Rin was not sure what he expected the inside of a psych ward to look like. Perhaps a lingering stench of damp and dust filled lightbulbs which covered the room of peeling wallpaper in a dull piss yellow shade. It would feel cold and you would hear creaking floorboards and screaming inmates and the room would be filled with shackles and blood.
Rin did not expect it to be a spacious room which had flowery wall-paper and a bulky TV in the corner of the room as well as a few sofas. The room shared the same old stale clinical smell as the rest of the hospital rooms. It was a little hotter than the other rooms, probably because the windows were shut. The windows were barred from the outside. The only sound was the rattling of the AC and two patients chuckling over a card game. The room wasn't bleak and archaic, instead it was tacky and similar to someone's grandmother's house.
The two patients who were playing cards had begun to argue. The two patients were a blonde boy, who seemed very young, and a boy with glasses.
"You can't have the black cards with the red ones or else Ayano will burn the food again," the boy in the glasses protested.
"No, she won't I always mix these cards up and I don't have burnt food everyday!" The blonde boy argued back.
The conversation continued in such an odd back and forth that it almost made Rin feel dizzy. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned round to see a nurse and a very tall brunette holding his things.
"Would you like to get settled?" the brunette asked. Rin turned back to the arguing boys who seemed to have started to re-arrange the cards alreadu. Rin gave a small grunt and nodded his head before following them.
The brunette began to chatter away about how he was a volunteer at the ward and that he'd been volunteering there for a number of years and knew the layout very well. Rin wasn't really that interested, he just wanted to leave. He hated that lingering clinical stench that pervaded the walls of the whole hospital building.
"We have a point system here," the nurse began. "Your psychiatrist will give you a number of points depending on how much progress you make at each session. Points can also be deducted for self-harm, attempting to abscond, refusing to take medication, skipping meals, etc. etc. Having more points gives you more freedom and privileges for example, someone with one thousand points can go home for a weekend. You generally receive fifty points per session so it would take twenty sessions to be able to get that privilege but it's important to remember you have three to five sessions a week."
Rin nodded, not all of her explanation really sunk in. He just knew that he was stuck here. The dormitories didn't appear very large from the outside. The last door on the right, before the corridor turned left to the bathrooms, was where they stopped.
"Here's your room!" the volunteer announced. The nurse unlocked the door and then pushed it open to reveal the room.
"This door locks? Can I have the key?" Rin asked.
"These doors are never locked whilst people are inside them. Only when they're vacant or if the patient isn't currently in their room, just to avoid… issues."
The room was simple and plain and blank. There was a bed with a mattress on it and a pillow, a small chest of draws, and a desk with a little blue plastic chair (the same model the doctor had sat in when she told Rin he was going to be sectioned). There was a small window at the top right corner, also barred up. It seemed almost pointless to have it there. It was too high up to look out and barred so tightly that it would hardly let in a breeze.
"Can you open my room for me?" a monotone voice asked. Rin turned around and was taken aback to find that a shirtless and shoeless teenage boy had wandered into his room to talk to the nurse. Rin found sort of attractive, because he was definitely just that comfortable with his heterosexuality that he could admit that another guy was sort of hot. Definitely.
"Could you give me a minute, Haru? I'm showing Rin his room." She huffed. Haru turned and noticed Rin. Rather than answer the middle-aged nurse, he chose to stare gormlessly at the redhead. Rin began to feel self-conscious. He began to fidget, his finger hooking around the bracelet covering his wrist. He felt his face getting hot and he knew he was going red in front of the other boy.
"Makoto, could you give Rin a run-down about the room whilst I take Haruka back?" she groaned.
"Yes, of course," he replied. The nurse smiled before exhaling and turning to the blue eyed boy, she went to take his arm but the boy jolted away and continued to stare at Rin.
"Does he… does he always do that?" Rin asked, finally being able to find something to say about the situation.
"Not really, he usually doesn't take an interest in anything except water," Makoto answered. Okay then, thought Rin. Haruka grunted fairly quietly before following the nurse out of the room and across the hall.
"He's a schizophrenic," Makoto added, conversationally.
"Isn't that when you have like two personalities, or something?" Rin asked.
"No, that's disassociate identity disorder. But a lot of schizophrenics have auditory hallucinations which they refer to as having voices in their head," he answered. Rin didn't really care that much though, he just knew that he was going to have a lot of problems with Haruka.
"So, how many of those points does he have?" Rin asked.
"He doesn't have any," his voice held a chuckle but the side of his face pulled in a way which suggest something of an agonised grimace.
"Really? How come?" Rin took a seat on the bare mattress. He placed his elbows on his knees then leaned forward so that his chin rested in his palms.
"Well," the brunette rubbed the back of his neck slightly, "he constantly runs off when no one's looking because he likes going to the swimming pool, they have one here for physiotherapy and stuff but he always sneaks off and goes swimming in there. I also heard that he never gets any points because he's never talked during any session whatsoever."
"And I'm across the hall from him?!"
"Well, he's not noisy. I think… I finish doing volunteer work at four so I wouldn't know if he's loud at night or anything."
Rin fell back on the mattress with a melodramatic sigh. Great, he thought. He had trouble sleeping enough at home. It was always restless nights and dribs and drabs of nightmares and sneaking sleeping pills which don't work anyway. Now he didn't even have his old sheets from home. Speaking of sheets…
"Where are my bedsheets anyway?"
"Well, there are a lot of rules about what patients can have in their rooms… I've got a print out at the front desk but to answer your question, high risk patients can't have blankets until lights out, just in case."
No fucking blankets, are you kidding me?
"What else can't I have?" he asked with a frown.
"Well there's quite a few things. There are grey areas, some specific patients can't have certain things because of the risks involved, whereas others can… I'll fetch the print out for you when Nurse Etsuko is finished with Haru."
Later that evening, Rin sat with a tray of burnt food and a long printout with very fine writing. He had been scrutinising it since he got it and was still shocked by the things he couldn't have. Like headphones and portable electronic devices.
The canteen was spread out sparsely and it had taken him awhile to find a seat. He sat next to a silver haired boy at first but then he looked like he was going to cry so he had to circle the canteen again, somehow finding an empty bench.
Now, he was crunching through the burnt mushy hospital food, minding his own business, when he heard someone clear their throat. Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit.
"That's my seat," a bland and vaguely familiar voice brushed over Rin's head and that feeling you get when you unknowingly put a wet sock on your foot ran through his body. He wasn't sure what possessed him to preform his next big fuck up because rather than evacuating the table and looking to sit somewhere else, he moved into the next seat. Haruka grumbled but sat next to Rin.
"This is my table," he said. Rin felt he didn't need telling twice and he grabbed his tray and almost jumped right out of his seat when Haruka turned and stared at him again.
"But you have to sit here now, they say you have to," he said. Rin put his tray back down and continued to eat. He noticed that Haruka was pealing the wrapper off an all-in-one nutrition bar. It looked kind of grey but the blue eyed boy showed no qualms in eating it.
"How do you eat that?" Rin asked.
"How do you eat that?" Haru retorted, indicating to his tray.
"I don't know what you mean."
"They could have poisoned it," Haru replied casually, he then took another bite of the bulky chewy block of a nutrition bar.
"I wouldn't mind that," Rin sighed, pushing the food around with his plastic fork. He hadn't been allowed a knife to eat his food with. Though the food was so mushy he didn't really need one.
The rest of the meal continued in an awkward silence. Rin felt like a weight had been lifted off his back once he'd finished the hideous plate of food in front of him. He was about to get up when Haruka caught him off guard.
"You don't remember me, do you?" he asked.
"You were in my room earlier, right?"
"Before then, we knew each other."
He felt a little cornered, and that something bad might happen if he said he didn't. Though there was nothing to remember, he had never met this guy before.
"You don't. Memories are odd like that. If someone played with your memories they could make you think that you'd always known someone and make you think you had memories of them before they did that. Or they could make you forget someone really important."
"I've got to go now," Rin replied getting out of the seat and the schizophrenic huffed slightly. I've got to get out of here, Rin thought.