Character Analysis
Carmen
Carmen is like the mysterious new kid who moves into your town senior year.
She's a new patient who arrives at the hospital in the third year Deborah is there—near the end of the novel. She reminds Deborah of Helene, and Deborah feels she might be destined for a long stay in D ward.
Carmen's father is very rich, and he expects Carmen to conform to his every expectation of her. Shortly after her arrival, Carmen's father comes to release her from the hospital. That didn't take long. The next week, Carla shows Deborah a newspaper article about Carmen: she has killed herself. Deborah is extra upset about this, because she could tell that Carmen showed the inner strength to get better. She just wasn't given time to.
Miss Coral
A returning patient to D ward, Miss Coral is an older, petite woman with white hair and a firecracker personality. Like Helene, she's got a violent streak, but she can also be super chill. When she's calm, she's charming, intelligent, and fun to be around.
Miss Coral teaches Deborah ancient languages and mathematics, and they form a bond over it.
Doris Rivera
Doris Rivera is the stuff of legend in D ward.
She's a patient who left the hospital and lived out in the real world successfully. The mere mention of her name gets the patients all wound up—and by wound up, we mean punching each other, freaking out, and needing to be restrained.
For the D ward patients, Doris Rivera represents the possibility that they can get better and leave if they put their minds to it. This is both exciting and terrifying. It's exciting because it gives them hope. It's terrifying because it means that they'll have to work really hard to get where she got.
When Doris comes back to D ward, it disappoints and upsets the patients. They wonder what her failure means for them. Will they ever be able to make it in the outside world? When Doris leaves yet again to try to succeed outside the hospital, the patients get a glimmer of hope again. But they also get a glimpse of how hard getting healthy can be—it often seems like a cycle of success and failure, too exhausting even to try.
Dowben's Mary
This D ward patient is named for her doctor—Dr. Dowben—to distinguish her from Fiorentini's Mary. She's a little creepy because she prays aloud constantly. She annoys her fellow ward-mates.
Fiorentini's Mary
This patient is named for her doctor—Dr. Fiorentini. We're not going to lie—she's a bit pathetic. She has a laugh that sounds like broken glass, because she can only imitate what she thinks happiness sounds like to her. She's never felt it.
Ugh—that is sad.
But Mary does reach down and find the courage to offer some comfort to Deborah in one of Deborah's darkest moments. After a meltdown followed by the longest cold-sheet pack of her time at the hospital, Deborah talks with Mary and asks what made her snap out of the freak-out. Mary explains that there are boundaries to the nightmares of their illnesses. The brains and bodies will only go so far. The violent episodes can't go on forever; that would be "obscene" (19.104).
Deborah is comforted to know there's a limit to how crazy nature will allow her to get. The answer to the question Can it get any worse? will eventually be No.
Helene
Helene may be a small woman, but she's known for throwing violent fits of rage when she feels threatened or vulnerable. She once remarked to her fellow patients that "A nut is someone whose noose broke" (11.5) because all the mental patients have tried to kill themselves at one time or another. It's a shame that she sees ill people as just failures at suicide, but that's how down about life a lot of D ward patients are.
Helene attacks Deborah with a lunch tray after showing her pictures of family and of a friend who had gone to college with her. Helene is quiet and open during this friendly exchange, but she lashes out at Deborah afterward to get back at her for seeing her in such a vulnerable state. It's kind of like inviting someone to see your favorite stuffed animal from childhood and then punching that person for seeing an intimate part of you.
Some people go overboard when they feel vulnerable.
Near the end of the novel, Helene is transferred to B ward, where Deborah and Carla had been moved earlier. Deborah goes out of her way to make sure Helene doesn't face some of the same prejudices from the staff she felt after being transferred from D ward.
Overall, Helene gives Deborah the opportunity to show growth and empathy. It doesn't matter that Helene once attacked her with a lunch tray.
Lee Miller
Lee is the first person to introduce herself to Deborah in D ward.
Lee is petite with dark hair and is intuitive about what other people are feeling—especially when they're feeling fear. When Deborah asks Lee if she's an attendant, she responds, "Hell no, I'm a psychotic like you are...Yes, you are; we all are" (7.6). Did we mention she's a little sassy?
Lee sticks up for Sylvia, a mute patient who only speaks about once a year. When Sylvia finally breaks her silence one night, Lee demands that the nurse on duty alert Sylvia's doctor. The nurse refuses, so Lee gets loud and violent on Sylvia's behalf. Deborah admires the selfless advocacy of Lee in this moment; there's even an Yri phrase for it, nelaq tankutuku, which means "eyeless-and-utterly-naked"—basically, you've made yourself really vulnerable.
Later in the novel, Deborah will mirror Lee's behavior by defending Helene, who is smacked around by an attendant named Ellis while she's defenseless in a cold-sheet pack.
This is one of the many examples in the book when the mentally ill learn deep life lessons from each other.
Lucia
This new patient shows up in the middle of the book and tells the other patients that D ward isn't as bad as other hospitals she's been in. She's like the person who always has to trump someone else's sob story with phrases like, "Oh, yeah? You think that's bad? Well, when I was young…" Or whatever.
According to Lucia, the patients in D ward are scared of what she calls "the little maybe" (13.53). The other patients understand this "little maybe"—it's the hope of maybe one day getting well and being part of the world.
…And maybe never having someone like Lucia spoil every single pity party you ever want to have, even if it's just for a second.
Lucy Martenson
This D ward patient is rarely mentioned in the book until she punches Hobbs. What a claim to fame, right?
Punching Hobbs makes Lucy a bit of a hero in the ward for a hot minute, since all of the patients hate him. She's also the patient Deborah credits for screaming wildly when the Blaus first dropped Deborah off at the hospital.
Sylvia
Sylvia's a patient in D ward who rarely speaks up. By rarely, we're talking like once a year.
At one point, Sylvia breaks her silence to say that a new attendant—Ellis—won't commit suicide, because it's against his religion. Yeah, the patients were kind of hoping Ellis might off himself, because they don't like him. We know that's sick, but these are people who are battling mental illness, after all.
Lee Miller is so excited by the fact that Sylvia has spoken that she demands the nurse on duty go and fetch Sylvia's doctor immediately. Lee makes herself vulnerable so that she can be an advocate for the mute Sylvia—who goes back to silence immediately after she speaks.
Sylvia also speaks briefly to Deborah while they're in a pack at the same time. It seems like she just doesn't feel compelled to speak unless she has something important to contribute. Her silence is misunderstood by staff and patients alike.
Sylvia represents another instance of the way we judge each other and make assumptions about people—but we can never truly know what goes on in the minds of others.
The Secret First Wife of Edward VIII, Abdicated King of England
This D ward inhabitant initially looks at Deborah with pity. She believes D ward is a house of prostitution she has been sentenced to live in by the ex-king's enemies. She tells Deborah that she gets raped every night.
Yeah. She's a little bleak in her world outlook.
The thought of The Secret Wife getting raped makes Deborah start seeing a dark cloud settling above her with worms falling out of it.
Well, then.