Stay

I was looking over some files of patients while waiting for my ten o'clock appointment. Then the door opened, there was Henry. I could tell he hadn't changed since the last time I saw him. His pants were covered in blue and yellow paint. "Henry, I wasn't expecting you. What are you doing here?" I asked looking at my watch to see how close my next appointment was. Henry ignored my question and leaned up against the wall.

"Who did that?" He asked referring to the painting behind my desk. I turned around and admired it, it was a painting by Lila that I loved.

"My girlfriend Lila did, it's great isn't it?" I replied smiling. He looked at it hard and shrugged. "So, any plans on becoming on being a meteorologist?" I asked Henry trying to find out about his hail prediction.

"No," he shook his head confused as if he thought I was being random. I guess I was, but I thought he'd know what I was talking about.

"Do you watch the weather man?" I asked

"The weather man? Naw....," He made his way to the sofa and sat, "you know, I can't understand a word that comes out the the guy's mouth. You do? Do you understand the weather man?" He gestured toward me. His question struck me as odd.

"Well, yes. He says rain, I bring an umbrella." I thought my response was clever but I started to get irritated with Henry's vagueness. "Henry, talk to me, I'm good at what I do."

"Okay," he said and I felt relieved knowing we'd have a successful meeting, "I've been hearing voices."
This was what I was waiting for. "Are you hearing them now?" I asked and he nodded. I got up from my seat and handed him a note pad, "Here take this and write what you hear okay?"
My telephone rang. "Yeah?" I answered putting it on speaker phone.
"Sam your ten o'clock is here." The secretary said.
"Bring him in" I turned to Henry, "What do you have written so far?" I asked him

He stared at the paper, "Yeah, Sam your ten o'clock is here, bring him in..." I looked at his paper in disbelief.

"These aren't voices, these are real." I said

"Well, maybe you could teach me how to tell the difference." He said still looking at the paper. I told him to tell me what he was hearing so I could show him what was real and what were voices. He recited: "I saw it happen first, I didn't move him, I know you aren't supposed to touch them.... Stay, Henry, Stay..." The door opened, my next patient.

"Hold on, sorry." I said to him. The man was wearing a business suit. He turned around and shut the door behind him. I looked back at Henry and caught sight of his arm. There were burns everywhere. This was definitely going to be a good appointment. "What's this?" I said pointing at his burns. He lifted up his sleeve.

"Oh I burn myself." He said indifferently looking away from me and started looking at the door again.

"Why?" I asked. He stood up and started walking towards the door. "Wait Henry, Stay here. Why did you burn yourself?" He turned to face me, for the first time his eyes were looking into mine. A chill went down my spine.

"I'm practicing for hell" he said simply. This intrigued and frightened me.
"Why do you think you're going to hell?"

"For what I did... For what I'm gonna do." He said reaching for the door, but I got up and stopped him from opening it.

"What are you going to do, Henry?" I asked urgently. I hoped so badly it wasn't what I thought it was. Not again.

Henry let go of the door. He lifted his hand and made a gun motion to his head.

My throat dropped into my stomach. "You're going to kill yourself? How seriously should I take this because I'm going to have to take certain precautions if you talk to me about suicide."

"Saturday, at midnight that's when I'm gonna do it." he said showing no emotion on his face, his eyes looked so empty. I reached for the phone so I could call an institute. "Wait," he said," Deal with this guy," he said motioning to the door, "and we'll talk about it next time." He said going to the door again.

"There's a next time?" I said making sure he wasn't going to do himself in before he said he would.

"Yeah. Yeah. We got three days." He shrugged and walked out the door.
I let him leave.

***
After my ten o'clock left I went to the psyche ward section of the college to report Henry. Once I got there I could hear a woman having a mental break down. She was screaming "He's just a kid! He's just a KID! I am NOT a monster!" There were about five doctors around her. One was Dr. Ren whom I wanted to talk to.

He held a needle and stabbed it into the woman's leg. "See now if you wouldn't forget to take your meds we wouldn't have to go through this." He said trying to calm her. She winced as the needle went into her leg. Then Dr. Ren saw me. "Ah, Dr. Foster. What brings you to club meds?" He smiled. Behind him the other four doctors took the woman into another room.

"I have a student threatening to kill himself." I said nervously.

"Well, tell him to take a number." We started to walk towards the blue and yellow exit door so we we could talk in private.

"He says he's going to do it on Saturday at midnight."

"Wow, organized kid. He's got it all scheduled. Did he say why?" He asked looking concerned. I shook my head.

"I didn't get to ask." I admitted, "Is there anything we can do?"

"We can take him in for forty-eight hours, but we can't keep him here forever." He said taking off his white rubber gloves.

"Okay, thank you. We can bring him in Saturday afternoon." I said walking away from Dr.Ren.

"Alright. See you then." He mumbled behind me.