Kzine Issue 15 Read online

  With that, she gave me a hurried peck on the cheek and offered the doctor a little wave before turning on her Prada heels and getting the hell out of there.

  “Your mother is not a fan of psychiatric facilities, I take it. Well then, more fun for us.” The doctor gestured for us to move forward, to a waiting car. “Where is your luggage, Maggie? Franz and I would be happy to help you with it.” He pointed to the driver of the car, a large, nice-looking black man.

  “Oh no, this is it.” I motioned to my carry-on bag. “I don’t really have a lot of clothes.”

  Doctor Jenson laughed. “So rare to meet a girl from the states who isn’t a fashionista! Well, it’s good to be a light packer. Means you’ll never be weighed down.”

  The ride to the hospital was very pleasant. Franz stayed silent as he navigated the twisting roads and let the doctor and I talk casually about my illness. Doctor Jenson asked me a few questions about my history, but kept it very conversational. It was almost as though we were old friends. When he revealed to me that he himself had been dealing with schizophrenia since he was twenty-six, I felt even safer.

  When we arrived at the circular driveway of Gaustad, the doctor said his goodbyes.

  “I’ll be by from time to time, but for now I am placing you in the very capable hands of the Gaustad resident doctors and nurses.”

  I felt betrayed. I didn’t want Doctor Jenson to know I was upset with him as I didn’t want to appear childish. Something told me though—this would be the last I would see of him. The old bait and switch. I have had this happen to me before—at the other facilities. A great, friendly doctor would be your greeter, but they usually disappeared from your life completely within hours, only to be replaced by doctors a lot like Fisk-cold, falsely interested recent medical school grads.

  Franz led me into the building, keeping a firm but distant grip on my bicep. His huge hand looked like it could easily snap my puny arm so I made sure to remain glued to his side. When we entered Gaustad, I was hit instantly with a strong smell of rose.

  I looked around, trying to track down the smell, but there was no plant life in sight. During my inspection, I noticed how incredibly clean and comfortable Gaustad was.

  The walls looked as though they were freshly painted, glistening white slates. Even the floor was shimmering. As Franz escorted me further into the hospital, towards two oak doors at the end of the entrance hall, I took note of the other people walking around us. There were quite a few doctors, walking briskly to their destinations, but the people I knew were patients, well they looked like me. Young women about my age, some clearly suffering from eating disorders seemed to make up most of the population here.

  When we arrived at the doors, Franz held one open for me. As soon as I entered the room, the door slammed shut behind me and I found myself face to face with a tall, blonde, bird-like woman. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun on top of her head. This caused her eyebrows to slightly arch, giving her a forever bemused expression.

  “Miss Margaret James?” The woman smiled almost menacingly and motioned for me to sit down at a large, black desk.

  She sat on the other side, and folded her hands in front of us. I did the same, leaving a four inch gap between our hands.

  “Miss James. First of all, I want to formally welcome you to Gaustad. A number of our patients are American young women, like yourself, who have found that U.S. medicine and treatment simply doesn’t ‘cut it’. Now, here at Gaustad we offer a very relaxing environment for our patients. We believe that the more comfortable the patient is, the more accepting they will be to treatment.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so—this meeting is a lot like the opening of Cuckoo’s Nest,” I blurted out. “You guys aren’t going to give me a lobotomy are you? Oh Christ is that why my parents sent me out of the country?”

  The woman, who I now saw from her degrees hanging on the wall, was named Greta Asleson, looked at me in shock for a moment before her mouth broke into a huge, genuine smile.

  “Oh my—oh my no.” Doctor Asleson covered her mouth as she laughed modestly. “No, Margaret we don’t believe in that kind of barbaric treatment. I was simple trying to make you feel at ease. We actually feel that the less treating we do, the better. Our philosophy is to try to train our patients to think well for themselves, so they want to stay healthy.”

  I sat and listened as she rattled on a bit more about the Gaustad philosophy but my mind was already on trying to silence the little nagging voice—the mothering voice—that popped into my ear whenever I was filled with anxiety.

  “This place is full of it—let’s go. Leave—they can’t keep you against your will.”

  Yes they can. I told the voice, silently.

  Finally, the Doctor Asleson stood up and walked around to me. I was still silencing the nagging stress voice when she led me down a hallway to the left of her office. She was showing me to my room. I was instantly reminded of college, only now I wasn’t being shown around by a drunk R.A. who kept calling me “Kimmy.”

  Most of the rooms we passed had the doors shut tight, but as we passed a room with an open door, the nagging voice was replaced by another louder, much darker voice.

  “Hello, lovely girl.”

  “What?” I asked Doctor Asleson. “Did you say something?” I knew it wasn’t her, but I was full of hope.

  She looked at me skeptically before jotting something down in a little notepad she had retrieved from her pants pocket.

  When we passed the room with the open door, I snuck a peek inside. The woman who was in here picked her head up, meeting my gaze right on. Her hair hung in black curtains around her face, almost reaching her knees, which were positioned Indian style on her bed. She didn’t smile, but she definitely nodded in my direction.

  “That’s Lucy,” Doctor Asleson whispered. “She’s been here for about three years— extreme sociopathic tendencies coupled with severe bulimia. We have only managed to solve the bulimia. Avoid conversation if you can.”

  We reached my room a few minutes later. After Doctor Asleson showed me around, she dropped the key in my hand and handed me a schedule of group therapy meetings.

  “Dinner is in fifteen minutes. Afterwards you can have a peer counseling session or group if you like.”

  Before she left, Doctor Asleson tapped on my wall, where a chart hung.

  “Your medicine chart. We are very strict here about giving out the exact right dosage. Do. Not. Lose. Or. Deface. This.” She tapped the wall with each punctuation.

  I nodded. “I won’t, I promise.”

  “Good.”

  Doctor Asleson tapped the wall once more before leaving me by myself.

  “Hello lovely girl.”

  The voice was back. Usually, my mind was full of soft chatter. Not necessarily talking, just a white noise of nonsense. But when this voice appeared, everything was silenced.

  “Don’t worry. I just wanted to say hello. And to not worry—you have a friend in here.”

  I looked around, not expecting to see anything, but just because it’s something someone who is normal would do.

  “I don’t want another friend,” I said to the wall.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you would like someone to talk to.”

  I crept over to my door and swung it open. There was nobody in the hallway, but the walls looked different than they did when I arrived. They were black now.

  “I was scared when I got here, too.”

  “Are you all right?” A voice—a warm, helpful voice came from behind me.

  I spun around to see a plump, middle aged woman hurrying towards me.

  “I’m fine!” I cried out before jumping back into my room and shutting the door. I put my ear to the door and listened to the plump nurse heave a grunt of annoyance and walk away. She was probably just thinking I was having some kind of episode, and would no doubt be keeping tabs on me.

  When I was confident she was gone, I opened my door again and slid out. I s
nuck down the hall towards the room with the open door.

  “A little closer”

  Finally, I reached the room. The now black walls made it more difficult for me to know which door was which and I hoped I could find my way back to my own room. I noticed that the room I was inches away from was emanating a blue glow. I held my breath before spinning myself in front of the door. I took note of the door number. This was room 9. I was in room 27, and there were no even numbers. This relieved me—at least I wasn’t far from where I was supposed to be.

  The woman sitting on the bed was probably about my age, and she hadn’t changed her position since I had first seen her. She was still sitting Indian style on her bed, with her raven hair hanging in front of her face.

  “Hi.” She said, in a voice that I found most comforting. It was sweet, like a child’s voice and nothing like the dark, commanding voice that echoed in my ears.

  “I’m Lucy. Do you want to come on in? Are you new here? I saw you coming in with the doc—sorry about all the questions…I’ve always been that way. I ask too many questions when I get nervous.”

  She offered up a small, strained smile and pushed her hair back behind her ears, which stuck out at the top like mine. I entered her room, and noticed that the blue glow was coming from a light on the table next to her bed.

  “I hope that light isn’t bothering you. I know I shouldn’t keep my door open when I have it on but the color is really calming for me. They always yell at me here when my door is open and the light it on because the other patients can’t stand it.”

  I shook my head, “no—actually I had one just like that when I was younger. It calmed me down too.”

  Lucy smiled again. “Good. I’ll keep it on then. So what’s your name?”

  “I’m Maggie. I just got in today.”

  Lucy nodded. “I figured. You’ll like it here. The nurses are really nice and the docs are okay. What’s your damage?”

  I looked at her, confused. She giggled.

  “What’s your condition? Why are you here all the way from America—or Canada?”

  “Long Island—I uh, well I need to have my medication adjusted. I’m schizophrenic.”

  “Oh a schizo—you’ll fit in here, about ninety percent of the people here are. I was diagnosed as a sociopath when I first got here. They were torn between sociopath and psychopath with me back in the states but I got my official seal here.” She giggled again. “Sorry, I’m talking too much. So do you hear voices in your head and stuff?”

  She looked at me with wide, childlike eyes, expecting an answer.

  “Uhm, I guess sort of yeah. I mean, they don’t sound like human voices—it’s kind of just like a constant stress dream. Like, I keep being told to do things or say things but it’s easy for me to block them out. Sometimes I see things too—like, what color are the hallway walls to you?”

  Lucy leaned forward to peer at the walls. “They look blue, actually—because of the light.”

  “Oh, well bad example then I guess.”

  Lucy bobbed her head up and down. “Did the doc tell you not to talk to me?” She asked out of nowhere.

  I debated for a moment if I should tell her the truth or not. Finally, I figured I should.

  “Yeah. I’m sure she didn’t really mean anything by it though—you know, people like their privacy.”

  Lucy tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, and I tend to annoy people. Whenever I try to talk to someone they get real irritated and ask to be moved to a different floor.”

  She playfully bounced off her bed. “But that’s okay because now I pretty much have the floor to myself. Well, we do anyway.”

  She walked over to her dresser and looked in the mirror. She really was a pretty girl, with big blue eyes and jet black hair that badly needed a washing. Her oversized nightshirt hung loosely on her very fragile frame and reached down below her thigh. She stared at herself in the mirror for a while before lifting her eyes so her reflection was looking at me.

  “Not all of the docs here are good though. The one who walked you to your room—well, she’s just lucky she’s not in prison.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, holding her eye contact in the mirror.

  “Well, she was accused by a bunch of people of overdosing really difficult patients. A lot of the times, they would just go all comatose and be easier to handle, but two of them died.” Lucy went over to her bed and reached underneath it. She pulled out a yellowed newspaper and handed it to me.

  The paper itself was written in Norwegian, but on the front page was a photo Doctor Asleson being led out of a courthouse with a man in a suit next to her. “I’ve picked up a little Norwegian from being here—that top part says ‘Two dead in suspected overdosing case.’ They could never prove anything so she’s still here, but just watch out for her, I guess.” Lucy’s eyes flickered as she watched me scan the image.

  I handed the paper back to her. “Wow—nobody told me about that.”

  Lucy shrugged. “They like to keep stuff like that quiet.” She looked at the clock on her wall. “Hey do you wanna go to dinner together? It’ll be nice not to have to walk down there alone.”

  I could see why Lucy didn’t want to go to dinner alone. The women I saw back when I first got here were gone, and in their place were ragged, broken individuals who looked as though they were just rescued from living with wolves.

  “I kind of feel like we’re all alone here.” Lucy whispered to me as she led me through the cafeteria. The rose smell still hung in the air, but it was putrid now—overwhelming to the senses. Lucy was right—of everybody in the place, we were the only two who looked human.

  We passed a table of anorexic, crow-like creatures, one of whom was eating her own hair. She wasn’t making a big show of it, but just casually pulled out a handful of strands and slurped them down like spaghetti. At another table sat a man who had hollow, yellow eyes. His arms showed that he was either a heavy drug user or saw a very sadistic nurse at some point in his life. He stared at Lucy and me as we made our way to an empty table towards the back.

  “I don’t like it here anymore.” I said to Lucy as we pushed around our noodles. “I thought it was nice before, but I don’t know, it feels like something has changed.”

  Lucy looked blankly at me for a moment, as though she was trying to come up with an answer. Then, with conviction she stated that “they do that—make it look all nice and clean at first then the real show starts.”

  “Something is weird Maggie. You need to call your parents. Bribe them—tell them you’ll never forget to take your meds as long as you live. Just get out of here.”

  The nagging voice surfaced again. I blinked slowly, greeting it like an old friend.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucy asked sweetly. She squinted her eyes at me, almost accusingly before continuing, “I’m so happy you’re here—I know that sounds strange, it’s just now I feel like I have someone to talk to who is—well you know, normal.”

  I closed my eyes again. That’s when I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder. I jumped a foot out of my seat and yelped.

  “Oh no—dear, I’m sorry.” It was the plump nurse from before. “You are Margaret? Can you come with me please?”

  She spoke with the same crisp accent as Doctor Asleson, but had a much kinder demeanor.

  I nodded at the nurse and let her lead me out of my chair. I looked at Lucy, who avoided my eyes, and instead shot daggers at the kind nurse.

  “Oh lovely girl now you’re going to see—they are going to tell you all kinds of fun stories now.”

  The nagging voice had once again been replaced. I wondered if this nurse was taking me somewhere to give me my medication.

  “Oh don’t worry about that. Your medication can’t get rid of who you are, lovely girl.”

  The nurse led me down a hallway that still carried that deathly rose smell. Why, I wondered, was it so pleasant before but now smelled like a rotting funeral?

  “I’m so sorry to disturb your m
eal, Margaret. Doctor Asleson wanted me to fetch you directly. I think maybe she forgot to tell you something.”

  The nurse didn’t hold on to me like she thought I was a danger. I appreciated that she trusted me to stay by her side. I noticed that in one hand, she was holding a rosary. The red beads were peaking out from her loose fist and shining brightly in the dark hallway.

  When we reached the heavy doors to Doctor Asleson’s office, the nurse knocked lightly.

  “Come in.”

  Doctor Asleson was reading a chart, which she tossed on top of her desk as soon as the nurse let me in. She closed the doors behind her and once again Doctor Asleson and I were left alone.

  “Margaret, I passed by the cafeteria and saw you were talking with Lucy.”

  I squirmed uncomfortably in my place. I hated being talked to like I was in high school.

  “Uhm, well yes. I—she kinda introduced herself to me and I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “Yes, yes. I understand that. I admire that actually. Margaret why don’t you sit with me here on the couch?”

  “Don’t fall for it, lovely girl. She’s going to tell you quite a story. The doc is evil.”

  I shook away the dark voice and followed the doctor to an overstuffed red couch at the other end of her office.

  “Margaret, I’ve looked over your file. It seems your schizophrenia is a unique case. You don’t have a lot of the more serious symptoms, and when you take a low dosage of medication, everything seems to be in check. It looks as though your destructive behavior only comes about when you have forgotten to take your meds and are under extreme stress.”

  “Here come the lies, lovely girl.”

  “What happened the night before you flew to Norway, Margaret? Why did you lash out at your boyfriend, or more notably, his bird?”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, that morning, he told me he was having second thoughts about us getting married. We were going to, you know? And he told me over breakfast that unless I could hold down a job, he didn’t know if it would work. I didn’t think it would get to me so bad, being told that, I mean.”