PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT

CHAPTER THREE

The next day I'm late to work. I finally fall asleep at two in the morning, have a dreamless sleep and wake up at 8:00. My shift starts in five minutes so I blearily run out the door in my pajamas with my phone, bag and keys and drive myself half asleep to HMF. The first thing I notice when I see the girls eating breakfast is that Elle is gone. Maria, a nurse rushes up to me and pulls me off to the side.

"Where were you for the first twenty five minutes of your shift? The girls all woke up and asked where you were," she hisses at me.

"Woke up late. Listen, Maria, can you search the archives and see if anyone named Zanna stayed here? And where's Elle?"

"What? Do you have a last name for Zanna?"

"No, but I know what she looks like."

She looks at me like I'm crazy. "You don't know where Elle is? Have you not been in touch with Joy and Robert?"

"No, they're in charge of the intensive care ward why would I need to- oh..."

She nods. "Yeah. She flipped out yesterday and tried to strangle herself with her bedsheets. We tied her down for the rest of the night, but she somehow escaped and we found her holding a broom. She snapped the goddamn stick in front of us- that girl was thinner than the fucking broom- and impaled herself on it. She turned even paler than she did yesterday in that room when she went cuckoo and blood started gushing everywhere. We had to rush her up there in that same wheelchair because there wasn't a stretcher on hand. Why aren't there ever any goddamn stretchers on hand?" Maria stops to breathe and I must look like an idiot, standing there with my mouth open, because she just looks at me. "Damn, white girl, you look almost exactly like Elle. How are you fazed by this, you're a fucking psychiatrist."

"Well I don't work with psycho patients who snap brooms and stab themselves with 'em everyday!" I defend myself.

"Fair," Maria decided. "Anything you can figure out with your psychiatrist powers?"

"What? I can barely figure out what happened yesterday in the office."
"I've got an idea," pipes up Stephen, who's been listening in. "Maybe it's a ghost. Whoooooooo..."

"What?" Maria and I ask simultaneously, then, also in synchronization, we sigh as we see Stephen's bloodshot eyes, red nose, shaky hands and one long pinky nail on his left finger.

"Go home, Stephen. You can't work at a mental hospital and snort crack."

He shrugs and continues typing away at his computer.

I leave Maria in charge and go do my rounds in the boys' ward. I only have two patients today, the other doctors are in charge of the rest. Jamie, this African-American kid, is new, so he fidgets in his chair while he tells me about the dream he had last night. He tells me about the concert Dream Jamie went to, how the stage blew up and demon back up dancers escaped into the crowd, how he got up close and personal with one of them, how he died. I CBT the hell out of him and he leaves with his hands shaking. Patrick, the other guy I'm meeting with just doesn't talk at all. I leave early because I don't need to do anything else, and to be honest, I deserve a break. I'm so tired that I want to take a nap when I get home, but I'm terrified that I'm going to end up in dream world again. Eventually, the weariness takes over me and I fall asleep.

constructive criticism appreciated :)