Inpatient

By: J.R. Harrington

Mortal soul in mortal peril. Ascension, god forsaken godhood. Newscast nothing new, earthquakes and hurricanes caused by you. Christmas coming, Christmas past. Timeskip, timesave, time travel. Wormhole in the hospital, jumping to January, skipping stones through a rushing river.

Time is malleable. A clear substance, iridescent in the right light, through the right scope. Something you can feel but not see, something sort of like memory. Past, present, future, cards spread and interpreted, the feeling that each loon in the bin is but a facsimile of your own twisted mind. Read the cards, then play a game with them.

Respect the property of others and the properties of the place that you stay. Listen to the clock, but listen to your gut, too. Get food, make a mess, hide your face, hide your head, hide from the God who walks these halls. Delusions of grandeur, delusions of splendor. Splendiferous, scrupulous. Words that feel fake but have a real spelling, auto-correct to tell you how unoriginal it is.

Saving soap, saving sin. Keep your toothbrush and smile to yourself, hissing like a cat when they start to doubt. Growling and being growled at, the strange comfort of hearing someone else use the same semi-verbal threat noise as you. Insanity presenting sane, sanity presenting insane.

Asymptomatic psychosis, sitting still and watching, chatting with messengers of God. Madness and intelligence go hand in hand, here’s how to get out, threatening gestures, fear that others are your family in disguise, is this the good place or the bad one? Either way the faces change but the thoughts don’t. Is your brother there? Does he hate you as much as the world hates you? Does he hate God, the way modern men do?

A man grabs at you, mutters “small shoulders,” he’s not a doctor, just a stranger with a hat covering his ears and hair. A woman scribbles a rainbow in your notebook. You carry it like Linus does his blanket, silent watcher uring two lines for one with green crayon. Word association, meanings behind colors—green is for the truth, blue is for liars. Father’s son or mother’s daughter?

Purple is for calm, steady. Hearts talking to each other in a hug that lasts eighty seconds. Eight is a number for children, but you always loved the way it’s written. There’s a purple blanket on your bed as you shiver and shake, there’s fear in your head as you color code with the red and blue versions. Are you an agent? Of chaos, of the regime, the voice of a dictator whines in your head to stop ignoring it; you don’t listen.

Holes in cloth worn threadbare. Two parts red and blue make a third, purple, and all the best things come in threes. Secondaries over primaries everytime, the winner takes half and the biggest loser takes the other. Queen of cards in the corner of a quiet room, holding up the line for the phone as she talks and talks.

Solitary, a dark room with a rocking chair. Windows covered in white or black, you stare waiting to be asked your decision. Up or down, left or right, or just spiral, spiral, spiral. Distorted fragments of unsound memories filtered now through a newly sound mind. Jeff Dunham, puppeteer being puppeted by heaven and hell, complex ventriloquy, fleeing the living room when the Christmas special comes on—you’ll never look at him the same, and any voice like his fills you with fear.

You will not be the next puppeteer, but even still your fingers move on autopilot, bounding across the flat plane of the keyboard, fingertips washed with faded white light.

Handkerchief embroidered with white flowers, linen scraped with tiny holes, moths with the munchies. “Something smells like skunk,” and it wasn’t you, but could it be? “Is everyone talking about me?” A girl who lies pathologically, a thing that startled the truth from her.

Night shift, delinquency night, making friends and forgetting just as fast. Time is a slippery thing in your fingers, oobleck, cornstarch and water making a substance that doesn’t hold firm to ordinary physics. Wet and dry at the same time, showertime making you cry and pound on the walls. Press a button to turn the water on, every five seconds, it takes a while to get warm so the heat’s all the way on, come out red like lobster.

Blood draw, dizziness refusing to subside, watching with dry-wet eyes. Staying still on the windowsill, leaning against the cold and wishing for an end. Pale as a ghost, sick of the sheet. Laundry baskets passed around, only three so hold onto it if you can. Uncomfortable pillows, the sense that you can adjust to any conditions if your will’s hard enough, tardigrade in the freeze.

Double socks in the night, to keep your things you better hold on tight. All the books you requested are hardcover, you can’t bring them here—what if someone decided to knock you upside the head with them? Get your things together, packed snow tighter than air can reach. Holding a hand to your heart, if you don’t keep checking it might stop, every feeling in your abdomen evokes organ death.

Are you having a seizure? Clockhead says “Shut the hell up, I’m trying to sleep,” already in the hospital, you call the police. Check behind my legs for needle tracks please, I think they gave me LSD. Seeing more things than usual, not black cats in the corner of your eyes but weird little alien guys. There’s drugs in the food, that’s why these graham cracker wrappers say that, please don’t toss them, I need them for evidence.

Calling the police while in the hospital, calling everyone you know saying you’re afraid you’re having a seizure. Tell them you love them, your voice is a bit flatter than it used to be, like singing the song wrong in the car, a note lower than it’s meant to go. Don’t ever sign up for that talent show.

Fifteen or so days in and you remember about three with clarity, the haze of psychosis and various medications. Overly difficult patients, impatient patients, everyone scrambling to leave before the big day. Fistbumps exchanged, carefully limiting time on the phone to under fifteen minutes a day. Shiny pamphlet with the staples taken out, read and re-read, marked with washable marker, circles and question marks.

Paged skilled with waxy scribbles and rainbow spirals, regaining your mind and losing it waiting, waiting, waiting. Expected visit, unexpected freedom, shock that lasts all day smoking cigarettes in the cold winter sun. A breath of fresh air—in, out. No more need to count.

Now every day is new. Changes. Writing with a pen feels like heaven under your hand, your own handwriting makes you smile. It really is the simple things, like typing on a keyboard, putting on lotion after you wash your hands.