Morning came and along with it—a rude awakening. A loud buzzer sounded throughout the entire building and was followed by multiple sounds of doors being unlocked. Time to let the patients out. As the buzzer sounded in the right wing, the new patient jolted awake—falling off his mattress with a thud. As he opened his eyes, a ray of happy of sunshine blinded him; he threw up his arm to block it. He grumbled underneath his breath as he managed to get to his feet, which was still a little hard since the effects of the night before were just now starting to wear off. He noticed that the door was opened and he shuffled towards it, trying not to trip over the missing tile pieces.
Once he came to the doorway, he saw others shuffling towards another set of doors down the hallway. He wasn't quite sure where he was as of yet and he was still not awake enough to form words really. So he followed the crowd through the double doors and into a room that had a few couches and chairs that were set in front of a small TV, there were card tables to the left in the corner with chairs as well, and a few more couches were set up against the other walls. There was a small bookshelf to the left of the TV that held books, magazines and videos and there was another shelf unit to the right of the TV that held crayons, paper, etc.—all of which to keep the residents within happy. Across the room and to the left near a set of doors that lead to the yard was a small room with a nurse sitting behind a desk. She was the supervisor of this specific room, or from what the boy could comprehend with the amount of drugs he still had flowing through his veins.
He decided to find a seat to wait out the effect of the drugs so he could think more clearly and figure out where he was and how he was going to get out. He found a couch near the far edge of the room where a set of doors were chained together with three padlocks. Curiosity flashed through his mind, but he couldn't dwell on the thought too long; he was caught off guard by someone sitting next to him. He turned his head a bit to see a young girl with light brown hair down to her shoulders, staring back at him with her hazel eyes. She had a soft, innocent look about her that made him smirk a little, but he looked away. She was still looking at him though, eyeing everything about the right side of his body; her eyes stopped at his scar across his right eye. She lifted her hand to touch it, he backed away, but she still pursued until she ran her finger down it. At this point, the boy was facing her completely now with a bit of a puzzled look upon his face. No one had ever really touched him before unless it was with a closed fist or with an inanimate object to beat him to a bloody pulp. This was a new experience, a new feeling—one which he couldn't explain at the moment.
She retreated her hand and fiddled with the hem of the white dress she was wearing. He looked away and stared straight ahead of him and down at his bare feet. His brain was trying to evaluate everything, but all he could think about was his name. He glanced over and watched the girl twisting the bottom of her dress in between her red, chipped fingernails and then pushing a bit of her hair behind her ear. She sighed and then looked up towards the ceiling a bit. He turned and faced her.
"Gary" he managed to say. At the sound of his voice the girl turned and looked at him, slowly smiling.
"Alice" she whispered, holding out her hand slightly to introduce herself properly. His movement was still slow from the drugs, but he managed to shake her hand, which was soft. Once they parted, she went back to fiddling with her dress, only she was still smiling. He went to talk to her again, but he was suddenly interrupted.
"Gary Smith?'' called nurse Marcy. She was standing in the middle of the room, holding her clipboard and motioning for him to follow her. He glanced at Alice again, who had stopped smiling. He sighed, stood up and followed the nurse down a hall and towards a small interrogation type room. She opened the door and gave him a little nudge into the room before she closed the door. In front of him, sitting on the other side of a metal table, was a white male with red hair and glasses staring at Gary. Gary scratched his head nervously as he waited for him to speak.
"Why don't you have a seat Gary" instructed the man, pointing to the seat in front of him with his freshly sharpened number 2 pencil. Gary obeyed since he realized that he was somewhat stuck in the extremely white and tiny room for who knows how long and if he didn't participate—he'd be there longer. He pulled out the chair and sat down, leaning back and slouching some. The man noticed this and jotted it down in his notebook.
"My name is Dr. Grossi and I'm here to analyze you so that we can understand your situation more and deduct what we must do to help further your treatment so you will no longer suffer from your ailments and can be safely allowed back into the real world as soon as possible. There are no ifs ands or buts. The more you fight us, the longer you'll be stuck here. Do I make myself clear?" questioned the doctor as he shifted his glasses a bit and waited for a response.
"Transparent" he said, feeling his brain starting to function properly. The doctor raised an eyebrow to his response and jotted it down.
"Now, I've already went over your full medical history, physical and psychological, and have concluded that you are in fact suffering from a serious form of psychosis which most likely became present somewhere in your early childhood. How about we start there and work our way up from there?" Gary rolled his eyes as he let his head fall backwards and he stared at the ceiling—he'd done this about four times already and wasn't looking forward to doing it again.