Excerpt from Chapter 1

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The admitting nurse thought I was an idiot. I could see it in her eyes. “What took you so long?” she
asked, peering over the top of her reading glasses. “We’ve been waiting—it’s been hours since you
called!” Sharon sank into her gold corduroy jacket. My hands trembled in my lap.

What took so long? If the nurse had seen me shaking outside Mom’s condominium on the frigid
Minnesota morning, if she had heard the officer shouting—“Try to make it easy for him, and what does
he do? Fights like a bull! Has to trash the place!”—if she had seen him spraying spit in my face as he
ranted—“Kicks his way down the hallway! Shatters the glass door with his stocking feet!”—if she had
heard me pleading with him to bring my brother to the emergency room, she wouldn’t have looked at
me the way she did.

“It took six attendants to get him on the gurney,” the nurse said, leveling her gaze at me. “The first
set of shots didn’t touch him. Had to give him a second round to bring him down.”
I had no idea my twin was so strong. He had never gotten into fights. At least none that I knew
about.

My knuckles had turned a bloodless yellow. I unclenched my hands and wiggled my fingers while
the nurse moved her pen down the admitting form. Sharon shoved her permed ash-blond hair away
from her glasses, left me to do all the talking about her husband.

​

“He’s forty-five years old,” the nurse said, noting the date, October 29, 1941, when we were born.
“It’s highly unusual that he’s never been hospitalized. The first manic episode normally occurs in the
early twenties.”

She stared at my stunned face. I stared back.

“Are there any people in your family who are manic-depressive?” she asked.

“No. Everyone in our family is fine.”

She set the clipboard down and removed her glasses.

“This type of mental illness is very difficult to diagnose. If there’s any history, any people in your
family—maybe an aunt or an uncle— information like that could help us determine what’s going on with
your brother.”

The nurse watched me as I opened and closed my hands, rubbed my knuckles. I wanted to tell her
how Dr. Dowswell had never heard a second heartbeat; how Mom had said “I told you so!” after she
gave birth to my twin; how Dad’s face had broken into a proud grin in the picture she took with her

Brownie box camera, one baby on each knee. Marilyn and Marvin. A girl, and finally, after waiting so
many years, the boy he had wanted. But the nurse wouldn’t care about any of that.

“I remember one time when Marvin seemed nervous,” I said.

“What do you mean by ‘nervous’?” she asked, squinting at me through her glasses.

“Nothing. Just that he seemed tense.” I wanted to stop talking, but she kept staring at me. “He was
on leave from Germany and came to visit George and me. We were living in Connecticut—we’d only
been married a couple of months.” I remembered how his eyes had flashed with anger, his pale face
turning a deep red as he pounded the table while arguing with the long-distance operator. “It wasn’t like him,” I told the nurse, “talking to the operator like that.”

“Go on,” she said, as she scrawled notes on the form.

Years later, Mom had told me about the rest of his leave, which he spent with them, how Pastor
Folden had driven to their farm to tell her he thought Marvin should see a doctor. I asked her what
caused Pastor Folden to make such a shocking suggestion.

“Well, anyone could see that Marvin was nervous,” she said, swatting her curly red hair away from
her face. “I told Elsie what the minister said—she said Pastor Folden should be taken out and shot!”
I never dared to bring up the subject again.

I didn’t bring it up with the nurse. She would have made too much of it...