Elliot's Heartbeat

Dawson Reid White

"It's a heartbeat" he whispered as he slid the wire ring onto my finger. Then he was gone, just like that my rock was gone, taken away from me without my consent and I wasn't ready for it.
This isn't a love story, it's a story about a girl who needed somebody and a boy who craved to be needed.
The next few months, well years rather I never took that ring off, it never left my finger. Even when it was turning my skin green, I didn't care.
Dawson was gone but he left me this... this ring that was supposed to mean something but I hadn't figured it out yet. All he had told me before he left was "it's a heartbeat." Those were the words that constantly ran through my head. I think deep down, I knew why Dawson had left me with a heartbeat but there were so many things it could mean. Was it his heartbeat, was it mine, or was it just an extra one when I needed it to get through a hard time that he wouldn't be there for? If Dawson was with me now, he would have said it meant all of those things, but I needed to know what it meant to him. Was it a promise that he would be back or was it something to remind me of him because he knew I would never see him again.
***
I live and have lived in Crestwood's Mental Institute since I was 13. My parents sent me here because I had stopped talking and to be honest I couldn't talk even if I wanted to, the doctors said it was because my "brain wouldn't let me." To be frank my parents didn't want to have to deal with my newly formed mental disability, and didn't want me to jeopardize their reputation in the high class community we lived in, so they shipped me off four states away to a place that scared the living shit out of me.
This place was not meant for kids, the first year of me being there I had only seen people that were in their late 20's and older. That first year, my designated nurse, Maggie, taught me sign language and was the only friend I had in this god forsaken place. It took me months to get used to the murderous screams and scratching noses coming from the hallways at night. I didn't get a proper night's sleep until my 3rd or 4th month of being here. It was like hell on Earth and I only felt safe with Maggie near. I was told by the director to go play in the common area and stop being such a trouble maker... he had obviously never spent time inside the mental institute he was in charge of. The common area had a T.V, a radio, board games, couches, stuff like that but there were unsaid rules about the common area.

If Linda was in there you couldn't touch the radio or she'd go bat shit on you and try to claw your eyes out. Even when the only thing playing was static or white noise, but that's what she liked I guess. If you wanted to watch the T.V. you had to wait until Harris left for his nap or got bored of his cartoon to turn the channel or he would start flipping tables and screaming at you. Harris had broken 3 T.Vs since I had been there and even more before me, but he would never hurt a living thing. He was a sweet man and absolutely adored animals but when it came to his cartoons, you either stayed clear or watched them in silence. You couldn't touch the Game of Life because Carol thought that it really controlled life and if we messed with it, we would screw up the universe or something so that game was off limits. Seeing as that was the game no one touched, it looked brand new, unlike all of the other games that were missing pieces and usually had weird stains on them, so I tried to stay clear of them. The couches also had stains on them but the nurses swore that it was just marker stains and things like that, but Maggie told me that that wasn't true and that she wouldn't even sit on those couches if she was offered 1,000 dollars.

I usually just spent my time hanging out with nurses and the "orderlies," but everyone knew that the title "orderlies" was just a fancy way to say security guard. Most of them didn't know sign language so I taught them the basics and pretty soon we were able to have conversations together, even though I had to sign really slowly, but it wasn't too bad.

One day me and one of the orderlies Jake, who is a 40 year old man with the maturity of a 16 year old boy, were having wheelchair races on the 5th floor, that was basically deserted, and he got a call on his walkie talkie and said we needed to leave because there was a new arrival that was putting up a fight. I didn't really like seeing people come in, it made me sad because they were either really confused and frustrated or really sad and angry and you could just tell that they really didn't want to be here. Maggie said I wasn't allowed to be up on this floor without supervision because I wasn't supposed to be up here in the first place but she knew that I was a bored 14 year old girl and needed to do something other than stare at blank walls, so she said it would be a harmless secret between Jake, herself and I. None the less I was forced to go back to second floor with Jake.