PTSD & Craft

Chapter One - Begin Again

When you think about an inpatient facility, what do you think of? Do you think of cozy chairs, pastel colored walls, artwork that evokes the mind? Or do you think of plastic; plastic chairs, plastic cutlery, even just the smell of plastic, following you everywhere?

Of course it's different at every facility, but it's hard to tell what you're getting into until you're already in there. The front office always looks nice. The people who talk to you and do all your paperwork are empathetic, caring, and ask all the right questions. What you don't realize is they're asking all the right questions to get to your insurance plan; whatever will get them enough nights to pay their own bills.

Chloe Newman happened to go to the plastic facility. Even worse, it wasn't just plastic. It was fences with barbed wire on top, it was sharing a room with someone who's coming down from their drug of choice who you can't relate to because you're just there cause 'you're crazy', while in the next room there's a girl with a bulky cast on because she hurt herself. It was all white, not even calming pastel colors. And it didn't even smell like plastic. It just smelled like bleach, like they had just cleaned up a different crime scene each day. That didn't mean it was clean, though.

There wasn't anything to do except color, play card games with incomplete decks, and watch whatever movie they decided would help you 'therapeutically'. They make sure you join in all the 'healing activities', which is a work sheet they got online and printed last minute. The nurse would read you the work sheet, which says 'you got this! Just keep going!' and then dismiss you for medicine and lunch, which hopefully wasn't another tuna sandwich. Chloe did find a fun activity though; when the nurses refused to believe her room had bed bugs in it, she started plucking one up, bringing it to the nurse's station, and dropping them on the desk one by one.

Well, it was fun until they stripped her down, put her in paper scrubs, and made her sleep on a thin mattress in the 'quiet room'; a prison cell with nothing in the concrete room.

That was behind her now. Literally. She took a long drag off the stale cigarette from her purse she finally got back. She was quitting, she told herself, but after the week she had...one cigarette was allowed. Holding in the smoke until her chest hurt and her head swam, she waited for her taxi just outside the gates of the facility. She didn't want to look at it, didn't want to technically be on their grounds anymore. Standing in grippy-socks and her musty clothes they finally gave back, she hoped the taxi driver wouldn't just turn right around when he saw her.

Later on her friend, Uma (who happens to be a nurse) said she had to do some clinical work there during nursing school and said it was worse than prison. That made Chloe feel a little better about throwing her little tantrums. Those nurses were asking for them, though.

The taxi finally pulled up, right as she was finishing her last cigarette. She threw it at the gates behind her and got into the back seat.

"Where you headed?" the driver asked politely, not turning to look at her. Probably out of courtesy.

Chloe took in a deep breath before giving him the address to her mother's house.

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Bethany Newman lived very comfortably and she wanted the world to know. Yes, she came from a small town. Yes, her mother had her when she was very young. And yes, she had Chloe when she was 18 herself, but she was a polished woman. A real lady.

The sprawled McMansion was tall, intimidating, and crisp as a magazine cover. Nothing was out of place, not even a blade of grass. The flower beds on either side of the sidewalk leading from the drive to the front porch were all standing proud, as if they knew Bethany would come out with pesticides if they drooped at all. Chloe mused they were probably just as fake as everything else here. Upon feeling one of the flowers, she realized her mother just has a really good gardener that's here every day.