Out of My Mind

Melody discusses her relationship with the doctors in her life, most of whom she thinks don’t understand her at all. Her mother, a nurse, “speaks their language” (18), but doctors do not know how to talk to Melody. The young girl has seen so many doctors in her life and knows all too well that they cannot cure her condition. She also betrays her feelings regarding how she thinks the doctors see her by acting in the manner she thinks they expect of her; she plays dumb.

When her mother is preparing to enroll Melody in school, she takes her daughter to a psychologist, an obese man named Dr. Hugely; Melody notes, “For real. I couldn’t make this stuff up” (19). The doctor puts Melody through a series of tests, starting with basic size order. This exercise upsets her, as she knows size order but cannot use her hands to put the blocks in the right places physically. Using her arm, she wipes the blocks off the table, laughing at the overweight doctor breathing hard as he bends over to pick them up off the floor.

The next tests require Melody to choose the card with the correct image on it, but she is quickly bored with the easy level of the questions.