Chapter 2

It was lunch time in the ward. Kate had to admit that the ward's food was pretty decent. They reminded her of the old school lunches that followed the food pyramid. Kate sat at her usual table in the corner by the window with Tommy who had taken a liking to carving flowers into his potatoes. At the moment Kate was in the middle of a sketch of Saturn and it's rings and she still hadn't decided where she was going set in the red storm.

"I could just leave it out," she though out loud, "it could be on the other side, the side you don't see." She looked up from her paper and gazed around the room. Two tables over sat a woman by the name of Nancy and a man named Jake, they were playing connect four while a man in white stood feet from them watching to make sure Jake didn't eat the pieces.

She looked to the opposite corner of the room where Michael sat. Alone. Looking down at his plate of food. At least that's where he appeared to be looking, Kate couldn't tell through the holes in his chosen mask of the day not to mention the strings of brown hair hanging in front of his face which he neglected to brush away.

Michael moved as if to look up from his plate and Kate snatched her eyes away to look at Tommy who, she found, had been staring at her intently. Kate raised her eyebrows as if to say, "what?" since it would be useless to try speaking with him. Tommy looked down at her plate, then at his plate which held a potato he'd carved with nothing more than his spork into a small seal sitting on a platform in the middle of his plate. Kate looked up at Tommy who repeated his previous motion to which Kate responded with a raised eyebrow. Tommy pushed a green bean from his plate toward her.

Kate looked down at her plate. She didn't have anything shaped like that on her plate. Green bean? Could he mean green? Kate scooped up a spork full of her peas and held them out to Tommy who eyed the offering carefully. Finally he reached out and selected a perfectly round pea and placed it atop the potato seal's nose where it stuck. Tommy sat back in his seat to observe his work.

Kate smiled at him and brought the spork of peas to her lips. Tommy's eyes widened as she did so and what happened next happened so fast it took Kate a moment to catch up. Breaking out of habit Tommy lunged at her with his hand outstretched in a grabbing motion for the spork. Kate was knocked out of her chair to the floor where Tommy landed on top of her still grabbing at the now empty spork, exclaiming, "More green, more balls! Balls! Green balls! It's ruined. My balls!"

Within seconds men in white surrounded the two of them. Two men pulled Tommy to his feet as he struggled to scoop up peas from the floor. "Mine, CIRCUS FRAUD!"

"Oh no you don't Tommy," said one of the men, "let's just calm down."

Tommy wasn't listening, all he was focused on were the peas on the floor.

"Stop! Stop it!" cried Kate. "He wasn't -"

"COOL IT NOW TOM!" broadcasted another man.

"He just want's -" tried Kate again.

"Alright buddy," another man said walking up to join the bunch, "you don't wanna make this hard now. Right. Let's just take a nice nap." It was at this moment when Tommy chose to make another grab for the peas and as he brought his arm back he unknowingly elbowed a large man in the nose.

"Fuck this!" the man said through a bloody nose. The man balled his fist and drew back his arm ready to knock Tommy out cold.

Then all at once it was as if Kate had suddenly jumped forward a few seconds in time. She was staring at her ballpoint pen sticking out of the large man's shoulder. Her hand let go of the pen as blood began to stain his white uniform. The man staggered away, running his hand over his shoulder scouting out the damage.

Then something large slammed into her taking her to the ground. A sharp pain in her upper left arm told her that she was about to go to sleep very quickly. She didn't bother to struggle, her gaze remained locked on the growing red spot on the large man's shoulder. It was only just before her eyes lost focus that her gaze flicked to the figure just behind the large man in white, silently observing through holes in a paper mask.