Source of Tomorrow

Chapter One: Eric

The season change was paranormally noticeable. I could notice every change on my daily morning walks. Every morning was different; everything seemed to change overnight. One morning was cold like winter. The trees were still dry and colorless. This morning, however, the sky is illuminated with pink, purple and orange. The trees are blooming with the white flowers, and some leaves already turning green. The grass was vividly green, and the yellow flowers appeared at every corner. It was no longer cold, but rather warm with a cool breeze. To me, that meant a better year, and a bad tornado season.

Finishing my walk and closing my notepad, I check my watch realizing I will be late to work if I do not head there now. I stand from the blue bench I always sit at. It is where I rest to write down every morning. It is the only place where I can notice the changes around me and keep up with the year.

I keep thinking of how the middle of March feels like a mixture of May and December. You cannot keep up with Oklahoma's weather. I knew that if it felt like this now, then the warm and cold will mix greatly for a tornado. I will have to buy a tornado shelter soon.

As I look down at the cracked cement, I spot something glistening in the morning sun out of the corner of my eye. I walk over to it and pick up a gold key. It rested outside of the drug store where I usually buy my monthly pack of cigarettes. The key does not look like it belongs to a house or anything important. I might as well keep it for my favorite patient. He is my favorite because he has been with me for so long.

The boy was eight years old when I first met him. He walked in quiet and hidden behind his worried mother. Many parents who bring their children to a child psychiatric hospital are worried. It is the last place they want to see them. The kids come in with the usual backstory of being an only child and a single parent. He didn't have this story. His mother explained that he never uttered a word, and when he did he gave the same speech the exact same way. Both his parents were caring, non alcoholic, didn't travel without him and had him in a normal public school. They only wanted the best for him.

At first the only thing I noticed that was different was that he lived in a normal household. He looked the same as all the kids that stumbled into my door, besides the fact that he looked at you as if you held something of his and he was waiting for you to admit it. That was how he looked at everyone that walked past him. I ignored that, keeping in mind he is in a mental hospital.

I asked that his mother come once everyday to make him more comfortable. She did for one year, until I asked her to stop when I noticed there was no difference. She insisted on seeing him, and came once a week only for one hour. She became aware that her presence did not help him even then, so she decided to stop coming altogether. His mother committed suicide two months after she left him, and his father put a bullet through his head three days after his mother.

I gave him a journal to write his thoughts down in, but no ink was pressed on the pages. I give my mute patients a journal because that is usually the only way I end up getting them to speak. The boy thought that I would try to find it and read it if he wrote anything in it. He was right.

I've about given up on him and sent him to another doctor, but I know that would do even more damage to him. So I walk to his room everyday and talk to him about anything I possibly can to get a reaction out of him. I tell him stories of other kids I worked with, and who have left because they talk to me and are cured. Not even the idea of leaving gets his attention. I don't blame him. He does not have any other family now.

There was once not long ago when I was telling him a story about a patient who liked to talk about keys as if they were living things. I thought it was funny to think of keys that way, but the word "key" captured his attention making him look up to me curious. It startled me at first because he has never given any sign of life, and then he suddenly looks up at me because of one word.