Doctor Marcus's Home for Special Children (P.2.)

Dinner at Marcus’s Home for Special Children is a very regulated event. Where you're assigned to sit, you sit, no if, ands, or buts. Any kids who put up a fight are literally strapped down to their seat. If they do something really bad, the helpers come in.

I’ve never gotten in trouble during my time here. I’ve lived in a sort of dazed, unexcited existence. I go with the flow, stuck in my mind, and unable to really communicate my pain with other people.

But, as I walk into the cramped dining hall, I’m seriously considering whether or not rehabilitation would really be worse than this get-to-know assignment I have.

I get in line for food and Robert walks up to join me, occasionally peeking behind himself. He knots and unknots his fingers, holding them close to his chest and hunching his shoulders up and over. “H-hi,” he stutters as I pass his a plastic tray.

Everything is plastic here. Plastic doesn’t break like glass does.

“Hey Rob. How was the rest of therapy?”

“It was bad. A-as soon as you l-left, Josh freaked out again and now h-he’s being rehabilitated.”

“Shit,” I say, trying to hide my distress. Josh has always been my problem. I know how to calm him down. I know how to calm most of the kids here. That’s one of the reasons I think I’m still relevant.

“Y-yeah. What’s for d-dinner? Did Linda say?”

I shake my head. Rob’s tongue flicks out, running over his dry, cracked lips. He is always visibly shaking. It’s really depressing how scared he is. He and the other Hallucinators are all kept in the same bedroom, because they can’t sleep alone.

We move a few feet forward as the line trudges up. The dining hall looks just as the rest of the hospital does: gray bricks, blue-green carpeting, slow turning fans high above us, fluorescent lights flickering.

A fat, greasy lunch lady slops some Sloppy on my Joe and holds it out to me. I set it on my tray and slide it down the counter to the condiments, squirting ketchup on the meat before replacing the top bun, brushing the sesame seeds off. Rob is right behind me, reaching for a cookie. I hand him a carton of chocolate milk and grab a bottle of water for myself.

Rob and I always eat together, usually with the rest of our therapy group. But they’ll probably have to eat without me, I realize as I exit the line. Doctor Linda stands right beside the lunch lady checking our food and doling out our meds.

Two horse-pill sized blue pills are dropped on my tray, followed by three circular red ones. Linda snatches my upper arm and says, “Excuse us, Robby. Rosy will be sitting somewhere else today.” Rob’s eyes widen and he moves his head side to side rapidly.

“No. I can’t walk there alone. I can see them waiting for me,” he says, eyes darting to the corner where our table is.

“Rissa will walk with you,” Linda says and Rissa appears almost magically, like Linda pulled her out of thin air. Rissa is another of Doctor Linda’s patients. “Won’t you Rissa?”

“Sure!” Rissa says enthusiastically.

Rob looks a little less than excited. Rissa is kind of the outcast of our therapy group. She’s just way older than we are. It’s nothing against her.

I watch the two of them walk away, Rob looking at me like I’m being dragged away to my death or something. An understandable worry. Linda gestures towards the opposite end of the dining hall. I can see him already.

He’s sitting by himself at a table in the corner, as most new kids do. Thatcher’s back is to me so I can’t see his face but his hair looks well kept, brunette and very neat, cut short close to his head. It won’t look like that for long. There’s no hair gel in the Home. Linda stops walking with me and instead watches me go the last ten yards by myself. I walk awkwardly up to the seat across from him.

“Is this seat taken?” Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course it isn’t taken. He’s sitting by himself.

He looks up from his food, a friendly grin on his face. “No,” he says. His voice is low and kind of… sexy. Which is weird to say. I sit.

Thatcher doesn’t say anything, just sits and looks at me, the corner of his mouth turned up. I feel my face warming. He’s cute. Good-looking for a boy in a crazy home. His eyes are so dark that they look black, swallowing up his pupil in its entirety and his cheekbones are high and sharp, but not haughty looking.

And his lips. They’re slim and deadly looking, especially with the devilish curl his smile brings to them. I lick my own.

I can feel Linda watching me from across the room. We need to start talking. “I’m Rose. What’s your name?” I don’t want to seem creepy, knowing his name already.

“Thatcher.” There’s nothing I can build on right there. I drum my fingers on the table. The room seems quieter than usual, but that might just be my new seat across the room from where I usually sit. I look over to my crowd and see Rob staring at me. I wave, just a twitch of my fingers.

Thatcher speaks, bringing my attention back to him. “Why are you over here? Obviously you’d rather be over there.”

My mouth hangs open and I don’t know what to say. I close it and swallow. “Yeah, my private doctor thought it’d be a good idea for me to branch out and make new friends. Friends my age. You know, before I become irrelevant or anything.”

“What? Why would you become irrelevant?” His dark eyes on me are unnerving, unwavering.

“Sorry, I forgot you were new. When someone here dies or is killed, the doctors tell us that they have become irrelevant. Or lost their relevance. It’s stupid. Just hospital slang. You’ll get used to it eventually.” His eyebrows had knotted together.

“Why would they pick that?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.

“No one is ever ‘irrelevant.’ That’s an insult to them and their memory. Just because someone isn’t alive anymore doesn’t take away their relevance to anyone. That’s ridiculous.” My tense shoulders drop. This kid is less stupid than I expected him to be.

“Well, it may be hard for you to get, because you lived in the Outside for so long, but in here, none of us are relevant anymore, not even when we’re alive. No one cares about us. We’re not doing anything or saving people or solving problems. Most people forget about us. Face it, Thatcher. There will come a time where your parents will forget you’re here and move on and even though you’ll still be alive, you won’t have any meaning in their life. You won’t be relevant anymore.” As soon as I’m done with my diatribe, I feel bad. I hardly know the kid. He’s probably still in denial that his parents sent him here.

We glare at each other for a few seconds then he breaks down into laughter. “What?” I demand, stunned and unsure of how to respond.

“I like you. You’re fiery,” he says as his laughter calms. “And you’re a little too beautiful to be stuck inside of a crazy home.” As he says it, the bell tolls again and he stands. “Good bye Rose. Hope to see you again.”

My eyes follow his path across the hall to dump his uneaten food and exit the hall in the arm of his tour guide, an absolutely tiny girl with slanted, Asian eyes and a body to kill for. I can’t even summon the state of mind to pull myself from the table until Rob walks up.

“What did he say to y-you?” he asks timidly.

I just shake my head.

Sitting in my bedroom, tugging on my linen sleep pants, I hear a soft knock at the door. I perk up, nervous. I glance at the clock on my bedside table. It’s three fourteen in the morning. No one, not even the doctors are awake this late. Plus, I’m locked in. I can’t get out, even if I wanted to.

Regardless, I lift the curtain that covers the window in my door and peek out. I see Mary staring back at me, smiling. She’s missing one of her front teeth; the other is snapped in half. Blood bubbles up and spills down her chin. I’m frozen, unable to do anything, scream or run.

She drags a disjointed index finger through the blood, still smiling, and begins to write on the window. I want to blink, to rub my eyes, to make her go away. She writes the word RUN, small tendrils of the sticky blood dripping down the window.

I finally find my voice as she begins dragging her nails along the door towards the door handle. I shriek, on and on, backing up and dropping the curtain, slamming into the wall. My eyes bug out of my head and I continue screeching. I hear footsteps far in the distance and my voice feels like it’s not loud enough. No one can hear me. I howl louder and louder even when the door flies open.

Linda sprints across the room and wraps me in her arms. “Hush, hush. Rose, it’s okay. It wasn’t real. Whatever you saw, they weren’t really there.”

My voice trails off and I feel my chest shaking with hyperventilation and I realize I’m crying. I haven’t cried in years, since I was a little kid. I don’t cry. I also don’t scream. I’m a good kid. But I’ve never heard sounds that weren’t there.

“Rosy, what’s wrong? What happened?” I continue quivering, trying to calm myself. Linda seems to notice that I can’t catch enough breath to speak. “Rosy, we’re okay. Nothing is going to hurt you.” I furiously rub my eyes and cheeks.

A few gasps later, I find my voice once again, looking up at Linda, terrified, “I heard something. It wasn’t just a vision. I heard it.”

I look up towards the door, half expecting to see Mary there again, but it’s only a pair of helpers. I let out a small whimper. “Are they going to take me away?” I whisper.

“No, they won’t. You haven’t done anything wrong.” I feel her move behind me and the men back off, moving down the corridor. When their footsteps are out of earshot, Doctor Linda helps me to my bed and sits down beside me. “Now,” she starts, “what happened, Rosy? This isn’t like you.”

“I heard someone knocking at my door. And I’ve never heard things that weren’t there. So I looked out there and I saw Mary. She was all covered in blood and she wrote something on the window…” I stop, unsure if I should tell Linda. I’m unsure as to why I’m unsure about telling her; after all, I trust Doctor Linda with my life. But something inside of me holds my tongue.

“What did she write, Rose?”

I blink a few times and her face and the bloodied RUN flash across my vision again before I squeak out, “My name. Rose. Just that. Then I screamed and dropped the curtain and she was gone.”

Doctor Linda pushes a strand of my black hair behind my ear and says, “Okay. Well, she wasn’t there. You know that. She couldn’t have hurt you. Now we have a couple options. First, we go down to Doctor Marcus’s home right now and tell him or we do it tomorrow. Which would you like?”

“Why do we have to tell him?” I whine. Kids who visit Doctor Marcus don’t usually come back.

“Your condition has worsened. Your symptoms have changed. He needs to be alerted of this.” Her voice is soothing yet firm.

I twist my fingers together in my lap. “Can’t you tell him? Alone?” My eyes drop to the floor. “He scares me.” Doctor Linda sighs.

“Fine. I’ll tell him tomorrow. But if he asks to see you, you have to promise to come without arguing.” I nod reluctantly. “Now the only question is what to do with you now… Do you want to stay here alone?”

No. “Yeah. I’m fine, I promise.” Doctor Linda pats my back.

“Okay. Try to relax a little bit. I’m just down the hall, as usual.” With that, she leaves. It’s really weird that anyone came for me. There’s usually a lot of screaming here, both at night and during the day. They typically just ignore it because it’s too much work to go around to everyone crying and screaming in the night to calm them.

I think it’s because this was my first Nighttime Reaction, as they call it on their doctor hand outs and slips.