Her (40 page)

The next part of the day was filled with poking and prodding.  But it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. After the test, Dr. Pelchat told me that my results would be back no later than a week. Then he took me to another part of Bent Creek. We had to walk through the Adult Ward to get there. I grew nervous passing through there. There were a lot of elderly people sitting alone and in corners. A few other patients who looked younger, but who actually were a lot older than me, were watching television or sitting alone as well. The atmosphere was different from the Adolescent Ward. At least, in the Adolescent Ward, we talked, even if it was to make fun of someone. Like when Tai made fun of me for not being able to take a bath. I cringed as I thought back on that.

“This is the Adult Ward, Kristen. We’ve had a few kids in the Adolescent Ward actually turn eighteen and graduate to the Adult Ward while they were here in Bent Creek. I’ve seen some adolescents leave Bent Creek, only to come back, old enough to go straight to the Adult Ward. It doesn’t look too fun, does it?”

Dr. Pelchat always had a way of reaching me. Though his words did scare me, I tried to listen and take it all in.

When we got to the other side of the hospital, we entered the medical clinic. The waiting room was empty. A nurse came out of the back, and she took Dr. Pelchat to the side. He handed her my chart and they began talking. They were talking about me. I heard her say that the doctor, whose name was Dr. Mitsen, was going to look at my stitches and determine if it was time for them to be removed. Shortly after they spoke, the nurse came over to me with a sweet smile and, in a tiny voice, invited me to the back, where I assumed the doctor was waiting. Dr. Pelchat assured me that he’d be back to escort me back to the Adolescent Ward.

I followed the nurse, and she led me to an examination room. I had to get changed into the hospital gown, so the nurse left me in the room alone. After I was changed, I looked around and studied the room. It was a normal examination room, with the examining table that reclined back, the doctor’s rolling chair, a sink, and some cabinets. But what was different about this room from others I had been in was that this room had locks on the cabinets. And there were no cotton balls in small jars, or those sticks that the doctor put on your tongue to make you say “Ahhhh!”  There weren’t even any lollipops that the doctor was supposed hand out when a patient was well behaved.

Dr. Mitsen entered the room. He was a tall and thin, friendly-looking kind of man. Even when he unwrapped the bandages and saw the sad scars and the wires and stringed stitches, he still remained smiling. While he examined me, he asked me questions about school.

It was as though this was a normal check-up at a regular, family clinic. After examining my wrists, he determined that the stitches would need to be in for another two weeks because of the vein damage. He said that they needed to heal properly. Therefore, he told me to keep cleaning the stitches and not to get them wet. He kept the bandages off my wrists. It made me feel a little uneasy. I looked down at my wrists and saw the lines and rows of the damage I had done. Mr. Sharp smiled from somewhere inside of me. I felt almost safe, but, without the bandages, I felt somewhat scared.

I asked, “Dr. Mitsen? Are you going to put the bandages back on?”

His warm smile was kind and gentle. He said, “I think it’s best to leave them off since the stitches will be coming out soon. Let them air off a bit.” He chuckled.

I tried to smile back.

When the doctor was finished with my examination, he sat down in the rolling chair and wrote in my chart. Naturally, I was curious. I tried to look at what he was writing. He laughed when he looked up and caught me peeking.

“Don’t worry, Kristen. I’m not writing anything terrible. Everything I just told you is what I’m writing in here.” He was so warm when he spoke. “Okay, Kristen Elliott. If you are not here in Bent Creek in two weeks, when it’s time to take those stitches out, I’m going to see to it that you get back here to see me. And don’t worry, because it won’t hurt taking them out as much as it did putting them in.”

“I guess I was lucky. I was sleeping the whole time,” I told him. I let out a snicker.

Dr. Mitsen didn’t find it funny. He ignored my sick humor and opened the door to leave. He said goodbye and left so that I could get dressed. After I was dressed, I walked back out to the front where Dr. Pelchat was waiting. Dr. Pelchat was reading over my chart.

“Two more weeks in those chains,” he said. “Don’t worry, Kristen. Two weeks will go by as fast as the past four weeks has for you.”

CHAPTER 43

Friday was exactly four weeks to the day since I had taken the pills and had cut my wrists. Four weeks ago, I had almost died. 

I opened my eyes and saw the sun shining through the windows. Ms. Mosley never failed. I looked at my bare wrists. No bandages. I held them up to the sunlight. Then I pressed my arms to my chest and kept them there, as if I was hugging them. I closed my eyes and let the sunshine warm me.

Ms. Mosley crept into the room. I heard her shoes squeak on the floor. I opened my eyes and saw her standing at the foot of my bed. I sat up.

“Are you ready?” she asked me.

I nodded and got out of bed. I tried to gather my things for my bath quietly. I didn’t want Mena to wake up and see Ms. Mosley helping me. I could hear all of her smart remarks in my head. She would shove it in my face as much as she could, and as loud as possible.

“So, how did it go with the doctor?” Ms. Mosley asked.

“The doctor said two more weeks,” I told her.

I knew she could have read about it in my chart. She was trying to make conversation because of the awkward silence while she helped me clean up. After I was drying off, she put the treatment for my stitches on my wrists. The smell was strong.

I thought back to the day I had woken up in the hospital. I’d had no idea where I was, or that I had been asleep for a week. From looking at my stitches, I couldn’t really tell that I had done that much damage. I had waited so long to look at what I had done. Now that the bandages were off, I had no choice. When I looked down, it didn’t really feel like the wrists I was looking at were mine.

“How long have the stitches been in?” she asked as I started to dress.

I frowned, remembering how angry I had been when I had woken up. How angry I had been at Dr. Cuvo! He had only been doing his job, trying to help me. I had been so harsh in the beginning. I had been asleep for a whole week before I realized that I was still alive.

“It’s been a month,” I told her.

“Seems like a long time?” she asked as she stared down at my wrists. She looked like she wanted to touch them. I wouldn’t have minded, but she didn’t.

“No,” I honestly replied. “It doesn’t seem that long ago at all.”

Ms. Mosley nodded and seemed to be forcing herself to look away from me.

I admired Ms. Mosley for her honesty and her influence on me to want to be honest not only with her, but with myself as well. I was scared, but I began to feel something change within myself each time she and I were together. She didn’t make these moments awkward, because I felt that she really did care each time she helped me.

“Do you think that Janine is okay?” I asked her.

Ms. Mosley looked back up at me as if she was not expecting me to say anything else.

She smiled at me and she said, “I’m sure Janine is going to be fine. She’s getting the help that she needs.”

“What if she’s like Rocky? What if she dies?”

“She didn’t do enough damage. Thank God for that,” she told me.

She was right. Ms. Mosley wouldn’t have said that just to make me feel comfortable.

With my mind still aching and worried inside, I held back what I really wanted to ask her. However, Ms. Mosley wasn’t the type of counselor to let something like that go. She used her gift of deep perception, and she saw right through me.

“If there is something bothering you, I’m here to listen,” Ms. Mosley assured me.

“Sometimes I wonder if…” I hesitated. I took a deep breath and continued. “I wonder if, I mean, when I get out of here, will I do it again?”

“Do what again?”

“Will I hurt myself?”

She gave me a look of deep concern, and the words she spoke were earnest.

“It is true that there are people who leave the hospital, and they do fall back into deep depression, self-injuring, and some try and even succeed in committing suicide. Some people leave the hospital still feeling a little weak. If the doctors notice that these people are not better, they have to be placed in a long-term facility so that they can take more time to heal. But some people come here because they had suffered a moment of weakness, as you did. As they begin to heal here at Bent Creek, they begin to grow stronger, and then they build up enough strength to be able to survive outside of the hospital. You, Kristen, I believe, will be a survivor.”

“How do you know? Maybe I’m like Rocky. Or I’ll be like Janine, and have to go to a long-term hospital.”

“Don’t you dare do that to yourself,” Ms. Mosley said. “I know that you’re not going to be weak when you leave here, because I can already see you healing. You’re a fast healer, Kristen. You’re strong. You don’t see it, but you are. You ask these questions, not because you’re scared, though you think you are. You’re not scared of what the answer’s going to be, because you already know that what I’m going to tell you is the truth. You’ll take that truth to heart and you’ll remember it. Then you’ll use it. That’s how you learn to heal. That’s how you will learn to survive.”

I was scared because I wasn’t completely sure. I knew that she wouldn’t lie to me, but how could she be certain that I was strong enough to be a survivor once I left Bent Creek? She seemed positive of what she spoke, but I was unsure and confused. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Thank you,” I said to her with a forced smile.

Ms. Mosley nodded at me. I could tell that she did not want to drop the conversation by the way she stared at me intensely, but she did close the subject anyway.

“You’ll understand when the time comes,” she said. “I’ll let you finish getting dressed.”

She left me alone in the bathroom.

After I was completely dressed, I went back into the bedroom. Mena was fast asleep in her own bed. I tiptoed quietly to my bed so that I wouldn’t wake her.

At eight o’clock Ms. Mosley came into the room to wake us up. “Vitals! Come on! Get up, girls! You need to come get your vitals checked! Let’s start the day!”

Mena growled with her head under her pillow. “I hate you!” she complained as Ms. Mosley continued her way down the hallway towards the other girls’ rooms.

“I hate it when she does that!” she kept on.

I ignored her as I slid my shoes onto my feet. Mena kept the pillow over her head and snuggled up under the thin, white blanket. I folded Janine’s blanket and laid it neatly on top of mine. I walked past Mena to get out of the door. As I walked out, I passed Ms. Mosley. She was coming back into our room to make sure we were up. As I got down to the double doors that led to the main unit, I could hear Ms. Mosley nagging at Mena to get out of the bed.  I could picture Mena’s angry face all scrunched up and her evil eyes rolling as she tensed up under Ms. Mosley’s stern morning breath and intimidating motherly scold.

I smiled at the thought.

Geoffrey smiled at me. I realized I was on the unit and unintentionally looking his way. He was checking vital signs on the patients. He must have thought that I was smiling at him. But he didn’t greet me as he normally did. He shooed the other kid who was sitting in the chair away when he was finished, and I took the empty seat. Geoffrey began checking my blood pressure. I stayed silent, but I kept the smile on my face.

When Geoffrey was finished checking my vital signs, I went over and sat down at an empty table. Other patients started filling the room. Mena walked in, sleepy-eyed. She got in line to get her vitals checked.

For some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There was something different about her. She didn’t have the same evil look that she seemed to have had permanently engraved on her face. She seemed calm and almost humbled. When she was finished with her vitals, she looked over at me. She started heading my way, as if she was going to sit at the table with me, but Tai cut her off, sitting down at the table with me instead. Mena walked the opposite way and sat down in a chair near the corner of the room by herself.

Tai smiled at me wearily. “Morning, sunshine,” she said in a flat tone.

“Good morning,” I said with just as much excitement.

“Are you ready for another day in hell?”

I shook my head and leaned back in the chair.

“Did you hear about Rocky?” Tai leaned back too. Then she rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it in her mouth. She sucked on it as if it was a cigarette.

I looked at her strangely. “What are you doing?”

“Hey! Give me a break,” she pleaded. “I asked you a question. Did you hear about Rocky?”