Time

by Livian Grey

  Jeffrey wakes just before five, the silence louder now. He showers, grooming himself for his appointment, thinking if he looks neat and tidy, his doctor will let him go home. He prepares to leave, in a way. He’s not living out of his bag, but he’s ready to go at a moment’s notice. He has to keep his room tidy, make his own bed and collect his own linen and towels from the closet down the hall. He’s to wash his own clothes in the shared laundry. It’s not a cakewalk, but some find all this easier on the inside than the outside.

  It’s why they get so comfortable; why they keep coming back for more? A security blanket paid for by the state.

  Alone at dawn, he smokes and thinks of his apartment: where he left things before he stumbled to the emergency room, if he locked his front door properly. He imagines he’s been robbed. He’ll come back to find his whole place ransacked and the shoebox containing his emergency cash — seventy-three bucks and some loose change — will be missing. They won’t take his laptop, it’s too old, or his TV. He has nothing of value but that never stopped a crook from trying.

  It’s only a matter of hours until his appointment, but the minutes dragging turn this time into the length of two days. Impatience almost gets the better of him, but he refuses to pace or to appear upset. His outsides will not match his insides.

  The door to the yard creaks open and Carolyn steps out, still in her sweater, her hair a little messier but still in the braid she made the night before. She takes out a smoke and lights it, not seeing him seeing her.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  She doesn’t jump. Her responses are dulled. ‘Hey.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I feel like shit. They always give me way too much.’ She takes a drag, moves in beside him and tucks her free hand under her thigh. Her knee jiggles, like always. She’s just a walking bag of nerves, really.

  ‘There should be fresh coffee soon,’ he says, listening out for the cart that rattles into the cafeteria every morning to be attacked by the inmates; their privileges finally awarded to them. They’ll leave empty stevia packets on the floor, spill the decaf grinds all over the cart, making a mess like children at kindergarten attacking the paints with glee.

  No decorum. No dignity.

  ‘I was right about Josh,’ she says, talking about the boyfriend at last. ‘Told me he was seeing someone else. I wish I hadn’t cried.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ she snaps, but her anger isn’t for him, and it’s really not for Josh. She’s her own worst enemy. ‘Damn him. I wish he hadn’t gotten to me like that.’

  ‘Someone will, at least once. If you let them.’

  ‘I should be alone.’

  Such a typical thing for a girl her age to spout after a heartbreak like this. But she’s more honest now than before. ‘I think some people are born to be alone. There’s not someone for everyone, that’s a cruel trick people play on you to give you hope.’

  ‘Better you learn it now.’ For half a second he believes this is a thought, but he’s said it aloud. Her reaction confirms this. He’s too accustomed to solitude, his failure to engage others in conversation has made him absentminded.

  ‘When did you learn it?’ She’s engrossed, she wants to learn from him how to be singular. What a horrible education this is, he thinks. And the thought behaves itself this time and stays locked behind his teeth.

  ‘Early,’ he states. ‘When I was nine or ten. Your first experience of humans comes from your parents. How they behave represents how all men and women behave, that’s your primary marker. It usually tarnishes your further interactions. It might enrich them, but this is rare.’

  ‘My parents are pretty neutered emotionally. It may as well be the fifties. I think they’ve told everyone I’ve gone to Europe for a month.’

  ‘You can try to learn from their mistakes.’ He doesn’t want to go into specifics. These people known as his family don’t affect him as severely as they once had. He’s come to consider them strangers, himself an emotional orphan deprived of understanding. But he doesn’t wear this like an open wound to gain sympathy, he accepts it as a truth and he’s comfortable with it now.

  His lesson continues and she listens attentively, making notes in her head. His bungled experiences become markers for her future, things to be wary of. Never expect this, don’t ask for that. Promises are hollow when delivered drunk and desperate.

  ‘Well, I already knew that.’

  ‘You’ve got your head screwed on tight enough,’ he says. ‘You’ll be alright.’

  ‘I just want to get back to school. I want to graduate and leave town. I don’t get why I need a month in this place first. I’m sure there are other girls my age who went overboard with some pills and didn’t need a month in a psych ward, right?’

  ‘Depends how severe a case you are when they get to you.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you came here? I mean, you must’ve thought shit was going south badly enough to run to a hospital and admit yourself.’

  ‘It’s what they suggested I do. I don’t see myself doing it again.’

  Her smoke is dead so she stubs it out on the bench that’s covered in scratches of graffiti.

  ‘What do you do for work?’ she quizzes him.

  ‘Mechanic. If I’m here, I just don’t get paid.’

  ‘But you’re smart, well read. Why do that for a living?’

  ‘It’s what I can do, it pays the bills.’ He’s taken to his pouch again, purely working on instinct as he crafts himself another cigarette. The two of them could happily sit there all day smoking and talking, and he finds this appealing and worth hanging around for.

  ‘High school dropout?’ she continues.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ This isn’t a shame point for him. School was a torturous place and to relieve himself of this nightmare, he dropped out and learned a trade. ‘I’m not unique in any way.’

  ‘No, you’re leaving something out,’ she says. ‘Something painful.’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone have something painful they don’t want to talk about?’ He lights his smoke and considers confessing. He doesn’t bring it up often.

  ‘My sister died,’ Carolyn says, beating him to the punch. ‘About two years ago. Killed herself. They think I have what she had. They’re not sure yet.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re locked up, you’re a high-risk case.’

  ‘I feel like I’m being punished for it. Like I’ve been a bad seed.’

  ‘Did she feel the same?’

  ‘I think so… We were close as kids, but when I left for college we stopped talking. She’d already left town after high school and she fell off the map for almost a year. We heard she was moving north, then about a month later, the local police called my parents to say she’d been found gassed in her car. My parents fessed up after the funeral that she was diagnosed with severe depression. And it wasn’t like I was clueless, I knew she wasn’t well… I just wasn’t allowed to talk about it.’

  ‘What happened with you and the pills?’

  ‘I don’t know…’ She squirms under his scrutiny and the skin of her neck grows red. ‘I don’t think I wanted to die… not really. I thought I did… It’s too hard to explain.’

  ‘I know.’ He gets it. She may not believe him, but he does.

  She’s taken out another cigarette of her own and has it between her lips, but her fingers shake too much for her to light it. He offers his assistance as an apology for his bluntness.

  ‘You’re not very good with people, are you, Jeffrey?’

  ‘Not really.’

  They’re interrupted by another nurse leaning through the door. ‘Carolyn. Meds.’

  She cradles her head and groans. ‘No. No more.’

  ‘C’mon, hon. You know the rules.’ The woman beckons her over with diminished patience. Carolyn obeys but not without protest, and this carries on inside, her complaints becoming col
ourful insults.

  Jeffrey goes inside to watch from a distance. Any other time this happens, he’s simply watching a play or some tired daytime drama; it’s pointless and always ends badly. They have to get physical with her, and she’s dragged away to her room. A male orderly, known for barking orders and getting tough on recalcitrant inmates, heads after the squabble.

  Distracted by his nurse then, Jeffrey takes his meds without a fuss, restless now about this altercation and Carolyn’s mistreatment. She’s required by law to take the medication. No amount of refusal will be tolerated.

  The zookeepers are better at keeping people locked up than they are with secrets. They speak of the patients as if they’re so removed from reality it won’t matter if they make a throwaway comment or disclose treatments to another doctor in earshot of someone else. He knows much more about Carolyn than he should because his ilk doesn't complain. No one listens to subhumans.

  He hides in his room until his doctor summons him. The office is in another part of the hospital, and he follows at a step behind his nurse as she takes him through the corridors, signing off on his movements from the ward. He thinks it’d be easier for them to all be lowjacked; tagged and monitored without pen and paper recording their locations. That way, if they’re lucky enough to escape, the cops can bring them in quicker. Checks are made every fifteen minutes, this isn’t a fiction, it’s how it works. Whoever is assigned to you has to check where you are at least every fifteen minutes, the time extending only when you have proven you can be trusted.

  He’s left in an