It Hurts

Mental Hospital

Shuffling through sheets, her hand found the baby blue diary buried below the pale white as her thoughts took over her. He did not quite understand why she was here, but this was not an abnormal day for Josephine.

I'm here for the bandages to be changed... and for my brain to be fixed.

Apparently, I am all kinds of fucked up.

No genius was needed to point out the elephant in the room; the mounds of bandages that surround her thighs. The wrapping protruded from beneath the flimsy blue and white hospital gown, giving insight into the previous night.

These bandages are itchy. I know there will be scars but I don't remember who did this to me.

The smell of peppermint tea filtered through her mind as memories surfaced.

There were chunks of my coffee mug. Everywhere. When I woke up that is. It has been hours since then, maybe even a full day.

This must have been Josephine's fourth time in the mental hospital since the incident, yet Josephine was rarely present.

My therapist says I am missing something, something important is missing. Does it matter? No. If anything is important, I would obviously remember it.

Days pass with Josephine being silent and completely enrapt in her own thoughts. Individual therapy turns into group therapy as the therapists realize she will not speak to them one on one.

As group therapy rolls along, I get an urge to be sad. The walk to a bathroom is short, no one questions it because sometimes, a gal has got to go.

The second stall on the left will always hold a place to Josephine. It seems to be where she gravitates, no matter the location of the bathroom.

Pants never fully removed but the bandages underneath did. Someone hurt this girl's body. Josephine must have had a real bad life for someone to hurt her this bad. I think someone is still after her, they wrapped her bandages quite thickly, but, I am quite persistent and of course, they all got removed.

Josephine sat in the back of her mind, watching her life play by her as if her own thoughts had no control. She could hear them though, the person in charge. Josephine had heard this voice before and trusted it. She knew they meant no harm.

When I left the bathroom, feeling both airy and cold, I was tackled. Some person in white grabbed me, held me down. I didn't move. I didn't need to. I was not in trouble! Why are they hurting me?

Josephine could hear every thought, jotting it down against her hand as if to remember it for later. She felt safe in this cocoon of darkness, safe knowing someone else was out there, fighting for her. She could not quite remember the events that lead her here either.

Soon her outfit is pink, maybe more red. People in white rush in, my group members are all staring at me. What did I do wrong?

Looking down, Josephine's vision changed from blurs of white and red to her blood stained legs pouring its warm red liquid out at a speed unsafe to someone her size.

Someone stabbed me. No. Not stabbed. Poked. A poke that led me to blackness.

Being knocked out is something Josephine used to ache for. The tranquility of pure relaxation. Many people give up once a body is limp, but the whispers from outside this body burned Josephine's heart in a jolting sensation, causing her eyelids to drift open.

As light seeps in, my arms feel heavy. I pull, but nothing moves. Except for the feet of the people talking.

"Josephine"