The Twilight Self

Years ago, when I was interned in a psychiatric unit, I watched as a young woman was wheeled in on a gurney. She was about my age and only semiconscious, her pallor nearly as gray as the gown issued to each of us patients. The gray blanket covering her legs and feet and the unit’s gray walls gave the whole scene, as I recall, a chilling grisaille, overlayered with apprehension. The accompanying silence was funereal. Sounds baffled, death was in the air.