Free In Litchfield - Nicky Nichols x female oc (OITNB)

Chapter Fifteen

Author's Note: Sorry for a late update! This one's a long chapter to make up for it. Also, I've decided to try and update once a week from now on unless I have extra time to write. Anyways, enjoy! :)

She spends most of her time pacing back and forth in the cell, mumbling the lyrics to songs underneath her breath. Her feet have become numb and sore from walking, but the pain helps her stay in reality. She only sits when she doesn't think she can stand anymore.

Each day, she does push ups and sit ups and every other exercise she can come up with until she physically can't stand anymore, and when she regains her strength, she goes right back to pacing.

Lacey had heard plenty of stories of women going crazy in here, and she wasn't going to let that be her too.

Especially since they had found her with heroin, so she likely had a lot more time left in here.

She had no idea how many days she'd been in there, but she was estimating about 13 days.

They hadn't given her any information of what time it is, and the inmates in her hallway were never silent, so she slept only when she got tired. She realized on the first night that going to sleep at the usual time was hopeless; it was impossible to sleep on the concrete below her unless she was already about to collapse when she lay down.

When she would run out of songs, Lacey would recite the state capitals. After she ran out of those, she moved on to the county capitals. She had gone back to strategies she had used back when her dad used to lock her in the basement for weeks at a time.

She had gone through almost every category of information she could think of, and recited them again and again and again.

Lacey had probably gone through the whole thing a hundred times by now, but still, she didn't stop no matter how bored of it she got.

"Georgia, Tbilisi. Germany, Berlin," she mumbled under her breath, trailing her fingers along the rough bricks on the wall. "Greece, Athens. Hungary, Budapest. Ice–" Lacey paused when she heard a muffled noise, one that didn't sound like another prisoner, and glanced around. She listened, hearing footsteps walking down the hallway. Sighing, she started reciting the capitals again, figuring they were just bringing down another inmate. "Iceland, Reykjavik. Ireland, Dub–"

This time, she was cut off by the sound of someone banging on her cell door. Lacey whirled around just in time to see a guard sliding open the red door.

"Inmate, you're coming with us," the man grunts harshly. He holds handcuffs up and swings them side to side.

She raised her eyebrows, wondering what this could be about. Lacey would be shocked if she was already getting out.

Reluctantly, she walked towards him, holding her arms out as he slipped the cuffs around her wrists. He grabbed her arm tight enough to leave a bruise and started pulling her out of the cell, another guard shutting the door behind her.

They turned left around the corner, and Lacey's shoulders dropped. They had come from the hallway on the right. That would be the direction they were going if they were letting her out. She wasn't expecting to get out of SHU, but she was certainly hoping for it.

They walked down an empty hallway lined with gray doors, and then the guard knocked on one.

They led her into an interrogation room, and she was hit with a rush of deja vu.

Lacey had been on the other side of this situation so many times, she almost expected there to be a suspect on the other side of the table waiting for her to interview.