Lost in the Shadows

Laura

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Oh, Si-ilent Night. Ho-oly Night...All is calm...all is sedated. Round yon pharmacist, give me more drugs. Crazy pa-atient, stay in your bonds. Keep thine wa-alls poofy. Keep thine patients down.

I was sitting in my room, looking out at the tiny courtyard and humming to myself. Life is a crock. Really. What the hell is going on here that is going to help me "recover"? A load of psychos. I found Maggie under the table one day. The table. Do you know how crazy that is? She was sitting under the table with her knees tucked up to her chest like she was trying for the fetal position. Under the table. I sat down and didn't even know she was there until she grabbed my shins. This isn't going to help me recover, it's going to drive me completely insane, instead of just marginally.

The obsessive-compulsive-schizo in the room next to me is tapping the chair leg on the floor again. The walls are quite thin here. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Pause.

I started to hum louder. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Finally I picked up the little plastic chair off the floor and hurled it at the adjacent wall. Tap-tap-WHAM!

Silence.

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"What were you going to be?"

I turned around slowly to see Maggie curled up at the window in the common room, her toes curled under her feet and her face towards the window. But it was clearly her that had spoken to me.

"Excuse me?" I asked unbelievingly. "Did you say something?"

She nodded. "What were you going to be before you got chucked in here? Lawyer, writer, artist, accountant, politician, what?"

"Doctor," I said, slowly realizing what she was saying. "I was a med student. And I was going to be the most famous person alive. I was going to show people the afterlife."

She laughed harshly and turned her dark eyes to me for a moment before looking away again. "I could have told you that."

She sighed deeply and touched the reinforced windowpane with one thin finger. "I was going to be a teacher."

I took off my glasses and hooked them in the collar of my shirt. "Why are you talking to me?" I asked bemusedly. Why, indeed? I had never seen her choose to talk to me before, other than the time she had chosen to say the word "death" to me. And what about that?

"I can talk," she said stubbornly, lowering her chin like a belligerent child. "But no one listens to crazy Maggie." She looked at me for a moment and blinked her oddly long eyelashes. They made her eyes look strange in their wideness. "He's not watching you today. That's why I talked to you. He kept following you before."

I understand why they call her Crazy Maggie. I ran my fingers through my hair in pure frustration. "Who are you talking about?"

Maggie was a Level One. That meant she couldn't go anywhere outside of the common room without escort. She wasn't trustworthy. Suicidal, they said, and schizophrenic as well. Most of the patients, I had learned, changed their status to that of a Level Two or Three quickly, by staying out of trouble. Maggie had been there a year. This was due to some various events involving "inappropriate behavior." I did not know the details. She looked at me and swiped her bony hand across the side of her head like a cat, brushing against her short, crisp, black hair.

"The one that follows you," she said unhelpfully. Really. That helped me understand her statement exactly NONE. "The little boy with the hockey stick."

What? Billy Mahoney was gone. Billy Mahoney had gone on to his sick little hockey-stick afterlife. I sent him there, and nearly sent myself there as well. And now this girl was telling me that after I nearly killed myself getting rid of the little shit, he was still hanging around. And again! How could she know? After a minute of complete silence, in which I could hear a tinny muzak version of "White Christmas" playing in some office, I made a command decision to completely ignore what she'd just said.

"How is the Christmas season played out here?" I asked. Completely off-topic. Maggie bit her lip.

"Little emphasis," she said with sudden clarity. "They don't want to remind people how alone they are here."

I laughed. "I know what they mean." I looked up at the ceiling. "I believe in God, I have to. God let me come back." I said softly. "But I hate Christmas."

"Have you had visitors?" she asked, tilting her head and let her index finger drag on her lower lip, pulling it down in a childish motion. I shook my head, then nodded.

"Mannus and Labraccio tried to visit me. But I didn't go see them. They were the ones that put me in here. You?"

She shook her head and lowered her eyes. She looked so young. It was hard for me to remember from her chart that she was 23 years old, two years younger than me. She didn't look it. She looked like a teenage anorexic on crack, that's what she looked like. She looked psychotic. Maggie looked like she needed to be here.

"No," she said softly, her eyes starting to lose their clarity. "No visits."

Drugs were kicking in. She must have been in-between doses. I sighed. In those few moments of lucidity, Maggie had been an intelligent person to converse with. But now her eyes were unfocusing and she was starting to bite her nails.

There is no companionship in this place.

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