be together again.