'… shows total disconnection with reality…'
I could hear the gravel crunching under the tires of the cruiser as it drove down the long, soggy road towards a massive brick building, becoming more and more visible with each passing second.
'She shows symptoms of severe hallucinations, onto which she clings as if they were reality…'
I glanced over at Charlie, but he was staring straight ahead, down the road. It was drizzling, not enough for the windshield wipers to be on, but enough to shroud everything in a gray haze. I looked forward again and could feel my anxiety building with every passing second.
'My formal diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia…'
The massive brick structure drew ever nearer, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Out of the corner of me eye, I could see Charlie begin to look toward me, but he caught himself at the last moment and kept his eyes forward. I swallowed and clenched my jaw, blinking back tears. I felt a wave of nausea roll over me as the cruiser inched closer and closer to the building at a steady 20 miles per hour. Unable to bear the sight of the encroaching object any further, I refocused my gaze on the wall of red trees outside my window, appearing and then vanishing as the car moved on. The wind picked up and blew through them, causing their branches to shake and wave. I sniffed in an attempt to clear my stuffy nose. The branches kept moving, kept waving, scattering the droplets of moisture that had accumulated on their leaves to the ground. Waving goodbye to the fall, to my freedom… to me. My molars ground together even harder, but it was useless as I felt the moisture escape from my eyes. I quickly and angrily swiped it away with my coat sleeve, but it just kept coming.
'What do you suggest we do?' Charlie asked, keeping his eyes trained on the psychiatrist. He hadn't looked at me once since he'd seen the results of all the tests she had run on me.
'There's an institution I'm quite familiar with, right outside of Seattle. I suggest we send Bella there until we can fully assess the condition of her psyche…'
The cruiser stopped in the middle of a wide, open field, right in front of the building. The gravel road continued before us, around a small, dry, fountain, and right up to the concrete steps which led to a large pair of double doors. Trails of ivy crept up and down the main building and the two towers situated on either side of it, displaying their final show of vibrant color before they turned brown for the winter months. If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was some fancy boarding school for the children of Seattle's wealthiest families. The barred windows on every floor, however identified it as something else entirely. I felt my heartbeat increase.
"Dad," I said, my voice raspy from disuse. It hadn't been used in a week. I tore my eyes away from the looming structure and focused them on Charlie. The tears continued to fall down my face. I didn't even try to brush them away.
"Hush Bella." Charlie said, keeping his gaze on the building before us. A sob escaped my lips.
"Dad, please—"
The cruiser door was abruptly opened and Charlie stepped out into the crisp late fall air. He inhaled deeply before he pushed the door shut and went to the back of the car to get my things out of its trunk, leaving me alone.
'A mental institution? A mental institution! Dad!' I looked toward Charlie, pleading, 'I'm not crazy!'
'Bella…' Charlie said, a note of warning in his voice.
'But Dad—"
"Damn it Bella, you haven't been yourself since September,' Charlie said, cutting into my sentence. His words were firm, but his head wasn't even turned toward me. 'If the doctor says this is what's best for you, I'm going to trust her.'
My door opened, and I was pulled out of my thoughts. I looked up and was met with Charlie's silhouette against the steel gray sky, holding the car door in one hand and my two duffel bags in the other.
"I don't know what else to do," Charlie spoke suddenly, keeping his eyes trained forward. "I want to help you Bella, and this is the only way I know how."
"Dad, listen to me, please—"
"Stop it Bella," Charlie cut me off once again, "don't make this harder than it has to be. Let's go."
There was no way out. I put one foot on the gravel and followed it with the other and slowly rose out of my seat in the cruiser. Charlie pushed the door closed as soon as I was fully out and our feet began to move toward the building, him steering me toward the structure with a firm hand between my shoulder blades. This was it, I realized as we neared the looming doors. This was going to be my life for however long I would be forced to stay here. One of the doors opened and a smartly dressed pepper-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties stepped out, followed by a fair-haired young man dressed entirely in white. I could see the woman's lips curve into a smile as we neared.
"Welcome to the Rockford Youth Mental Health Facility," the woman said as she descended the stairs towards Charlie and me, the young man following her, "I am the lead director here, Annabel Weiss. And this is Paul, one of our student interns from the University of Washington at Seattle. You must be Charlie Swan," she said, coming to a stop before Charlie and me and extending her hand. Charlie removed his hand from between my shoulders and shook Annabel's. She then turned her head towards me, the smile still on her lips. "And you must be Bella," she started, though she made no move to shake my hand.
"Yes," I said simply, tilting my head up slightly to meet her dark eyes with my own.
"How nice to meet the both of you. Paul can take your bags, Mr. Swan, and Bella, you can follow him. Mr. Swan, if you could please come with me, I believe we have a few things to discuss and a few details to sort out." The director said, turning back towards the building. Paul took my bags from Charlie, and started after Annabel. Charlie turned towards me and looked at me for the first time in days.
"I guess this is goodbye for a while, Bells," he started, grasping my shoulder with his hand. I nodded and cast my gaze downwards, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. Charlie cleared his throat and sniffed slightly. "I wish there was another way, but—"
"Mr. Swan, Bella, if you could please follow Paul and I," Annabel called from the door, interrupting Charlie. I heard my father give a sad, short quasi-laugh, and the hand on my shoulder once again relocated to the space between my shoulder blades and gave me a small push as we once again moved forward. We ascended the steps, following after Annabel Weiss and Paul who had since disappeared into the building. We crossed the threshold of the double doors, and they closed with a resonating bang behind us.
And that was it.
"So where'd you say you were from again?" Paul asked conversationally, carrying one of my bags in each hand as he led me down a wide hallway with a number of glass doors leading to what looked like lounges on either side of it. My shoes made no noise on the hardwood floors as I followed him.
"Forks, sort of," I answered, refusing to look anywhere but ahead of me.
"Forks? Never heard of it. I'm from California, born and raised just outside Sacramento," Paul continued on, either not noticing my discomfort or not caring. "Came to UW Seattle for the mountains though. I could've gone to Colorado, but my aunt and uncle live in the city and I didn't want to be too far from family. Here we are," Paul stopped suddenly in front of a section of the hallway wall made entirely of glass windows. Through the windows I could see a mass of people, all seated at long tables, eating. "This is the cafeteria. It's around mid-lunchtime, so you can go ahead and grab a tray if you're. Your hallway's group session is right after lunch in that room down there," he pointed to one of the lounges, "so just go there after you're done, okay? Susan will take care of you after that. If you get lost or anything have someone contact me and I'll come find you." And with that, Paul kept on walking down the long hallway, leaving me alone in front of the cafeteria.
I could hear the loud chatter of people from outside the cafeteria, and when I opened the glass door and stepped inside, the sound was amplified. It was a large room, with a salad bar and hot food area on one wall, the far wall being composed entirely of windows, and row after row of long tables placed uniformly throughout the room. I stood at the entrance for a moment and took in my surroundings. A few people had looked up at my entrance, but they had almost immediately gone back to eating their food, disinterested. My stomach churned unpleasantly at the thought of food, so I instead made my way through the rows of tables, searching for an empty area to sit in until lunch was over. Heads turned as I walked past the tables, but I refused to make eye contact and instead kept my eyes forward, though my cheeks were burning. After a few minutes of searching, I located a table by the window wall that has a small group of three sitting at its far end, but was otherwise unpopulated.
I sat down on the opposite end of the group, and snuck a glance at them to see if they noticed my presence. A dark-haired girl and two boys, one blond and one brunette, sat chatting with each other, though it seemed to be the boys that were doing most of the talking. The girl's head was turned toward the windows, chin resting in her palm. She would glance at the boys briefly if one of them said something to her, but her gaze always turned to the grassy expanse behind the building and the red forest beyond it. Occasionally she would itch at what appeared to be white bandages covering her wrists, but I couldn't tell from my position.
Looking away before they noticed my staring, I focused my eyes on a clock occupying the wall across the room, and stared at the hour hand as it slowly progressed toward one o'clock.
It was my fault I was in this situation in the first place. After months of waking up to my screams in the middle of the night, Charlie had insisted that I start seeing a psychiatrist after school. At first I told my doctor nothing, but after a few weeks I decided to tell her the barest details about the truth concerning why I felt responsible for the 'incident' as she called my breakup, and little by little, the stories about the Cullens, about what they were, and about what I'd seen began leaking though. It felt good; to have someone to talk to and confide in about the things I had been through over the past year or so. I didn't realize what I had done before it was too late. The psychiatrist had taken my stories as delusions and coupled it with my apparent detachment from my surroundings and other varying 'symptoms' and diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia. No amount of attempted convincing on my part could alter her decision, and when she told Charlie, things got bad. Bad enough to land me in a youth mental facility. I didn't talk to anyone for a week after Charlie made the decision.
The ringing of a bell startled me from my musings. My eyes refocused on the clock, and made the observation that I had spent nearly half an hour brooding over my circumstances. People around me began to move out of the cafeteria, and I followed, making my way toward the lounge Paul had pointed out to me earlier. As I entered the room, I noticed the dark-haired girl from lunch sitting in one of the large, comfy looking chairs placed in a semi-circle around a two chairs at one end of the medium-sized room. She was staring out of the window again and did not look up as more and more people began to enter the room, all of which were female. I chose a chair a few spots away from the dark-haired girl, sat down, and waited.
A short time later, all of the spots were almost taken. It was then a dark-skinned woman who looked to be in her thirties strolled in the room with a tiny, mid-teens black-haired oriental girl by her side, followed by another girl dressed entirely in white. The black-haired girl was smiling at something the woman had said, and gave her a quick hug before claiming the last chair and curling up in it. The woman and the orderly seated themselves in the chairs at the focal point of the semi-circle, and after a short conversation between the two, the group session began.
"Good afternoon ladies, I hope your morning went well. We have a new addition to our group today, and so we'll go around the circle and introduce ourselves. I'll start," the woman said and looked at me. I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks as every single individual in the room turned to face me. Everyone save for the girl from lunch, that is. She continued to stare out the window. "My name is Susan, and I am one of the doctors here at Rockford." Susan said, smiling. I nodded my head awkwardly in her direction. The orderly introduced herself as Hannah next, and the names continued with the black-haired girl, Allie, and onto the next individual and the next until the only person who had not said anything was the girl from lunch. An awkward pause ensued as it came to be her turn, yet she said nothing and continued to stare out the window. Susan cleared her throat.
"Miss Hendrick," the orderly said, drawing the dark-haired girl's attention toward her. She blinked a few times as if coming out of a daze, and cleared her throat.
"Yes, Hannah?" she asked, her voice disinterested. Hannah nodded in my direction, and the girl's face turned toward mine.
"We have a new individual in our group, would you care to introduce yourself to her?" Susan asked kindly. The dark-haired girl nodded in my direction. She was extremely pretty, and made me feel slightly self-conscious just by meeting her pale-green gaze.
"Lyra," she said simply, and turned her face back toward the window. Susan nodded and turned towards me.
"Would you like to introduce yourself to the group, Miss Swan?" Susan asked, encouraging me with a smile. I cleared my throat.
"Uh, sure," I said awkwardly, "my name is Bella."
"And where are you from, Bella?" Susan asked.
"Forks," I said, and at Susan's questioning gaze, I added, "it's near Port Angeles."
"Can't say I've heard of it, but let's get started." Susan said, and started the group session. The focus of the day was on everyone's childhood and how they'd grown up, and I soon found myself drifting away from the conversation into my own thoughts. Time passed rather quickly after that, and soon another bell rang, signifying the end of the session. I glanced at the clock and was surprised to find that three and a half hours had passed during the time we had been seated.
The rest of the day passed quickly. Susan showed me around the first floor of the building until it was time for dinner at eight o'clock, Allie tagging along for the entire thing. Rockford was surprisingly well equipped, with a pool, a computer lab, and a gymnasium. Dinner passed quickly enough, though I still didn't feel like eating anything. Allie kept me company throughout the meal, chattering about anything and everything that came to her mind. After the meal was over, Susan found me once again and took Allie and me up to the third floor of one of the towers, which contained two hallways of dormitory-style rooms and two bathrooms where the separate hallways met.
"I believe most of the boys and girls are up from dinner and in their rooms already. Bella, you're just down the hall there in 307. I think your roommate is already inside," Susan said, pointing to a closed door. She turned to the petite girl who had not left my side since Susan had given me the tour of the first floor of the building. "Allie, it's time for bed," she said in a gentle voice, laying an arm over Allie's shoulders and steering her away down the hall. The smaller girl's brow creased for a moment before a small smile formed on her lips.
"Bye-bye Bella!" she called as Susan began walking her away, "See you tomorrow!" I raised my hand in an awkward farewell and turned toward my room. Susan had said that I had a roommate, something I hadn't really been expecting. I started toward 307.
The girl I would be sharing this room with had to have been in the group session earlier, Paul had told me that all the people from my hallway would be there. I ran through their faces in my mind. When we had been discussing our childhoods, all the girls had seemed pretty normal, but then again, this was a mental facility. I paused in front of the solid oak door and breathed deeply as I stared at the brass door handle. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, maybe this girl would be someone like me, who was here due to a misunderstanding. Maybe…
I steadied myself and turned the doorknob, pushing at the wooden structure and standing in the space between the hallway and the room, staring at the individual inside. A pair of pale green eyes stared back at me, completely apathetic. I swallowed.
"H-hi," I started, stepping into the room and closing the door behind me, "I'm Bella, Bella Swan." My roommate continued to stare, eyeing me as if I were a piece of produce to be inspected before buying. She sat on one of two twin beds in the room, the other being occupied by my two bags, dressed in a simple white cotton tee-shirt and black athletic shorts. Her long dark hair was drawn back into a high ponytail, yet it still reached her upper back. She raised her hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and my attention was drawn to the white bandages adorning her forearms, reaching from her wrists to her elbows.
"Lyra Hendrick," she stated, voice completely monotone. I continued to stand in the space between the door and the beds awkwardly.
"It's nice to meet you, Lyr—"
"What're you in here for?" She interrupted, still appraising me with her eerie eyes. I gave a short, uncomfortable laugh as I moved forward to sit on the bed nearest to me, pushing my duffel bags aside to make space.
"Well…" I started, looking down at the white sheets on the bed and letting another uncomfortable laugh escape my throat. I heard Lyra shift her position on the other bed, waiting. I cleared my throat. "Uh, the doctors diagnosed me with, um, schizophrenia…" I trailed off, chancing a glance up at my new roommate. She had repositioned herself so that she was laying on her side facing me, her head propped up by one of her hands.
"What kind?" She prompted. I could hear a slight change in her voice, she sounded almost… interested.
"Paranoid," I answered. "What about you?"
"Same," she said, sitting up, intrigued. "How'd they diagnose you?"
"Uhh…" I started, feeling extremely awkward. How do you go about telling someone that you told your psychiatrist your ex-boyfriend was a vampire?
"You're already in a mental institution Bella," Lyra said, interrupting my thoughts, "There's not much more anyone could judge you for."
"Well, I, uhm… Sort of told the doctor that my ex-boyfriend was a vampire, among other things…" I cast my eyes downward again, preparing myself for her mocking laugh I was sure would follow my confession. What I got instead was a choking noise. I looked up to find a horrified expression on Lyra's face.
"Wh-what… did you just say?" She asked, her voice weak. I furrowed my brow in confusion.
"Vampire?" I offered hesitantly. Her face went pale and her mouth hung open in mute shock. "What's wrong?"
Lyra swallowed thickly and drew her mouth shut, her eyes blinking a few times, trying to clear away the tears I saw forming there.
"A vampire… ate my family…" She started, raising a hand to swipe distractedly at the tears threatening to fall, "A-and… he told me that he'd hunt me down after giving me a head start and… kill me too…"
Author's Notes:
After a very, very long hiatus, I've decided to re-write this story! It straight up sucked before, I couldn't even stand it. So here you are, a very heavily revised first chapter! No promises when the next one will be about, but I'll do my best to make it snappy... or something. Sorry it's not very long, I'll try and work on that in the future.
Love it, hate it? Review and let me know. I'm fireproof.
