Depakote

“My name is Austin,” said the scrawny boy swallowed by a wooden chair with red cushions on it.  “I’m twelve.  I’m here ‘cause of my meth use.”  He was short with mousy brown hair.  His hospital-assigned sweatpants looked like they would fall off of him if he stood up.

            The group therapy leader looked like he wanted to cry upon hearing this.  “That’s a great first step, admitting your problem, Austin.   You go next, Daniel.”

            “I’m Daniel.  I’m seventeen.  I’m not really here.”

            “You are here, Daniel,” said the group leader looking at Daniel sternly.  He was friendly, maybe too friendly, and had a stubbly gray beard and was packing a few pounds on his belly.  He wore glasses with big, thick frames and thick lenses and had on khakis and hiking boots.  Abigail was jealous that he got to wear shoes.

            “No,” said the boy, “I’m not.”  He stood up and headed toward the door.  “I’m not here.  I’m gone.”  Daniel was not seen for the rest of the night.

            The group leader smiled, and Abigail finally noticed his name badge: Harvey Smits. Group therapist, art therapist.  “And what about you, Abigail, hm?  How was your first day?”  Abigail glared at the therapist, who looked away from her chilling eyes.  They were big, glaring at him.  He felt like they were looking through him, exposing his secrets, reading his mind.  He took one more quick glance at her accusing green eyes and moved to the next patient.  “Allie.” Harvey smiled sadly at a girl sitting cross-legged in one of the armchairs.  “Can you tell us why you’re here?”

            “I’m Allie. I’m twelve.  I cut myself.”  Abigail looked at her, and, unlike Harvey Smits, Allie looked back.  Allie’s eyes were a pale brown and looked young and tired.  Her small, fragile bones stuck out like daggers under her perfect porcelain skin.  Her mousy brown hair reached past her shoulders in soft waves, but it was thin and brittle.  She gripped the arms of her blue plastic chair as she held a conversation with Abigail with her eyes. 

            “Well,” Harvey Smits said uncomfortably,  “I think it’s time for dinner!”

            The trays of food were made of heavy plastic and they were all gray, almost as gray as the food inside them.  There was a carton of 2% milk, a plate of some sort of meat-noodle dish, and an apple.  There was one plastic spoon and one packet of pepper.

            “They take the salt out of the silverware packets,” said a voice from behind Abigail.  When she looked up she saw an older-looking boy with light brown skin and the miniature methamphetamine addict, Austin.  “Some of the crazies use it to burn themselves.”

            “I’m not crazy.”  Allie looked at her tray in disgust before pushing it away.  “My parents, they just don’t know how to deal with me.”

            “You don’t seem crazy.”  A boy over six feet tall was wailing in the corner, banging his head against the cinderblock walls.  “He’s crazy,” Abigail said, pointing toward the boy. 

            “He’s John.  He’s retarded.”

            “Why do you cut yourself?”

            “Because I can and I like to.  Why are you here, anyways? Got some drug addiction? You a methhead? Or are you one of those schizo types who hear s**t and flip out twice a day?”

            “They diagnosed me with psychotic tendencies.  They think I see s**t that’s not there.”

            “Do you?”

            “I guess so.”  By this time the boy, John, had been dragged by his ankles to a seclusion room where he banged on the door, begging to be let out.  The hospital staffer read a book as he sat in front of the door.  John’s screams were bloodcurdling and echoed through the entire white ward.          

 

           *************

            A week later,  Dr. Morrison asked Abigail how she was doing.  “Is the medication helping you at all?”

            “It’s making me shake,” Abigail said unexcitingly.  “Like tremors or something.”

            “How are the hallucinations?  Have they subsided any since you’ve started the Depakote?”

            “I don’t hallucinate.”

            Dr. Morrison smiled sadly and wrote things on her clipboard.  “Right.  Well, are you feeling less depressed?  Less anxious?”

            “I guess so.”  Abigail’s tone was monotonous; she seemed, to an outsider, as if she had no soul.

            “Well we’re going to up the dosage.”

            “But it’s making me shake, I can’t�"”

            “You’ll be fine.  It will go away.  Your birthday is soon… you don’t want to go to the adult asylum. Take the medicine.  Your journal is due to the staff tonight, you better have something written in it.”  She wrote a few more words on her clipboard before leaving to visit another patient.  Abigail, left to her own, looked out the window, only to see a man standing outside.  She told herself he wasn’t really there and blinked her eyes hard.  He was still there when she looked again.  She blinked again, this time longer, and opened her eyes.  The delirium was gone.

                       

 

Today I saw him again.  I AM NOT CRAZY.  He is really there and he has talked to me before.  He comes sometimes, but then always disappears when I look away.  He comes sometimes in my dreams.  He is REAL. I am NOT crazy.  I have not slept in two days thus far and my head hurts.  They say it is because I am suffering from mania.  I want to get out of here so badly.  I really didn’t mean to crash the car.  I was going too fast, but it was the Interstate.  And he was there, on the side; I couldn’t hit him.   I had to stop to see him, to talk to him.

There are people here with bad intentions.  I am NOT PARANOID.  This is true.  There are people that want me to suffer.  I do not want to be here.  Delaney and Michael still have not called.  I want to be with my father.

I don’t like this Harvey character.  There’s something off about him, something about his face.  It’s sneaky and nervous.  He’s hiding something.

I want to go home.  I don’t want to be here with these f*****g crazies and retards.  I’m not crazy and I’m not retarded.  I’m not a meth addict and I don’t cut myself, though I may as well, just to see if I’m still alive.

I don’t believe I’m still alive.

I hate having to wear these stupid sweatpants and t-shirts.  I am always FREEZING.  And no shoes?  It’s disgusting.  I want my shoes back.  I want to be able to wear jeans like normal kids because I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING.  People get into car crashes all the time, and they don’t get sent to the nut house.  I have no possessions.  The food is horrid.

I cannot stop shaking.  Dr. Morrison says I am simply bringing it upon myself.  She increased my dosage of Depakote. 

I want to go home.

 

            “JOURNALS,” boomed a voice from the center of the bedroom cell area, “TURN IN YOUR JOURNALS TO ME NOW!”

            Allie crept out of the room beside Abigail and handed the small woman her journal.  The woman was wearing a scrub suit with white sneakers that had little pink check marks on them.  Her pants and shirt were both brown, like her hair and eyes, and she had a commanding yet uninteresting air about her.  Abigail handed her the black and white marble composition book.  The patients weren’t allowed pencils, erasers, or pens, because they were deemed too dangerous, so they had to write with felt markers.  Abigail’s scrawls were usually done in blue, her late father’s favorite color, or orange, her favorite color.  She honored every aspect of her father she possibly could at every moment she could.  At her house, she slept in one of his shirts once a year on his death day.  She never washed it.  On his birthday, she went to the river, the site of his death (for he had no grave), and laid pink dahlias and lit a candle.  It was a fast river, with lots of rocks.  Some parts were shallow enough to stand in; many young people passed summers splashing in the shallow, gentle rapids.  But some parts were deep and black, and they never found his body.

            She started seeing him a year after he died.  She was eleven, and, too young to fully understand what had happened or where he went, talked to him when she saw him.  He told her that he mustn’t tell her mother or Michael, or any of her friends; it had to be a secret.  She never told because she didn’t want her father to go away, even if he was just an illusion.  He looked real enough to her, and sounded real enough.  When she learned more about audio-visual hallucinations, she slowly stopped talking to him, save for a word here and there, and he appeared less often. She thought she was cured.  She didn’t tell anybody for fear they would send her away and lock her up.  Sometimes she debated with herself over whether he was alive or dead.  He was there so clearly, yet only she could see.  In the beginning, she firmly held the belief that he wasn’t dead, but that belief often vacillated to and fro.  Usually, she was convinced he was alive, unless she felt particularly uneasy, in which cases she told herself she was still dreaming.  But far deep inside her, she knew something was not quite right in her mind.  Her father was dead, and she was still seeing him.

Reviews

[Gandré]

I like how you point out this problem, I personally look first at the meaning, then how it is written. I didn't see anything what I would not like. I think your future looks bright. It made me feel like we live in an era where kids die before their parents and even grandparents. I think such a writing can protect others and warn them without explicit warning of using drugs for fun on the other hand this cutting - it is the family, the society who is to blame. we r becoming lonely and if there were aliens looking at us then they see us as a bunch of ants looking into a box... playing with their gadgets and many kids today even don't know where comes the cheese from in their sandwich..they don't experience nature, and they don't love it, it is quite the social (and hierarchical) pressure to try this for fun and that for fun. I like this character name Abigail like in "Scornful Lady"... this thing from 17th century or so.. well done!