Rowyn's Lullaby

Chapter Thirteen: Epilogue

Months after the escapade to find the suicide note, I woke up one morning in the hospital having no recollection of how I got there. This time it was not the one where they brought me stuffed animals and cards. It was seven thirty when the staff would switch on the bright fluorescent lights to remind me that sleeping was over, and another day had to begin.

Instead of stuffed animals, I was stuffed with medication, and food was forced into me. I would sit and stare for hours in a chair in the sitting room, thinking about how I got myself there and why Mr. Williams said I wrecked him.

I was clawing my arms when Carter showed up for a visit. He warned the nurses about my habit because all the other patients were too consumed in their own trances to notice the blood on my forearms. After they cuffed my arms behind my back, I sat down across from him in a private room.

The first time Carter was there, I looked at the clock, and it was two in the afternoon. He was telling me about how he was glad to turn eighteen so he could visit me alone. He said he missed me. He said Arabella's mom was nervous about her seeing me so she could not come with him. She was starting her senior year. I worried if she would ever come see me after she graduated.

When I glanced at the clock again, it was five, and my hands were no longer pink and raw but smoother and paler. I faced Carter again, and his chin was covered in rough fur. The millennium had changed outside, but the inside of my mind still thought it was 1998. He was leaning forward in his chair and asking, "Wrenn, can you still hear me? I'm trying to tell you that your mom and dad are coming next week."

I nodded my head, and, in a flash, he had switched places with my mom, only she could make it. She was trying her best to expand my mind about the outside world. My mom's new cellular device was humming the entire time, and it was aggravating me and the guards. When she leaned over to turn it off, she frowned and said, "Oh, dear, it's your dad. You know how he couldn't come today? Don't you? He had to go to the doctor's office for an exam."

With a stone face, I sat unresponsive through every meeting with my friends and family. Arabella came frequently over her holidays when she was in college.  She filled my mind about what it would have been like to go to college. When she met that prick from her co-ed soccer team, her visits were sparse. Every time she came, she looked five pounds heavier and had little to say with me. Her life was becoming less common than mine in the psych ward.

My father died of cancer in the outside world of 2002, but it was still 1998 in my mind. My mother's fashion had changed so much by 2005. She found a new man and retired early to somewhere in Florida. Carter was the only one who still kept coming on a monthly basis while my mothers were every three months or so.

We would mainly discuss what was taking place in his life. He eloped with Tobias in 2004 and had been happier ever since. He stopped caring what other people thought about him. He even started paying for college when he decided to become an engineer instead of a lawyer like his parents wanted him to be. Very seldom did we bring up the subject of Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams became a relic of our teenage years before the turbulent years of adulthood took over.

"What day is it out there?" I asked and clasped my hands in my lap. My hands had not seen much sunshine in a long time. I could see my violet veins protruding through my porcelain white skin. I spent most of my time inside writing or reading books. I had no money for my own use, but selling the rights to any of the fantasies I wrote made enough profit to keep me there until it was finally time to leave.

Carter leaned back in his chair impatiently. He was typically patient with me, but I had already asked three times what day it was. I wanted to be sure that of the day I was finally going to be released on the second of January.