Breathe Me -1- Help I've Done It Again
"The patient in question has been diagnosed with chronic depression, agoraphobia, acute schizophrenia, and she hasn't spoken to anyone in two years. She is 17." I couldn't help but hear the doctors as I sat on the floor in the corner of the room, silently rocking myself back and forth.
"Go ahead and perform the electroshock therapy." The second doctor said.
"If that doesn't work we'll have to give her a lobotomy, eh?" The first doctor laughed with the second. Two nurses pulled me up by my limp arms and walked me down a hallway. We made a right turn and passed a young girl with black hair, screaming and thrashing around as two nurses carried her off somewhere. I was ushered through a door and into what I heard a nurse call the "Prep Room". While they stripped me of my t-shirt and torn pajama pants, I half-listened to what the nurses were reading off of a clipboard.
"'Ariana has claimed to have made things move, made things disappear, and claimed to be able to get people to do what she wants them to do' schizophrenia. Being able to make them disappear, she can control them, make them do whatever she wants inside of her head." The nurse gave me a sad almost pitiful look and kept on reading. "'she has tried to kill herself on more than one occasion. Once turning the tube of her IV into a noose and hanging herself. A second time stabbing herself in the throat with a tweezers producing a scar." The nurse who was dressing me moved my hair to the side, exposing the thin scar on the left side of my neck. "The poor thing. She watched her father being killed you know." The nurse flipped the clipboard shut. "The case of Jeremiah Nowak." The nurse dressing me stopped.
"Jeremiah Nowak? They didn't kill him. They tortured him into begging for death! They cut off chunks of his flesh and burned them!"
"Mary!" The other nurse gaped at her with wide eyes. "Not in the presence of his daughter!" I started rocking myself back and forth. "Right. Let's move on to how the procedure will take place. First they will clean off your face and neck with cold water." I let the nurse, Mary; lift my body to wipe the dirt from my legs. "They will attach suction cups with wires to your temples, and this little black machine that looks like a box will go over your eyes." Mary shook out one of those paper hospital gowns. "They will inject you with medicine that makes you go to sleep. 30 seconds after that, they will give you a muscle relaxant. Then they will turn the machine on, give your brain a shock, and you'll have a seizure. You won't remember it, and you won't feel a thing." The paper gown was stiff as it slid against my bare skin. Mary pushed me out the door and both nurses walked with me down to the torture room.
I was laid down on a table that looked like any ordinary doctor's office table. I watched the ceiling as the doctor wiped my face and neck, scowling at my self-inflicted scar. The black box was put over my eyes, and I felt the needle go into my arm. Almost immediately my eyes were droopy. Help. I screamed in my head. I tried to count to 30 in my head, but only made it to 15 before I was out.
My eyes opened groggily, trying to adjust to the dim lighting. I was back in my room. My head pulsed and my muscles were shaky and tense. There was an IV in my right arm. It was feeding a purplish liquid into my veins. It was cold. With my eyes still fuzzy, I ripped the cord out of my arm and threw it to the floor. The machine it was attached to started beeping. I tried to stand up to shut it off, but slipped on the spilled liquid and fell to the floor. Mary and the nice nurse came bustling into the room. "You've done it again." The nice nurse tisked me and Mary lifted me back into my bed. "If you keep that up you won't be able to go home with the nice lady downstairs." Home? My eyes probed hers for any sign of hope, but they found none. "No dear. It's not your mother." Nice Nurse kissed my trembling hands. "She's still missing." She just tucked me into the sheets when a woman with blonde hair stepped into the doorway.
"Oh! I'm sorry if I've interrupted." The woman said looking at me wearily.
"Oh it's no bother. Ariana, this is the woman you're going to stay with from now on." I looked up at her with tired eyes. Her own dark blue eyes looked back at me. She looked to be maybe in her mid-thirties. I surely had never seen her before in my life. Mary moved to dress me in the clothes I had been wearing for 7 years when the woman stopped her.
"I've brought along fresh clothes if you don't mind." She gave Mary a bag. Looking through the contents, Mary dressed me in a simple black dress. It was strapless, and went to about my knees. There were shoes too. Ballet flats. I walked with the woman to the front desk where she filled out some paperwork. I followed her out to her car, and sat very still as she buckled the seatbelt.
We drove in silence for a while. "Your mother and I were very close. When you were very little she used to bring you to my house while our husbands were out golfing. You used to play with my son. Do you remember him?" I shook my head no. "I would have come for you sooner you know. If it wasn't for the courts keeping me away. They kept throwing things at me, reasons I shouldn't be your legal guardian. But my husband is excellent with words. He convinced them to let me keep you on a trial basis of sorts. Just to see how things work out." I stared straight ahead out of the windshield as she talked. "Oh! I suppose I should tell you my name! I'm Narcissa Malfoy."