Broadmoor
I'm awful at titles… Hello again!
This is really just a short drabble that I wrote while I was walking home from college once, and I posted it on my blog. However, nobody really reads my blog *sobs*
Ah well; here it is. I don't know whether I'll expand on it at any time, and I certainly won't until I've gotten through Still Figuring Out :)
I hope you enjoy it anyway!
Alice Mary Brandon.
You know how boring it is here? Spending each day looking at the same four walls? It starts to send you mad. Even more so than they thought you were. "Nowhere in America is suited to cater for your, needs." the doctors had told me. "How do you fancy a vacation? To England?" At first I had seen it as a way out, if I was in England then surely they couldn't keep me locked away? And I was wrong. Broadmoor. "Hospital". It didn't seem like much of a hospital. Looking at it brought the tiny window as you drive up, you would think you were going to prison. You see, the doctors, they think I'm crazy. Not a little bit, not like something that can be controlled with medication, and a few check-ups. No, the kind of crazy where they insist they have to keep you locked away. Looking at the same four walls. You can't even see the door. They'd done it so that it's 'camouflaged' in with the rest of the room. All white.
I'm in the special room this weekend. With the lights on all the time. There aren't any windows, so whenever you're awake, you don't know whether it's night or day. It really messes with your body clock. There are rumours going around this place that the women are going to have to be moved. "Men only." they say. If we do have to move, I'd miss my room. But then, I know that it would be exactly the same in the next place, and the one after. Plus, where would they send us? Nowhere in America wants us, I heard this was the only place that would take us. Men only. That's so typical. I bet this entire place is run by men, excluding some nurses, why do they need more men? Surely they want some females around. "Time to leave" the nurse had said, but somehow it sounded far away, muffled. But that was a regular occurrence now. My inner monologue had become so loud that it was like trying to have a conversation with a band playing in the background. But I had heard her. I instantly assumed that she meant Lear the hospital, but I knew that was unlikely. People like me, people stuck in this place, are here for a reason. They think we're a "threat to society", but we're not. I'm not. I know I'm not.
I'd be fine, with other people, normal people. But they only let me "mingle" with other crazy people. People more insane than me. I could go back to my room though. I had missed it, the tiny window with bars across it, and the significant lack of lights. The little desk in the corner of the room. I spent all my time there, writing letters to my family. But I don't know whether they would actually get them, but I liked to think they did. Today was going to be a good day, I could tell. They were quite rare around here, so I knew I had to savour it. After I had sat in my room for a few minutes, with my legs crossed on the threadbare blanket on my bed, a nurse came in, told me I could leave the room. I walked out to find people gathered near some nurses, chattering to themselves about the outside. The garden. I hadn't been able to go out there for what felt like months. I walked over to the huddle of people, and waited. After a while we were led outside.
The sun was burning down on us, something we were not used to in the least. The group had dispersed around the large expanse of grass. I looked down and saw one person twirling around, another was eating the mud and grass. I was unsure of what to do, what was typical etiquette in the garden? I had forgotten.
I wandered to the far corner of the garden and sat down with my legs crossed. I knew that if you looked at a "patient" for too long, nothing good would come from it. One time, one person looked at another for too long, and was attacked in the day room; a chair leg, sharpened to a point.