Existence (Existence Trilogy #1)(48)
A door opened up down the hallway and a girl with bushy, brown hair and large round glasses stared at me, and then quickly slammed her door shut. I heard the lock click behind her. She was easily startled and frightened. She must be someone truly suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD as they referred to it here. I stared at the other closed doors wondering if everyone on this hall had the same disorder. If so it was going to be loud at night with the screaming caused by nightmares.
I walked down the stairs to the main living area, or what they referred to as the Great Room. It was where the televisions played sitcoms and board games were set up on tables. There were no computers or internet available for patients. A nurse smiled at me brightly as she walked by with a basket full of snack foods.
“We’ll be eating our afternoon snack soon. Hang around in here and you can get something to eat and meet some of the other patients. We have several your age.” Meeting teenagers with psychiatric disorders wasn’t really appealing to me. But I didn’t say anything. Instead, I walked to the double glass doors leading out onto the front deck.
“You won’t be able to open them. They lock them. You know, for us crazies who may take a wild notion to see if we can fly. Although, I figure the sand isn’t going to kill us when we hit.” I turned around to see a young girl with bleached blond hair that I guessed was probably shoulder length. She had it pulled up in piggy tales on top of her head. She wore bright red lipstick, which stood out against her pale skin.
“Thanks.”
She shrugged. “No problem. If you want to go outside and enjoy the beach you can get a nurse to go with you. They like having an excuse to go outside.” I remembered the lady outside earlier feeding the birds. She’d been alone.
I didn’t really want to know who she was so I again nodded and said, “Thanks.” She tilted her thin face from side to side and acted as if she was examining something rather dramatically.
“You aren’t a mental, are you?” I hadn’t expected this strange girl to make such an accurate observation. After all, the doctors all believed I needed help. I shrugged, unsure how to respond.
“Well, they seem to think I am.”
She raised the dark eyebrows she’d left out of the bleaching. “They can be wrong. They have been before.” I wondered if she was referring to herself. I glanced over at the nurse who sat behind a desk working on a laptop. She didn’t seem to react to the accusation that they had people in here who didn’t belong. “Karen knows it’s true. She just won’t admit it. Will you Nurse Karen?” The blond was grinning at the nurse, who glanced up and rolled her eyes affectionately and went back to typing. “She knows it but she’s too busy on Twitter to admit it.”
The nurse reached over and patted the stack of papers she had beside her before glancing back up at the blond again. “I’m plugging in meds and test results.”
“Blah, blah, blah. Don’t let her fool you, she’s a Twitter whore. On it all the f**king time.”
The nurse shot her warning glance. “Language please.
You’ll lose ten more minutes from your room time if you aren’t careful.”
The blond shrugged and stared back at me. “Like I said, they aren’t always right around here. I can see it in your eyes.
You’re very sane. You don’t have the demons in your eyes most of the people here do.” She stood up and stretched, showing a very pale, flat stomach. She had a large black bar through her belly button. “I’m Gee, by the way.” She held out her hand for me to shake and I went to return it and she jerked her hand away. “Rule number one, don’t shake anyone’s hands. This place is full of mentals.” I smiled. “I take it you aren’t one of them.” She let out a cackle of laughter. “Oh no, I’m as screwed up as they come.” She sauntered away and slapped the papers the nurse was working on as she walked by. “Don’t Tweet too much, Karen, it’s bad for the eyes. Gotta pull back off that shit.”
“Ten minutes, Gee,” the nurse said without looking up.
Gee glanced back at me and winked. “They don’t like dirty words so if you have a shitty mouth you need to reign it in.” “Twenty minutes, Gee,” the nurse said again, still focused on the screen. Gee cackled with laughter again and headed back toward the dining room.
The nurse glanced up at me. “Gee is definitely a special case. You’ll learn to ignore her. It’s snack time in the dining hall if you want to go get something to eat and meet some other patients.”
I smiled. “Thank you, but I’m not real hungry. Can I just stay here and watch the television?” Nurse Karen nodded and went back to her work. I curled up in a chair and stared blankly at the television screen feeling lonelier than ever before.
Chapter Sixteen
The dining hall was a large room with five long tables that sat ten people each. A cafeteria-style buffet was set up where nurses filled the patients’ plates. This was the only room with large windows. The entire south wall was primarily several large picture windows overlooking the beach. I thanked the nurse as she handed me the bright red tray filled with macaroni and cheese, which appeared very edible, grilled chicken strips, a Caesar salad, green beans, a large wheat roll, and a small slice of some sort of custard I already knew I wouldn’t be trying. The tables closest to the windows seemed to be the popular ones as they were already filling up and a few patients were bickering over specific locations. I decided to sit at one of the tables away from the windows. I didn’t want to have to deal with sitting in someone's coveted seat. I took a plastic cup full of iced tea and turned toward the back row of tables.