“It couldn’t, could it?” I asked. “Don’t let it,” said Georgina. “Don’t forget it.”

In the chapter “Calais Is Engraved on My Heart,” Kaysen recounts the arrival and swift departure of Alice Calais, a seemingly quiet girl whose catastrophic breakdown prompts her removal to maximum security. Both Alice and Daisy suffer from obvious and profound mental illness, unlike most of the other girls on the ward. The routine of life in the hospital lulls Kaysen and the others into boredom and monotonous routine, but the sudden appearance of full-blown mental illness shocks them. When the girls visit Alice, they find her smeared in her own waste, a different creature from the retiring girl they’d known only days before. Each of the girls gains instant perspective on her own problems, and wonders whether Alice’s fate could be in store for the others. Georgina’s firm command never to forget what they have seen summarizes the uncertainty and fear that Kaysen and her fellow patients feel.