Jagged Welcome to the Devil's Aorta
"Jagged Welcome to the Devil's Aorta"
Notes n' Warnings: This is a little piece based on a true life experience I went through. It's about the first few hours or so of my first hospitalization. The date was January 5, 2000. To protect identities in the name of patient confidentiality, all names of the patient body have been changed, including my own (BTW, Corey is the character based on me). It must also be noted that self-injury is mentioned in this piece, so please read with caution. There is also a lot of profanity used in the dialogue of characters, so if bad words offend you, don't read this.
Characters in mentioned order:
Corey - 16 yr old. Male. Bunny.
Mrs. Martin - 48 yr old. Female. Skunk.
Mr. Thurbert - 39 yr old. Male. Wolf.
Beth - 14 yr old. Female. Lynx.
Joey - 11 yr old. Male. Mouse.
Laura - 14 yr old. Female. Badger.
James - 17 yr old. Male. Doberman.
Outside, a timid January sun was still shining, though winter air still licked exposed skin with a cold dragon tongue. Inside Harsham Hospital, Corey was attempting the role as miracle worker, trying to ward away the ever pestering voices of "why didn't you..." or "what if you...", and trying to make sense of the severity of this particular crisis.
Committed? Where the fuck? What the fuck? How the fuck? No, why the fuck? Were the fresh wounds (as well as the geriatric scars) on his bunny arms sobbing to the psychologist so loud that it warranted this? Did walls of the high school bathroom tell the specialists how he was skipping class, not to enjoy himself like most who engage in truancy, but only to curl up on the piss ridden floor of a vacant stall?
The mental hospital. Crazy house. Cookoo's nest. Nut bin. Home. Happy New Year!
Corey peacefully gave up the gym bag to a staff member, Mrs. Martin. The bag contained all of his material possessions (most of which would end up in the sharps closet as contraband). She, and a few other members of the treatment staff perused their way through everything that lay zipped up, looking for drugs, sharp instruments, or any other potential weapon of self-destruction.
[He's a cutter. Watch out for sewing pins hidden in clothing. "Found one." Shoes, well, you know we can't have the threat of laces. Closet em'. "Make that two." Two tie dyes, both with colors too boisterous and hallucinogenic in nature to allow on the unit. Closet em'. "Found a third pin." Gotta make the strip search thorough. He might have some pins stuck in his present attire. "Think that it for here."]
In a separate room, Corey gave up his shirt and jeans to a large wolf on staff, Mr. Thurbert. Now clothed only in scanty white briefs, the bunny watched Mr. Thurbert scan over each micro-segment of his clothing, as if scanning the fabric fibers for a utensil no larger than a tick's leg. He then brought his head up, apparently satisfied. "Ya good ta go kid," he declaimed, throwing the clothes back to Corey. "When yo ready, ya can go ta yo room. It's room one fitty nine," he informed the bunny, who was ending the embarrassing the slightly embarrassing ordeal by putting his clothing back on. The two walked out of the room, back into the unit's reception area.
A girl was standing stout at the reception desk, and was exercising what few privileges she had, screaming at Mrs. Martin. The skunk staff member was too preoccupied with reorganizing Corey's bag to care what hospital policy the lynx had to verbally bomb this time.
"What the fuck? You can't take pens and pencils away from me. What am I supposed to do during free time now?," questioned the girl.
The jaded, unconcerned voice of Mrs. Martin answered, "Well Beth, maybe you should've thought of that before you pulled the eraser out of the pencil and cut yourself with the metal holder."
"Bitch, you're lucky I didn't slit my wrists."
"Well thank you, Beth, for your kind consideration," a sarcastic Mrs. Martin said before turning her back and heading for the staff lounge.
"Stupid bitch!," Beth screamed, turning herself about. This brought the lynx face to face with a most unfamiliar face.
At first sight of Corey, she scowled with enamel hardness, succeeding in intimidating the bunny boy. Seeing that, she quickly put on the smile of a viper so full of venom it leaked from the teeth. "New, huh?"
Corey couldn't muster anything more than a gnat loud, "uh huh." He was too captivated by the sight of her arms: Broad, elongated lines running like connecting rivers, skin separated into isolated segments like tectonic plates. A magnificent, unrivaled display of self-injury. Corey was aware that Beth too knew the secret to setting up a conversation with the Gods of euphoria. She was a cutter (a dedicated one at that). Corey was finally with his own kin.
"I'm Beth. This place is Hell."
Embarrassed, uncertain, and intimidated, all Corey could say was, "Er. Hello."
From nowhere her scarred arm sprang forth, paw grabbing Corey's arm. Pulling him in towards her, she growled, "Hello yourself." Even though he was in kissing range, Beth kissed her own free palm, and brought it across Corey's face with a slap. She then shoved the bunny away upon seeing Mrs. Martin's reemergence.
"Where'd you run off to, huh?," she yelled, stomping her way back to the counter opposite of where the staff member was standing. "Don't wanna hear me bitch. Too bad! I'm gonna bitch even more now, bitch!"
As Beth resumed her fulmination, Corey decided to head down the hall and make his way to the dorms.
Before reaching Room 159, Corey caught sight of a pre-adolescent mouse boy, hanging onto the inside of a door frame. His tiny body fell slightly forward, then rocked back upward, repeating the process over and over, making a ruckus while he swung.
"Quiet time is for the loud. Quiet in the room! Too quiet!"
A badger stormed up to the mad child at play and parked herself just far enough as to not get hit by the little schizophrenic-in-training. "Joey, you son of a bitch. Shut your fucking face for God's sake."
The dark haired boy brought his head up, and with sunken in grey eyes looked at the teenage girl before him. "We think Laura should silent herself. Silent yourself, dumb creature. Just... just be silent, bitch!"
"You little fuck!," Laura screamed. "You're the loud one. Can't you shut up? Ever?"
Joey, still swinging (a physical replication of his emotional state) laughed at her. "I will if you suck my dickie."
The response given by Laura's face made it look like she just took a whiff of heavily used gym socks and expired feta cheese. "You sick twerp. Have you even hit puberty? You're probably hung like a maggot."
"Bigger than you."
"I'm a girl, you idiot!"
"That's what you think." He then almost squealed with glee as he decreed, "We know your secret.
An eavesdropping doberman (listening from his room) laughed, "Joey, you fuckin crazy! I love ya man!"
At that moment, everything disintegrated. Completing a forward rock, Joey doused his locomotive behavior. Though the doberman said the word in a dogging fashion (and as a compliment), it still summoned reality's lead pipe to pound the mouse into submission. For a few seconds, all Joey could see was the void. Then, almost as quietly as a whisper, he said, "I'm not crazy. You don't know. Understand us? You don't understand."
Laura, like a sadistic opportunist, jumped on the chance. "Yes you are. See these red eyes? I'm not stoned Joey. It's because you're so fucking loud at night. Nobody can sleep. You're so fucking annoying. You're so nuts it's contagious. I go nuts just seeing your face. And you don't let anybody sleep! I can't sleep with you always screaming!"
"You're wacko," he quietly said to Laura.
The badger was quick to respond, "How much Mellaril is Dr. Stoltz prescribing you these days? Whatever it is, it's not enough."
"Mellaril," Joey sated, his comment not directed towards anybody. "Tired making pills. Holy fuck how much tiredness they have."
"I should shove a fistful of those tranquilizers down your throat, you pest. No wonder your mommy got rid of you," Laura said with abundant harshness.
Joey's mouth answered her insults with a spit, followed by a slam of the door. From behind the door came yelling.
"That fuck bitch! We hate that fuckhead bitch! Stupid bitch-head fuck!"
The badger pressed her face against the door, and, for the sake of taunting the boy, loudly said, "Talk to them, Joey! Talk to your invisible friends! They're the only friends or family you'll ever make!"
From depths of the room came a gargantuan scream that Corey never knew could possibly come from the lungs of a mouse (or any other living thing, for that matter). The noise carried through walls as if they were made of toilet paper, catching the attention of all patients on the Adolescent II ward. It also snagged and sodomized the eardrums of staff members, who rushed to the scene, whilst Joey began to use the walls in his room as a personal punching board.
As the staff members arrived, one of the patients opened her door and accompanied Joey's screaming with a song. By the third verse, the rest of the patient population, be it in their room, or in the hallway, joined in the chorus:
"I don't wanna grow up
I'm a Harsham kid
There's a hundred million fuck-ups that I can play with
Dopeheads, schizos, self-mutilators
It's the biggest hellhole there is
I don't wanna grow up
Because if I did
I wouldn't be a fucking Harsham kid!"
The Harsham choir all sung the song, at the top of the lungs, several times as little Joey morphed himself into a hurricane, throwing punches and spits at staff members, who were attempting to place the orphaned child in the seclusion room.
At this point, Corey was beyond being befuddled and bewildered. The one thing he did know was that his new temporary home would provide his 16 year old senses with more spectacles, memories, and experiences than most of the general population would acquire in an entire lifetime.