A/N: Hey ya'all, been a while since my last update, I know. What can I say, school had me a little distracted. This chapter wasn't supposed to be up first. I had another one I was going to put up first, but this one just got completed earlier. It's a little deep, but next one involves frat parties, so don't give up on me. Now, go read and review. Make my day!
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I've been locked in here for as long as I can remember.
Maybe even longer.
The view from the lounge is amazing…well, to me it is. The nurses aren't that fond on it. But they're jaded, they experience the world everyday. Their shift ends and they leave this cloistered sanctuary, get swept up in nitty-gritty, fantastical, elbow rubbing life. We…I don't.
All my life I've been an observer. When I'm awake I sit in front of this window, for hours upon hours. I sit, watching the world rush past me, never stopping, never pausing, never looking up and noticing my small face in a sea of glass plating. I watch them, but they don't watch me. Oh what I wouldn't give to break through these walls, storm out of here and take one breath of city air. Breath in the smells and touches and tastes so different from those of my sterile prison. If just for one second, one moment, I could be free, then that might just be enough.
Might.
I didn't used to be so bad in here. I had books and television privileges. I would spend hours combing the library, putting my newly acquired reading skills to work. At night I'd take command of the community room's little TV, viewing everything from cartoons to I Love Lucy reruns. But that didn't last long. My family came for a visitation day…back then those didn't used to be so few and far between. But anyway. They came, and found that my 'eccentric' behavior wasn't any better than before. They wanted the staff to do something about it. They though that too much creative stimulation was fodder for my emotionally troubled fire.
The staff jumped to meet my family's request. After all, receiving a check as big as the one my father made out when I was admitted…well, that'll get you real service. So they cut me off, cold turkey. No more reading, none. Only my textbooks, and even then, only selected passages. TV, not anymore either. Just the occasional History channel documentary. So the four walls I lived between got closer together, and the window became my favorite pastime.
Maybe if I'd been a little older, not so young and naive, I'd have kept quiet. I wouldn't have broadcasted my abilities so outrageously. I might have been able to fake a 'recovery' and have been out of here and back at home where I belong. But children can't often see the consequences of their actions very clearly. I was not exception. And because of it, I would rot in here forever.
And I wasn't even ill.
There was a soft 'buuzzzzzzz' that resonated through the floor and walls, a noise you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't known in was coming. Late shift change. Below me I watched a nurse carefully cross the street, heading for the parking garage down the block.
Heading home, to her family.
Lucky bitch.
"You still up?" came a sharp voice, echoing across the empty room behind me. I sighed deeply.
"Aren't I always?" a snicker emerged from my companion. I didn't turn; I didn't have to.
"Yeah, Alexa, you are. Which is why your meds are scheduled for now." A pale hand held it a small paper cup over my shoulder, jiggling it slightly. The pills inside clicked together gently. I pushed the skeletal hand away with my own ebony colored one. "Alex…" Warning tone. I was unfazed.
"I'm not taking those," I sulked, eyes still focused out the window. "I don't need 'em." The voice from behind sighed deeply.
"I know that better than anyone else here, hun," it cajoled. "But unfortunately, it's not up to you or I." *Jiggle…jiggle* I sighed again sullenly, but after a few seconds I snatched up the cup and downed the medication in one, swift motion, downing them without water. I handed the cup back to the hand behind me.
"Show me," the voice commanded. I whirled and stuck out my tongue, showing it to the skinny, wraith of a young woman behind me. I wasn't being rude, though. I was proving that I hadn't tongued my meds, er…hidden them under my tongue rather than taking them. Satisfied that all was in order, she grinned. It wasn't the most appealing look for her malnourished face. "Thanks hun." She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, leaning over me and glancing outside. "Anything good on the window tonight?" I liked Lisa Ancheckb, she's better than the rest of the nurses here. That's one of the reasons I like nights so much. One of the reasons…
She at least acted like she gave a damn about the people behind the patients, not just the charts and diagnoses and medical conditions. She was only a few years older than I, and in a different time, a different life, maybe we'd have been peers. Friends. She's kind but surprisingly tough for someone so small. There were rumors circulating amongst the nurses here when she first came on staff that she was anorexic. But the nurses treated one another with the same disregard that they did patients. They never took the time to get to know the real Lisa. Maybe if they had, like me, they'd have better understood the poor thing. Maybe she would've even open up to them about her condition. Maybe…I live in a world of maybes.
"Working girl out there looks pretty cold," I muttered quietly. Just like Mary Magdalene. That's the only reason I knew what a hooker was. The Bible was the only book I was allowed to read in my free time now. "Wish someone would bring her a cup off coffee every now and then. Or at least notice her." Lisa snorted in distain.
"I have a hard time feeling sorry for her," she said, drawing up and empty chair and planting it next to the window seat. "She made that choice herself." Lisa worked her way through school. She's a big believer in the rags to riches story; she's lived it.
"Yeah…" A moment of silence before Lisa asked,
"So…have you ever, you know," she tapped here temple symbolically and jerked her head towards the window, "her?" I didn't answer for another moment.
"You know, despite what her job title implies, there's very little sleeping that goes on." Okay, so maybe that came out a little bit cynical, but can you blame me? Talking about why I'm here tends to make me edgy. The silence persisted for another few minutes as I watched the girl on the corner pace back and forth, her breath shining up in a mist around her. Finally though,
"Why did you become a nurse?" I asked, my voice reverberating about the room. Lisa contemplated that question for a moment.
"I guess…" she began, "well, I had so much secondhand experience already, I wanted to give something back, ya know?"
"Yeah, I know." Another long silence,
"So, why so quiet tonight?" she asked me, looking at me, slightly worried. "You don't seem yourself." She was right, I was acting odd…odd for me, at least. "You might as well tell me. 'A problem shared is a problem solved'," she quoted off a plaque that hung in the head nurse's office. I snickered sadly.
"I have another appointment tomorrow," I confessed. From anyone else in this place I would have gotten the sympathy sigh, but not Lisa. She knew better. The only pity I accepted was from myself. Instead I got the 'deep thought' discussion.
"You know, maybe if you just downplayed your…natural gifts a little, faked it out for a while, they'd let you out." I shook my head sadly.
"No, they wouldn't."
"Bu-," she began, but I cut her off.
"I was so messed up as a kid that my family wouldn't take me back for all the money in the world. Bad publicity," I explained logically. "And the doctors are so into what I do that they won't let me leave anyways." I sighed deeply. "I'm not going to get out of here, hun. Any chance that I will is just a lie. A beautiful lie, but a lie nonetheless."
"Well, at least I know you're not crazy." That forced a light chuckle from my lips.
"Yeah, thanks." I was still glaring out the window, but I heard Lisa get up to leave. She padded away softly when I suddenly remembered.
"Hey," I called, whirling around. She paused in the doorway and glanced back. "How was your appointment?" She smiled a little sadly at my question.
"You remembered."
"Have I ever forgotten?" I asked a little more brightly. Her smiled grew a little.
"No…no you haven't. I'm up two pounds," she said happily, as she should have been. "better absorption count than last month's too."
"See," I said, waggling a finger in her direction. "I told you Milky Way's were the way to go, didn't I?" Oh God, what I would have given for some chocolate at that very moment.
"What can I say, you were right?" she chirped. Then, reaching her hand inside her white lab coat, she walked back over to me. "And I got you something too." She shoved the brightly colored comic book into my willing hands. "Bros say this is a good issue." I took it greedily and slipped in under my sweatshirt.
"Thanks Lis, I owe you owe." I patted my package comfortingly. She just shook her head and made her way back out the door.
"No, were even."
Lisa has been smuggling me in things to read from day one, particularly her younger brother's comic books, mostly because they're easy to hide and…well, smuggle. She's known, from our first meeting, that I was different from all the other patients in here. That all this was the result of a horrible misunderstanding. She was the person who treated me like an equal. Not like a psycho, not like a nut job, but like the mutant that I am.
Yeah, that's right, I'm a mutant. Want to know something terribly sad? My parents know that, they know I'm not crazy, and they don't care. I'm less of a liability in here. No way for the press to get a hold of the fact that the Conservative Republican Governor's daughter is a mutant if she's in an institution being treated for her crippling depression and psychosis. Not to mention her insomnia. As a child I had them baffled. I was awake all night, or I'd wake talking about different people's dreams. They couldn't put two and two together the way the doctor's did, the way Lisa did.
When I sleep, I don't dream. Ever. Instead I get sucked into the dreams of others, usually those closet, physically, to me. I can manipulate them, though it's difficult to do so, and watch them unfold. I feel the emotions the dreamer feels, sense the significance of the images and sounds and shapes playing out in their minds.
It's horrible. Especially in this place, where so many dreams are messed up memories of pain and violation. I'd give anything to make this curse go away, but I could wish on every star in the sky and it wouldn't make one bit of difference.
Sometimes I imagine that I'm a character out of one of Lisa's comics. My cool name would be DreamCatcher and, despite my ridiculously weak power, I would somehow come through and manage to save the day. People would look up to me.
My family wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with me.
Another beautiful lie…
If only I could dream it.
I watched as a red truck circled the block outside a stopped by the corner. The hooker made her way over to the door and got in, rubbing her hands together for warmth. Strangely, I wished that one night she might just dose off there on the street corner and let me get a peek. So I could see what had created the life that made mine seem so much better. The truck peeled out into the night, racing along.
'Well,' I thought to myself, 'at least she'll be warm for a while.' Suddenly the night seemed so much emptier. It was like Lisa and the girl and I had been the only ones left alive. And what a crowd we made.
A hooker, working for her meals.
A mutant, locked in the nuthouse for her genetic makeup.
And the nurse, battling cystic fibrosis while she was busy healing others.
What a crowd indeed.
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A/N: Review, please :)
