Day by day, the conceptions running swiftly through the web of her mind, spindling more thread to add to one's confusion. Infinite passages leading to rooms of paranoia and hurt, destruction and deterioration, a new door to open and create havoc. The girl that is simply a lost cause. No recovery cards, or words of encouragement, or smiles of hope from doctors and family surround her. There is only pity for this girl, and this compassion is tragically forlorn, for this girl, made entirely of lies and hysteria, is sure of one thing besides her mess of thoughts. This girl knows that the only thing that kept her from the grip of death is her beating, broken heart started by resuscitation. This girl knows the little red pills and barred windows are the only beings in this world keeping her and wanting her alive.
This girl is kept in a building with many faces shown to many different kinds of people. To passers by, this building is a place for the hallucinaters, the imaginers and explorers, the humans that are not safe for their world. Ignorance is bliss, no? But to the neurotics kept in this construction, it is a place of cloudiness, some of them not knowing what place this is at all. And to the recovered, the people filled with belief and strength, it is a second home now, and it is noted as second, for they are allowed after succeeded days or months of habitation here, to be let out, released and restored into ordinary life of colour and memories. They are now part of the families and passers by. All the citizens of orderly activity are in a cycle of birth, rebirth, welcoming, and age.
For this girl, the clinic is a hellhole, straining her from traditional adolescence, stealing years of her life simply due to a lattice of personality that is not considered to be usual. She fails to understand why she is not reborn, welcomed, taken by a calming wave of happiness and forgiveness, by unjudging people. But she has learnt to recognize there is no one in this generation that is forgiving to a girl like her. A girl at first sight, but an alienated foreigner within.
She walks today through the hall of a considered underworld. This is exactly what she calls the New York Hospital for the Mentally Inhabited. A purgatory of some sort. Where wiser, older, healthier men and women in sterile white coats judge her for what she thinks. Whether she is allowed freedom, a Heaven in many ways. Unfortunately, the results are 'inconclusive'. But everyone knows her outcome is failure.
Juno Merriman is this girl's name. She is eighteen under profiles, and she is as different as a young adult of her age, or a woman in general, could be.
Today is April the 3rd, and it's been four years since entering the unit. A normal day for Juno would be pill after pill, hour after hour of pointless therapy, and glimpses of social interaction when she's been a well behaved patient. But today is different. Not the opposite of ordinary, those days of electrical rehabilitation, screaming in a cramped room until she's calmed down, nights of drugged, heavy eyelids,just to control her. No, today will be something extraordinary for Juno.
It all starts with a hand on her shoulder as she is awoken by morning's heavy darkness, the human's natural blindness. It is bleak in this room, dusty and straining to the eye. "A new patient is very eager to meet you today, Juno." New patient? Meet me? All the words are infused; but they are still just as surprising. Why would anyone want to meet a girl that has been narcotized the night before, when she was ready to hit the nurses against the wall, to blow their heads in? And this so called new patient is eager? Eager? These words would be strange to anyone at the hospital. But why is she picked out of thousands? Hasty questions drown the medication's effect in Juno's mind, but this is nothing out of the ordinary. She pulls herself out of the room, and the day begins.
For most teenagers, the awaiting day is something of anticipation and desire for future plans to become present happenings. Juno remembers these times of wanting and words of 'I can't wait.' Of thirst for knowledge. But these memories are vague and distant to her, and suddenly, she is caught by these emotions again this April 3rd. It is only for a second, not even that perhaps, but it catches her off guard. However, to Juno, she hardly notices this change as she walks through the breakfast hall, sitting at her table, metaphorically labelled and barred from others. This table is a symbol of her mind. Labelled and barred from others.
Surprisingly, the day goes past with small smiles of hidden knowledge from the nurses. A usual day would be filled with scoffs and rolling eyes towards Juno's behavior, but she has decided to keep quiet, sensible almost, so her impatient patient is uncovered from mystery. She is careful never to think of them as a visitor. What a daft and idiotic idea, a visitor for poor old Juno. A human being bothered to come from the outside to speak and see her? It is unreasonable to say she has never had a visitor. The first year, she was spectated by her ex-Art teacher, Mr Edges. No one else was there for her, after all. And no other outsiders wanted to make the effort for an ignorant fuck-up. But, every month, Mr Edges was the only one Juno tried for. However, one week she took him to the bathroom, and the end of the visit was a hidden condom and no mutual desire to see the other again. That was the end of all external communication for her.
At exactly four thirty in the afternoon, Juno's daydream is broken as she is called to Room 149. Of course, she knows her way through every corridor and hallway of the unit, and gets there in four minutes. Precisely. The door is unexpectedly open, and she wanders in without a second thought. There is no description needed for the room, due to the deficiency of objects describable. However, as Juno turns to try and find the eager one, she is caught by a mirror. Mirrors are strictly forbidden from the unit, and it has been 3 years since an encounter with one. She is introduced to a small and slim, oval face, with attractive cheekbones and a good jawline. Her eyes dig deep into the reflection, the colour so blue and stern looking, a lost soul expressed in the pupils. Hair brown, but straggly and cropped. A thin nose and red lips, dark eye make up quickly put on without image.
Juno is in awe of her image, so much so she doesn't notice the second figure walk slowly into the room, her every movement slurred. He arches and fits his small back into the corner of his new room, and watches the reflection of the pretty girl as it turns and touches. After another moment of this wondrous curiosity, he allows herself to interrupt it all.
"Well?" The male voice interrupts Juno, and startles her into turning to see the origin of the sound. A boy is placed in front of her. A boy with a tall, skinny figure, fitted loosely with dirty shorts and an old white button down. His face is of an oval shape, the pale skin spotless. Full lips, brown eyes, blonde hair. Hee was so fitted, as if every part of him was a puzzle, perfectly matched with no spaces needed to be filled. "Aren't you going to say something?"
"Hello." This simple, five letter word meant nothing for the other boy in the corner, but to Juno, this was the first word she had let out for so long. Some say too long, but Juno has barely noticed.
"Hello.My name is Bird. I am 19 years of age." noted the boy who now had a name.
"I-"
"I know who you are. You think I'd invite any one here to my room? Juno. 18. Mental illness: Unidentified. 3 years of rehabilitation. Perks of fucking the secretary woman, right?"He says this as he reaches into his pocket for a lighter and a cigarette.
"You're not allowed one of them until 6 in the afternoon."
"Relax, kid, this is my last one. I'm guessing you don't remember how fucking stressful it is to be put in here on your first day? All these nurses shoving a million pieces of paper to sign in my face."
"You don't easily forget it." Juno murmured, uneasy from this interaction that has become so unfamiliar to her. Speaking to another, looking at another, connecting like this, it's all a stain in her life that she has chosen to forget. Until now. "Why did you chose me to meet?"
"You interested me. Your file said unidentified, yet you've been here three years. No one else in this entire hospital is like you. You stood out to me. So I decided to meet you."
"I consider myself lucky." Juno smirked, scuffing her feet along the floor. Wasn't it so different, to speak? Her tongue felt firey, as if all the words she could've, would've, and wanted to say were unravelling themselves. For 3 years there was nothing to tell, nothing to interest or comment, to flatter or to insult. Was this due to the company she was allowed, that welcomed her? Maybe. Or maybe it was due to the fact that so many others had shut the door in her face.
She looked up through her hair to see the boy looking up at the wall, on his bed.
"I'm kind of hoping we can talk again. Maybe then you'll have more words for me."
"Whatever." Juno remarked, already walking out the room, Bird's eyes following her silhouette.
What a strange girl, everybody would mutter, after she did the same to them. But Bird thought the opposite. Because after all, who was he to judge?
