Freedom of Sketch

The Tour

Tori's smile wavers. "I can't see you causing any problems. Anyway," she claps her hands together, "let me show you to your room." We turn left after the nurse's station and walk past door after locked door. The walls are covered in motivational posters, a Self-Esteem! (meant to be crowed with enthusiasm) Board, uplifting essays, and positive drawings - lots of rainbows, dogs, trees, and blue clouds against white skies. I glance up to see several pyramidal skylights, the dark winter night scratching at the glass.

My new room is a modest, sparsely-furnished rectangle. It carries in the clinical color pattern from the halls, and contains the basics: three beds, three nightstands, three plastic pitchers of water, twin bulletproof windows overlooking rural oblivion. The beds aren't like anything I've ever seen before. They are constructions of light polished wood, narrow and low to the ground without any kind of crawlspace underneath, and are topped with vinyl mattresses, no springs inside. The bedding consists of threadbare sheets and waffle-weave blankets in a dozen shades of white. Built into the wall between the two windows is an alcove that functions as a closet, with six shelves. A colorful heap of wrinkled clothes rests on the bottom shelf, which is labeled "Riley G."

I glance toward the far left bed, where the blankets twist off of the mattress and curve to the floor in a thick, knotted S. The wall around the bed is a collage of creased photos, info flyers about various mental disorders and medications, and - I lean in for a closer look - what appear to be different therapeutic art projects, all of them featuring big-headed aliens with almond-shaped black eyes. This in addition to the scarring on the bed and nightstand suggest that the left-side occupant has been living here for a while.

The two remaining spaces are ready to serve brand-new crazy people. Bedding has been bleached and ironed, surfaces disinfected, battle scars spackled and repainted. Tori points to the middle bed. "Home sweet home," she remarks. With a voice like that, it's difficult to tell when she's being sarcastic. "We expect you guys to make your beds every day and just generally keep things clean, but as you can tell," she gives Riley's bed a very deliberate glare, "people sometimes forget."

I look up and survey the ceiling. The lights and vents are built flat against it in sturdy metal frames with tamper-proof screws. "Is that a camera?" I point to a small black dome mounted in the far corner. A red light inside blinks on and off.

Tori nods. "You can never be too careful," she says. "That's why you need to make sure you go into the bathroom to change clothes."

We stand there in silence for a moment, staring deep into the eye of the camera. I imagine a bewildered security guard off somewhere, staring back at us over a mug of coffee.

Tori: "Speaking of the bathroom, let me show you where that is."

We retrace our steps straight down what I now can safely assume is the main hallway. Tori leads me past the nurse's station, her blue sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. Aside from the very quiet shhhk shhhk shhhk-ing coming from my rubber-treaded footsteps, I am as silent as a ghost. We pass more shut doors, save for two adjacent ones on the right, which spill long rectangles of light out into the corridor.

"That's The Lounge," Tori says, breezing past the first room. "It's where everyone goes when they have free time."

I catch a glimpse of the room's colorful interior. My heart skips a beat when I see the other girls, heads drooping, faces covered, knees pulled to their chests. How am I going to fit in with them?

Tori stops when she reaches the next door. "Here it is," she announces.

The community bathroom is a yellow-tinged, tile nightmare with individual shower and toilet stalls. The off-white shower curtains are slick with soap scum. I poke my head in and look to the left at a row of sinks and freckled, shatter-proof steel mirrors. I nod. "Great. Just... great."

Tori hides a smile behind her hand. "I totally understand," she laughs. "Let's move on and get you something to eat." She gestures for me to follow her back down the hallway. "You must be starving."

I shrug. "Not really, especially after seeing that." I'm empty, but it's not a hungry-empty. I feel like one of those hollow chocolate Easter bunnies that has nothing but air inside its smooth body cavity. My insides are scattered around the city: inside my high school, on the couch in Dr. Fox's office, on the ambulance stretcher, in the hospital exam room, the trail of my blood lengthening steadily each day. I'm going to need much more than food, smiles, and kind words to fill me back up.

Tori drags me to the cafeteria anyway. It's smaller than I expected for a building this size, but Tori tells me that the eating disorder patients eat on a different meal schedule than those who are here for other illnesses. "They need more support and supervision," she explains.

"How many patients are there?" I say, sinking into a plastic chair.

Tori unlocks a wide door at the back of the room and disappears. I hear her shuffling behind the big metal curtain that covers the window where I presume food is served. She emerges with a Styrofoam box, a sealed cup of fruit punch balanced on top. "We can hold thirty five," she says, setting the box in front of me. "But right now I think we've got twenty nine."

I open the box to the soggy remains of what might have been an edible meal at one point. The flat sandwich leaks rubberized cheese over most of everything else. Tori watches me, chin in her hands, as I rake my lukewarm vegetables into little piles with my plastic fork; corn on the right, lima beans on the left. "You don't like veggies?" she asks. She sounds like a kindergarten teacher.

"I'm just not hungry," I sigh.

She slides the cup of fruit punch toward me. "At least drink something," she presses.

I struggle to peel back the foil lid and end up picking it off in tiny pieces. The juice is made of pure sugar, which collects on the surface of my teeth like moss. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. "How long do people usually stay here?"

Tori averts her eyes in a way that makes the fruit punch in my stomach turn into acid. "Well, there's no set length," she says carefully. "It varies greatly from person to person. Some are sicker and just need more time. Then there's the whole health insurance issue... some plans pay for more inpatient days than others, and some don't even offer residential benefits."

"Maybe like a week? Two weeks?"

She shrugs. "It just varies."

A series of piercing screams suddenly erupts from the hallway. The noise pulls up the hairs on the back of my neck. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Tori flies out of her chair and blazes through the cafeteria toward the shrill sound, which has reached an octave capable of shattering glass (maybe not the bulletproof stuff they've got going on here, though). She yells at me to stay put, so naturally, I get up and wander over to stick my head out the door.