Last time on the Summoning, Liz moves things without touching them.

Miss Van Dop insisted I take half a sleeping pill.

Antipsychotics are tranquilizers. You don’t casually mix them with another form of tranquilizer. This is a great way to accidentally make people stop breathing.

but when she tried to follow it with an extra dose of my antihallucination medicine

She what.

There are no antihallucination drugs, they’re antipsychotics. Antipsychotics are incredibly dangerous. You don’t up someone’s dose because something exciting happened, and it wouldn’t work if you tried to because they don’t work that fast. (I’ve just spent yet more time trying to find if there’s any antipsychotic that does kick in fast without requiring an injection. All I’m seeing is that the injectable fast acting ones, which also are be the strongest set, which is exactly what Chloe shouldn’t be started on, and they’re used when there are current, active symptoms the person desperately needs treated right then, not just because the nurse is bored or whatever the fuck is going on here.) The only reason to do this is if you’re trying to kill or permanently cripple someone. Some antipsychotics can also cause seizures if the dosage rises too fast.

But it gets better.

Chloe doesn’t take her extra dose because I hadn’t seen or heard anything since lunchtime. While that might have been the meds kicking in, I couldn’t help hoping Rae’s wild theory was right—that my “break with reality” was only a temporary mental vacation, brought on by stress and hormones. With any luck, I was already making the return trip to sanity.

Let’s work through what’s wrong with this.

Antipsychotics don’t work that fast, and Chloe should have been told that in addition to what her medication actually is called.

She just saw things moving without being touched that was caused by a poltergeist. Either she accepts that was supernatural, in which case there’s no reason she can’t see ghosts, or she just had another hallucination.

Besides, “I haven’t seen anything for a couple hours straight” is sane now? She went days without seeing anything in the hospital before she was on meds. If anything, she’s getting worse fast.

The belief you’re better and you don’t need to take the medication is a huge problem. People regularly do this and it regularly leads to horrible consequences.

I had to test that theory. So I’d save the pill and, if I saw anything, I’d take it.

…this is the mental health equivalent of “I don’t feel drunk, and besides, if I start to have trouble driving I’ll drink some spiked coffee”.

She smells Liz’s hair gel and wakes up to see Liz back on her bed.

“I had the weirdest dream last night,” she said, gaze fixed on her feet.
…
“I dreamed they took me away and I woke up in this hospital. Only I wasn’t in a bed but on a table. A cold, metal table. And there was this woman there, like a nurse, wearing one of those masks. She was bending over me. When I opened my eyes, she jumped.”
Her gaze shot my way, and she managed a tiny smile. “Kinda like you do sometimes. Like I startled her. She calls this guy over, and I ask where I am, but they just keep talking. They’re mad because I wasn’t supposed to wake up and now they don’t know what to do. I try to sit, but I’m tied down.”
Liz bunched her nightshirt in her hands, kneading it. “All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move, couldn’t yell, and then . . .” She shuddered, arms wrapping around herself. “I woke up here.”

Oh. So Liz is dead.

That doesn’t make any sense. Both on a practical and supernatural level. This isn’t how kids would be treated, and she has some sort of violent guardian spirit protecting her.

Chloe asks if Liz wants her to talk to the poltergeist now. Liz agrees, but when Chloe tries to touch her her hand goes right through.

Well, that was a ridiculously short chapter. I guess it did get a lot of information across, but on the other hand, what information was it? Chloe already saw a poltergeist or poltergeist-like activity and is just completely blowing it off, so unless this is finally enough to kick her into action, it’s just another thing to add to the list of Chloe not having a clue. There’s no point in throwing in new suggestions unless it’s going to get Chloe to finally try to do something. There’s potential here if tomorrow the staff mention there was an accident and Liz died on the way to the hospital, but even then I wouldn’t be surprised if Chloe just ignores that too.

What happened to Liz seems incredibly sinister, but as we’ve established the way the kids are treated here is already wrong in every way, so are we supposed to think that’s just what happens when you’re hospitalized? Once you’ve broken with any semblance of realism on one front you can’t expect people to tell when something else is wrong.

There seems to be yet another addition to the ghost inconsistency. Chloe hasn’t mentioned smell being part of ghosts. Does that mean Liz isn’t actually dead but one of those “comas/near death experiences make you count as dead” things, but they aren’t exactly like ghosts? Or is that just the author not following rules again, to go with our echoing/plopping but no footsteps thing? I sort of hope Liz is somehow alive, because it’s sad she was killed off so casually, but considering we’re ten chapters in and the main character hasn’t even started on figuring out the ghost thing yet, is now really the time to be adding new wrinkles. Although if she’s not actually dead and Chloe somehow gets that confirmed, that’d at least justify the plot dragging a bit because Chloe would have evidence it was just her overactive imagination.

You know, I’m not really fond of such plots, but god would that be an improvement over this. There’s ways to write things so they’re ambiguous instead of the character just flat out ignoring plot points. For example, if Chloe had refused to help Liz with the poltergeist, climbed back in bed and pulled her blanket over her head, she wouldn’t have witnessed Liz not needing to touch stuff to send it flying. Then she could wonder how Liz trashed the place so thoroughly so fast, but not be completely sure what actually happened.