"Group. In that corner, there." She gestured at a collection of sagging sofas underneath one of the ward's grilled-in windows. "You're late, and they've started without you."
There were four other people there, two women and a young boy, and a doctor in mufti, identifiable by his shoes — not slippers — and his staff of office, the almighty badge-on-a-lanyard.
Throbbing with dread, I moved away from the still-heaving girl to the sofa cluster and stood at its edge. The group turned to look at me. The doctor cleared his throat. "Group, this is Art. Glad you made it, Art. You're a little late, but we're just getting started here, so that's OK. This is Lucy, Fatima, and Manuel. Why don't you have a seat?" His voice was professionally smooth and stultifying.
I sank into a bright orange sofa that exhaled a cloud of dust motes that danced in the sun streaming through the windows. It also exhaled a breath of trapped ancient farts, barf-smell, and antiseptic, the *parfum de asylum* that gradually numbed my nose to all other scents on the ward. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to look attentive.
"All right, Art. Everyone in the group is pretty new here, so you don't have to worry about not knowing what's what. There are no right or wrong things. The only rules are that you can't interrupt anyone, and if you want to criticize, you have to criticize the idea, and not the person who said it. All right?"
"Sure," I said. "Sure. Let's get started."
"Well, aren't you eager?" the doctor said warmly. "OK. Manuel was just telling us about his friends."
"They're not my friends," Manuel said angrily. "They're the reason I'm here. I hate them."
"Go on," the doctor said.
"I already *told* you, yesterday! Tony and Musafir, they're trying to get rid of me. I make them look bad, so they want to get rid of me."