The Tears of Time

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Ella was plotting. She’d had enough of doctors, nurses, specialists in this and that. She wasn’t sick. She never had been and if she was now it was because of all the drugs they forced into her. On the edge of her bed, she looked calm enough to the nurse clearing up left-over breakfast, but inside her brain was whirring.

Ideas were formed and banished in a matter of seconds, each one spiralling further and further from the possible, until she sighed in desperation. At the back of her mind a possibility was forming, but she was careful not to think of it deliberately in case it flew away, as her ideas tended to do. So it lurked just out of the corner of her minds eye, ready to be seen when it was ready. Her sigh was noticed by the nurse, who was a slight, shifty thing. She looked Ella suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

“What?” Ella snapped, her patience already in rags from constant dirty looks.

“Nothing,” the nurse answered, after a significant delay. Ella grimaced back and then returned to her plans. This wasn’t going to work. She flopped back on the bed, staring hard at the ceiling as if her gaze might bore a hole through the floors above. Mentally creating an aerial escape took up the few minutes before the nurse left. Only a few weeks ago and she would have been able to walk out. But a new Doctor had taken over the ward, immediately insisting that the doors be locked at night. Locked in like a lab rat.

By midday the plan forming at the back of her mind seemed more substantial, and a few of the obstacles had been mentally overcome. It would take a while to do preparation work, but it would get her out. By midnight, unable to sleep for thoughts, the plan was finished.

* * *

Out of a window, along the roof, back in on the third floor. Raided a nurse’s locker with a stolen key for some ill fitting jeans, a t-shirt and black coat. Then out the front door, trying desperately to look as if she should be there. Just act cool and no one will look twice, she thought again and again. Once on the street she breathed a sigh of relief, quickly banished when she realised she didn’t know where she was going.

* * *

A cold wooden bench isn’t the nicest bed. After trudging about a mile away from the Hospital, Ella had curled up on a park bench, outside for the first time in three years. Not able to sleep for staring at the sky. Stars smiled down at her, tiny silver pricks of light in a black velvet swathe.

In the morning she watched the sun rise, spreading a halo of rosy colours across the broad horizon. A trickle of people moving to and fro made her move from the bench and wander further, never turning back to the hospital. Her nose was running, and her throat sore, but she tried to ignore them. Suddenly everything seemed familiar. A corner shop caught her eye, and she realised that she was only a little way away from the middle school she’d been to. Which meant that home wasn’t too far away either. Not that she could ever call it home now.

Ella’s heart stabbed when she remembered the day that her foster parents had said they couldn’t keep on being her parents. They’d wanted to adopt someone who could be their child full-time. Not only in visiting hours at the loony bin. Well, they hadn’t said that, but it had been in their eyes. She’d read their faces as easily as if they’d shouted it at the entire hospital, written it on every single piece of text she ever saw, announced it in every sound she’d ever heard in her entire life. They didn’t want her.

She wondered whether they’d replaced her. With another girl? Or a boy, so that they weren’t reminded of her? Or perhaps they’d been able to have a child after all. Maybe they had a couple of kids now. One of them could be 4, about to go into school for the first time, the other could be just reaching toddler phase… Or maybe they had twins.

Her mind wandered, only to be broken into by a crystal clear picture. She gasped aloud, tripping over her own feet. No, surely. She sank down next to a lamppost. Yet she knew, with every part of her soul that what she’d just seen was true. She thought of Emily, and tears began to fall thick and fast down her face.

She got up and began to run, feet pounding the pavement. Emily would still be there, she would never have moved. She wasn’t the sort of person who would move on. She would just stay… Ella rang the doorbell franticly, stepping from side to side in a nervous dance. She let out her unconsciously held breath as she heard footsteps coming towards the door. The latch clicked as it was turned, and the door opened inwards to reveal a tired face.

“Emily!” Ella laughed, the tears exploding once more as she leapt to hug her.

“Do I know you?” A confused voice said from between Ella’s crushing grip. Ella stepped back, sorrow flooding her throat as she realised how much she must have changed.

“It’s me. Elanor.”

“Elanor?”

“Yep.” Emily’s mouth opened and closed, half formed words tumbling out of her mouth in a collection of random sounds.

“Come in,” she said finally, eyes disbelieving. “How… the hospital?”

“They discharged me, I’m fine,” Ella lied quickly, “New medication.”

“That’s great, I don’t know what to say, so much has happened.”

“I know,” Ella said, then quickly shut her mouth as Emily looked sharply at her; “I mean, the hospital. I asked the Doctor where I could find you.”

“Oh,” Emily whispered, slumping into a kitchen chair.

“Shall I make some tea?” Ella motioned towards the kettle.

“No, no I’ll do it. You sit down. So how have you been?”