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  Cadence seemed to like to antagonize new people because she was having too much fun annoying Rocky. Rocky was staring as if he wanted to snap her neck off her body. Cadence found this amusing. Janine and Daniel were in their own little world.

  “Are you okay now?” Janine asked Daniel. She was showing her cute, pink dimple on the left side of her face as she smiled.

  Smiling at her, Daniel said, “Yes. I am now.”

  “Why are you being so quiet?” she asked him.

  “I am just thinking about stuff,” Daniel said as he unzipped a small carry case and packed away his blood glucose meter.

  He pushed the carry case aside and looked right at Janine. As soon as Daniel's eyes met Janine's, she blushed. He put his finger on her chin and wiped.

  “You had caramel on your chin,” he told her.

  My stomach burned. I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and went to the bedroom. I stayed there with the door closed, wishing I could lock it and keep everyone else out. I didn’t leave to go back to group therapy, and no one came to look for me.

  I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes. I wanted to be far away. I didn’t want to be here with the other people. I wanted to be back in time to where I was happy. Back when I thought that mental hospitals were not real, and they only existed in horror movies.

  I could almost see John’s face. I could almost see his hair and his eyes from when we went to the same school, and when he came over to our house with his little brother, James, so that he could play with Nick. He was considered my cousin because his father was Jack’s brother, but technically, he was not my cousin. We were not related.

  “I remember you,” he said to me as we sat on our front porch. “Do you remember me?”

  I nodded, picturing him refusing to dance with his mother at Jack and Mom’s wedding.

  “We go to the same school,” he said, referring to the middle school we attended. “I’m about to go to the high school. What grade are you in?”

  “I’m in seventh grade,” I told him.

  I saw his gorgeous eyes, and I remembered his lovely smile so clearly. He looked different in middle school than he did when I’d seen him at Mom and Jack’s wedding. He was much taller. His voice was deeper. He was a big brother now. At the wedding, he’d been an only child. My happier thoughts of him were before he knew Lexus. It was the pain of growing up that made me most bitter. Thinking too much made my head hurt. I let myself drift off into sleep.

  It seemed as if time had been stolen from me. I fought back tears, which only made my chest fill up with pain. I closed my eyes, confused, and tried to focus.

  “God, if you’re not mad at me, please help me…” I whispered. I couldn’t stop thinking. My mind was racing. I saw Janine’s face and I saw Daniel’s face. I saw John’s face and I saw Lexus’ face. They were intertwined. “God, please, please help me.”

  Ms. Mosley appeared out of nowhere. She had come into the room silently. She must have come in to check on me. I was embarrassed to see her standing in the doorway, staring at me, when I opened my eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. She moved closer to me, hesitantly and slowly. “I came in to check on you. Your group is about to go to their last meeting before dinner.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Everyone says I smell bad and I’m just disgusting,” I cried. I could smell the dirt on my body. I almost felt sick.

  Ms. Mosley sighed heavily. I could see the sincerity in her eyes.

  “I am going to call one of the nurses tonight. Someone should have been here to draw your blood and help you with your stitches. I will do everything I can, Kristen. I would help you myself, but I don’t want to do anything to mess you up. You’re excused from your meeting tonight. Don’t worry about it. I will see if Geoffrey can bring your dinner to you so that you won’t have to be around them. Just make sure you are at the nurse’s station when it’s time to take your medicine.” Ms. Mosley smiled warmly.

  Before she turned away to leave, I sat up in bed and called out to her. She turned back to me.

  “How long does it take before someone can really get better and go home?” I asked her.

  She sighed. “Listen to me, Kristen. I know it is hard being in this place. But while you are here, you can’t let your mind become occupied by the fact that you are here. You can’t get bogged down with feeling sorry for yourself. You should be pondering on why you’re here and what it will take so that you can get better, get out of here, stay better, and stay out of here. You want to try to get help from your doctors and try to find something that will help you appreciate life.”

  “Ms. Mosley,” I cried. “I am punished with life!”

  She put on a stern face and looked me right in my eyes. “Do you believe in God?”

  “I believe that there is a God,” I told her, confused.

  “No,” she said with her stern face, “Do you know who God is?”

  “I’ve heard of God,” I told her. “When I was a kid, my Mom and I went to church. We used to pray together. She always told me that I could pray to Him anytime, even if it was in the middle of the day. I used to know Him, but I think that He’s forgotten about me.”

  Ms. Mosley came towards me again. “Honey, He has not forgotten about you. He knows who you are, even if you don’t know Him. Do you know how I know that God has not forgotten about you? You have air in your lungs, you are able to speak, think, and move. This is what you are taking for granted. These are things that you tried to take away that God has blessed you with.”

  She sat down beside me and continued, “Your life is not yours, Kristen. It is God’s. He can never forget about something that belongs to Him. Even though you are suffering with this pain inside of yourself, God is helping you endure it. And He is not letting you do it alone. You are here, and you are getting help from people that He has directed you to. No, God has not forgotten you. He wants you to be alive. That’s why you are here.”

  The beating of my heart was steady and calm. I felt relaxed and secure with Ms. Mosley there beside me. She gently placed a hand on my shoulder as her sternness faded to sincerity.

  She said, “He’s got you here. There’s no way He can leave you and not get you through the rest of the way.” She paused and looked at me to make sure I understood.

  With dry eyes, I stuck out my arms and wrapped them around her. She hesitated before she hugged me back. Ms. Mosley quickly let me go and smiled.

  “You need to rest. We’ll talk later,” she said as she began to walk away.

  Her eyes were always serious, and her tone of voice was strong. I liked that. Ms. Mosley was the most real person I had ever known. I lay back down in the bed when she left the room. I rolled onto my stomach and closed my eyes. There was an ache inside of me. I wanted to get rid of it.

  God, get me to endure this.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ouch. No. Ouch. Stop it. No.

  I felt a sharp, pricking pain shoot through my arm. I first felt it when I was asleep. It started on the back of my hand, and then moved to my wrist. When I opened my eyes, I could hardly see because the bright light from the sun was shining through the bedroom window. I tried to lift my hand to cover my eye, but when I tried to move, I realized that the pains were on the inside of my arm. I squinted and tried to lift my arm again. It wouldn’t move. It wouldn’t move because there was pressure on it, holding it down, face-up, on the bed. The pressure squeezed my wrist when I tried to lift it. There was someone holding my arm down by my wrist. I was hurting. I had to get up and make it stop. I tried to sit up.

  “No! Keep still! I almost have it,” a female voice yelled at me. She took her hand off my wrist and violently pushed me back down on the bed.

  When my eyes focused, I noticed that there was a tall woman hovering over me. She had a needle in her hand. I watched her as she brought the needle down to my inner arm and stuck me again. It felt like she had stuck me in the same spot she had tried previously.

  The pain was ter
rible. She was having a hard time drawing my blood. She snatched the needle out of my arm, sending an excruciating pain up my arm to my head.

  “Ouch! Please… Stop it…!” I cried helplessly. Blood squirted from my arm out onto the bed sheet. My arm felt like she had been sticking me with needles while I had been asleep all morning.

  “Hold still, child!” she demanded.

  “No! Stop!” I cried louder.

  The woman held my wrist down, pressed to the bed. She squeezed it tight. The pressure was so intense, and it felt like my stitches were going to break. I was growing scared. Tears were falling out of my eyes.

  “Stop fighting me,” she growled. “If you hold still, I will get your blood without all of this difficulty. But if you keep moving, it’s going to keep hurting some more. Do you want that?”

  I shook my head with tears drenching my face. She felt the need to squeeze my wrist some more. I wondered if she was doing that on purpose. I held as still as I could. It took her four more agonizing sticks to get all of the blood she needed. If I felt the need to hurt myself at that moment, I wouldn’t have to, for she was doing a fine job. She filled six tubes of blood. When she was finished, I sat up and felt light-headed. She laughed when I fell back and laid my head on my pillow.

  “You shouldn’t sit up right away,” she tardily said. She began putting labels on the tubes that held my blood.

  “I have to get your vitals this morning. Take your shirt off, and if you have a bra, take that off too,” she said while not looking at me.

  When I had my shirt off and she had put away the tubes, she pulled out a stethoscope and a blood pressure tester. While checking my blood pressure, she yanked on my bandaged wrists and pulled my arm to straighten my posture. She then shoved the thermometer into my mouth roughly, which almost made me choke. She laughed when I coughed. It occurred to me that I was not dealing with a nice nurse at all. She was brutal, rough, and seemingly careless.

  I didn’t hear Janine moving around. I looked over at her side of the room, and she was still asleep. I wondered where Ms. Mosley was. The nurse told me to put my shirt back on and gather my personal items. She said that she was going to assist me in getting cleaned up.

  I wanted to tell her “no, thank you” because she didn’t seem like the kind of nurse I wanted touching my private areas. She was not like the nurse at the other hospital at all. Hesitating, I got up out of the bed and grabbed my underwear and a menstrual pad. When she saw me grab the pad, the look on her face changed from simply mean to terrifyingly angry.

  “Don’t even tell me that you are on your period, child,” she said.

  I nodded, afraid of what she was going to do to me.

  The nurse shook her head with a grimace on her face. She turned away from me, grabbed the tubes and her bag, and stormed out of the room. Confused, I went to the door. Anxiety washed over me, and I couldn’t make myself go out the door. I looked down at my arm as it ached in pain. I could see the spots where she’d stuck me with the needle. My skin color turned black and blue. I grew afraid that she wouldn’t come back. If she wasn’t going to help me, then I had no way to clean up. She was the only nurse who was apparently going to help me. I didn’t mean to make her leave.

  I forced myself to walk out the door and try to catch her. I was hoping that I could at least get her to give me new bandages for my wrists. I walked out the double doors that separated the Girl’s Unit from the main area, and stopped when I saw Ms. Mosley and the nurse talking.

  Ms. Mosley was upset. “Why didn’t you help her get a bath?”

  The nurse responded, “I am not about to clean her while she is on her period, Karen. This is not even my area. I work with the adults, not pediatrics. I don’t appreciate you leaving messages on my voicemail like the one you left last night, either. I didn’t know that you all had a new female patient on the Adolescent Unit who needed her blood drawn. I came to draw blood for you because your unit’s nurse has not been showing up for her shifts. If you have a problem, you need to talk to Dr. Pelchat because I have nothing to do with what goes on over here. Don’t ever call me with that kind of business again!”

  Ms. Mosley stayed silent as the nurse stormed off. Geoffrey had been watching from behind the counselor’s desk. He asked her if she was all right, and she nodded.

  I hurried back to my room feeling embarrassed and dismayed. When I entered, Janine was coming out of the bathroom. She looked at me. Her hair looked soft and it flowed down her back. She smiled at me, flashing her cute pink dimple.

  “What are you doing up so early?” Janine asked. She threw herself down on her bed and covered up with her treasured, pink blanket. She looked warm.

  “The nurse came to take my blood,” I confessed. I went back over to my bed, and covered myself with the thin, white blanket. It hardly did any good for me because I was still cold.

  “Wasn’t she supposed to be here yesterday?” Janine asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I hate this place,” she complained. “Wait. Didn’t you say that the nurse is supposed to help you get cleaned up, too?”

  I nodded.

  “This place really sucks.” Janine frowned at me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She tried to smile at me, but I couldn’t smile back. I looked away from her. She must have drifted off into her own place. I turned back to her when I heard her giggle. She looked pretty when she smiled. Her eyes sparkled.

  I looked down at my hands. I didn’t want to see her face. I touched my face. It felt oily. I looked at my fingers. They were shiny. I touched my face again and felt my nose. There was a mild pain. I felt the spot where the pain grew stronger, a spot between my nose and my cheek, right on the crease of my nose, where it felt like a pimple was growing. I felt like crying. I looked up at Janine. She was lying down, and her eyes were closed. Her pink skin looked soft and clear.

  Angrily I lay back down on the bed. I touched the pimple on my nose. I went from touching to digging. I dug the nail on my index finger into my skin and went as deep as I could into the pimple. Then I ripped as hard as I could. I felt the pressure of the pimple release as blood spilled down my nose. I could taste it on my lips.

  “Hold still, Lexus,” I fussed as squeezed the small, barely noticeable pimple on her chin.

  Lexus tried to lie as still as she could on her back as I sat on top of her and hovered over her to try to kill the evil pimple.

  “Oh, but it hurts,” she whined.

  “Then squeeze my hips or scratch my back. Just hold still,” I told her.

  Lexus wrapped her arms around my back and, as I squeezed her pimple, she dug her nails into my back. The pain was amazing. I felt too much adrenaline go to my head. I couldn’t stop squeezing. I had to make the puss come out. One long, hard squeeze and Lexus dug her nails into my back even harder.

  The puss shot out. She screamed, and I screamed. Well, my scream was more like a moan, as she had run her nails down my back. With the way things looked, if one of our parents had walked in, they would have gotten the wrong idea.

  “Well, that was fun,” I said jokingly, as I sat on top of her.

  She looked beautiful, lying on her back. She looked up at me and laughed. “Get off of me,” she giggled.

  I got off her and grabbed a Kleenex from a tissue box. When I gave her the tissue, she wiped her chin. She looked at the bloody paper.

  “Eww…this is nasty,” she said. “I hate it when I get pimples.”

  “I couldn’t even see it. It was so small,” I said.

  I looked into the mirror as I spoke to her. I frowned. I had oily skin with too many dark spots. I was ugly. I turned away from the mirror angrily. Lexus looked at me, and put a hand on my shoulder. I shoved her away from me. She sighed. She silently forgave me for shoving her, and tried to smile.

  “You look so cute in your new outfit. I think we did a good job picking our new outfits for the picnic. Don’t you think?”

  She wanted me to respond. I looked at her mi
ni-skirt and corset tank top. She was wearing nail polish and make-up. Then I looked at my denim jeans and long-sleeved sweater I wore to cover up my cuts. I didn’t want to respond.

  Still trying to be cheerful, she grabbed some lipstick. “Come on, just this once. Let me put some lipstick on you.”

  I stared at the lipstick, almost afraid. Lexus laughed and shoved me into a chair next to the dresser.

  “Look, you will like this color,” she said as she hovered over me and began to put the lipstick on my lips. Then she pulled out her blush. I tried to get up, but she pushed me back down.

  “No,” she said. “You made me sit still while I let you torture me, and now it’s your turn.” After the blush came the eye shadow. I sat still without a fight until she went for the liquid eyeliner. “Now, you will have to trust me,” she warned.

  I stayed quiet and stared at her. She laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s not like you’re going to die.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “Shut up, no you won’t. Now, look up at the ceiling.” She ran that liner pen on the line of my bottom lashes, then along the top, without poking my eyes out, as I feared she would. “You don’t need mascara,” she complimented. “You’ve got nice, long eyelashes like your Mom.”

  I smiled at her.

  She stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. She cocked her head as she studied her work of art. “You look nice,” she finally said. “Look for yourself.” She pulled me up out of the chair.

  “No,” I told her. “Lexus, I don’t really want to look at myself in the mirror.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Look.”

  I stood in front of the mirror. I felt emotionless. I didn’t look different. I just had color.

  “What’s the difference?” I asked her.