Chapter 7

(Lauren)

The morning sun lit the path in front of her. Bushes and trees were growing to the left and some branches twined far across the walkway. The river, mirroring the blue sky, silently floating, framed the track to the right. Some great crested grebe were diving in the water to find the smaller fish underneath the surface.

White smoke escaped out of the two red brick smokestacks of a refinery on the other side of the river. The sun was shining bright and it gave a welcoming warmth. It was a lazy morning. No passersby had met her way since she walked out of the glass doors of her second home.

It had almost been ten o'clock when Lauren said her goodbyes and left the clinic. Finally on her way back home, her body felt heavy and her thoughts were flying around in her head settling on one topic: The small bakery she used to eat breakfast in. An interesting and unsuspected surprise after long hours of thinking of the vision of that stunning brunette, of trying to collect herself of the effect said brunette had on her and the tangled mass of information she had received that evening.

Unfortunately the shop would be closed by the time she would arrive. The time frame to buy freshly baked bread and buns was short on Sundays and Lauren had to cover a distance of at least twenty more minutes to get to her destination.

She could kill for one of those multi-grain bread buns, some home-made orange juice and a decent cup of black coffee. Nothing compared to a mug or two of freshly brewed Colombian coffee after an on-call shift. Especially like the last one.

Yes, the rumors about hospitals and caffeine were true. All of them. Too much, at nearly any occasion thinkable of and way too strong most of the time.

Some co-workers used to drink the brew even when it was already cooled off or reheated it in a microwave. They called it 'Plörre'. It wasn't about the taste, only about the boost. This night, the Doctor consumed a lot of said 'Plörre' or 'gnat's piss', like her father had once called his brother's coffee creation on a family dinner after spitting it back into his cup.

Lauren wondered whether her gastric mucosa was made of iron or maybe marble or if the receptors were already dead and not able to signal any pain to the brain anymore. Every nurse's station made sure to not run out of that black life force. It was some kind of a challenge of its own. There was a huge amount of milk, sugar and the brown powder of pure felicity stashed away.

Sanity and hypo-mania holding hands all the way through the shifts. At some point one could get confused whether it was a patient or a colleague next to them.

Back then on her first week, Frank advised, if a patient asks why she was stuck in a loony bin and what diagnosis those nut-balls of couch doctors imputed her with; then she was doing her job pretty well. It's nearly impossible to break through people's walls sometimes.

There's no better way to create a connection, than to let free your own little maniac deep inside, become an equal, not the one who closed the door to freedom and autonomy.

That one patient, a few years back, who rioted inside the unit by throwing chairs and threatening other patients and staff members, yelling at them to let him go, was one of the many patients no one could get through to. He refused to take his medication for a couple of days, because in his mind he wasn't sick.

"I do hear those voices! You, know. They are talking about me. Saying I am going to rape small girls and that I am going to kill my neighbors. Spreading rumors all around my neighborhood. But every time I try to get to those men talking bullshit about me, to force them to stop, they were already gone! Stupid sucker ran away. I'm not crazy. Those men are real."

On the seventh day without his anti-psychotics, the voices were more present and persisted the entire day and the night, not only talking about him, but telling him to kill himself.

A dangerous mixture for a person with psychotic symptoms: No sleep nor protection of stimuli. When he kicked holes in the hallway's wall next to his room, the nurses had to react fast. They called for support of the police, because of his energy and the high level of rage the patient got himself in. He was as meek as a lamb when he saw the two police officers getting into the unit. He laid down flat on the ground and put his hands on his back face to the ground, not saying another word, just waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Lauren had felt guilty. What had this man been going through to behave like this? The next moment he was fastened to his bed and medicated, sleeping like a child. At those times, Lauren hated to be part of this machinery. Thinking about other possibilities to handle situations like that. With more time, the right space and enough staff, things could have been different. Less heated and without so much force.

Small stones of the gravel path squashed between the rubber of the wheels of her mountain bike, singing a song of squeaking and cracking through the sounds of wildlife. Her legs pedaled forward in a constant rhythm. She was inhaling and exhaling deeply. The fresh air cleaned her pulmonary alveoli, reviving her tired system. The smell of wet stone and tree bark lingering in her nostrils.

With every kick of the pedals the tension in her back loosened. Her rucksack swayed slightly from the left to the right and back again. Soft beams warmed her face, bare arms and legs.

Before she had jumped on her bike, the Doctor had transformed into the Cyclist. Her inner-child screamed and danced in excitement. Finally, she could brush off this controlled facade and slip into another role in this theater she called her life.

The black, white and red BMC-Outfit clinging perfectly to her body, like a second skin. The Swiss knew how to satisfy their costumer's needs. A pair of sunglasses secured her eyes of flies and other insects, which otherwise would be glued to her retina. There was no escape from the swarms of those tiny animals. Her hair, up in a ponytail was covered with a red helmet. Safety first, at all times. Maybe she couldn't get rid of the whole control-security-package after all.

The speedometer indicated, she was up to twenty five km/H and the small perfectionist in her knocked on the front lobe of her brain, saying that she could do better. So she sped up.

"Twenty eight. Twenty nine."

Muscles contracted and relaxed in sync. Shifting on to the next higher rear sprocket with a soft rub of the bike chain against the derailleur, Lauren pushed even harder, ignoring a light twitch in her upper legs.

A smile stretched across her face and a strong feeling of satisfaction spread in her chest. Her whiskey brown orbs stared on the small computer fastened at the handlebar, watching the numbers going up to thirty two.

When she looked back up, her smile fell immediately. There was a man standing about ten meters in front of her.

"Fuck!"

She pulled the levers of the disk brakes as hard as possible and tried to steer her way around but it was too late. Her wheels blockaded and she flew across the handlebar. A burning pain shot through her left ankle. The next thing the Cyclist made out was a cold wetness all around her.

Somehow she had managed to direct her bike down the small embankment to the river. The water wasn't deep enough to drown in but it absorbed her fall quite well. Her heart was pounding heavy and fast. She could feel it all the way up to her throat. Breathing became an issue. Lightheaded, she was searching the slope up to the path for the person she thought she crashed into. Sure of the fact that he was hurt. But the man was nowhere to be found.

"What the..."

Shocked and confused Lauren stood up on shaky legs. Trying to bring down her heartbeat by decreasing her rush breathing. Her left ankle ached like hell. The clipless pedal hadn't loosened its grip on her cycling shoe fast enough so that her foot twisted unnaturally to the side when the rest of her body had already been in the air.

Her bike was laying with one wheel in the river, the other was still spinning slightly hovering above the green grass of the riverside. With the use of her hands she crawled back out of the water. Her sunglasses neatly placed on her nose, like nothing had happened.

When she placed her damaged foot on safer ground, a dull pain forced her to sit down on the grass next to her mountain bike.

"Shit! Ouch!"

While sitting on the green grass she stared at the other side of the river. What had just happened? She was one hundred percent sure, that she saw a man standing in her way. Where did he go? He couldn't have vanished into thin air. He had to be somewhere. Yet again, Lauren took a look in both directions of the path she had been cycling on. But there was no one to be seen.

Sighing in frustration, she tried to stand up again after checking her wound. No broken bones just bruised and the area around her ankle began to swell. This time she made it all the way around her bike and heaved it back up. To steady herself she leaned on its frame with one hand and the other holding the handlebar tight, walking awkwardly up the embankment.

Water was running down her whole body. It would be one hell of a trip back to her apartment with an aching ankle. Thankfully her bike wasn't broken, so she didn't need to carry the extra weight. That would have been impossible, because of the fact, that holding herself upright was more than enough to manage.

Shaking her head a few times to clear her mind and refocus the blonde felt a slight headache coming up. Sitting back on the saddle, the Cyclist slipped her good foot back into the clip of the pedal. She would have to push and pull with one leg the remaining fifteen kilometers back home.

When she arrived at her apartment, Lauren put her bike away with all the power left in her weakening and tired state of being. The stairs to the second floor felt like they had rebuilt themselves mitosis-like. She was sure that there were at least thirty more steps than the last time she had to climb up to her front door.

After a quick shower, more leaning against the wall than actually standing under the spray of water, she bandaged her ankle with some arnica-sports-gel and a stretchable gauze.

Her stomach was still empty and longed for something. Anything. Hobbling through the bathroom and living room she entered the small kitchen. She grabbed some Chinese leftovers from the other day that smelled fresh enough and hadn't developed their own fragile ecosystem, just yet. Together with a bottle of water she made her way past the small den with papers of her research placed neatly not only on her desk, but the floor and windowsill, too, and finally the blonde Doctor ended up in her bedroom closing the door and the curtains to shut out the world around her. The need to rest was more present now than it had been in weeks. She tried to shut down her mind without much success. The pain in her body foregrounded even more now that she had settled down.

Sleep was overrated. That's what she told herself from time to time. Especially when it wouldn't come, because of the ache in her ankle and the thunderstorm inside her head. Thoughts she couldn't gather while tossing and turning on her king size bed.

There was this new patient, Bo Dennis, and her unexpected story about an organization which tortured her in the most unthinkable ways possible. The false husband, who forced his way into the Doctor's office to catch this mysterious woman Lauren tried to bond and to build a level of trust with. Then this accident on her way back home. It had been a tough twenty-something hours. When she finally fell asleep she was even too exhausted to dream.

Several hours later the church bell clock next to the clinic was striking seven pm when Lauren stepped out of her car to get back into work-mode. Good thing she bought a car with automatic gear system so her bruised foot could relax and let the healthy one do all the work of pushing the gas pedal.

The black Smart was quite an eye-catcher, when the blonde maneuvered into the smallest parking spaces without much effort. She had decided to get back to her office as soon as possible. She had at least dozed off for quite some time and felt refreshed enough to reboot her brain for the things she had left undone the other night. Hopefully she could also catch a glimpse of Miss Dennis.

Walking through the entrance and the quiet hallway to the elevator, she pushed her key in the lock of the control panel and turned it around until a light next to the button switched on telling her the lift would be coming soon.

"Guten Abend, Doktor."

The man at the reception looked up shortly to greet the blonde when she passed by. At times, Lauren had earned some remarks about not having a proper home or if she had lost something on her way out, but that receded with the years.

Stepping into the cabin of the elevator she held onto the leather strip of her bag. Yet again her thoughts drifted off to the brunette, like there was nothing else left to think about. She had hoped to find Miss Dennis in the secure unit. The twenty four hours ran out in about fifty two minutes and there had been no reason to initiate some kind of involuntary commitment. This woman was no harm to herself or to others and didn't do anything to provoke a fight once she had arrived on the unit.

No judge would agree to a treatment against the brunette's will.

Lauren also hoped that this Mr. Thornwood hadn't showed up at her door already. She occasioned a blockade for any kind of information anyone would ask for and that there would be nobody allowed to visit the woman. By the look in the brunette's eyes and the things she had told Lauren, she wasn't as sure as she should be, that it had worked out. She didn't know what this men were capable of and how far they would go to get what they wanted.

The Doctor was heading to the door with the letters 'Station 12' as soon as the elevator opened its portal to the third floor. All kinds of emotions ran through her belly and chest.

What would be waiting for her behind the locked entrance of the secure unit?