Wow! I'm thrilled you guys like the story and want to thank everyone for reading, sooo many hits in the traffic! Couldn't stop smiling! And the reviews, alarms, and messages :) Still speechless.
Had a few chapters already finished buuut a lot of you wanted to know more about the mental state of the girls so I re-wrote it. Sorry if it's a bit edgy but it was kinda rushed and I tried to keep a few things while adding others.
At least 3 reviews and I'll post the next chapter ;) more will make me write faster.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Katie Fitch :)
IwysAshes
She was laughing like crazy at the trouble I'm in
Her light eyes were dancing she is insane
Her brother says she's just a bitch with a golden chain
She keeps coming closer saying "I can feel it in my bones
Schizophrenia is taking me home"
I haven't had an idea how fast things could change. How much one sentence can change and how much of fucking nothing we can do about it.
One sentence left a strangers lips and I stopped existing for Effy.
I still feel her eyes on me but she uses her super powers to avoid eye contact. Never been fast enough to catch her eyes and make her look at me. Make her see how much she kills me with her ignorance.
It happened two weeks ago, on Friday, the day after I fucked up my thigh. My shrink told me that Effy's gonna be the guide for the new girl, and he wanted me to help out because our crazy beauty isn't much of a talker.
Then he let it slip. He told me that before I even arrived, Effy's been gone for over two weeks with Cook. They've broken out of here, went away and no one knows how it happened but when Effy crashed a car into a wall she barged into the clinic and told everyone about it. She didn't stop talking right away, the silence reappeared a few weeks after.
Something inside of me flipped and I freaked out. Went all mental on Effy, fucked her against our bedroom door and didn't let her touch me. Pushed her head away when she'd tried to kiss me. Left her standing there with open trousers like a whore and lost it completely.
We made up that night. All night.
And then everything changed. From one second to another.
It's around 3am and the door opens, our heads shoot up in panic of being caught naked and practically on top of each other. Effy didn't move away, whereas I've tried to hide into the wall she only crawled closer, resting an arm around my waist as if whoever walked in wanted to take me away.
"What the fuck do you want?"
This wide eyed expression belongs to the new girl. She's gaping at us and it takes me a minute to realise that we haven't covered ourselves up yet. I reach for the duvet and throw it over our naked bodies, my glare never leaving her in fear she might try to run and tell on us.
"Close the door, Jesus! Will you?" She's shaking her head and slams the door shut, probably alarming the whole ward with the loud noise. With a sigh Effy moves to her side of the bed, in case someone might come and check on us now, after hearing the bang.
I eye the girl again and wait for an explanation. "Why are you here? What the fuck do you want?" And she just walks to our bed and sits down with a grimace, knowing what we've been up to on this very sheets earlier.
"I...uh, wanted to check on you and see if you're all right. You've been pretty insane earlier. But, yeah, I think I've interrupted something. Something that's not allowed and besides, how can you even be together? Isn't that like screwing a rag-doll? I mean she doesn't speak or communicate in any way, so your practically fucking a living"
Seeing our shocked faces she freezes. "Did I, oh fuck it. What? I'm right." A look of disgust falls over my own face and I look at Effy, who's already got her wide eyes on me. "Oh, fuck no! Just ignore me, yeah? I talk bullshit and never think before acting so...I bet it's uh...lovely, really wonderful and you have your own way to communicate. It's probably really...uh... cute."
I rub my forehead, torn between slapping her and laughing because she's really flustered and looks kinda cute. Her faked smile is blinding us but her dimples show and that is seriously adorable. "Why don't you just go? I'm fine. I'll be as good as new, promise." I say with a chuckle and she stops the act.
"Really? You punched a glass door. Looked pretty awful." "That the reason why you jumped on my back?"
She's blushing, has got to be a pretty hard blush seeing as it's really dark in here. "Awe, are you blushing? My hero, you should get an medal for keeping me from jumping into the broken glass, not blush." Makes her blush harder. Cute.
From the corner of my eye I see Effy throw a jumper over her head, grab her fags and storm out of the room. My eyes follow her and I think I managed to do the unthinkable.
I've pissed off Effy.
I guess I must've spaced out because the new girl is waving her hand in front of my face. "You should go after your girlfriend. She's well pissy, fucking jealous if you ask me and if you want to get into her knickers ever again you should apologise."
My pretty room-mate left me. She's just packed her shit and moved herself to a single room, just like that, without getting a permission from the workers or doctors because she's Effy and she doesn't need a permission for anything.
Katie fucking Fitch arrived and smashed my little, pretend-world on her first day.
She didn't do it on purpose, hates being the reason for my pain and for Effy's condition. She might not be to blame but it was her big mouth throwing the words at us after all . She feels like shit and like she's supposed to look after me now.
I'd rather have her look after Effy.
"Naomi? Did you listen to a word I've just said?"
Hank. My shrink. "No."
There's no need to lie, why should I bother? It doesn't matter anyway. He's sitting in front of me, annoying glasses sliding down his too big nose as he watches me. We have an e-meeting. I was done for the weekend but sadly my trip to the hospital yesterday night made him want to see me again before the weekend starts.
Friday morning, 8am, way too early for that crap.
"Naomi, you've been here for quite some time now and it appears as if you don't take the treatment serious." He sighs his big, disappointed sigh and shakes his head. "I thought you knew better than that. I know you're a clever girl but I cant understand why you wont take the chances we offer."
I hold my decaf in one hand and a fag in the other, staring him in the eyes. With a shaking head the lighter is handed to me and I smile. "Thanks." I take a deep drag of my first fag for the day and a gulp of the horrible tasting wannabe coffee. "You were saying?"
"I was saying that you need to change your behaviour."
He averts his eyes, cant stand it to look at me for too long. "Well, isn't my 'behaviour' my illness doc? If I could turn it off, don't you think I'd have done it a long time ago?"
Maybe he sees that I'm honest, maybe he sees a hurting girl with a destroyed thigh, maybe even a destroyed heart. Maybe he sees right through me and knows I'm saying what he needs to hear to leave me alone.
"I know."
"No you don't. You don't know how it is to wake up and hate everything, absolutely everything without a fucking reason. You don't know how it is to sit with your mates and tear the place down suddenly, because someone said the wrong thing. You don't know how it is when your mum is scared for and of you. You don't know how it is to feel so much that it makes you go mad. You either fly high above everyone else or you are so deep beneath them that you cant see anything any more. You have no idea idea how empty one can actually feel, and how the emptiness makes it hard to breath. And you don't know how it feels to feel ALL of that in a matter of minutes. It makes you lose it."
I see a little smile on his fucking face before he pulls himself together and I scoff. Of course he'd be glad to hear that, so fucking predictable.
"You know that it wont stay this way forever."
"Yeah? What I know is that it will always fucking stay this way. Wasn't it you? Showing me stupid documents and sciency stuff about studies on the topic? I'll always be a fucking freak needed to be locked away." And he shakes his head, writing another useless fact in his Naomi folder.
"You are seventeen, Naomi. The doctors call the time: the blooming years of a borderliner. Your hormones are all over the place, which is absolutely normal but it gets 50 times intensified through your condition. It will pass, just like the puberty passes."
This time it's my head that's shaking at his ridiculousness. "You're having a fucking laugh. How can you even compare it to puberty? You're out of your mind?"
And then he starts a fucking rant and I have no other choice but to slam down my mug on the table and walk to the door. "I'm not listening to that. Maybe you should get and fucking special training to work with us."
He asks me to stay, says he's got something for me and then I have two books in my arms. 'I hate you-don't leave me' and 'sometimes I act crazy'. "I know the black and white one, my mum bought it when they first assumed I've got a borderline-personality disorder. But haven't read the second one yet."
He starts explaining how it might help me want to really take part in the DBT therapy.
"I know Hank, maybe your right. But when I sit with a fucking razor, knife, Cd, or whatever and my tension is by 80 I cant think of squeezing a fucking sand ball. Or do any other 'skills'. I'm too far gone by then."
Skills. That's part of the program; Dialectical behavioural therapy and it's bollocks. After I've had to go through almost fifteen test that took over two weeks I was officially diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. No doctor can diagnose anyone under eighteen, because of fucking puberty but my birthday is next month and I'm in therapy since I was eight that made the head of the clinic want to start the DBT.
It's got lots of different parts of a huge concept with single therapy, group therapy, self soothing (biggest bullshit I've ever heard of), meditating, and lots more.
But skills break my neck. We've got something like a chart, from 0 till 100. It's about the tension we feel. You need to think of my attitude as a door. This door is your tension level when something happens that makes your emotions explode. Lets say someone told you what a beautiful morning it is. You say yes or no. I hate mornings. Assume the person knows it and that they're asking me on purpose. Makes my blood boil. Everyone walks to the door, opens it, walks through and closes it again.
I don't. I run, head first through it.
And the skills are here to help calm down the tension when I feel it coming. Sadly it's not knocking either. A little thing, a glance, a word, a fucking smile lets me lose it and I'm from 50 (the usual tension a borderliner always has) up to 80 and I'm on my way to do something about it.
A tension needs release. And the release is, in my case right now self harm. A common persons usual tension is about 05, and never gets to 80.
They think they're out of their mind when it reaches 40.
It's making my mind explode. These intense feelings. Either good or bad.
I got a list of skills but am welcome to invent my own. Like, a little ball filled with sand, rice or other stuff you can squeeze. Or running up stairs. Or even playing drums. Whatever helps you release the tension but isn't harming you in any way. Getting pierced, tattoos or laying in the sun until you're burned isn't a release, it's just another way to harm yourself.
The only thing working for me, sometimes, is sex. Haven't had any in weeks. But I'm still learning, and my prior therapies have been shit, they weren't even calcified to work with someone with that condition and I was running wild.
A speeding car without a driver.
Hank pulls me out of my thoughts with his annoying, soothing voice. "Why don't you sit down, Naomi? I'd like to talk to you about Elizabeth."
Of course he would.
I feel the tension rising again, the anger boiling inside of me like I'm a freaking volcano ready to erupt and destroy everything around me. "Yeah? What's she got to do with anything?" If I were an animal, I'd be baring my teeth at the moment. But I'm not, so I'm just gripping the books and glare at him.
The thing is that there is just a good or bad. Nothing in-between. Black and white, no other colours with me. And if I let someone close, I'm addicted to them, depend on them with my life and live in constant fear of being left behind. Being left alone.
Effy's left me and I'm fucking dying.
No day has gone by without me needing to be brought to hospital because I managed to slice open some veins or needed the common stitches. It hurts so much, so fucking much that I need other pain to help me stand it.
Being ignored is one of the worst things that could happen to me. Love me, hate me, do whatever you want but never, never ignore me.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't try to kill myself. I don't think about that, right now I'm not suicidal but fucking close.
But even if she's left me, I cant let someone talk about her, let someone think bad about her or even try and criticise her. She cant fucking defend herself. Someone has to.
I can be pissed off as much as I want, yell and cry and fucking hate her because my heart hurts soo much but no one else is allowed to.
Fucking mental case, I am, right?
He's chuckling because he's had the same thought, I suppose. "Retract the claws, fighter. I just wanted to know how you manage without her."
The chair looks like the worst thing in the whole wide world, I know if I sat down, he would make me talk about it. Make me think about it. Make me see the truth and in the end I would spill the truth which can never happen.
"She isn't gone, only moved to another room." Is what I spit instead, turning away my head to hide tears I know will flow soon. Then my fist bangs on the door, I'm done with the session for today.
"Naomi, if you wont take the offered help this weekend and end up in the hospital again I'll be pushed to make some decisions. And before you bite my head off; yes, it is your illness but you have to try, it's what you're here for. You're right, it cant be healed but you can learn how to live with it. It's been going on like this for far too long and the head of the clinic is on my back."
Michelle opens the door from the outside with a confused face, probably wondering why I'm crying. She shouldn't be surprised, everyone cries from time to time after a session.
When she slips her key card through the slot and the green lamp shines I push the door open without glancing at her again and march to my room. Katie's on her bed with her mobile phone I taught her to smuggle inside.
She looks up at me and smiles, patting the spot beside her. After I kicked off my shoes I let myself fall into her waiting arms, resting my head on her legs as she runs her fingertips through my hair. She's got a calmness in her that makes me instantly relax and my heart starts to beat normally again.
Don't get me wrong, she's a force of nature but in moments when everyone is upset and hectic she's suddenly the easy sedative person, making me calm down.
It wasn't our idea for her to move in, the whole staff didn't want me to be alone, said I needed to be 'socialised' and couldn't be on my own. Pandora isn't a good choice, I love the girl but being in a room together? 24/7?
I'd kill her.
And sadly that are all the girls on our ward. Pandora, Katie, Effy and me. The others either moved to the open ward or were released but we're never much more patients. Mostly it's 5 boys and 5 girls.
Only Katie was available and she felt like it was her duty to be the best room-mate I could wish for. She's fun, really unbelievably funny and makes me laugh a lot. She's also the most annoying person in the world, making me want to kill her.
We're a good team.
She's hard like water you jump from a cliff into, and soft like the fur of a puppy. Haven't met a person with that much layers, faces or personalities.
Katie is schizophrenic and she was really glad that I didn't ask her how her other self's name is.
That's such a stereotypical thinking, saying people with schizophrenia have to be two persons in one body. Of course I didn't know all the details she's told me but at least she didn't kill me for being an idiot.
She's hearing things, has hallucinations and she cant make out what's real and what isn't. Like her past, she cant tell if what she remembers really happened or not. Sometimes when we have a nice day, maybe something interesting happened like a patient freaking out and I start talking about it on the next day, she doesn't remember. Or she remembers it in a completely different way.
She's living a very hard life.
Everyone stops hanging out with her, her mates turn their backs because they think she's a lying bitch when in truth, she just cant see the difference between what's real and what isn't. Her mind is playing tricks on her and makes her a very lonely, sad girl.
"You know how every child has a imaginary friend at some point in its life?" She asked me once and when I nodded she told me a horrifying story. "I've had a whole city around me, it never left."
And sometimes I catch her talking to someone when she's alone, and when she realises that no one is actually there she freaks. She starts banging her head on every surface she can find.
Her head always hurts, because it takes all her energy to concentrate and block out voices her mind lets scream at her. If she doesn't focus hard enough it happens that she starts yelling at people or punches them, who knows what she heard them saying?
She's come in contact with the coppers a lot over the years. Her illness helped her most of the times but when she almost killed a girl with a rock they've made her take part in a residential psychiatric treatment, or she'd have to go to jail.
Through the years she realised that her little world wasn't a nice place and it made her angry, so angry that she cant keep herself together when something happens. She stops thinking and like a bull sees red. Tunnel vision the call it and it's like a blackout for her. She opens her eyes at some point and sees what she's done, without having an actual memory of it.
She's a danger to others and to herself.
The gorgeous girl with the big, sad eyes is out of control and she's the one suffering the most because of it.
"Bad day?" Her raspy voice asks as her hand trails down my side in a comforting manner. I nod into her neck, wondering if that was supposed to happen.
If she had to be here, with me, for me when Effy wouldn't. If destiny brought her here, even her flee attempt couldn't change it and I wonder if this was all suppose to be this way. Because as much as she's been a help to me the last weeks, I've brought her through some horrible days too.
It's a push and pull between us, two stubborn filled heads that run through walls. "Yeah. You too?"
She leans down and kisses my temple, nodding softly. The comfort she's giving me comforts her too, and we can be never sure who isn't suffering. "You miss her."
When I turn my body around to look up at her, look into her unbelievably bronze eyes, she doesn't look away like everyone else does. "It's killing me." And then I feel my eyes burn with new tears, and her fingertips trace the lines they run down until stopping at my lips.
Her thumb softly strokes my bottom lip while her eyebrows are knitted in concentration. Is she concentrating on something she thinks about? Or is she concentrating on my lips to know if I talk or if her mind is playing tricks?
Always makes me wonder when her eyes stare at me like this.
"Are you gay Naomi?" I didn't expect that.
Of all the possibilities what her mind would have her ponder about it is my sexuality? "I don't know."
I have never been in a situation where I needed to explain it, or think about it really. Effy's been the first girl I've slept with, but does it make me gay? Spending almost six months living with a girl, sharing clothes, food, drinks, fags, pills and the bed?
"Makes you not straight." Happened again.
Happens all the fucking time. Something makes me voice my thoughts without meaning to when I'm near Katie. It's scary, who knows what I'll think next? "Do you have a problem with that?" She shakes her head lightly, never letting her eyes leave my face.
"Do you have a boyfriend waiting for you, Kay?" She shrugs, and I feel suddenly a very different kind of tension in the room. I shuffle a bit and hold up my body on my elbows, our heads are closer now and her breath hits my face.
I fucking hope I'm not misreading her signs because that'd be fucking embarrassing and horrible for our room sharing. But my eyes don't leave hers as I slowly close the gap, gently pressing our lips together and good god, she tastes like heaven.