She was a 3 am patient but she didn't act like it.  In fact, she didn't act like much of anything. She'd been there for three days before anyone got a glimpse of her.  That was Lisa, of course.  Lisa was always the first to see any of the new patients.  She liked to be their first impression of the place.

But Jamie managed to evade even Lisa for three days, and by a very simple means: she stayed in her room with the door closed and wouldn't answer to anybody.  The nurses doing checks had to come in and physically pull the covers back from her face to make sure the lump under the covers was her and that it was breathing.  A social worker came to her and on professional-looking triplicate forms jotted down professional-sounding notes meant to convey that Jamie wasn't talking.  Her psychotherapist took a nap during her session.  A nurse wheeled in meals on a cart and wheeled them back out untouched an hour later. Though there was talk of putting in an IV if she continued not to eat, the word anorexia never came up.  She wasn't refusing to eat, she was refusing to live.

Among the patients the common consensus at first was that she was "just another catatonic," but that rumor was started by a resentful Lisa – what right did Jamie have to shut her out?, and was untrue. Jamie wasn't catatonic.  She was thinking.

Her eyes remained wide open whenever the nurses pulled the blanket back for checks.  Occasionally she responded to their questions with a small smile, perhaps a low-voiced "Thank you, I'm fine." In general, nurses reported silence but not vacancy.  "There's something there," one young aide reported, abandoning psychspeak in her frustration at her inability to save the world, to make this one girl talk.  Thoughts, questions, fears flitted behind those large gray eyes like small fish darting up to the surface.

Fear: that was it.

She cried out sometimes in her sleep, and her voice was young, like a ten year old girl's, though her admissions sheet pegged her for twenty-one.  Her fingers sometimes clasped the edges of the sheet convulsively.  Though she never talked to nurses, some of the kinder ones sensed that their presence was a comfort, and took a few minutes from their rounds of checks to stay at her side.  They were usually rewarded with one of her small smiles.  When they left, they never saw her scrunch her sheet up tighter than ever.  They never saw the lost look renew itself in her eyes.

Three days into her stay, Lisa managed to buy her way into Jamie's room.  This had nothing to do with Jamie; the deal was transacted through a new, sympathetic night nurse and a seasoned male security guard.  The night nurse believed Lisa when she said she thought she might be able to help Jamie out of her shell.  The security guard believed Lisa when she said if he'd keep his nose out of it she'd reward him for it later.

From behind cracked doors, the other patients watched her slip into Jamie's room with a mixture of respect, awe, and jealousy.

Lisa was up and swinging the next morning, in full form: hips swinging with the good moods, arms swinging with the bad.  She was Lisa, and no one dared approach and ask how it had gone the night before with Jamie.  The only odd thing was that Lisa didn't tell them immediately. There were no details of the conquest.  They didn't get lurid details about how fucked-up the new girl was.  They didn't get stories of her past, predictions for her future.  They didn't get Lisa's customary confident one-word summary: "Boring," they might have expected, or "She won't last a week in this place," or a simple "I fucked her."  None of that.  No one knew what to make of it, but then no one ever really knew what to make of Lisa at all.

But the truth was that behind the closed door of Jamie's room, Lisa had… relaxed.  There was no other word for it, and even that word seemed inadequate.  A rare, fleeting softness that could almost be called tender seemed to touch her, and when she sat on the bed opposite Jamie, looking quietly at her, there was no salacious licking of the lips, no seductive smoking.  She sat and stared at Jamie until Jamie shifted her gaze to stare back, and what she found in Lisa's eyes was not flirtation but open interest.

 –-I'm Lisa, she said, without preamble.

Jamie nodded and seemed to reflect for a minute.  –I'm Jamie, she said eventually.

Lisa nodded back.  It seemed the one time in her life she was able to sit still.

--Why are you here? Jamie asked eventually.

There was some return of the old Lisa, the cocky Lisa.  –Why wouldn't I be? she asked, slightly saucy but still subdued.

Jamie shook her head.  –Are you real?

Lisa stood up then, twirled a cigarette out of its box in an old, practiced gesture.  –Babe, she said, I'm the only real person you'll ever know.

--And what is that supposed to mean?   Jamie was almost holding her breath.

Lisa smiled slightly.  –It means, she said, flicking the lighter on, holding the flame to the end of the cigarette, that your life in this shithole just got a little more interesting.

Jamie stared at her.  The gray eyes were surface-calm, but troubled deeper down.

--I've heard you in the halls, she said in a minute.

Lisa leaned her elbows on her knees, took a long drag on the cigarette.  –Heard me what? she asked.

--Yelling.  Screaming.  Throwing things, sometimes.

--So?

--So why aren't you screaming now?

--Because that's not what I want, Lisa said, and flicked her legs up, around, and under her on the bed in one movement.

--What do you want?

The old Lisa's personality suddenly flooded the room, sexy and overwhelming, and Jamie seemed to shrink back a little on the bed from the force of it.  "Well," Lisa said, drawing out the l, making it long and slow and suggestive.  Then she left it at that.

Jamie shook her head, as if to clear it.  –Why are you here?

--Because I read your file—

--You have access to my—

--and you remind me of someone.

--Who—

--And besides, Lisa said, saucier than ever, --I'm the most important person for you to know here.  You'll figure that out soon enough.

--What—

Lisa uncurled with the suddenness of a cobra rising for the strike.  Moving towards the door, she said "You're eating lunch with me tomorrow.  No more of this closed-door shit."

--You—

And she was gone.

But next afternoon, Jamie ate lunch with Lisa.