“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet…”

So I’m sitting in my room—psychiatric unit, St. Luke’s, quoting Juliet like an idiot. Kerri, my staff person for the day, walks in in the middle of “Oh, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon…”

“Romeo and Juliet, huh?” She says, smiling.

I tug at my hospital scrubs. “Yeah, only these aren’t exactly medieval ball gowns…”

“You’ve got a point,” she concedes. “You like that play?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Juliet was so lucky…” I shut down there. I’ve never gone any farther than that, not for my parents, friends, anyone. But Kerri seems nice. I wonder if it would be okay to tell her.

“Why so lucky?”

“She had someone who really loved her when they did it together. But it’s not like that, it dirty, it’s—“

I wonder if I’ve said too much. If she’s guessed about my first time. I had thought it would be so much more.

“It’s okay, I know,” she says.

“That I was raped?”

She nods.