Outside casts hues of red, purple, orange and some deep greens. Large pines sway in time with the wind. Mature oaks stand like stick figures, their leaves showing the change from bright green to deep brown. Many leaves cling to the branches. However with each gust of wind, a few more fall victim to the blast that touches them. Sure enough, another gust of wind sweeps up. This sends the last leaf on one tree spiraling down to the ground. Cassie watches all this from her chair sitting under the window. She sighs, and lightly traces circles in the not-so-quite cushy armchair with the tip of her finger.
The old chair is well padded. Its brown vinyl, now faded to a pale tan, is worn smooth from years of sitting in. Cassie shifts, her weight causing the leather to squeak and groan. Her legs, now drawn up and folded under her body, protect her from the rest of the room. She’s not uncomfortable, but she’s not comfortable either.
The sun peeks out from the clouds. Cassie allows what little light trickles through the thin window pan to warm her. She knows that it’s cold outside. It looks as cold as she feels sitting inside a temperature-controlled room. And she wishes she could be out there to feel it. This is the magic of autumn. When leaves turn colors and the temperature stays cold long after the sun comes out to warm everything up. The wind taps on the window, teasing her, calling her name, “Come out Cassie, come play in the magic.” Cassie shifts her weight in the chair, feeling left out, and closes her eyes.
She imagines becoming free. Her feet push her body outside of the room she’s locked inside. Her heart races, quickened by the adrenaline, as her eyes focus on the goal ahead. The two white hospital doors. They hold the key to her freedom. Her feet move swiftly across the white floor. For her, getting to them feels like an eternity passing before she even gets close enough to feel their smooth surface. Finally, she stretches her arms forward, palms facing out. They hit the door with a resounding “thunk”. The muscles in her arms contract and then expand with force. The doors explode open, freeing her from the cage, and from the horrid moments that trapped her inside.
Cassie escapes out of the hospital. Instead of more hallways and doors, she finds herself outside. It’s warm and bright. The sun warms her skin, easing the goosebumps on her arm back to sleep. The trees bud with new flowers and leaf buds. She looks around at the flowers blooming. The hostas tall and green. Then her eyes lay upon them.
Standing there beneath the tall trees and next to the hostas are her friends, her wonderful friends. Hazel, with his long crazy hair and impossible purple eyes, smiles wide and calls out her name as he extends an arm to her. Stick is there too. She rests on his shoulder, standing tall, her blue arms waving and cheering. Behind them, standing at attention, waits a giant army of creatures, all sizes and shapes. As soon as Hazel and Stick cheer, they, too, begin raising their weapons and banners in salute.
The sounds of cheers fade into one long solid monotone noise. An unseen clock wails out from the walls. Static to Cassie’s ears. She turns as the double doors swing and part open. No Hazel. No Stick. No one comes through to save her from distress. Just another orderly wearing nothing but white, white, white. This one carries a white tray with many tiny white paper cups filled with cocktail mixes and a splash of water. Cassie sighs once more as the orderly in white walks over to her and waits. It’s drugtime.
Cassie hates the drugs and the buzzer. She doesn’t like her time being monitored and tracked all the way down to the second hand on a clock. She looks up at the orderly in white and takes the white paper cup with the white oblong shaped pill and the two small round white ones. She cocks her head and then dumps the contents of the white cup onto her tongue. The orderly checks Cassie’s mouth and gives her another white paper cup with water. Cassie quickly drops the pills under her tongue and chucks the water down her throat, cool and pure. She feigns swallowing and the orderly smiles. Cassie thinks that they force the smile a bit too much.
The orderly leaves Cassie and she returns to the world outside. Watching the colors move and blend for a bit longer. She knows that she needs to wait a few minutes before asking to take leave to the bathroom. There she will spit out the drugs that stifle her mind, take away the colors, and her dreams. The window pane ripples as another gust of wind slaps against it. With it, Cassie feels her mind returning to her body, the drugs no longer having any real effect on her chemistry. It’s a small win and she hopes that no one realizes she’s been dumping drugs down the drain.
It’s almost time to go to the bathroom. Cassie focuses her eyes on her reflection in the window. Her brown hair hangs and drapes over her shoulders. She pushes a long strand out of her face and concentrates into the deep blue eyes that seem lighter than ever. Her skin, pale from not getting enough sun, seems almost as white as the walls and doors. The hair slides slowly behind her ear. Cassie frowns and goes to find the attendant that will get her into the bathroom.
“Permission to go to the bathroom,” she says softly to a woman seated with her back towards Cassie. The Floor Guardian, who’s also dressed all in white, reading from a book with a white cover and white sheets, nods, “You have five minutes.” Cassie turns and heads towards the bathroom in her Pod.
She thinks about all the fancy names Blackwell gives to their rooms. To give them personality and make people like her feel right at home. It doesn’t work, of course. Cassie spits the drugs into the toilet and waves as they flush down the pipes. Cassie thinks that naming rooms is dumb but keeps her thoughts and secrets to herself.
The whole hospital has six floors. Each floor looks identical to one another. The only thing that’s different are the kids and adults caged inside. Each floor has it’s own Commons, the big open room with windows, where Cassie spends most of her day. They eat meals, participate in group activities, and have “Free Time” all in the same big white room. The floor in the Commons is made of unordinary white square tiles. White walls with white frames of white images cover the walls. The tables have white Formica tops and the plastic chairs are white and horribly uncomfortable. A white sofa sits in the middle of the room, facing a television set.
Seven doorways lead from the Commons. Six do not have doors. These foyers lead directly into each resident’s room, known as pods, with a bathroom set between the two. Tread-worn white carpet covers the floor inside each doorway and the walls are all painted white. Nothing sits on the walls inside each room, no pictures or art or personality. Cassie hates not having a door to her room. But Blackwell does not care what Cassie thinks she should have. She shares her doorway with three other residents. One is her roommate, and the other two share an identical but opposite room across from her room.
Floor Guardians watch them all the time. One of them sits inside the Commons and is there to immediately assist a resident. Cassie hates this as she likes to be alone and have her own space. She also doesn’t like being watched all the time, even during free time. She feels like a prisoner, even though she has not broken the law. She feels like she is less of a person here than she would be considered on a street outside.
The last door in the Commons doubles up and leads to the outside. This door leads to the Control Room and it’s always locked. Only Blackwell’s Staff can go in and out of the Control Room. Doctors and nurses sit at desks behind the window. Observing the residents, taking notes of conditional changes. Cassie has only seen this room once when they brought her in. It too is also white with a white bookcase and white binders facing out. White folders sit on the shelf, faint outlines of letters forming the names of each resident on the floor. The Control Room also stores the drugs that Cassie takes twice daily.
Cassie gets permission to return to the Commons. The Floor Guardian replies without looking up from the white cover on her book. Cassie turns her head to the Control Room. Three people sit in comfortable white chairs. Two hover over files and one fixes their eyes on a television monitor. Someone is sitting in the padded room today. Cassie’s eyes don’t rest on anyone she recognizes. She’s thankful for her Doctor appears out for the day.
Five residents share the Commons with Cassie, although the floor can hold a total of twenty-four residents. They are all roughly the same age but she feels like she has nothing in common with them at all. The only other thing that ties them together is the label and condition their doctors gave them. A young boy with curly red hair, Fred, sits on the sofa. He’s rocking. No matter what he was doing, Fred rocked. Cassie guesses that he rocks back and forth all night long while the drugs prevent him from dreaming. Even though the Floor Guardian has him facing the TV, his eyes stare off in the distance, vacant. Cassie tried to talk to him once, but he never responded and Cassie felt that he was not all there. So she stopped trying to talk to him, or anyone for that matter. Next to him sits a girl, her tangled hair as wild as her eyes. She’s drooling. Her eyes held, glazed over, by the white light coming from the TV. Her name is Beth. A small line of drool pooled from one corner of her mouth down to the shirt she was wearing. Beth never made an attempt at wiping it from her face. Cassie wondered if she even knew it was there.
Cassie doesn’t like what they show on TV. The pre-approved programs Blackwell receives from satellite are old and crappy. She’d rather be writing her own stories or telling them to Stick and Hazel. Cassie watches the Beth and Fred. Her gaze moves from her peers to the TV.
The TV was making silly cartoon sounds but nothing appeared on the screen, at first. Cassie rubbed her eyes and refocused them on the screen. White blurbs flash and flicker across the screen without rhyme or reason. Cassie blinks again as color slowly returns into the image, bringing the action into focus.
People were fighting. Huge flowing fabric banners depicting royal family crests sway in the wind. A banner with the head of an Eagle carrying a olive branch wavers in the distance, its bearer having issues keeping the banner aloft in the blowing air. Suddenly a creature wearing dark grey armour falls in front of the banner bearer. Bright red blood pours out of wounds on its face and body. An arrow with green feathers sticking out from it’s back. The banner bearer frowns, tears streaming down his face, holds his position. He cannot lose his post, lest morale under the name of the Council fall. He’s unable to do anything for the dying soldier but call out to the healers on the battlefield. More creatures fall. The battle is not going well.
Blackwell’s surround sound speakers let forth an earth-shattering cry. It sounds like a cross between a elephant and cat that has been cornered by a dinosaur. Cassie watches as the scene shifts to the air. “There it is,” cries out from an unknown camera holder as a large blob with wings beating hard dives back down into the army below it.
Fred mutters out loud something that is a cross between the noise Cassie just thought she heard and a laugh. The images she once saw on TV have since been replaced by a horribly out of color image of a mouse and cat. The mouse sits on the right side of the screen, running towards a hole on the left. It’s being chased by a cat, waiving a giant mallet. Cassie watches as the mouse, always the mouse, reaches the edge of the screen and escpes into a dark hole. The cat, unable to slow down in time, runs into the wall. Fred mutters the disturbing laugh once more.
“Stupid cat,” Cassie mutters as she climbs back into her chair. Cassie shakes her head, she’s seen the show before. She watched it ever Saturday morning, silently before anyone else rose. Blackwell never showed anything new. It was all mostly old stuff. Every now and then, on special occasions they got to watch something new. Of course, it was never really anything truly new, just more recent old stuff. Stuff that Cassie had also already seen. But those occasions were rare. Instead, Cassie preferred her chair and window. What went on outside the room was far more interesting.
Movement off to Cassie’s right catches her eye. Susan paces back and forth. Unlike Beth and Fred who now sit perfectly silent and still, each in their own world, Susan was a constant blur of motion. Even with all the medication they put her on her body required motion. Susan’s taller than Cassie, more than a foot tall and has a thicker build. Cassie watches as Susan occasionally twitches while each foot carefully measures out the distance from one another as she paces. Her mouth opens and closes, faint words barely audible. And random. Random words, spoken passionately but without meaning. Cassie can never tell if Susan is really talking to anyone. Cassie tried to ask her about it once. But her voice sent Susan into one of her episodes.The nurses shoved Cassie aside as they sedated her companion. Cassie hasn’t said anything to Susan since then. Not that she had any desire to speak to anyone left.
Cassie doesn’t see the last resident on her floor. He’s not in the Commons and not in his Pod. His name is Mike, and he’s the floor’s newest acquisition. Mike was admitted to Blackwell two days ago. They sent everyone to their rooms when he arrived. He bit two staffers and kicked and screamed. It took four people to hold him down while they took him to the Padded Room. He’s been there ever since.
Cassie closes her eyes again. She’s dreaming of being outside again. Of course, when she closes her eyes, it’s always a dream of somewhere other than Blackwell. Stick and Hazel are with her and they laugh as they jump into the leaves. Stick hums a madrigal. Cassie tosses a handful of leaves at Hazel. It covers him, making him look like a fuzzy bear. He smiles and playfully tosses a pile back at her. She laughs, enjoying herself. But Cassie is not laughing today. She wondered where Hazel and Stick were and what they were doing. With luck her friends were having more fun that she was.
“Do they even miss me?” she whispers into the window.
