Vol. 1 Issue 1
Margaret's life in the behavioral hospital is curious as she finds little relief and much confusion.
Margaret was pacing now. She was pacing yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. She was stretching out the belly of her shirt with one hand and rubbing at the back of her head with the other. She could swear there was something in there—in her head—prodding her. Finally, she sat down on the floor.
“Well, look at that.” Paul said. “Miss Margaret, are you done pacing now?”
She looked at him, her eyes wide and her heart thudding. “I’m terrified,” she said.
“You want a snack?”
She felt like a child every time he talked to her. And she hated him. “No, I’m not hungry.”
She got up, rubbing the back of her head fervently, and went to her room.
…
She’d taped pictures on the wall—drawn stained-glass windows and taped them to the window. The pictures didn’t make any sense: altars and candles and even pews. It seemed she was building a church out of flat paper there in her room, and everything was hung up all around, covering the walls. It made her feel OK, a little less uneasy, and at the head off her bed she drew a curtain and taped it there and felt as if she was protected from the prodding feeling. She could sleep at night with her arms by her sides because of that.
The nurses would come in the room on their shifts and ask about the drawings. What’s this and what’s that. She couldn’t answer because she didn’t know. She drew a beautiful with the crayons in the rec room—a break from the pencil sketches. And the woman had wisps about her and Margaret imagined that she was glowing, but she wasn’t certain how to draw that.
They went to the cafeteria in a line and some type of outdoor space akin to a yard in a prison. When it rained, they went to a gymnasium. If she didn’t go—and she didn’t want to go—they told her, you’ll have to stay longer. But she worried about her pictures when she was gone. She worried someone would disturb them or take them down. She stood for a moment before leaving, examine each one in their place and, when she got back, she did the same to ensure they had not been moved. And she looked at the glowing lady taped on the wall, across from the foot of her bed, and then glanced out the door to see if anyone was nearby, and then back to the glowing lady, and bent down and kissed the floor before her portrait.
…
She slept through lunch, and Paul came into her room with the tray of food she’d missed and said, “Miss Margaret, I got lunch for you—oh wow, look at these pictures!”
He admired the pictures as she awoke and left before she could examine his demeanor. She grew paranoid about his intentions then.
…
Every day she was bothered by the prodding in her head, and the rotating doctors would ask her, “How’s the feeling?”
“It hasn’t gone away. Can you just look at it?”
They’d look at it and say, “No, you look healthy.”
She wanted a head X-Ray, she said. She didn’t know what it was called. She wanted brain surgery or something. She felt like there were people prodding at her head.
“Who’s prodding at your head?”
“I don’t know—they won’t stop.”
She’d press her hand hard into her head at these questions.
“No, don’t do that.”
“I don’t know who.” She had a faint idea: evil people.
It was something that coming into her mind: there are evil people prodding at my head. She didn’t know the details of their existence, she tried not to, but she felt the details were slowly coming to her.
At night she cried and had visions about them, these evil people. They wore masks like doctors and raided her mind with scalpels. She thrashed about in her sheets, pausing only when the nurse tech passed by the door. She didn’t want to cause a scene and stay longer: she’d pretend to be asleep in those moments, no idea if she was fooling anyone.
In the morning, she’d wake slowly. “Miss Margaret, we need to get your vitals.” It was 6AM. So, she’d wake slowly and lift her head with her hand steady at the back of it, and come into a seated position on her bed facing the glowing lady. She’d feel alright for a moment, the corners of her lips would jerk in a faint smile, then she’d get up and the prodding feeling would come back and she would go to get the rec room to get her vitals taken.