When you're in a hospital for so long you get used to the routines. It's almost like that's all a hospital is, routines. The medication always comes at certain times, and meals always come at certain times, and the things that happen happen at the same times every day. Every day for weeks and weeks and weeks, it's been the same.
My life before this, before killing the soc and running away and landing in the hospital, there were no routines in that life. There was nothing that was the same from one day to the next. So routines are funny things, kind of hard to get used to at first, then hard to let go of.
I always knew if there was a change in the routine for any reason, and when I was getting woken up at like five thirty I knew something was up. It was one of the night nurses shaking me, saying my name softly in the dark room.
"Johnny, Johnny, wake up," It was like a voice in a dream, and ever since the fire I've been having dreams that seem so real, and it isn't anything crazy, it's just me in my old life hanging out at the lot or something like that, walking around with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jean jacket, no big deal. But it seems so real, so much like it used to be, that when I wake up it's hard to adjust to how things are, how things have changed.
"Huh?" I said, opening my eyes, trying to focus on her.
"Here," she said, holding out the pain medication, two white little pills filled with so much power. She had the pills and she had a glass of water but I felt dread at that, because those little pills were always before the dressing changes and it was way too early for it. But I didn't question her or demand to know why things were different today, because I knew that court hearing was coming up. I figured they'd change the routine of that day so I could go to court, and then end up getting hauled into juvenile hall, and I'd just lay on some bed all the time because I couldn't walk, and the burns would get all infected and then I'd die anyway.
I took the pills and waited for them to kick in. When they kick in, man, you can't imagine it. I know why people do heroin or something out on the streets. It makes you feel happy and it makes you feel like whatever is wrong doesn't matter, it makes you float away on a cloud, the pain still there but not exactly the same, not something that has any power to hurt you anymore.
Then it was time for the dressing changes, and I closed my eyes and winced because even through morphine it still hurt a little. It was still the night shift. There were three shifts for nurses, it was day, evening, and night. This dressing change thing was usually done on days. But I knew court would start at like nine in the morning, so all this had to get done early. But I managed to go back to sleep when it was done, even though I was starting to feel nervous about court.
The food here was kind of, I don't know, bland. Breakfast was oatmeal and orange juice. But I ate it. They tell you all this stuff when you're a patient, like how if you're hurt, injured and everything with all these burns, that your body can't heal itself unless you eat protein and everything. So I ate at every meal. Before, when I lived at home, there wasn't food around all that much. Not enough, really. My parents bought a lot of alcohol but not so much food. I'd eat at Ponyboy's house, or Two-Bit's, or Steve's, wherever, but a lot of times I just didn't eat anything because there was nothing.
When the day shift came on the day nurse was all business. The day nurses, they're more edgy and busy than the other shifts. Sometimes at night the nurses are half asleep. Not really, but it's all quiet and they have to tiptoe around everywhere and whisper, and it's just different. But on days it's so loud and the nurses are just, I don't know, things are more hectic for them. So I'm like dozing off after breakfast and this day nurse comes in with a suit. A suit.
"Johnny," she said, and I gazed at that suit, it was dark blue, navy, with a white shirt and a tie. Would this suit make the judge think I hadn't killed anybody? I knew where it had come from, too. Darry. Darry would be the only one who would have thought that I needed it. I'd never worn a suit before.
