CIVIÈRE 41: Stretcher 41

A POWERFUL NOVEL THAT EXPLORES MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS WITH A GREAT SENSE OF HOPE.

Flavie has always wanted to die. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. It's even worse now she's become Brouillard's whore—a side of herself riddled with depression that leaves room for nothing else. Her bipolar diagnosis and psychiatric hospitalizations get the better of her relationships, leaving her isolated. When her boyfriend decides to leave her, Flavie can't hide any longer and has to face her demons alone. The road ahead is long and challenging as she sets out to stitch the fabric of her existence back together. It's a matter of life or death.

EXCERPT
I knew things were going to change between Léo and me when I was hospitalized. You can't emerge unscathed when you see your girlfriend come undone like that. It doesn't matter that we've been living together for three years. I know he knows I'm fucked-up deep down inside. I know he knows life with me promises to be anything but a long, calm river. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He knows something's broken. I'm not the girl he wished he could love.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
He doesn't touch me anymore. He doesn't kiss me anymore. He sleeps on his side of the bed, with his back turned, as if my madness might be contagious. I suspect him of trying to disinfect me during the night.
I try to pull myself together, turn on the charm for him. But the depression is clouding all my thoughts. This fog is so invasive.
Wake up Flavie. You're not in a fog. You're bipolar, for fuck's sake.

Catherine Cloutier-Charette trained as a special educator and worked with troubled teenage girls in a youth centre for seven years. She has seen their distress, pain and mental health problems firsthand. Stretcher 41 is not her story.