by K. C. Hughes
Deakon reached the nurse’s station. “I’m hungry,” he said. The bracelet felt foreign on his wrist so he instinctively touched it.
“Lunch isn’t for a couple of hours,” the nurse said. She never looked up at him.
“Excuse me Miss, but if you check your records, you’ll see that I haven’t eaten in a few days,” Deakon heard himself say. But that had to be another withdrawal symptom from the pain killers because it came out stutter free.
“I don’t have to check anything…,” she stopped mid-sentence, looking up at him.
The nurse popped out of her seat and backed away from the desk, looking at him bug-eyed. She came around the counter and walked next to him. Deakon saw the top of her head. Without a word she grabbed his arm and checked his wrist ID band. She cupped her mouth and panted.
“What the…?” she started.
“Can you get them to send me a tray of food? I will eat anything.”
“I-um. They can’t do that,” she stumbled. “I can take my break now and go to McDonalds or Chipotle.”
“McDonalds. I’m lovin’ it,” he said, smooth as one of the cool kids at school. He couldn’t believe the trick his mind was playing on him. He really liked the hallucinations. No wonder so many people did drugs. He knew it would wear off, though.
“I’ll be right back.” She grabbed her bag. “I’m Lisee, by the way.” She rushed out the door, turning a few times, gaping at him.
He didn’t have a clue what got into her. She was being so nice. He walked back to his room and noticed that his pants were about a half inch from the ground, even higher than moments before. He smiled at himself remembering hallucinating earlier that they'd been dragging the floor.
Lisee returned and peeked her head in his room, holding a lot of McDonalds’ bags. She placed the food at the table. He eyed all of it. There was one of everything from a fish sandwich to a double Quarter Pounder with cheese, even a milkshake, sundae and an apple pie.
Deakon inhaled the food. He hadn’t remembered McDonalds tasting so good. He practically swallowed the cheeseburger whole. He wished she would’ve got more French fries, but there was enough food to satisfy his primitive need. No wonder mothers eat their young. If they had been hungry like him, he understood.
While still eating, he glanced up and saw the same man eyeballing him. It seemed like a year ago when he sat at the same seat, too weak to walk to the far side of the room. It had only been a couple of hours ago. The man kept staring at him while digging in his nose. Then he saw him pull a slimy clump of green mucus and put it in his mouth. Deakon couldn’t take it. He sprung out of his seat and slung the remaining food and everything else from the table.
“You’re disgusting,” Deakon said.
The others turned towards the commotion, but no one laughed. He didn’t care if they laughed or not. He paced the Freedom Room with his arms folded, wearing a deep frown. He was mad. He had never, ever exploded like that before. But he couldn’t control the boiling anger. It felt good to let it out.
Lisee trotted by his side.
“What’s his problem?” Deakon asked.
She motioned him to the staff break room on the far right wall. He followed her so close that he got a whiff of her perfume and inhaled deeply. She smelled good. It stirred something in him. As they walked across the Freedom Room, his senses were heightened and focused on her. The rhythm of her hips swaying mesmerized him. He could hear the swishing of her hair as it moved. He tried to understand the unknown feeling that overcame him. He knew it wasn’t a hallucination.
When they entered the staff lounge, he was surprised at the contrast between it and the Freedom Room. The room was warm and homey and not cold and detached. The walls were painted in an earthy beige. There were a couple of ficus trees placed in the corners that added to the warmth. A comfy looking couch faced a flat-screen TV. The small kitchenette had a bistro set. Deakon knew about things like bistro sets from reading his mom’s magazines.
Lisee closed the door and walked to the table. “Brad has an eating disorder,” she said as she sat down. “He eats everything in sight.”
“Is that why he stared down my throat when I ate?” he asked, taking a seat across from her.
“I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but his eating disorder doesn’t involve food. He literally swallows anything that’s not nailed down,” Lisee said, leaning her chin on her hand. “I have no idea why I’m telling you this, but he started swallowing small toys when he was younger which is normal for kids.” She paused.
He studied Lisee’s face. It was perfectly smooth and oval shaped. He guessed she was around 22 years old but definitely not older than 25. Her eyes were icy blue with dark, curly eyelashes. She had bangs with long flowing light brown hair. She was cute.
“Please go on.”
She lowered her hand and sat up higher wanting to continue. “Well, it’s kind of fascinating. Brad graduated from swallowing little toys to nails and then Matchbox cars. When he swallowed a full box of staples, he had his first operation.”
“First?” he asked, engrossed in the bizarre tale. Not only was he fascinated by the story, but having a sit-down conversation with a cute girl was on a whole other level.
“Yep, in fact he’s had so many surgeries to remove foreign objects from his intestines that no hospital will operate on him. Ever!”
“So why is he in the hospital now if he didn’t have surgery?” Deakon asked.
Lisee diverted her eyes from his, realizing that he didn't know he had been transferred to the psychiatric ward. She was not sure what to tell him. “Um, this isn’t the hospital, per se,” she said.
Deakon placed both hands on the table, palms down and leaned in. “Where am I?” he asked.
When she hesitated he stood up. He walked out of the staff lounge into the Freedom Room. For the first time he noticed that it wasn’t a hospital wing, but more like a prison cell block that he’d seen on TV. He swept the room with expert eyes. He realized he was in a mental hospital when he saw the drawn-out looks from the other patients. He walked in circles, feeling enraged. He marched back into the staff lounge, and slammed the door behind him.
“Is this what I think it is?” Deakon barked.
“You’re in Mercy General’s psychiatric ward,” she said, unwillingly. Her resolve melted like the snowcaps from Flagstaff mountains in April.
Deakon wrapped the thin robe around his waist and plopped down on the couch. He gazed into the TV’s black screen and his new reflection stared back.
Had he been paying attention, he would've noticed that it changed.
CHAPTER 9
Deakon stirred from a fitful sleep, trying to squirm away from the pain. He rolled over and clutched his knees from the intensity. When that didn’t help, he rolled out of bed and tried to stretch. When he bent over, he moaned from the excruciating pain. He tried another stretch, one that Marc had taught him. He pressed his palms on the brick wall and extended his leg back. When he lifted his head, he noticed that his bracelet was missing. He raced to the bed, ransacked the sheets and peered under the bed. With no other place to look, he left the room looking for Lisee.
When he saw her sitting behind the desk, he rushed over to her. Every movement hurt.
“My bracelet is missing,” he said breathless. “Please help me find it.”
Lisee immediately stood up and searched the Freedom Room. Deakon followed her eyes. When she spotted Brad on the couch, she walked around the counter and headed towards him. He walked behind her.
Brad leaned back on the couch with his left arm dangling over the back cushion. He wore a look of gratification on his face and wasn’t picking in his nose. He averted her eyes when she stood next to him, hands on hips.
“Brad, did you take Deakon’s bracelet?” she asked, bending over like a kindergarten teacher talking a student.
He turned away from her and began picking in his nose.
“If you don’t answer me, I’ll going to tell
Judy to stop playing dominoes with you.”
The county had hired a pica disease specialist to come in twice a week to help Brad overcome his compulsion to swallow non-nutritive substances. He and Judy played dominoes so she could monitor his obsession with swallowing the game pieces. He was not allowed to play without Judy’s supervision or all the pieces would end up in his colostomy bag. Since no doctor would operate on him, the hospital had to surgically pull his colon out through the abdominal wall and stitch it to his outer skin. A colostomy bag had been attached to the opening to allow stool to drain. Everything Brad swallowed passed through his bowels and ended up in the bag.
“I ate it,” Brad said, with darting eyes.
Lisee opened his pajama top and looked at the plastic bag. She squeezed the bag and a murky brown liquid squished around. Deakon immediately saw the outline of his bracelet.
Yuck yuck yuck!
She turned to Deakon. “I need to strain the contents and sanitize your bracelet. Give me a few,” she said matter-of-factly, like she’d done the procedure many times.
Deakon later learned that he had swiped his bracelet in the wee hours of the night. Because of Brad, each patient at Mercy’s psychiatric ward had been given a steel lock box with strict instructions to lock away any and everything and hide the key. Deakon’s box had been ordered upon his arrival, but it took a few days to process the request.
When Lisee returned the bracelet to him, he hesitated before he grabbed it. He kept thinking that pieces of bowels were trapped in the tiny crevices of the carving. But he had no choice because the bracelet had been the only relief. The second he cuffed it around his wrist the pain stopped.
***
Karri McDill changed outfits three times before deciding on the Juicy Couture fringed top and her new skinny jeans. It took nearly her entire summer savings to buy the outfit. But she had to have it, and it was worth every penny. The only thing left to do was make-up. She asked her BFF, Sienna, to style her hair in a high-top ponytail like she'd seen on J-Lo.
Outfit? Check. Hair? Check. Make-up? Next.
She wanted the sexy, smoky-eye that she’d seen other girls wear at frat parties. It made them look older and smoldering hot. Karri searched online for instructions on applying the eye makeup. There were tons of blogs and even videos, especially on You Tube.
As she followed the steps, she envisioned Deakon gasping at her. Karri had no intentions of going out with Deakon, but as she applied the makeup, she frowned at herself in the mirror. Why was she trying to look sexy for him? Was it because he kicked her out? Or was it the guilt that continued to consume her? He was just a scrawny kid, not even college-aged. She learned from his mother that he was some kind of whiz-kid.
One final look in the mirror. But it wasn't right. The way she applied the eye-makeup was borderline ghoulish looking. She soaked a cotton ball with eye make-up remover, dabbed it on her face, and started over. Minutes later she was satisfied that her face was perfect. She walked to the full length mirror on the back of her door, swirled around, checked to see if her butt looked good, and smiled. She remembered back to high school when her big butt had been god-awful, but now, thanks to Kim Kardashian, everybody wanted what she had.
She grabbed her purse from her bed and checked the room, making sure she didn’t forget anything. She laughed, despite herself, at her Pepto-Bismol pink walls with black painted circles. Her friend Sienna joked that her room looked like a huge pink cow.
On her way to Mercy General, she kept checking her make-up and hair in the rearview mirror. Her obsession with her looks disturbed her. Normally she didn't give her appearance much thought. Just as long as she wore decent clothes that were somewhat similar to what everyone else wore. And make-up? Rarely did she spend so much time in the mirror applying it. Karri hardly ever caked it on like she did today. She didn’t need to. Well, one time she did because she had to look older when her and Sienna used fake IDs to get into a night club. And it worked.
Karri reached Deakon’s room only to find that he’d been moved. She made her way to his new location. When she reached double door entry, she took out her compact mirror to make sure there wasn’t any lipstick playing hide-and-go-peek on her teeth. Satisfied, she pressed the bell and opened the door when it buzzed. She cat-walked to the nurses’ station like she was auditioning for America’s Next Top Model.
Karri stood in front of a petite nurse and waited for her to acknowledge her. Nothing.
“Excuse me, nurse. I’ve been standing here for five minutes,” Karri said like she had been waiting to be served at a deli counter.
“Yes,” Lisee said. It never failed. People multiplied wait times by a factor of ten. Lisee experienced the reality when she waitressed at Olive Garden in college. If patrons waited one minute before being offered drinks, they’d complain to the manager that it took ten minutes. The same was true about the girl that stood before her. She didn’t have to see her to tell that she thought she was self-important. She could tell by the sound of her footsteps as she sashayed in.
“I’m looking for Deakon Metcalf.”
Lisee glanced up to get a look at her. For a brief second she felt a bit jealous that a girl came to see him. She shook her head, bothered that she was thinking that way about a patient. Lisee heard that a nurse at the hospital had lost her license for having a relationship with a patient. She could get in serious trouble for telling Deakon about Brad. Lisee couldn’t afford to lose her job.
“He’s in pod twenty.”
“What's a pod and where is twenty?” Karri huffed.
Lisee pointed.
Karri turned with her nose raised and headed towards it. She smoothed out her shirt, patted her lips and opened the door.
“Oh I’m sorry, I have the wrong room,” Karri said and turned to leave pod twenty. She was going back to the nurses’ station and demand to speak to the supervisor. The nurse purposely gave her the wrong pod number.
“Karri?” Deakon asked.
She swung around so quick that her purse hit her on the hip from the movement. “Deakon, is that you?”
He stood up and Karri’s mouth gaped open. He towered over her. She covered her mouth because it was stuck in the open position.
“Um, hi,” he said, blushing. Her beauty stung him. She looked remarkably like Minka Kelly. With her hair pulled into a ponytail, he was able to see the distinct almond shape of her eyes. Along with her skin tone and color of her eyes, she looked like an exotic Brazilian.
“You look so different,” Karri said after getting her mouth to close. She was scared to go near him. Not because of his looks. Quite opposite. He stood as tall as a grown man and not the scrawny sixteen year old nerd. The angles of his face reminded her of the male models from the Calvin Klein blue jean ads. His dark hair had gone from wild and messy to long and smooth. But his eyes were the most amazing change. She couldn’t remember what they looked like before because they were less than memorable. But she’d never forget them now. They were the rarest color of silver/grey. They were perfectly oval and large. The dominance of the rare color plus their size were hypnotic. His dark eyebrows framed them, magnifying their uniqueness She couldn’t tear her gaze away from them.
“It’s probably the meds they had me on,” he said. But he didn’t believe his own words. He knew something had changed. A lot had changed. He could see without his glasses. The pain was gone and he stood taller than Karri.
“Do you have a mirror?” he asked.
After she handed him the compact, he took one look in the mirror, lost his balance and stumbled. He saw another person staring back at him. There was no resemblance to the boy who entered the hospital beaten. He waved his hand in front of the mirror, trying to see if the image would mimic his gestures. And it did. He touched his hair, seeing if he could feel it. It was long, straight and dark. He grabbed wads of the thick hair and pulled on it. It was no dream, as the tug stung his scalp. He tried to blink away the new person’s image but when it didn’t go a
way, his legs gave out and he fell on the bed, hitting his head on the brick wall.
“Oww, that hurt,” he said, letting out a yelp.
Karri made a move to help him, but she stopped. A part of her wanted to help him of the room and another part of her wanted to run out of the room screaming. Just as she took a step towards him, Lisee came in the room.
“You have to leave,” Lisee said and went to his bed. She grabbed his wrist and took his pulse. “Visiting hours are over.”
“Excuse me, but it’s ten-thirty in the morning. What gives?” Karri replied.
“What gives is that I’m the nurse and I get to say when you leave. Now leave!”
“I’m not leaving and you can’t make…”
Deakon stood up, interrupting them. “Ladies, please stop,” he said, looking at them tenderly.
Like magic, Lisee closed her lips, folding her hands in her lap, and Karri sat in the chair. He remained standing, astounded by the control he welded over them. No longer was he the puny kid that people shrugged off or laughed at. He transformed into a new being. A being that, among other things, controlled people’s free will. He looked down at the bracelet and something told him that it caused the mutation.
CHAPTER 10
When Lisee brought in the release papers for him to sign, she handed him a plastic bag with used clothes in it. She explained that they were left over from a previous patient. Deakon didn’t ask who they came from, fearing that the guy’s mental disorder was worse than Brad’s. He kept silent and put them on. What choice did he have?
Before his parents arrived to pick him up, he sat on the bed biting his thumb nail while his foot tapped the floor in rapid beats. Would they recognize him? Heck, would they even take him home? The magnitude of his body’s change scared him. And even though he knew it was the bracelet that caused it, he never took it off. Despite himself, Deakon didn’t want to go back to the terrified boy that he had been.
