Institutionalized Part 3

 "Heero?"  It was just a hunch, but I was right, and I got an affirmative, "Hn," from him.  He stepped into the room and closed the dor behind him, relieving the strain from my eyes that were still trying to focus.  As he made his way to his bed, the lamplight shining in from outside levelled out my eyesight and I began to make out his face.  For a while, I thought they were just deep shadows, those black places on his face.  They seemed to be an absolute nothingness in the darkness surrounding him, and I wanted to reach out and make sure it wasn't his very self disappearing into oblivion.

 He tiredly lowered himself onto the side of his bed, facing me.  His face was still barely masked in darkness, but the lamplight cast a general glow about him and I finally realized what the shadows on his face were; blood.  Blood and faint bruises that had yet to reach their peak of nauseating purple, blue, and black colorings.

 "Oh shit!"  I sat upright in bed and flung the blankets off of me.  "What the fuck happened?"  He didn't answer me with words, but as I looked into his eyes, I saw a look of defeat.  Something awful, and emberassing, and shameful had happened, and I doubted I could ever get him to tell me.  He lowered his eyes to the floor and I went to the bathroom to retrieve a wet washcloth to clean the blood with.

 When I got back, he was laying down in his bed, his arms neatly folded over his chest as if he'd been trained to do so.  I flicked on the small, bare light bulb that jutted out from the wall above his bed and winced at the brightness.  Heero didn't react.

 As I got a closer look, I realized it wasn't as bad as the darkness had made it seem.  There was a light cut on his left cheek, with a bit of bruising and swelling, his lip was busted, and there was a slightly deeper gash above his right eye than there was on his cheek.  I was expecting to see a mangled, shredded face, bleeding and oozing from every gash and scrape.  Needless to say, I was relieved that it was so mild.

 I dabbed at his lip silently as he just stared up at the ceiling.  I began feeling a slight movement underneath me as I worked, leaning over his chest intently and blotting at his cuts.  After I'd finished cleaning the cuts as much as I thought I could without causing any more pain, if he could even feel pain, I stared down at him.  The movement continued, and it began to get on my nerves.  "Heero?"  No response.  Not a flicker of anything.  Just that movement.

 I finally leaned back and looked for what was flexing underneath me.  Heero's hands were balled into fists, clenching, unclenching, mechanically.  I was stunned. I looked back at his face and deeper into his eyes than I ever had before.  They were so black and emotionless, yet somewhere, deep inside, there was a rage building, like a wave.  It would form and pull and get larger and angrier until finally it waked, and swallowed up anything in its path, pulling it under and drowning it, until the wave itself succumbed to the ebb and flow and swallowed itself.

 I returned to my bed without another word and refused to sleep that night.  Heero didn't sleep, either.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 I'm awake when the nurse comes in to take our vitals.  Same routine as yesterday.  That's what I've already come to realize about places like these.  Routine is the key to everything.  Not just routine, but repetition, practice in the way of life.  Practice makes perfect.  Do one thing so many times and it becomes such a habit, you're forced by your own mind to adhere to it.  That's the whole idea to keep us appearing sane: make us repetitive robotic clones.

 My second day here, and I already got this shit hole figured out.

 Breakfast comes so early, it seems, when you've been awake all night.  I can literally feel the weight of sleep on my shoulders and I'm certain I've got such bags under my eyes it must look as if I'm the living dead, if you could call this living.

 I refuse to look at Heero.  I'm afraid of what I might find in those eyes this morning.  Perhaps the rage has subsided and he's back to his normal, antisocial self.  Perhaps not.  I don't want to think about not, so I choose to pick at my runny-powdered egg-like substance, burnt toast, and undercooked, sloppy bacon strips in silence.  Not that you can actually pick at anything with these eating utensils.  They're plastic spoons.  That's the only thing we get to use at mealtime: forks.  They must not trust us with plastic knives.  We might try to cut ourselves, or gouge out an eye at the dinner table.  That makes my stomach churn, so I decide to change my line of thought.

 I cast a glance at Heero, who is sitting next to me, same as yesterday.  "G'morning Heero."  I know it's meager, but I have to say something, right?  How else am I ever going to know if he's plotting to kill me, or just the staff members?

 "Hn."  He slurps an egg at me.  I've yet to stomach one of those things, although I'd already nibbled at my toast.   With the way they serve the food here, I'll probably lose ten or fifteen pounds by the time I get out.

 "Did you sleep good last night?"  Geez, he can be hell to try and talk to.

 He stops poking at his food and faces me for a moment.  The bruise on his cheek has became a tannish-brown around purple.  The gash on his brow is not so lucky.  He looks like he's been hit by a truck.  "I don't sleep."

 I find this a little hard to believe, maybe even a little strange, so I quirk an eyebrow at him.  His face remains stagnant.  He must be serious.  How anyone could go without sleeping was beyond me.  I've come to find out that many things in this place are beyond me.  When you really get down to it, I'm not on the same level as many other mental patients.  I'm the sane one in the insane world.  Really.

 I don't try talking to Heero for the remainder of breakfast.

~~~~~~~~~~

 Only a week ago, if anyone had told me I'd be locked up in a mental institute, I would have punched them for implying that I needed help, yet here I sit.  I'm locked up with a bunch of crazy adolescents.  Thirteen of them, in fact.

 On a large dry erase board, which leans against a pillar in the living room, I've come to call the meeting room the living room, because it makes it feel more like home, everyone's name is written.  Next to our names is our level.  There are four different levels, and I'm on the first one, along with Heero.  This means that we're restricted to the unit.  No leaving these cramped spaces.  Level two, you can leave the unit for up to thirty minutes, with an escort.  You can go to the nurses' cafeteria for a real meal.  I'm looking forward to that.  On level three, you can leave the unit for an hour without an escort and go outside, but not leave the grounds of the hospital.  Level four, you're taken out on short excursions away from the hospital with some nurses.  I doubt I'll ever get to that level.

 To pass the time, we patients watch television in the tv room, a small, windowless room with chairs all over and a small, old television atop a beat-up tv stand.  The room smells oddly like old cheese, and I prefer to go to the living room and play some games.

 Heero's in there, sitting with his fingers interlaced on the table top.  He appears to be observing a game of chess between two other female patients.  He can look so pissed off, even if he's not.  It must just be the aura about him.

 I grab a deck of cards off the shelves to the side and sit down across the table from him.  He stares at me quietly.  "Wanna play?"  I flash the deck of cards at him and he shrugs.

 "Rummy?"  I start dealing the cards.

 "Fine with me,"  He takes up his eleven cards and proceeds to kick my ass at this game.  Normally, I win every card game I play, I'm a real card hustler, but I've got nothing on this guy.  Or maybe it's just luck.

 He beats me three to one games, and I take it well, shaking his hand after each game, when I'm actually suspicious of whether or not he's cheating, like me.

 During our fifth game, the chess game next to us erupts into a fight.  The frizzy red-haired girl jumps out of her chair as the small, mousy girl flings the chess board off the table and proceeds to curse and pick up a chair.

 The lights on the ceiling begin to flash and the familiar announcement is made, "Code pink. Code pink. South wing."  I hate whoever announces that.

 Those same familiar, nameless gorilla men come in and restrain the wailing temper tantrum, dragging her off to the seclusion room.  She'll probably be there all day.

 After the girl is dragged into seclusion, everyone gets called in for lunch.  Some stale, cold pizza, corn, and warm milk.  I'm only able to stomach the milk and a few bites of pizza, but Heero eats it all.

 I still can't stop looking at those bruises on his face.  I can't stop wondering what happened to him.  If I could, I would savagely murder each person who hit him with my bare hands, ripping out their throats and gouging out their eyes with my fingernails.  Perhaps I'm a bit to graphic when it comes to violence.  Maybe that's another reason why I'm here, but I'm not crazy.

 After lunch, I try spending some time in the tv room.  The cheese smell becomes tolerable after a few minutes, so I curl up to watch a very boring nature show.  I'm saved from my boredom when Wufei comes in and begins stalking around behind me.

 "What's up?"  I turn around and peer at him as if to say, 'Show yourself!'

 "You know what happened to your friend?"  He seems rather proud to be saying this, and I suspect that he knows something I don't.

 "Heero?"

 "The one with the bruises."  He smirks, "You know what happened to him?"

 "No."  Asshole, if you know, then just tell me.

 "I do."

 "What?"

 Wufei pulls up a chair in front of me, between me and the nature show.  He folds his arms on his knees and peers up at me.  "Well, see, in this place, which is poorly run, and poorly staffed, some rather disquieting things sometimes happen between staff and patient.  Your little friend was probably raped yesterday."

 I can't believe what I'm hearing!  They raped him!?  No!  No, they couldn't have!  I stand up from my seat and scowl down at him, giving him my evilest, threatening glare.  "If you're lying to me, I'll kill you.  If you're not,"  I grinned widely, "I'll kill whoever did it."

 He seems a bit surprised by the fact that I have openly threatened the life of a staff member.  I don't give a fuck what I threatened.  I always keep my promises, and I know the consequences that I could be facing.  Heero's worth it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 On weekends, we have group in the meeting room.  Weekdays, we have "recreational therapy."  This is when we all sit down at tables and the dump some junk out of rickety cardboard boxes.  We're expected to make something constructive out of this shit.

 So here I sit, pasting some popsicle sticks together in a pathetic attempt to make a house, or something of the like.  Quatre sits across from me, smiling cheerily and painting a lovely, serene nature scene with watercolors.  There's too much sunshine and cheeriness in that picture, and it begins to make me ill.  Trowa's cutting some figures out of paper.  He seems to be just as pissed at this place as the rest of us, minus the cheery Quatre.  I doubt he could ever truly be angry at anyone, even if they were keeping him caged like an animal.  He's been here four days, I've found out, and he's already up to level three.

 Heero nudges me in the side and gives me a look.  He tilts his head up at Wufei, who's at the end of our rectangular table, sleeping.  Heero picks up my bottle of paste and gestures to Wufei with it.  I pick up a black magic marker and smirk at him.  As I stalk over towards him silently, all I can think is "what's he going to do if he wakes up?"

 Quatre notices our little plot and gets Trowa's attention with a giggle.  Heero proceeds to apply paste to Wufei's hair as I draw a mustache and pointy eyebrows on his face.  I almost feel sorry for the guy.   He doesn't wake up, luckily.

 As RT is finishing up, and the nurse comes in to make sure we're cleaning up, Wufei begins to stir.  The other patients have already noticed what was done to him, and they anxiously await his becoming aware of his state.  I feel as if I'm about to get killed.

 Wufei goes to scratch his head and immediately jerks his hand back.  He's fully awake now and his face is turning a nice, bright shade of red as he tries to figure out what the hell's in his hair.  "Who did THIS!!!??"

 I smile sheepishly and hope none of the crazies tattle on me.  Heero, to my utter surprise, drops everything in his hands and steps forward, "I did."

 Wufei's face goes from a nice, bright shade of red to a purple haze of rage, and I think I can see smoke rising from his ears, metaphorically, that is.  He lunges at Heero, drawn back for a punch.

 Then, the stupidest thing happens, I don't even think about it, it's just a reflex.  I jump in front of Heero and catch the raging punch square on the jaw.  I see sparks for a split second, but quickly recover and shove him away from me.  I grab my jaw and glare at him, "You stupid fuck!  It was a joke!"

 Wufei's eyes get wide.  I don't think he comprehends this concept.  "A joke?"  He must not.

 "Holy shit, you dumb mother fucker!"  When I get mad, my language follows suit.  It becomes uncontrollable, so I've given up trying.

 The nurse steps between us and tells us both to get back to our rooms for time out.  Those damn gorilla guys are hovering around the door, and I choose not to face them again, so I nod and begin to leave the room.

 I catch a glimpse of Heero before I leave.  The look of utter surprise and confusion is clear, and I feel good that I stepped in front of him and took that punch.  Perhaps I've earned some respect.  Maybe even some friendship.

 Maybe he'll start talking to me more...

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