Figments

(Part 1)

How can I find hope in dying, with promises unseen?
How can I learn your way is better
In everything I'm taught to be?
Isn't that crazy?
----MERCYME

The nursing staff are very gratuitous.

Meaning, I think they're living vicariously through their patients fantasies. Or, a selected few simply bask in the patients' insanity, wishing they themselves could live with little responsibility other then shifting throughout the day without being restrained and sedated. In hindsight, I think that's really a common fantasy that plenty of people indulge in. Then again, plenty of people don't actually get restrained and sedated.

I've been allowed to walk around the hospital. I've been directed to my room--when I'm not under physical restraint--on the other end of the building. Pictures adorn the walls--me with Charlie, me with Renee, me with a strange dog I don't remember having. Me with long hair, me with short and---I spot one of me with dark, musty black hair and a scowl on my pale face. I look about fourteen.

All of this solid evidence that the doctor was right---maybe I am crazy.

Maybe.

It would be somewhat of a comfort--to know I had never met Edward, never even knew Edward, that he and all he brought with him was just inside my head. That I can rest easy with my renewed sense of whats mythical and whats real, that I forget he's off somewhere, living without me, forgetting me.

Days have passed before the shock wears off. And then I cry.

It took all I had to convince the nurses I wasn't having another breakdown, and their needles weren't necessary.

How could it all have been a delusion? A figment of my imagination? How is that possible? I remember everything so clearly---every encounter, every confrontation, every person. All so fleshed out, more then a book or a movie could fabricate. I still feel the lingering warmth of Jacob's hands on my shoulder, I still remember Edward's cold fingers tracing circles in my arm---

That's not made up.

"Excuse me?" a girl says, leaning down so she I can see her. "Your not going to throw a fit again, are you? I only have so many picture frames..."

I realize I've drifted into my room again---staring at the picture of me with black hair. I fixate my gaze on the girl.

She's about my age---assuming I even know my age---with long, straw-like hair and freckles dotting her pale skin. Her mouth is heart shaped, in the way I thought only cartoons could have. Her eyes were the deepest, murkiest shade of green I had ever seen, like a swamp or forest underbrush.

"Sorry?" I say, blinking.

"My picture frame," she elaborates. "Your broke it last week when you had your little meltdown. I'm just glad you didn't scratch the picture--I only have one, you know." She sits down on her side, on her bed. I notice she has on a pair of non brand jeans and a blank white t-shirt. "Who's Edward, anyway?"

"What?" I blink again.

"Edward," she says. "You were screaming about an Edward, something about him." She pops something like a mint into her mouth. "Who is he? Boyfriend?"

"I..." I wonder who this girl is, why she's in my room. "Who are you?"

It's her turn to blink, looking at me with utter disbelief. "Who am I?" she scoffs. "I've only been your roommate for---what? Two years? Fuck, Bella, how much a' that shit they give you?"

Apparently a lot.

She leans back on her bed and reached for a a shelf above her bed, taking from it a small, pseudo--leather bound notebook, well worn and tattered. She has a lollipop in her mouth, sucking it erratically like she keeps forgetting it's there. "Here," she says, tossing me the notebook. "They wanted to confiscate it."

I catch it awkwardly, barely keeping it in my grip. I look down on it in bewilderment.

Across the front, in red lettering, is Isabella.

"I could'a gotten in some serious trouble for keeping that," the girl says, and I notice her thick Brooklyn accent. "You owe me."

I open my mouth, then close it. Is this worth that much trouble? I want to ask her. Instead, I say, "Th...anks."

She quirks an eyebrow at me. "Wow, your really out of it today. I bet they used the good stuff." She paused and looks at the wall. "You were gettin' pretty rowdy on 'em. Kicked a nurse right in the face." She chuckles.

"Who...are you?" I say again, looking up at her.

She was fumbling with something on the shelf, ignoring me. She pulls something from between two books and waves it in my face. "Look what I found in the nurses' station."

She tosses it at me blindly, smacking me in the face with it. I blink in disorientation, glancing at the title. Playboy.

"Why would you take this?" I ask.

She continues to ignore me. "I think it's that male nurse's, whatsisname? Nathan or something." She falls sloppily off the bed and plumped down on the carpet, reaching out her hand for the magazine. I hand it to her.

She flips it open and stares at the page.

"Why would you take that?" I ask again.

She looks at me like I just asked why the sky is blue. "Because they don't let us make subscriptions here, dumbass."

I blink again and lie down on the bed. I hear the girl stifle a laugh. "I see London, I see France..."

I realize I'm still in my hospital gown. Quickly, I sit up and cross my legs.

"You know," the girl says, glancing at a photograph taped to the wall. "I really liked that picture frame."

I look at the picture; it's a girl, with earrings spotted all over her face. Her hair was a sheen black, hanging in shags over her eyes. She's smiling with yellowed teeth, a cigarette hanging from her mouth.

"Sorry," I say.

"Your clothes are under the bed, in case you forgot," the girl says lightly, flipping through the playboy with little interest.

"Oh."

I get to my knees and riffle through the bottom of the bed, finding a modest pile of t-shirts and sweatpants. No shoes.

I start to think of Edward, something I hadn't allowed for some time. I remember what he said.

....it'll be like I never existed....

No. That's impossible. There's not way.

xXxXx

We have therapy. Mandatory.

I'm plucked from my room at eight in the morning by a plump orderly, telling me I've already missed three sessions and "there ain't no more ex'ses, yeh drama queen."

I found no point in argument, so I allowed myself to be dragged down the many woven halls. I wondered if they made it this complicated on purpose to keep people from making a run for it?

The therapist was a small, unassuming man with a receding hairline and a large, red nose. His smile was like a jagged scar across his jaw, completely colorless but for the white of his teeth as he waved a hand at the chair in front of me. I realize the nurse had left, and I was standing stiffly at the door.

"Please, Bella," the man said, "sit."

I looked around. There were only degrees and newspaper clippings on the wall. No pictures, no personnel effects.

I sat down.

"So," he said, preparing his clipboard on his knee and propping a pen over a piece of paper, "how are you since the incident?"

They love the word 'incident' here. Everything, from spilling a glass of milk to setting a section of building on fire was an 'incident'. I don't remember any incident, I want to tell him. I don't know what incident your referring too. All I know is that they're telling me nothing is real, and I can't believe that.

After a moment, the therapist says, "Doctor Christoph informs me you don't remember much,"

I pause. "No."

He says, "Can you tell me what you do remember?"

I look down at the jeans and t-shirt I don't remember owning, digging my nails into my palm. What do I remember? Nothing that will get me out of here. Nothing that would convince these people I'm not a nutcase.

But, damnit, I know it was real.

What's the point in telling the truth? It only gets you a dinner of pills.

"Everything," I say simply. I twist my fingers in my lap, glancing around for a clock. There is none.

He scribbles something down. "I thought you didn't remember anything."

There is a moment, such a brief, debilitating moment, when I consider the idea that I might--might--be insane, that I might belong here, surrounded by neutral colors and somber faces and unassuming nurses. Just a moment, and it quickly passes like the air leaving my lungs. I can feel it's impact, like a weight leaving my chest, because I know I'm not crazy. I know.

"I don't," I say. "I don't remember anything here."

I assume it's a safe answer, because he nods, smiles, scribbles and sends me on my way.

The girl who's name I don't know is waiting outside, with a nurse tight by her side and a grin overwhelming her tiny face. Her hair is ruffled, and the nurse has her in a vice-like grip. She looks at me and offers a mischievous smile before the nurse drags her past me and into the therapist's office. The door shuts with a click.

I stand, at a loss for words.

xXxXx

When I get back to my room, I notice that the things on my desk have been shoved to the floor, scattered at the base of my bed in disarray. The journal with my name on it is open, ripped at places and scuffed at the cover. I bent down.

The first thing I see, in chick scratched handwriting, is the name Edward.

I run my finger over the page. Would this have answers? Or would it just confirm my own insanity?

The first twenty or so pages have been ripped out, so I start somewhere in the middle. The paragraph starts mid sentence:

---me again. It's getting a bit...discerning. I keep expecting Edward to walk through the door and get me out of here. I hate this place...it feels like I've been here for years...and they keep telling me he's not real...but he is. I know he is. I keep waking up here, every morning...but then, when I think I'm asleep...I'm back at Charlie's...and he's there, watching me, waiting for me...I KNOW HE'S REAL--

The next half the page was slashed through to the back cover.

Oh, no.

xXxXx

"Sorry I messed with your shit," the girl says when she walks in an hour later. "My girl through a fit, started telling me she wasn't going to do nothing with a 'crazy girl'--I mean, it's only 'cuz of her I'm even in here." She ran her tongue over her teeth, as though scoping for a chunk of leftover food. "Anyway, hope you didn't like that box thing."

I didn't want to know who 'her girl' was, or even what it meant. I only looked down and looked at the box and looked and looked and stared.

It was pink, with sparkling purple stickers worn so thin on the sides it was almost as though they were part of the thick plastic. It was open, cracked along the top enough to send each end in different directions. There was nothing in it. Nothing.

This girl talked a lot, doesn't shut up doesn't shut up but never says her name. I ask her, I ask her and she never answers, just tells me how much shit they gave me and talks and talks some more.

But there is something there. A little silver chain. With a small, delicate clasp. The end is broken off, whatever charm that had been there long gone. But I still knew it, I still knew.

I closed my fingers around the delicate charm, around it and remembered how cold his skin had been as it brushed my neck. I remember, I remember. I don't think, I remember.

My knees start to ache; the crap from my desk is small, is sharp, and I'm leaning farther into it. I can feel the girl's eyes on me. Looking, staring.

xXxXx

"Time for pills!"

"Oh, no thank you."

"No up to you, sweetie."

"But I don't need them."

"Sure you don't, hun."

"I don't."

"Is that what Edward told you?"

xXxXx

Gaps in time are like this:

You can jump off a mountain, you can crash a motor cycle on a cliff side, you can discover fairy tales and let them swallow you whole, you can live and die and fall in love and fall out of love, but if your not there to see it, it might as well've never happened.

And then you end up here:

White walls, white beds, white eyes white pills white clothes white teeth white white white. Nothing else, nothing different. White, like the skin of someone not really alive. White like, like, like...

"I want to sleep," I told the girl who sleeps next to me. "I want to sleep."

She groaned, like it was such a bother, like I had just knocked down a thirty foot house of cards. "Get a nurse, then."

"I don't want to get a nurse," I said. "I want to sleep. I want to see him."

She looked up sharply, her eyes pointed even through the pale darkness. "How about I makeyou sleep, fucken psycho."

Tears stung my eyes and I did not sleep.

xXxXx

I know I'm not crazy.

Please, dear God, I'm not crazy.

xXxXx

Charlie is here, he's here to see me. I don't know what to do. He might be different, everything else is different. I don't know who I am, who he is. He could be someone else, someone else.

By now the drugs have dulled, have dulled everything around them, like a pencil rubbing at pen scratches. Makes everything lighter, but it's always still there.

Anyway, Charlie's here to see me.

xXxXx

He has a moustache still, he's still peppered with gray, he still looks uncomfortable, he still looks like Charlie.

I stare at him.

"How are you?" he asks me.

My mouth is dry, but I don't know it until I open it. "Fine."

"Do you think your feeling better?"

I get the feeling this has been asked a lot, been asked more then once; he wants me out, but he wants me quite. Normal.

"Edward's real, isn't he?" My head hurts, and I start to crave the daily white pill. Everything is becoming sharper, sharper.

He makes a face, like he's trying to hold it together, like he wants to cry. I bows his head, shakes it, back and forth back and forth. "Bella," he says.

They want me to believe this is my life; that's what they want.

I bow my own head and lean it against the cafeteria table, closing my eyes and listening to the sound of my father breathing. That's all, that's all.

Author's Note: A few things--I have a twitter opinionatedme12 and a book review blogspot account (readingwatchingliving . blogspot . com). Also, I'm working on some Twilight AU's, even though I promised myself I'd stay away. So, enjoy what I post, or not, whatever works.

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