Institutionalized

Chapter Eleven

‘School’ was by far one of the most relaxed activities of the day, seeing as my school hadn’t sent me any of my homework yet. It appeared that everyone had ‘school’ at the same time, so we were all inside one large room, at old-school desks, working on whatever had been mailed to us. However, since nobody was really enforcing anything, most of the patients were just talking among themselves.

I sat in between Trinity and Kevin in the second-to-last row of desks. Kevin was frantically scribbling an overdue essay on one of the books he had to read for English. Since Trinity had already finished most of her work, she was thumbing through one of the volumes of Shakespeare that I had seen on our dresser. Eventually, she noticed how bored I looked and decided to strike up a conversation.

“I’m sorry if I upset you at lunch,” she said sheepishly. “I just wanted to give you a little background on some of the patients here.”

I found it odd that she was apologizing, seeing as I wasn’t terribly upset about it. Still, it was a thoughtful gesture. “It’s alright. No harm done.”

She smiled gratefully at me. “I’m glad. So, how was your last session?”

“Pretty good,” I replied. “Dr. Dupre is a nut case, though. I think she should be locked up here instead of giving therapy.”

Trinity snorted and covered her mouth with her hand. “I have to agree with you,” she giggled. “However, I must admit that I do admire her…theatrics.” She chuckled and then straightened herself out. “Did you meet any interesting people?”

“Well, nobody as crazy as Dupre, but I did talk to Roseanne Little for a while. And Dupre paired me with a guy named Travis for our group activity.”

Trinity’s expression soured. “Ugh. Kevin, dear, did you hear that?”

Kevin glanced up from his notebook. “What?”

“Lilly had a conversation with Roseanne.” She emphasized her statement with a pointed glance in Kevin’s direction.

He gave me a pitying look. “Ugh. Please tell me you tried to get out of it.”

I shrugged. “At first she seemed OK, aside from calling me ‘Libby’. But then she started in with a bunch of gossip. Most of it was about you,” I told Trinity.

She snickered. “I’m always a little in awe of the rumors that are told about me. What kinds of drivel did she fill your head with?”

“Well, for one thing, that most of your roommates left within a week.” Trinity nodded. “But she also told me that Nicole Prince was your roommate at one point and that you attacked her.”

Trinity rolled her eyes and Kevin sighed. “Haven’t heard that one before, huh?” he asked.

“Well, at least she isn’t claiming that I attacked her in the shower like she did that one time…”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Christ on a crutch, that was weird. Did she ever admit that she made that up?”

“No.”

“Ugh. Well, at least nobody believed her, right?”

Trinity smiled wryly and then turned to face me. “Lilly, there’s one important lesson that I need to teach you—take anything Roseanne tells you with a grain of salt. She’s a gossip, an attention-seeker, and a liar,” she explained. She snapped her book shut and made a face. “Well, speak of the devil…” She gestured with the back of her hand to Roseanne, who was coming towards us. Kevin looked panicked and started scribbling in his notebook again.

“Like, hey Lizzie.”

“My name is Lilly.”

“Right, right,” she replied, waving a hand dismissively. “So, are you, like, busy right now? ‘Cause Jamie and I were thinking that you should, like, come and talk to us.” She indicated the dreadlocked girl sitting across the room.

“Umm...” A quick glance at Trinity, who was rapidly shaking her head and mouthing the word ‘no’ at me, answered my question. “Thanks, but I’m going to be OK right here.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Whatevs,” she replied with a shrug. She turned her beady-eyed stare to Kevin. “Hi, Kevin.”

“Hey,” he muttered.

“So, do you, like, wanna come over and talk with me and Jamie, Kevin?”

He paled. “Uhh…thanks, but I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She smiled brightly at him. “Well, you can, like, work over there!”

“I…um…uh…”

Roseanne would have probably dragged Kevin away to her seat with Jamie if Mikhail hadn’t intervened. He stood up from his seat and walked over to Kevin with an exaggerated look of confusion on his face.

“Kevin, will you please to be helping me? My speaking of the English is not fluent.” I could tell he was exaggerating his accent as well as his confusion; it was all I could do to not laugh.

Kevin smiled in relief. “Of course I’ll help you, Mikhail! Not a problem at all.” He turned to Roseanne. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but Mikhail needs my help with his homework, so see you around, hahaha!”

Roseanne glared at both of them, then gave a final snarl of “Whatevs” and stormed back to her seat.

Once she was out of earshot, Kevin squeezed Mikhail around the waist. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, you are amazing, thank you so much.”

Mikhail sighed. “Don’t make such a display, it’s indecent.” He smirked. “And did you really think I was going to allow that slag to touch what’s mine? Not a chance.”

Trinity giggled. “Aww, you do love him.”

He coughed and turned pink. “I never said that,” he sniffed. “Now will you please let go of me? I actually do have work to do.”

Dinner passed quickly and relatively quietly, seeing as everyone had spent ‘school’ together. Trinity had been right that morning—the food was good, for hospital food. It was all fresh and well-cooked. Granted, it wasn’t as good as the food back home, not by a long shot, but it was nice to have something warm and tasty in my stomach after a busy day. After dinner was finished, an aide approached the table and said that we could either go back to our rooms or to the rec room for free time. Rachelle and Mikhail elected to go back to their rooms, while Kevin, Trinity and I decided to go to the rec room.

The rec room wasn’t really much—there was a TV, a few couches and chairs, a small table, and a radio. A few kids had decks of cards and were playing all sorts of different games. Kevin pulled a deck out of his pocket and began to shuffle.

“Anyone in the mood to play?” he asked. Two guys on the couch walked over and asked Kevin to deal them in. He looked over his shoulder at me and Trinity.

“Ladies, care to play a hand? There’s plenty of room,” he offered.

Trinity shook her head. “I’ll decline,” she responded. “I brought along a book to read.” She sat down on the couch closest to her and cracked open a book of poems by Tennyson.

I raised my hand. “I’ll play. What game?”

“Rummy.”

Since I didn’t know how to play the game, Kevin gave me a quick run-through of the basics of Rummy, and after a few hands, I had gotten pretty good. I even managed to beat Kevin a few times, much to his chagrin and the laughter of the other two guys—whose names, I learned, were Jeremy and Ed.

“Out,” I said, smiling smugly at Kevin.

“Seriously? Man, that’s what now, five games in a row?” Kevin raked a hand through his hair and threw down the twelve cards in his hand. “Jesus, Lilly, how could you do this to me? After all we’ve been through?”

“Apparently pretty easily,” Jeremy quipped, eliciting laughs from the rest of the group.

Around then, the aide watching over the kids in the rec room signaled to everyone that it was time to head back to their rooms and prepare for bed. I helped Kevin collect the cards that had been scattered around the playing area and then headed for the door, where I caught up with Trinity.

She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “So, did you have a good first day?”

I nodded and felt my neck heat up slightly. “Probably the best day I’ve had in a long time.”