Faith

A Day in the Life.

So I suppose I should annoyingly break this story with the mundane difficulties of this girl's everyday life, rather than just skipping to the good parts. So I shall simply tell you about an average day in which nothing happens.

Faith woke up at half three precisely, already dressed in full protective gear and cuddling the bunny, who she had made narcissistic by naming him Four, like a talisman to ward off the nightmares. She pretended to be asleep until seven, for the sake of the security cameras.

At seven, Belove wandered in and didn't stop walking until she tripped on the bed and lay on Faith until she got up. She usually landed on the rabbit, and squealed when she heard her own voice stating its positive opinion on a number.

Tainne came in to help Faith get Belove off her and the three of them went down to breakfast. Sometimes they would go quietly, but today they felt chatty and spoke of mindless things until they reached the dining hall.

The square tables looked like they were designed by a three year old on a sugar high. Brightly coloured, with splashes of other colours that sometimes complimented, but mostly clashed with, the main colour. Tainne, Belove and Faith had their own table, designed by them. It was striped black and white (Tainne's contribution) with irregular blood red spots (Faith's) and large splashes of pale green and violently neon pink up the legs and on the corners (obviously Belove's). Tainne was especially proud of it, and took great care of it. It was one of the few things the nurses liked about her.

Invariably, they all had a colourless, tasteless, grainy porridge for breakfast. The nurses were unsure about this choice but the cooks were stubborn as bulls. On holidays they were more generous, and allowed strictly controlled amounts of syrup to be distributed to the tables.

Then, class would begin. There were equal amounts of relaxed classes, such as pottery, as there were stressful classes, which would hold dominance in the regular curriculum. This contributed to them leaving school later than was usual.

Lunch was similar to breakfast except it was more varied, consisting of either grey, crumbly potatoes or unappetising, soggy brown rice paired with a type of what seemed to be poultry that was rather hard to chew. The cooks claimed that it was chicken, but nobody had forgotten that rumour about how Fiona O'Nin found a reptilian scale attached to hers. Just because she was in St. Jude's for talking to who she claimed to be the ghost of her stillbirthed brother did not remove suspicion about the sketchy origins of the lunchmeat. Nearly no one ate it now, except for Belove who pointed out that no one that they knew of had died from it yet, if she got sick she'd get out of yoga which she found testing because the teacher was scared of her and didn't try to hide it, and she was going to die anyway.

After lunch, class continued in much the same way.

The nurses were very thankful for their fifty per cent control of dinner, although the cooks had a way of twisting this arrangement in their favour. To make things easier on them, the cooks had asked for a set selection of the nurses choice food for the meal. They had chosen colourful stuff; red lettuce, carrots, peas, cherry tomatoes, etc. The cooks usually blended some of these ingredients together to make a dark coloured soup which was a side to their hunk of beef, which was invariably either burnt black or barely roasted.

After dinner they had approximately five hours to spend however they chose (within boundaries and rules) before their curfew at midnight. Faith, Tainne and Belove spent this time in various haunts, such as Tainne's dimly lit room, Faith's barely furnished room, Belove's soft walled room, or some of the less used of the slinking corridors of the High Functioning Ward. They never ventured down the dentist-white hallways that smelled of strong cleaning agent towards the place with the well-earned nickname; Scream Town. That place scared the bejaysus out of them all, but Belove especially. She whimpered and backpedaled and always fell over when within spitting distance of any of the doors with the stern smiley face notice on them.

"Hi. I think you might be lost. This door leads to people who need extra-special care, and can sometimes get confused or upset when they see strangers. If you're lost, just wave at the camera and wait for a nurse to come and get you."

For the students at St. Jude's, nothing was scarier.

Faith made a point of never breaking curfew, Tainne made a point of always breaking it, and a nurse arrived every night to take Belove back to her room at midnight precisely. They were all in bed by ten past twelve, and, most nights, all asleep an hour later.