broken dreams-a seaycee story

the final chapter

Los Angeles Psychiatric Ward

Sean

__________________

"Sean?" Dr. Marymount comes in with her clipboard and her intern team. "How are you feeling today?"

"The same," I answered bitterly.

"That's better than worse," she sighed gently, scribbling something down and motioning the learning students to do the same. I hated it. I hated the way I felt. Like I was some animal in a glass cage in the zoo, being gawked at, my every move monitored, nothing going unnoticed. I couldn't live my life in peace.

It was better this way in some ways. I knew that. For my mother and my sisters, yes.

But for myself? No. I'd rather just end it all. I had nothing left. And the worst part was, I knew it. And so did everyone else, but they pretended I had stuff here left to live for, because what can you really say.....You're right, go ahead, here's some pills? No. So they keep me here, cooped up, praying I'll get better, and feigning surprise when the weekly checkups come back. No improvement, they read in ugly red lettering.

"Would you like to do your weekly checkup in here or in the conference room?" Dr. Marymount asks calmly. The conference room. Where you go when you refuse. Your wrists are clamped down to chairs and they force your jaw open to make you swallow pills that make you ease up. Spit out whatever it is you're holding in that day.

This is the first time I've ever been given the choice.

I won't talk to them. Nothing they can say can make it better.

"In here," I say, not wanting to give her the pleasure of dialing security again.

"Good," she clicks her pen and pulls up a chair. I sit on the bed sideways, my feet dangling over the edge. For a second, a glimmer of hope shoots through my body as they sway in response to gravity. They yearn to dance, then they pause, remembering that they have forgotten dance.

Well, they haven't really forgotten.

But dance reminds me of her.

So I made myself push it and all things her to the deepest, darkest, corners of my mind. Gone until they washed up in waves at 2 in the morning, causing me to scream as the doctors come running in, jabbing me with needles and hitting me with pulses, my mother flurrying in, sleepy-eyed, crying about how this isn't her boy, and she knows I'm in there somewhere, and Laura, holding my hand, begging me not to give up.

"We're going to do the questions now, Sean," Dr. Marymount says. "Are you ready?"

She treated me like I was slow. I hated it. I looked at the angry red marks that scurried up and down my wrists. Dr. Marymount's gaze followed mine and landed on them. She rolled up my sleeves. "Have you been going at it again?" she asked, concerned. "We're at the highest dosage of the anti-depressants we can give you, Mr. Lew. We need you to do your 50% now."

"Make me," I said. Her eyebrows raised, but fell. She was used to this.

"I guess that answers my first question," she sighed again. "Now remember, Sean-"

"Complete honesty gets complete recovery,"I regurgitated the sloppy phrase she tossed at me every week. Like a limp tennis swing, I'd hit it back to her, but barely so it crossed the net. She knew I didn't care. I knew that she thought I was a waste of space, and that the only way my soul would ever find peace again was in death, but I also knew that my parents were paying her too much to say that upfront. So it was our silent agreement that it would go like this until the end, she'd act surprised when one day I was gone, I didn't tell her when I was planning on doing it so she couldn't exercise her legal obligation to stop me, and she murmured a soft "He's making progress" to my mom and sisters every week.