Disclaimer: I don't any of the characters from CSI, just the ones I make up.
Thank you so much to anyone who has read this story and thank youso much those who took the time to let me know what you think and thats just utterly lovely so big thank you to The Magic Bringer, icklebitodd, Cherrydrops12, dark-girl-faith-sidle, pigeonofdoom and Dybdahl for taking the time to let me know what they think of this story and for just letting me know it was okay because I was a bit worried so thank you! x x x x x
The Magic Bringer- thank you for reading and reviewing thank you thank you thank you xxxxx
icklebitodd- heya thank for leaving a really long review, again, they are fab and you just really nice things so thank you again. I am glad I am keeping your intrest. I am actually wondering how 'deeply' it will affect her because I am worried that I might gotoo far and make it stupid, hope that makes sense. anyway thank you again xxxxxx
pigeonofdoom- thank you for reviewing.TWICE! wahoo! Thank you sooo much for reassuring me and for reviewing again xxxxx
Cherrydrops12- I love your 'I…' thank you xxxx
Dybdahl- thank you for reviewing again … it means loads…xxx….Sara is like a like a humpty dumpty toy (oooh egg analogy) that you can just break over and over but reversed so she can get back together again…hopefully…hmmm… xx
dark-girl-faith-sidle- thank you for reviewing the last chapter, its mint that you take the time.I have been reading about the ECT and its sounds like it hurt alot...thank you xxxx
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My eyelids were closed but I could see lights flashing, my sight was crackling with blue light. Whatever I was lying on was cold and hard. My left hand would stop shaking. I found it hilarious, I had no control of my left hand.
"What did you do to her?"
Although I was still drowsy, Liz's voice was distinguishable.
"What did you do to her?" she screamed.
No one answered her. I felt a release across my chest and I was being lowered on to the bed, like a casket in to the ground. I didn't like that I was thinking, because if I was still thinking, I was still alive. Liz kept shouting at them. Someone told her to calm down otherwise she would be medicated. I listened to Liz's voice. She was close to tears and they would fly out of her eyes just like the sobs flying out of her throat.
"She is just a kid." She stayed quiet. The door shut and we were left in darkness.
"Come on, Sar', come on. Wake up."
She tossed me about a few times, shaking me, sitting me up, my head lulling forward.
"Stop it." I moaned.
She sunk in to a marble calm when she heard me. I heard her rummage for something, followed by two spit sounds and her lighter enflamed. It was that moment that made me think'I want a lighter' so I could be like her, she carried it everywhere.
"Sar'?"
"What?" She wrapped the bed blanket around me as if I was a baby.
"What did they do to you?"
I didn't feel like talking or breathing.
"I had to lie down on a bed and a man put a…"
My head was swimming. I felt like laughing for some reason.
"He put something in my mouth." I rubbed my neck as my throat felt as thought I had been guttering, choking, drowning. My hand worked its way to my lips and cheeks.
"My mouth feels fat. Is it fat?"
She giggled and stroked my hair.
"No, it's normal size."
I asked her to lay me down.
"So what else happened?"
"The man put a head strap on and then he gave me in an injection. I don't remember what happened after that." Liz told me the things she had heard about what went on in that room. I was happy that I was asleep for it. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world, to be burned alive. I was so tired and drowsy that I just stayed in bed for next two days. Liz brought me my food and would make sure I looked clean and pretty. When I got better and was allowed up again, they kept giving me more orange juice, as I called it. It was more Largactil.
Doreen disappeared and I missed her. I got friendly with an older girl whose family didn't live that far from where my uncle Oliver and Auntie Annie lived. She had been in the hospital for years and had become immune to the drugs. Jane Halland…she used to drink up my medicine for me and we thought it was hilarious. I would pass my little plastic glasses to her to drink and we did this for a few weeks until we got caught by one of the male nurses. He reported up the psychiatrist and our punishment was being put back on the injections and confined to bed for three days. It was a return to the twilight and everything to slow motion. I was a young girl being transformed into an old bedridden woman. I was out of it I had to be helped to the toilet. I kept falling asleep and waking up with a fright because I had forgotten where I was and did not know what was going on.
A new girl came, Emma. She twelve and was lovely and had a speech impediment. Sometimes it was hard to understand what she was saying and she would become agitated but that seemed to be the only thing that might have led her to being sent away. She had great green pebble eyes and big teeth with a broad smile. She was pure, good and sweet. However, Emma became seriously ill and I used to go to her room and sit with her. She was pale, tired looking and thin. It was as if her spirit had been crushed that her body just broke down. There were probably more things she suffered from that I did not know about. Eventually I went in to her room one day and her bed was empty. Emma was gone. When I asked the nurse where Emma was, she said that she had died. I cried for weeks afterwards. I never knew how she died and I was never told. When I asked again, I was told to forget about her, but I never did.
We stood at the crotch of the tree in the rain. An apple plopped to the ground at my feet. It was wrinkled and black. I was ill with indecision; I had swamped with thoughts for a few days but I could not focus on a single thing. I was drowning in my confusion, and there is no one there to lead me—not even a stuck-up and closed mindedperson like Andrew.
"Can I have one?" I asked.
Andrew was a complete philistine, 'a prick with no prick' Mary called him, who mocked me for reading literature. He had a slight sweaty smell. He was always grave and tentative but he became even more so when I asked him.
"Now why would I do that?" He took a deep drag and I thought the orange glow was pretty because it reminded me of Christmas lights. I think he already knew my age or he could guess it. I guessed he was about nineteen. I desperate to copy the older girls and would have done anything to release the boredom in that place.
He looked around and passed me it.
I took my first puff. It was so disgusting that I started to cough and retch and a jet of brown vomit flew from my mouth and landed at his feet.
That stopped him from laughing. I thought that would have put me off from smoking for the rest of my life but I started again in my twenties.
I had been counting my needlebruises for over three hours when I realised my memory was shot. Since the visit to the 'shocks room' I had begun to forget things.They were beautiful colours, bruises; blues, purples, greens and yellows. Blue indicated a more recent jab, where as yellow meant it was administered while ago. I used to look away as the needle pressured the skin and I would wince but recently I had developed a fasination of watching. The nurses didn't like it but I found it wonderful, the way the needle just sank in to the flesh and the plunger was pressed down. It was magical. I asked if I could try it. The answer was no.
A girl, Frida, came and sat besides me. She had lots of scar bracelets up and down her arms. Her hands were so white, it looked like the skin had worn away from all that washing of her hands.
"You bin doin' that for the past three hours."
"So?" I continued poking my bruises, but I kept losing count. It was annoying me. I was finally losing my mind and I hated it.
"Arn't you gettin' bored?"
I looked away from my bruises and up at her face, which grinned gawkly at me.
"Go away."
She went away and I smiled stiffly. I looked at my arms again and sighed. I started counting again.
I remember seeing my mother for the first time since the incident at the reformatory. I was sat in the corner of the playroom; it was early morning so most of the children were still eating breakfast.
I was in a cocoon-like silence; someone was moaning, and I felt the cool winds sweep across the floor. A tear was half way down my cheek when the nurse came in.
"Sidle."
I heard her voice and what she said and I remember thinking, 'what an odd name.' I thought it must belong to a boy and then I processed the idea of being called Sue Sidle and thought it was funny.
I just sat there numbly. As soon as I woke up I knew I was going to be in a low mood that day. I was thinking about the different ways I could die. I thought about walking out in to the middle of a lake but decided that the water could be too cold. I considered the possibility of hanging myself but there was nowhere inside that I could hang a noose from. I couldn't cut myself because I didn't like the colour of blood. I thought about sneaking in to the kitchen and creating a mixture of raw egg and raw bacon and gorging on it to make myself sick.
"Hey, Sidle." The nurse clapped her hands and I was forced to blink and look upwards. "You have a visitor." I told herI didn't want a visitor but she told me I was talking nonsense.I was taken in to a monochromatic beige room, with boring green plants room that was stinking of lime air freshener. The room had icily air-conditioning and windowless. This was the room that smelled like lies. I looked like it should not have belonged to the hospital.It wastoo nice.
My momwas stood alone, no police officer or men in white suits, just her with her blond her pinned up and in a baby blue flowing dress. She turned around and she became distraught, her little girl stick-thin and drugged up to the eyeballs.
"What happened to my beautiful little girl?" she cried out. I was out of it that I could tell she was upset but it all seemed to be happening far away from me. I tried to reassure her, saying, but I just slurred my words, making her more upset.
"Sorry, Mom." I lazily pushed her away.I hated her seeing me like this. I think I was finally broken. I couldn't get myself to react to her presence in a positive way.
"Sara?" Titanic tears formed in her pretty eyes.
"Just go away." I mumbled as I moved away from her.
Her face turned in to a stark, blank sky and she moved towards me, grasping my elbow.
"Just…" I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Just piss off!"
Her peach satin skin turned in to the colour of a loved one's ashes and I evaporated from the room like a dream.
The daily doses of Largactil continued and the gave me so much that one time during the summer when we were all out in the field for the whole day, I got so sunburned that I could hardly walk. The pain in my feet and was unbearable. I had blisters under my eyes. I looked like someone who had boiling water poured all over them and I will never forget the pain. My skin peeled off my legs and it took nearly three weeks to clear.
When I got better I planned to run away. I wasn't going to stay there any longer. I went in to the playroom one day, and the window was wide open. I climbed out and ran as fast as I could down through the big field, out the gate and down the road. I didn't look back or think about where I was going; all I cared about was getting away from that place. I didn't mind where I ended up. I ran for what seemed a long time, but I didn't get very far. I went in to a garden of the first house I saw. At the bottom of the garden there was a large tree. I climbed up the tree and just sat there. I had been there for quite a long time when a woman came in to the garden. She stood beside the tree and I looked down at her. She smiled at me and I smiled back.
"Well, I never thought I would find a little girl in my tree. Can you come down and we will go in the house and tea and cookies?" she said. I was so delighted, not only was I having tea and cookies, I created a fantasy that she would let me stay with her forever. She sat me down at a table in the kitchen and made the tea. Then two girls in to the kitchen.
"These are my two girls," she said.
I was really happy. Not only had this nice woman rescued me and taken me in to her house but was also giving me two new friends. We all had the tea and talked. She never asked me where I came from or how I got there. Afterwards I helped wash the dishes. What I didn't know that while I was washing the dishes she was calling the hospital to get someone to pick me up.
I didn't know how she had worked out where I was from, as I didn't tell her. Maybe she had found runaways in her garden before. The nurses, one male and one female, arrived in a little white van and I was taken back to the children's unit. I was ordered to bed and was there for two days, with medication to keep me doped up so I would not runaway again. I was back to the slow motion state.
Thank you for reading x
