Short Story / Hospital

I laid down on the five inch thick plastic lined mattress, wondering how things went so wrong- I had completely hit rock bottom at 16 years old. The grueling day that was about to end replayed over in my head. There were no emotions inside of me anymore. All I could do was think, nod, and move on to the next thought. I was ashamed of myself for letting my young life get so out of my control that I had to strip myself of what little dignity I had left and be placed under constant surveillance. I had never felt smaller and more helpless than I did at that moment, laying flat on my back and staring at the ceiling that seemed miles high. I must have laid there for hours, listening to my stranger of a roommate snore in a deep, psychotic sleep, only closing my eyes when the night nurse came around every 45 minutes to make sure everyone was still breathing.
        I somehow managed to fall into a dreamless sleep, for the next thing I knew I was staring up into a complete strangers smiling face who was lightly stroking my arm to wake me.
“Goodmorning Lindsay! It’s 7:30. You have 30 minutes to get showered and dressed and into the lobby.”
I just stared at her without saying a word and sat up to let her know I was awake. I fucking hated her for being so chipper at 7:30 in the morning on a bitter cold December day in the most depressing place in New Jersey. When she left the room, I sat in place for a while, waiting for my still unknown roommate to be done with the bathroom. I forced back the tears that were starting to build in my eyes and talked myself into making that unfortunately familiar numbness course through my body. I was starting to get good at that.
        Still waiting in my pathetic excuse for a bed, I heard an announcement for the morning medications. Even though this didn’t apply to me, I automatically stood up like a trained robot and walked out into the lobby that I had only gotten a glimpse of the night before. I was a little shocked at how nice this place really was.  Comfortable but worn couches lined the tall windowed walls. I walked over to them and gazed out at the frostbitten ground and the lifeless tufts of grass, wondering if they would like to trade places with me if possible. The white tiled floor was spotless, but I noticed it was in need of a fresh waxing. Four large round wooden tables with nice wide chairs filled in the room with random snip-its of paper and random arts and crafts strewn across them. The nurses desk was curved from wall to wall across from the windows, connected to the meds counter. There were various doors that led to places I didn’t care about, and brightly colored bulletin boards urging me to build my self esteem. Aside from that, everything was white, which I found intensely depressing. Then again, everything depressed me. After my brief walkthrough of the lobby, I slinked back to my room to find my roommate on her bed, writing in a journal. She didn’t acknowledge my presence at all, so I didn’t acknowledge hers either. She was extremely uninviting and I was slightly intimidated. Of course I couldn’t room with a more uplifting person- everyone here felt just as miserably shitty as I did. I only had one pair of clothes until my parents came with more, so I quietly went around this strange girls bed and into the bathroom. I stripped myself of the makeshift pajamas I had received the night before and stepped into the shower where I proceeded to breakdown and cry. All I wanted was home.
        There was no shampoo in the shower, so I wet my body, stopped crying and got out. The towels weren’t big enough for an infant baby, so after rubbing it over my hair, the towel was completely soaked. I just stared at it and sighed heavily, bowing my head and rubbing the sopping wet towel over my sopping wet body. I cleared the steam from the metal sheet on the bathroom wall that was posing as a mirror- we were too unstable to have REAL mirrors- and I looked at my warped metallic reflection. Maybe fake mirrors are okay; seeing a different face looking back at you almost made you forget about how little you cared about yourself.
        After changing into dirty clothes and brooding about the lack of cleaning products in the bathroom, I went back into my now empty room and went for my shoes. I never looked anywhere by straight ahead. Moving my eyes took too much effort and energy that I was quickly running out of. As I went to put my shoes on, I noticed that the shoelaces had been removed. I sat there staring at my naked sneaker, absorbing the information. And finally, in a fit of incredulous rage, I threw the shoe across the room and listened to the echo of the load smack against the wall. I burrowed my face in my hands and tried to control my emotions. This place was a fucking prison and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Instead of making me feel safe and secure, they made me feel psychotic and completely embarrassed of where I was. I was so bad that I couldn’t have shoelaces in my shoes? Did they really think I would kill myself with my SHOELACES? This place was already ripping me apart. I decided ‘fuck shoes’ and got ready to go into the lobby with my dirty wet hair, my dirty clothes and my shoeless feet and succumbed to the terrible institution that awaited me.
        I took a few deep breaths as I made the long walk down the hall again as I had restlessly did just a few minutes earlier. I had done this before- I knew what was going to happen. I was going to walk into the room and all eyes would be on me and whispers would quickly race around the room. They’d say things like “she looks pretty normal…” or “I bet it was a suicide attempt” as they rolled their eyes and compared my struggles to their own, trying to guess my problems just by the way I presented myself. I’d be shunned until group, until I was forced to tell my story, and only then would they independently decide whether or not I was legit. I was miserably ashamed as I made my way into the now occupied room and kept my head down to the floor. I spotted an empty chair by the end of the window and sat down in it, quickly pulling my knees up to my chin. I rested my cheek against it and gazed out the window, already feeling like I had cabin fever. I still hadn’t even looked at anyone and did my best to look totally unapproachable. I got lost in thought, vaguely holding on to a nearby conversation just so I could have some kind of grasp on reality. I hadn’t cared about a single thing since they strapped me up on the gurney and shut the doors to the ambulance. I knew that the last rays of sunshine that hit my face before the darkness of the cramped vehicle enveloped me would be the last ones I’d feel for a while.
        I quickly got the sense that there wasn’t much to do around here. My peers all sat around comfortably, obviously accustomed to the plain white walls they’d been surrounded by. I only hoped to get to that point during my stay. I heard someone ask when we’d all go down for breakfast, realizing I’d forgotten all about food. I was in such a dream like state that I forgot that I was a human and needed some form of nutrition other than nicotine and Arizona Iced Tea. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to breathe for crying out loud, but I knew that being here meant I was in serious trouble and I should just give myself up and do what they say, no matter how unpleasant it all seemed. I kept my head down as I waited for some kind of instructions. Maybe by some stroke of luck today would be the day where they let everyone sleep all day long. I knew that it was highly unlikely. Finally, after what seemed like hours, way after that initial 30 minute period I had to get ready, a very heavyset black woman in her 40’s with a very intricate weave in her hair directed everyone to line up against the wall to get ready for breakfast. I recognized her as the woman who woke me up an hour earlier. I sat up just a little too quickly and felt the blood rush from my head. I felt a little dizzy as I walked to the wall that had the self-esteem bulletin board and thrust my back against it. I could feel the heat of everyone’s eyes on me. I instinctively kept my eyes to my feet, looking for a secret sinkhole that I could escape out of. The woman, who had been called Brenda by the others, then said ‘single file line, you know the drill. Don’t wander off’ and unlocked the door leading to the never-ending stairway that led to the rest of the hospital. We filed down 3 sets of stairs until we finally reached another locked door. All the while, with each step my feet touched base on, I thought about how far away we really were from the outside, from escaping, from freedom. Everyone was laughing and giggling, paying no attention to me, which was okay by me. I needed to feel out the situation like a scared and wounded tiger that had been taken from her natural habitat, searching for predators, hunting for prey.
        After the second unlocked door, we then got ready for a long walk down a skinny corridor with at least a dozen set of unlabeled doors, seemingly leading to nowhere at all. To the right of us was a wall of windows looking out into the beautifully frozen courtyard, snow and ice filling the birdbath. I was in dire need of a cigarette, but the nicotine patch that had been given to me at the first hospital I went to was helping me out. I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to have any nicotine while I was here since I was a minor and I was really not looking forward to that. We passed the pharmacy, where we saw a pretty lady with a blonde ponytail and acne scars on her cheeks, greeting Brenda as she passed. After about 5 minutes of endless walking, we came to a set of double-doors that led into the cafeteria. It was immense, filled with people all around. I was last in the line, and before I walked inside, Brenda stopped me.
“A few guidelines, Lindsay. No talking to anyone but the people you saw walking with you down here. Do not speak to the other patients;  don’t even make eye contact with them. Get your food, and come to me and find a seat. This is a very important rule that we strictly enforce.” She said it very kindly, sensing my irritable depression. I meekly nodded at her with my watery blue eyes, not saying a word.
“You’re gonna be okay, Lindsay. Trust me. This is one of the best hospitals in the tri-state area” she patted me on the head and gave me a playful shove on my butt and I hopped inside the doors.
        I followed my pack trailing behind just enough to let everyone know that I was new and didn’t want to be here or comply with anyone. I waited in the long line to the food bar. I looked at everyone surrounding me, even the older patients that I wasn’t supposed to look at. Some sat alone, their depression and reasons for being here written clearly across their faces. Some looked happy, feeling good about the day. Those people made me feel hopeful, that maybe this place could do me some good. But those miserable looking souls that sat alone worried me. I didn’t like any of this at all. It was just too much to take in. I didn’t want to become like these old people, in and out of hospitals for instability and unmanageable depression. I wanted to be home with my mom and my boyfriend and my cool bedroom that resided in the basement, its one tiny window and all. I missed my home so intensely in less than 24 hours and it was growing worse by the second.
        I got my food: some eggs, a few sausage links, French toast sticks and two little cartons of chocolate milk and made my way back to Brenda. She was quickly feeling like a surrogate mother to me, my safe house, my base. I found her and she nodded to the three tables that the adolescent wing owned. I found the emptiest table and sat at the end, staring only at my food and nothing else. I ate my good like a 95 year old woman, wincing as each morsel was swallowed. Everything hurt me, emotionally and physically. I started to tell my horrible story in my head over and over again. I’d have to tell it to everyone around me, and I had to make sure it sounded okay. Proofreading in my head was something I’d done since I was a little girl. I had to censor myself at all times, picking out the bad things and only leaving in what I thought everyone else wanted to hear. It was a specialty of mine, and I secretly enjoyed it. I was thinking about lying and making up a completely different story as to why I was put in here, but I knew that the adults knew exactly what happened, and since this place was a torture chamber, I’d surely get in trouble for lying. I had a horrible knot in my stomach that was intensifying as the cafeteria started winding down, knowing we’d soon leave and go to some sort of group. What I always found funny was the numerous different ‘types’ of groups there were. There was the ‘building self esteem group’, the ‘managing depression’ group, the ‘family’ group, and tons of others with some sort of phony name. They were all the same though. Everyone sat around in a circle, the group leader would ask some sort of emotionally straining question and we’d go around the room, one by one, answering the ridiculously stupid questions. When the person next to you started talking, you knew you were next and braced yourself for what could happen. I knew they’d never laugh at me to my face, but who knows what goes on in their heads. I knew I wasn’t alone in my feelings, but I felt that the reason I had come here probably wasn’t as severe as others’ reasons. Every time there was a new person added to the group, everyone had to do an introduction and tell everyone again and again why they were put here. I thought that was dumb- sometimes in the course of a one week stay, you’d tell your story at least 20 times, depending on how many crazy people had snapped and were sent here. Everyone else could tell your story by heart before they left.
        We finished eating and got back in the dreaded single file line and started the walk back to the adolescent wing. I enjoyed the annoyingly long walk, only because I knew it would be the only source of exercise I’d receive for a while. We hiked up the stairs and I kept myself invisible. We finally reached the tower of death and walked inside, where everyone plopped onto a seat and started doing exactly what they were doing before breakfast: absolutely nothing. I did the same as I had done. I sat in the same chair with my knees up to my chin, looking out the window. After 15 minutes of doing nothing, we had to go to group. It was time, and I was nervous.