Panic

Ella

We were sitting in the Dayroom playing cards when Holly came up and called us to head down to lunch.
"Fuck. Get ready for the worst food ever girls!" She rolled her eyes and grinned.
"Ladies! Straight line and stop talking or we will go back!" Holly yelled from the front of the line. This shit was ridiculous. She acts as if we are fucking children when I'm pretty sure every girl in our unit is over fifteen besides like one thirteen year old.
We all straightened the line and shut the fuck up. No one wanted to go back in the unit, we were all hungry, even though the food was shit, it was still better than nothing.
When we got there they were serving steak, green beans that looked like mush, bread and a baked potato. We got in line after the guys did. I guess they always got to go first because everyone kept complaining. I got myself a baked potato and bread. The "green beans" looked gross and I probably would have gotten the steak if I ate meat. We went through the rest of the line and saw they had saltine crackers so I grabbed a few. Echo did pretty much the same thing and Emma just asked for a baked potato. We sat in the left back corner, sorta near the window, close enough to see out of the window but not close enough to touch the glass. I went and got a Dr.Pepper to drink and so did Echo. Emma just got water.
"You know you aren't allowed to have soda unless it's sprite?" She smirked and took a sip of water. "Holly is gonna come over here and ask what you got then she will dump it out. Also, don't lie about what you got, she will literally take a drink of your drink if she thinks you're lying. If you're caught lying then you get on red."
"What's red?" Echo asked before I could.
"Well, technically, you would be on yellow first which is warning, but they always skip yellow and go straight to red or unit restriction. You are stuck in the unit for all activities and you wouldn't be able to come with us for lunch and stuff. Oh yeah, and no phone calls."
"Wait, so they won't let us come get our meals? So would we just not eat?" I asked and I guess I looked very worried because Emma almost spit out her water and she started laughing.
"Oh my god. You think they are going to starve you?" She laughed more. "Darling, if you get on unit restriction then they will make one of us bring you food. Chill, they aren't going starve you since a small ration of us have eating disorders."
I was legitimately worried for a second.
"Okay, ladies, time to go back to the unit, finish up lets go!" Another tech called. Pauline I think was her name. That bitch was the one that fucked up my bra. I rolled my eyes.
"What the hell? That was the shortest lunch ever!" Echo complained. Emma nodded and we all headed to throw away our left over food and give the cheap plastic trays to the people in the kitchen. I noticed that all three of us Hadn't even touched our food. I guess we all had lost our appetite.
We got back to the Dayroom and played cards again for about another twenty minutes before Pauline came out.
"Time for group!" Everyone groaned at that and then a spark hit Emma's eyes and she grinned.
"We call the couch!" She yelled and pulled us up and we ran to the back of the hall and went to the group room and Emma pulled us to the back of the room and we all sat on the couch. She sat in between us and she pulled a chair in front of us so we could lay our feet on it and get comfortable. Everyone else spilled into the room and started filling in the empty chairs.
"Emma, you always get the damn couch. Not fair dude. Some of us wanna sleep comfortably too." Said a girl I think her name was Emari.
"Oops sorry" she apologized, obviously not really sorry.
A lady with long dark hair walked in, she was wearing a nice looking pant suit and her blouse was a shade of red.
"Hey ladies, I'm back," she smiled. "Happy to see me?" She seemed to happy but everyone seemed very fond of her, maybe because she didn't treat us like prisoners or children that constantly needed supervision. "So in today's group, we are going to go around the room and say our name, how we feel, and how our day is so far, starting with Emari.
"Emari, I feel tired and my day is going fine."
"Jackie, I feel sad and my day is going alright."
"Why do you feel sad Jackie?" The last asked. After a while I kinda just tuned everything out until it was the girl beside me was taking her turn.
"Haylee I feel bored and my day is fine"
The lady looked at me waiting for my response. God I hated anxiety. My palms started to sweat and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest.
"Uh Ella, I feel tired too and my day has been rough" God I sounded so stupid I looked around to see if I had just embarrassed myself but most people weren't even paying attention.
"Why had your day been rough Ella?" the lady asked.
"It's my first day." I responded. She just gave an understanding nod and we went on to Emma.
After we all said what we had to say she told us to get comfy and she put on some weird meditating music and she started talking softly about picturing being in a cloud or something, I don't know. I tuned out.