It was just a thought.

I had tried to commit suicide, unsuccessfully, for what felt like the thousandth time. This time, the string I had tied around my neck broke, and after I blacked out, it dropped me to the floor where my sister found me, face down, passed out, on the hardwood floor of my bedroom. The next morning, I woke up in my bed, Mom must have moved me, so that meant Mom must have known what I tried to do the night before. My head throbbing, I got out of bed, wincing as my stomach squeezed together to lift me up and I felt the fresh cuts crisscrossing my tummy rub together. I walked slowly, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, out of my bedroom and down the hall. Mrs. Bilyeu was visiting, sitting on the beige suede arm chair with her legs crossed, she smiled at me and said good morning. Mom was sitting on the blue couch, her planner beside her with a few loose pieces of notebook paper scribbled over with doodles and phone numbers that had been written and then traced over and over, a habit Mom had whenever she was on the phone. The big, bold phone numbers, her planner, the cordless telephone sitting face down beside her on the couch all signified she had a plan. What that plan was, I didn't know, but from my mother's history of plans, I knew it was going to be huge, dramatic, and life-altering. You can imagine my surprise then when she told me she had made me an appointment to see a therapist that afternoon. It should have struck me as especially odd because it was a Sunday. What therapist is open to take a new client on a Sunday? Nevertheless, I was too excited to think anything of it. Excited seems like an odd way to feel about seeing a therapist, but for the first time in my life, it felt like my mom was actually caring about me. She was finally acknowledging that I wasn't going through a "phase" or "PMS-ing." For the first time ever, she seemed like she truly wanted to help. I got dressed quickly, throwing on a pair of grey sweat pants, my silver sequined flats and PINK University cotton t-shirt. I walked back down the hall to living room with Mom and Mrs. Bilyeu. "You look so grown-up, Gab, it's crazy," Mrs. Bilyeu said. "It's like you just grew up over night." I smiled and Mom collected her planner and the pieces of notebook paper, threw them in her aubergine handbag from the Gap, and we left our house on 69th street, got into the black Dodge Caravan and went to my "appointment."
     We pulled up to a big, brown building, deceivingly warm and welcoming, freshly painted. It was hidden down a long road in the Middle of Nowhere, Olathe, beautifully landscaped, exquisitely quiet. The only door that didn't require a staff identification card to unlock was the front door. The waiting room was small, two love seats separated by a small square end-table piled high with Highlights and Parenting magazines. The receptionist sat behind plexi-glass, her nose buried in oak-tag files. My mom went up to the window the receptionist sat behind and said quietly, "I talked to you on the phone about my daughter, Gabrielle Angelino." The receptionist nodded, grabbed a clear purple clipboard with a packet of forms clipped in, and a pen taped tackily to a giant fake flower. "Fill these out, someone will be right down." I was sitting on one cushion of the love seat next to my mother who was scrawling down my social security number, my last doctor's appointments, checking boxes next to questions like, "Is the patient allergic to any medicines? If yes, please list below." I had my headphones in as usual. I miss the days of being a teenager; when it was perfectly acceptable to have headphones everywhere you went and people were just like, "Ah, teenagers." Mom handed the forms back to the receptionist and moments later, I heard a faint buzz and the two massive wooden doors opposite the entrance opened and a man in a suit walked through them. He introduced himself, although I can't remember his name, and shook our hands. He was friendly, had a nice smile, I'm pretty sure he was gay. He told us to follow him, he would be taking us upstairs to a room where we could "talk." We followed and walked to the elevator which wouldn't work until he scanned his special card. As the elevator doors opened, I heard the slowly closing massive doors finally click shut with a hollow thud, a thud which should have made my skin crawl. I don't even remember how many floors we went up. I hate elevators so to me it always feels like an eternity. The room we sat in was white. The brick walls were painted white-and not like, eggshell white, like White-Out white. The metal chairs we sat in at the white plastic table were white. The clipboard the man had was white. A lady came and joined us. She, also, was white. My mom sat beside me opposite the doctors as they asked me questions like, "Do you ever feel the urge to eat dirt?" "Do you believe there are people who are 'out to get' you?" "Have you ever thought there were bugs crawling beneath the surface of your skin?" They gave me psychological as well as physical tests. They showed me diagrams, pictures, ink blots, they asked me millions of questions, half which sounded crazy and half which didn't seem strange at all. After a few hours, they diagnosed me as having bipolar disorder and told me they would be seeking to put me on medication. They got up and left and I thought that was the end of it. Then a black lady nurse came in, finally the first non-white thing I'd seen thus far. She took my heart rate, drew my blood, and then instructed me to take my nose ring out, all hair pins, she took the drawstring out my sweatpants and said, "Welcome to Marillac, Gabrielle."
     I looked at Mom, completely befuddled. "Mom?" I said. "What's going on?" Mom didn't say anything, she just gave me this half grin and shrugged. I looked at the nurse, finally understanding what was going on and wanting someone to confirm that it really wasn't. "Am I...am I...staying here?" I asked. The nurse looked from me to my mother and then back at me. "Well," she said awkwardly. "Well, yes. Your mother called and asked if we had any space available...you got the last spot. " My head was spinning. Thoughts multiplied in my brain like some sort of stress cancer. Thoughts building upon thoughts. Thoughts being snuffed out mid-thought by other thoughts. "How long am I staying here?" I barely asked, my throat was so dry my words came out as whispers. The nurse shrugged and shook her head, "As long as it takes for you to get better, baby." My stomach dropped; my guts churned. If there's one thing I hate more than any other thing (except maybe spiders) it is the unknown. It's like when I'd get in trouble, my mom would give me the silent treatment for days, once for over a week, and that had to be worse than the actual punishment ever was. The wondering. The waiting in the school office to see the principal. I think I would have handled Marillac better had I known how long I was actually going to be in there. The fact that the nurse didn't even know, made my tummy feel like I had just chugged a half gallon of curdled milk. Panic overcame me. My instincts to find the nearest exit and run set in but I knew I could get only as far as the stainless steel elevator doors which would stare dumbly at me, inoperative without that special, laminated card of liberation. So I just sat there, my heart drumming like an Indian chief was beating it with the rough of his splayed palm, next to my strangely cool mother. I put my fingers inside of my right nostril and used my index finger and thumb to twist the tiny little nose screw embedded in it and set it down on the white plastic table with a quiet clink. Instantly, I could feel the cool air (Marillac was like a giant, residential freezer) flow with more ease through the teeny extra hole in my right nostril. The nurse cautiously picked up the little steel screw with one latex-covered hand and put it in a tiny plastic bag. After I had removed the string from my sweatpants and the few bobby pins holding my hair away from my face, the nurse collected all of my items in a plastic bag which she labeled Angelino, G. Blood flooded my mouth. I had been subconsciously biting the soft of my inner cheek and it was now swollen and bleeding with pieces of cheek I had bitten loose rubbing against the rough of my molars. Mom just sat there silently, her face blank, refusing to show any hint of emotion at all. She didn't need to. I knew all too well from the abnormally erect way she was sitting, legs crossed, her purple purse set neatly in her lap, that everything was going according to her plan. And though she would pretend that this was simply tragic, the last resort she hoped she'd never have to be faced with, I knew she was feeling quite pleased with herself. Quite pleased indeed. While her face was cool, mine was hot. The sweat that beaded across my forehead instantly turned to steam. All the spit in my mouth had evaporated, leaving my tongue leathery, a desert save for the steady trickle of blood spilling onto it. I swallowed hard, my throat resisted and triggered my gag reflex. I heaved painfully, letting a few spots of blood fall onto that plastic table in front of me. It looked like blood spotted on snow. I looked at the few little droplets of blood before wiping them away with the hem of my shirt. "What about my things?" I asked finally. "All of my stuff is at home. I didn't realize I was going to be staying so you can understand why I don't have anything more than the clothes I'm wearing now." I directed this to the nurse, ignoring the Ice Queen beside me. "I suppose your...mother...will bring your things by later?" the nurse said slowly, cautiously turning her head in my mother's direction. I didn't turn my head to look at her, but out of my peripheral, I saw Mom nod slightly once. Awkwardly unsure as to how to proceed, the nurse took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, "Alrighty. Gabrielle, if you'd like to come with me, I'll lead you into the living room." We got up together, I guess Mom was escorted out, I don't know, I didn't look back at her. The "living room" was the first room we entered after the first two locked doors opened with a blinking of a little green light and a hushed buzz sound after that precious laminated card was flashed before its sensors. The first door led us to a desk in between two wards: the adolescent ward, where I was going, and the children's ward. Behind huge plexi-glass windows, I saw a little girl, maybe four years old, thin sandy blonde hair hung limply down to her petite, frail shoulders, the strap of her sundress drooping down the pale arm which held a blue, silk-trimmed blanket and her other hand was in her mouth. While the nurse gave the girl behind the desk, another nurse, the clipboard piled high with forms that had my name all over them, I stared into the little girl's eyes. She was staring back into mine, her head was slumped downward so that she had to look up at me. She had the eyes of a woman far beyond her years. Though she couldn't have been more than four years old, she had the cold, empty eyes of someone who knew far too much about loneliness. The dark eyes that stared back at me, heavily hooded with deep blue circles, had the look of hopelessness in them I had never before seen in a child. It wasn't until I felt the cool smooth of the nurse's hand around my arm that I finally tore my eyes from her's. I felt a thick chill coarse up my spine, prickling the thin baby hairs on the back of my neck. After the second heavy, locked door buzzed open, I was in the "living room." The "living room" consisted of a few round tables with plastic chairs pulled up around them, some had people sitting in them. I sat at an empty table, slumped down, my arms wrapped around my churning stomach. A couch was along one wall, and against another was a dry-erase board with Coping Mechanisms scrawled across the top in purple marker. Beneath it were, you guessed it, coping mechanisms, listed in bullet-form beside heavy purple dots. I really don't remember what they were. I'm sure it was something like, take a walk, journal, paint, call a friend, the stuff you see on the pamphlets in the school guidance counselor's office. I sat there alone for barely a minute and a half before a big, macho guy walked toward me, wearing a tight, grey, cotton v-neck, black cargo pants, and a huge, silver Swatch around his wrist. He held a homemade protein shake in a clear tumbler with a black lid in one humongous hand. He extended the other out to me, I shook it, he had the firm, military grip one would have assumed he had. I don't remember his name, but I remember what he looked like and he totally looked like a Chad or maybe a Brett. One of those alpha-dog, frat guy names that matched they way he looked. The way he talked kind of out of the side of his mouth, perfect, blindingly-white teeth, perfectly styled hair, he was one of those cool husbands who had a titanium wedding band, making something as delicate as a wedding ring look like it was a gadget in a Vin Diesel movie. He asked me what brought me to Marillac. I said with absolute honesty, "Beats me." He nodded, he seemed the sort who got uncomfortable in situations that weren't completely positive and upbeat so I have no clue why he wasn't working as a personal trainer at Balley's or something instead of working at Marillac. He handed me a styrofoam plate with something I was told was meant to resemble chicken parmesan on it and a plastic fork. "Everybody had dinner about twenty minutes ago so we had the kitchen run this up for you. You should eat something." I stared down at it: a hunk of eerily white chicken covered in sauce that was far too red, and wasn't really sauce but more of tomato water that drenched the slimy, worm-like noodles sliding around in the watery sauce when I poked at it with the dull tip of the plastic fork, leaving a trail of oily "sauce" on the styrofoam plate like the slime trails of a snail. Brett, or Chad, or whoever, was standing there next to me, occasionally tilting his head back as he took large swallows of protein shake, waiting for me to eat it. Honestly, I wasn't hungry at all. My stomach hurt in a way that lurched at the thought of food in general, let alone this prison food. I swallowed and turned the plastic fork on its side and dug it into the corner of the chicken. I could have just as well been trying to cut a brick wall with it; it wasn't going to happen. The chicken resisted and won. I put the fork down and looked at Chad and said, "Can I please have a plastic knife?" His eyes narrowed and shifted back and forth awkwardly. "N-no?" he said, answering my question with a question. He held a closed fist up to his lips and cleared his throat. "That is, that is contraband. I'm sorry but I can only give you a fork or a spoon." I pursed my lips and nodded slowly, looking down at my dinner before me, rapidly getting cold in the massive freezer I was sitting in. "I guess I'll try a spoon." He just stood there for a second then nodded and got me one. I tried to use the tip of the spoon to slice the chicken or at least break a chunk off. That didn't work either. My chicken was cold through and through when I finally set my pride aside and stabbed the chicken in the center with my fork, lifted it whole to my lips and bit off chunks, corn dog-style. When I had finished eating all I could stomach of my cold supper, the room had filled full of other teenagers, most of them looking very sick, others looking like kids I would have seen in the hallways of my high school. A young woman wearing a purple t-shirt with the name of some dance school printed on the front of it clapped her hands and said loudly, "Group time! Come on! Group time! Everyone to the living room!" The projecting voice of a veteran cheerleader. She had a short brown ponytail on the top of her head, stray hairs pinned down with silver barrettes. She was short with thick, muscular legs; the legs a dancer. Everyone was grabbing a chair and forming a shaky circle in the center of the room. I stood up and took my own chair to the closest gap in the circle I could find; I didn't want to risk carrying the chair for too long and tripping over it or banging it against a table and drawing a ton of attention to myself. I quickly found a space big enough to move in and out of without accidentally brushing against someone else, set my chair down and plopped down quietly and uncomfortably. After the last few stragglers found their way into the "circle," the young woman with the ponytail clapped her hands one last time and said, "Okay, it looks like we have a couple newcomers," her eyes shifted to me for a fraction of a second and then back to no one and everyone. "So we'll start how we usually do, say your name and why you're here." She pointed to a white boy wearing a blue jersey, grey sweat pants (no drawstring,) and white Nikes with a blue swoosh on the side (no laces.) He  mumbled his name (Chris) and said he was court-ordered for gang-related activities (Cryp obviously.) My heart found the pits of my turning stomach. I didn't know what I was going to say. "Hi, my name is Gabrielle, I'm here under false pretenses"? "Hi, my name is Gabrielle, last night I tried to kill myself because my mother makes it unbearable to live"? Though I was one of the last people to go, I felt like only seconds had passed since Chris had lifted his hand in a half-attempted gesture of a wave. It was my turn. "Hi," I said, my voice small, my face hot. "My name is Gabrielle, I'm here because I like to cut myself up." The dance girl nodded and gestured to the person next to me, a girl with mouse brown hair, terribly overgrown eyebrows, and a wrist, wrapped heavily with gauze, the other wrist had three hospital bracelets, all different colors like mixed and matched bangles. Her name was Lauren. "I was admitted here after KUMed. They didn't have any room and last night, I tried to kill myself." That gave me an eerie feeling. Both of us, living no more than a handful of miles apart, were simultaneously giving up on life. Finally, everyone in the circle had introduced themselves, most of their names I don't remember. I remember Rochelle, an incredible tall girl with yellow-colored shoulder-length hair, her nose and cheeks were splashed with freckles and pimples, she had tiny, sharp yellow teeth she used on the nurses frequently. All her jeans were cut off an inch above the ankle due to her incredibly long legs. I don't remember what got her there, but she certainly belonged there. At first she seemed normal. Then, the second a nurse told her to sit down or join the group, out came her fangs which she'd swiftly sink into the nurse's arm or hand or, once when she was sitting down on the floor with her back against the wall, I saw her bite a nurse's ankles like a yuppie little dog. Oh how that nurse had shrieked, jumping back from Rochelle's snapping mouth. Rochelle had obviously been sedated and they had wrapped her in a straight jacket and bound her to a table in an isolated room with velcro straps around her torso and feet. I never had to go in that room; I never did anything that required sedation or isolation or velcro-ation or anything of the sort. I was one of those fly-under-the-radar kind of kids. I did what was required of me, nothing more, nothing less. There was a girl named Hilary, although half the time she didn't know it. She suffered from some severe form of schizophrenia. Multiple times a day she would black out and forget her name and the year and where she was. Sometimes she'd say it was 1922 and she was Marilyn Van Der Linden, selling her body to make it by in the slums of New York City. Some of the things she'd say were just off the wall but she had a few consistent characters that always made an appearance during a group therapy session or breakfast. One of them was quite promiscuous and when this personality took over, everything thereafter was guaranteed to be NC-17. Once during music therapy, Hilary put her hands down her pants and began masturbating herself and moaning. When the nurses searched our rooms during one of their routine checks, Hilary said, "Go ahead, search! All you'll find is a bunch of skanky-ass underwear. Take a sniff, I know you want to!" Hilary was entertainment from day one. I learned later that she'd be in Marillac forever. Not where we were currently, of course. They had separate residential units for the patients who weren't looking at a mere couple of weeks or months. But for what Hilary has, there is no cure. When it was her turn to introduce herself, she was pretty lucid. She introduced herself as Hilary and said she was schizophrenic. Her red and purple hair hung in front of her face and she kept tugging at the sleeves of her green and black striped jacket. After everyone introduced themselves, the girl with the ponytail started to talk about the rules of Marillac. I was told that there would be therapy sessions, some group, some private, and everyone was required to attend. She said there was art therapy (that perked me up a bit,) music therapy, recreational time, and free time. Breakfast was at seven am, we were to awake by six, shower and dress, and the meals were mandatory. If food was not eaten, you were put back on Level 1 security, which basically meant you couldn't leave that floor not even to go to the cafeteria; the meals would be brought upstairs. Lights out was eight o'clock, which was now quickly approaching. When Miss Ponytail was finished, she told everyone to line up at the window on the far end of the room. The lady behind the desk who had taken my forms while I was staring at the little girl was behind the window and I realized it was just a window to that same desk, I just hadn't noticed at first. She had a seafoam green plastic tray with rows and rows of what looked like little ketchup souffle cups with a couple of pills in each one, some of them looked different but some looked all the same. She called people by their last names and when called, he or she would walk up to the window, throw the contents of their ketchup cup down their throats, take a swallow of the water in the small Dixie cup, open their mouths and then walked down the hall to their room. When my name was called, I too was handed a ketchup cup, there were two pills in there, one was stark white, the other was somewhat beige. I eyed them suspiciously, "What are these?" I asked. The nurse rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed, "Sedatives. A little something to help you sleep, you have to take them, miss." I reluctantly swallowed the pills and slurped the water greedily, now aware of how thirsty I had been. Hell, I thought as I felt the pills slide down my throat, I could use some sleep. The nurse looked down at a clipboard then up at me. "Gabrielle?" she asked. I nodded. "You still need to do your EKG tonight. Go have a seat and I'll have a nurse come for you." I nodded again and walked away, taking a seat in the same blue plastic chair I had just been sitting in. It was still warm, a small comfort, but I took it. I didn't know what an EKG was but I figured it didn't really matter anyway. I was a sixteen year old girl in here alone. Who was I to say no to anyone? That's what your mother is supposed to do. So I sat there, waiting for the nurse to do some kind of special test on me, wondering what I was going to feel like once those pills I had just swallowed kicked in. The big door buzzed open and a blonde nurse walked inside, a bright smile across her healthily tanned face. "Gabrielle?" she said, her pitch fluctuating when she said "elle." I nodded and stood up. She shook my hand and said her name. God, I am so bad with names, I'm so sorry. I liked her though, I remember that. She seemed genuinely nice and warm, like my second grade teacher Mrs. Barr. She led me out the doors, past the window I saw the little girl through (she was gone,) and down the hall, past that room I had first been in, to another room, a colder room, if that was possible. This room looked more like a doctor's office. I laid down on the table, the paper wrapper crumpling beneath my body. She lifted my shirt and gasped a gasp I saw her eyes instantly regret. "Ooh honey..." she said in a soft whisper. She ran her soft fingers lightly over the X's carved into my stomach, some old and scabbing, some fresh and welted. "You're so beautiful," she whispered. "Why do you do this to your body?" Her eyes were welling with pity, I could see her heart aching in the deep blue oceans of her eyes. My heart broke beneath her gaze. She was hurting because I hurt. It was so bizarre. It was so touching. She put these sticky discs connected to wires on my chest, arms, and legs.  She hesitated before placing the discs on my chest, seeing cuts all over my breasts and up to my collar bone. Not finding a clear patch of skin, she delicately stuck the disc on my cut up chest. She removed all the discs with even more gentleness than when she applied them, wiping up the fresh blood bubbling from where the sticky discs had removed scabs. Then she drew blood from the crook of my right arm, I winced with pain but her soft hand on my arm made it not hurt as much. I wished to spend the night there in that room with her. I dragged my feet as we walked back to the "living room." When I got back, the nurse behind the window called my name and I went back up to see her. She handed me a bag full of some Marillac-approved clothes and shoes, a couple of Easter cards from my family back east, and thankfully, a book, Stephen King's The Shining. The nurse plucked the book and examined the cover, and then the back, her brow furrowed. "We usually don't allow these kinds of books," she said. My eyes flickered with annoyance. She was about to take away the one thing that would take me away from this incredibly cold, incredibly white place. "But judging from your circumstances, I don't think this should be a problem for you. You may keep the book," she said, handing me back the book. I grabbed it quickly before she could change her mind, and put it back into the bag which I slung over my shoulder. "Also, here's a box of some hygiene products. Makeup is not allowed, as you are not here to focus on your outsides, but your insides." She handed me a clear box which contained Arm & Hammer body wash and toothpaste (unflavored,) a packaged green toothbrush, a wash cloth, and travel size of Pert 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. I turned to go, my bag on my shoulder and the plastic box tucked under my arm. "Also," the nurse said. I turned back to her. She was holding out a workbook (not spiral bound, of course,) with the words Marillac and Me printed across it in red. A picture of two ethnic kids smiling was on the cover. "You're required to complete this workbook. Sign and date the final page, a commitment to your recovery, and hand it in to one of the nurses or aides. Until you do, you are on Level 1 security, so if I were you, I would make haste." I took the workbook with the happy kids on the cover (false advertising, I thought,) and was escorted down the hall by Chad to my room. The room, like everything else in Marillac, was very cold and very white. Heavily painted cement walls were illuminated by intense florescent lights. There were two thin mattresses on two frail metal bed frames, dressed with a thin cotton sheet, topped with another thin cotton sheet, and a thin, scratchy cotton/polyester blend blanket folded at the foot of the bed. The head of the bed had a thin cotton pillow flatly in the center. A sort of dresser/desk combo was against the wall opposite the beds and beside the bed furthest from the door was the bathroom. I was told I was to have a roommate, a black girl who looked to be maybe fourteen or fifteen. She was a quiet girl so I was stunned when she had introduced herself in the circle and claimed to be there for anger management, but when bedtime rolled around, I saw the rage that put her there. I had been brushing my teeth as quickly as I could because the cold linoleum floor felt like a slat of ice beneath my bare feet. When I had finished, I got into the bed closest to the door (the other bed was clearly claimed with a teddy bear lounging against the pillow, it made me long for Fergusson.) I was trying to get comfortable in the so very uncomfortable bed so different from my own plush, welcoming bed, when I heard a blood-curdling shriek come from down the hall, followed by a crash, and more shrieking, this time there were multiple shriekers. I was looking out of the open door to my bedroom and I saw other kids coming from their rooms, slowly, cautiously, curiously. More loud bangs. Still more shrieking. It sounded as though objects were falling from the sky, dropping tables and chairs through the roof. In truth, that's somewhat of what was really happening. My roommate, the sweet, quiet black girl with the big bubble gum pink lips and anger issues, was hurling chairs at the nurses, now down on the floor with their hands held protectively over their heads. The girl was still shrieking, the tendons in her neck bulging. She flipped over the few tables which still stood upright, and hurled magazines, books, anything in her reach, at the crying nurses on the floor. I half expected her to shred her shirt with her fingers and turn green. Her braided hair was frizzed out from clawing at it, ripping at it, pulling at it. The male nurses and aides (Chad, especially,) rushed frantically to the screaming, crazy girl wreaking havoc at bedtime. It took two of them to hold her down while one of them injected her right there in the "living room" with sedative. Only seconds later, the writhing girl, nearly foaming at the mouth, went limp in the strong arms of the two men holding her down. Her eyelids closed with a flutter, but not completely. I could still see white slits in her eyes as they carried her to the restraint room, her head hung back, unsupported, her pink mouth agape. She looked so sweet as she was getting velcroed to that table, like a child sleeping in a very strange crib. And so it was every night around bedtime. I had a roommate with things in the room, but at night, I slept alone in our room, and she slept a deep, drugged sleep alone in the restraint room. My first night there, despite the pills that were supposed to help me sleep, I tossed and turned on the pathetic mattress, feeling every coil and every spring. Tears soaked my white, cotton pillowcase. Above me, a camera was always watching, and a nurse or security guard was always watching the camera from a monitor at the front desk. I kept the covers above my face, trying to feel alone. Even if I could have forgotten about the camera (I couldn't have, I have always been paranoid that people are watching me, this was one of my biggest fears confirmed,) there was no ignoring the security guard that opened the door to my room every half hour, shining a flashlight at my bed, asking me to show my head when I was beneath the covers. When they witnessed me, alive in bed, they'd close the heavy door which banged shut loudly with a hollow thunk that echoed through the empty, cold room. If I had been nearing the peace of sleep, I was wide awake every time that door slammed shut. That first night was definitely the worst. I was freezing all night even cocooned in my bedding, I felt so alone, so afraid, so betrayed. I cried all night. I cried for myself, I cried for my bed and my Fergusson. Never before had I felt so alone and terrified and I was forced to face it without my single comforting companion. That night, I cried tears of sadness, tears of loneliness, tears of longing, and tears of rage. All were absorbed in my flat, un-pillow-like pillow, which rejected them after I filled it to capacity, and it squeezed all my tears back onto my face. Crying exhausted me and finally lulled me to sleep. I felt as though I had been sleeping only seconds when I was awoken by a nurse standing over me, shaking me awake. "Follow me," she whispered. I followed her groggily out of my room and emerged into the florescent lit hallway. It hurt my tired, dry eyes and I continued the rest of the walk with my eyes open as little as possible. The place was nearly silent, save for a few security guards, posted on either end of the hallways, talking in hushed voices. I caught the time on the clock and was confused when it claimed it was four am. I thought I didn't have to be up until six... I followed the nurse into another florescent lit room and was instructed to sit down and roll up my right sleeve. I obeyed, pushing up the sleeve of my navy blue NYPD sweatshirt I used to share with my mom. The nurse began poking at the same spot in the crook of my arm that the nice nurse had drawn blood from earlier that day. Or the day before; it felt like it was all the same day. The nurse was becoming more and more agitated, clearly unable to find a vein. She kept poking, pushing the needle in, then drawing it back out and poking some more. Her grip on my arm was not the gentle softness of the nice nurse, but rather rough, squeezing too tight, digging into my skin with her fingers. My arm hurt, I kept flinching, and her grip tightened as she said through clenched teeth, "Hold still." I tilted my head back toward the ceiling, my eyes shut tightly in a grimace of pain. It was far too early for this kind of hurt. Finally, the nurse stuck the needle in and didn't pull it out for a couple minutes. When she did, she pressed a cotton ball down on my bleeding arm and secured it with a blue band aid. She led me back to my room where I crawled back into bed. Now my arm was throbbing and stinging all at once, by the time I finally got back to sleep, it was time to wake up again. My head pounded from fatigue. I longed for coffee but when I got to cafeteria (I quickly signed the last page of the workbook and handed it in, gaining Level 2 security access,) I learned coffee is apparently a drug and drugs, of course, were contraband here at Marillac. So I chugged a half pint of chocolate milk from the cardboard cartons they allowed us, hoping it would give me a sugar rush to compensate for the lack of caffeine in my system. Breakfast consisted of dry, overcooked scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, a gruel I was told was oatmeal, and a piece of fruit. I nibbled at my toast and ate an orange. One of the aides eyed me as I emptied my nearly full plate into the large garbage can next to the cafeteria door, but I didn't care. I wasn't eating it, and not because I had an eating disorder, far from it, it was because I loved food, and this...this wasn't food.  After breakfast was one of the first therapy sessions of the day. I learned about emotions. Rochelle, the biter, and Lauren, the girl with the bound up wrist, somewhat befriended me. I say somewhat because technically, friends were against Marillac's rules. There were to be no last names, phone numbers, email addresses, names of high schools were to be exchanged between anyone. Partly for privacy. Let's be honest, who's proud of being held in a mental institution? That's not something you want whispered in locker rooms and etched into bathroom stalls at your school. When I returned to high school after Marillac, I told everyone I had been in St. Thomas visiting my rich uncle. No way in hell was I telling the truth to a bunch of my brutal, back-stabbing, gossiping peers. So the privacy aspect made total sense. The other reason we weren't supposed to exchange any personal information was truly because we weren't allowed to make any friends while inside Marillac. They told us we were to focus on our recovery and not making friends. On one hand, I can see how they wanted to nip any future gossip and clique conflicts in the bud. You put a bunch of crazies in one room, let them socialize, and what do you think is going to happen? On the other hand, Marillac was an experience not a lot of people share. There's a lot of recovery that goes on after your "recovery" and I think maybe it would have been a little bit easier if I had someone who really knew what I went through to talk to about it. I, of course, had mandatory outpatient treatment twice a week, but I felt like, though they nodded and mimicked my facial expressions and said "Oh, mmhmm," and "Yes, naturally," they didn't really know how I was feeling. Maybe it's that egotistical, "Nobody could ever understand" attitude that made me feel like they weren't truly understanding, but nevertheless, that's how I felt. And I feel as though it made my recovery from Marillac a little harder, having no one to relate to. I did end up running into Lauren from Marillac. We were both at the same summer school the summer after. Those two weeks out of school, despite the fact that I had all my books and homework delivered and faxed to Marillac by discreet school officials, had put me behind in a lot of classes. Latin I made up and barely passed with a D on the final exam, biology was a breeze once I caught up with the book work, but Algebra, a class I was already failing even when I was in the class, was a lost cause. One I had to make up in summer school in order to graduate the following year. I was in the cafeteria, sitting at a table across from my friend Ashley and this boy she had met named Daniel. Ashley was telling me all about something outrageous this girl named Hailey did the night before at so-and-so's party, but I wasn't really listening. I was staring off across the cafeteria through the patches of people at the pretty brunette girl laughing and flirting with boy wearing a white v-neck. Her long brown hair glinted in the sunlight as she flipped it flirtatiously over her smooth, tan, bare shoulder. I narrowed my eyes, no...it probably isn't... trying to place the girl. As though she could feel my gaze, her green eyes found mine across the crowded room of people. The way her eyes kept darting from the boy's face back to mine confirmed the hushed question in my mind. I got up, cutting off a jabbering Ashley mid-sentence. "Uh," she said, dumbly. "Okay...bye...?" I walked in a daze, weaving through elbows and legs, pushing off the occasional stumbling student, toward the girl who was now looking at me with full recognition. I was finally standing there in front of her, we were both smiling, astounded. Her braces gleamed as she laughed, "I thought  that was you!" I met her outstretched arms with my own and we embraced, the setting so drastically different, though I could feel her, smell her, it felt like a dream. "Wow!" she exclaimed. "So wh-, wher-, so, uh," she laughed nervously. I laughed to. Now that I had come over here, I had no idea what I was going to say. "The lack of tweezers in that looney bin really changed your overall appearance, huh" ? I think not. I didn't know what I was going to say, I hadn't thought it through that far. I saw her and started walking, my thoughts ended past I hope that guy's hackey sack doesn't hit me in my face. With both of us laughing awkwardly, I really hoped Lauren would break the ice. Finally the laughter stopped and she said, "So what brings you to summer school?" "Algebra," I grunted, making a gagging gesture with my finger. She laughed and said, "English." I shook my head, marveling at how difficult it must have been to fail English. "Listen," she said, brightly. "I'm going to a party tonight at this guy Cody's, you should come! I'd like to catch up some more!" I went and a tipsy Lauren had slung her arm around my shoulder and said secretively into my ear, "It's so awesome to see you! Look at us, two crazy girls from Marillac, who ever would've thought we'd be here together?" Not me, that's for sure. After that, I never saw her again, but I think we're still Facebook friends against Marillac's no-friends-allowed rule. Along with that no-friends-allowed rule came phone privileges with phone restrictions. There was a phone binder full of patients and two approved numbers that I could call. No received calls were allowed, that went along with the whole discretion policy. My two approved numbers were home and my Mommom. I called home once or twice. Once was on Easter. I said happy Easter to my brothers and Autumn. Mom told me they were waiting to dye eggs until I got home. With a clenched jaw, I grunted my thanks, wished my mother a happy Easter and hung up. She visited me once but I could only sit with her for five of the sixty minutes I was allotted before I needed to leave her presence. At the end of my first week there, I had a parent meeting where my mom and Andy came into Marillac one evening and I met with them and a therapist in an office down the hall. During my first week there, I had learned quite a few things. I had learned not to feel hungry because the food wasn't worth the contentment of my stomach, I had learned that your arm turns black and blue after you get blood drawn twice a day, every day, for a week by an ill-tempered nurse who can't find a vein to save her life, and most importantly, I learned that my liberation from Marillac was completely contingent upon how well my parent meeting went. If I had a civil, loving parent meeting, chances are I would be released the following day. If the parent meeting ended in swearing and screaming, however, I was stuck there another week until the following Saturday when I'd have another parent meeting, and so on and so forth. I thought to myself, no problem. Fake nice, smile, be respectful, express deep remorse for the pain I've put my family through and babble on about recovery and new beginnings and moving forward. All that jazz. I didn't expect to feel my skin boil the second I saw her, a pathetic, sympathetic mocking smile across her face. Her eyes were lit up like a Christmas tree and they screamed, "I win!" I don't even remember what was said, instantly I was screaming at her, completely unaware of the snot and tears flowing down my face. The therapist was standing and shouting in a controlled tone, trying to be the mediator he was trained to be. Andy was trying to calm me down but I was completely taken over with a furious rage pulsing through my veins. Red, hot fury burned savagely in my heart. I was quite literally removed from the room by the therapist who had pulled me, then finally lifted me out the door. Once away from her, crying the last of the angry tears that flowed wildly from my burning eyes, I could breathe and begin to calm myself. The therapist was reprimanding me, telling me how disrespectfully I had just behaved, I was only half listening. The rest of my mind was dwelling on what had just happened and what that meant for me. Another week. The thought resounded in my head. Fergusson, my bed, a cheeseburger, had all seemed so close, only minutes ago. So close. And now I had just...bought myself another week in here. Another week away from Ferg. Another week on that pitiful flimsy mattress. Another week until I could eat a cheeseburger. I was escorted back to the "living room." It was free time so I walked down the hall, past the kids playing card games on the hallway carpet outside their rooms, to my room, second to last door on the right, directly across from this boy Tyler's room. He was in Marillac because he took too much of his mother's liquid morphine and was declared dead for two minutes. He was revived and then dropped off at Marillac. Tyler was a skinny, small kid. Very frail and sickly looking. After a day there, I found out Tyler had some stomach condition which made him completely unable of eating any food. Instead, he had a plugged hole, right by his belly button, and the nurses would cart in an IV bag looking thing full of this yellow substance they would feed through a tube into his stomach. Poor kid. He was really self-conscience about it. I got the feeling he was used to getting made fun of about it, and I'm sure he was; kids can be so senselessly cruel. When I got to my room, Tyler waved at me from across the hall, I didn't wave back. I just shut the door (against the rules,) and laid face down on my temporary bed. Seconds later, a nurse opened my door, propped it open with the door jam and said, "No closed doors before eight," and walked away. I cried alone for maybe five or ten minutes, then I heard a faint, "Gabby?" from outside of door, now wide open. I lift my head slightly to see who it was. Tyler. I buried my face back in my pillow and resumed my crying. "Bad parent meeting?" he said hesitantly. I responded with a series of wails and moans. "I know you want to get out of here-hell so do I," he said. "But I'm glad you aren't going yet." He walked away, leaving me and my wet pillow alone. My heart ached as anger welled up inside it. I was furious. Furious with myself, with stupid Marillac, with that hideous smile dancing across my mother's lips underneath of her feigned concern. The thought of another week here made me sick to my empty stomach. That past first week had already taken an enormous toll on me: emotionally and physically. My highly-maintained hair seemed to have a nasty allergic reaction to that foreign dishsoap-like substance in the pearly green plastic bottle that came in the clear plastic box with Angelino, G. printed on a white label on the ftont of it. The lack of Arbonne face cleansers and serums my young skin had grown accustomed to left my skin very dull and with no make up allowed, I just had to go with it. Every morning at around six o'five, I would brush my teeth in the bathroom I would have shared with the angry black girl had she not been groggily waking up from a heavily-medicated sleep on a bed with velcro straps, and I'd look at myself in the streaked, dimly-lit, bathroom mirror, I'd see my drab, colorless skin, the deep-purple bags hooding my lifeless eyes-the sleep deprived eyes of a lonely girl-and a tear would always run down my cheek by six o'seven. An indigo bruise-the mother root in the crook of my arm-snaked up to my bicep and down to my forearm from the constant blood-drawing, always in my left arm, always administered by the same uneducated nurse. The pain was a sensation so bright I couldn't lift my arm for weeks without an ocean of it crashing through me. Early during the first week, I went back to Level 1 security as a consequence for emptying far too many full trays of food into the large, grey garbage cans in the blindingly white cafeteria. I was also put into an eating disorder therapy group though the only disorder hindering my eating was the food itself, or rather the imitation food. The softness around my belly disappeared, leaving a thin layer of skin clinging vulgarly to the sharply defined bulges of my ribs. Large bubbles of tears blotted the ink on the pages of The Shining as my bony fingers thumbed through it at night, the florescent  light flooding through the crack beneath my door illuminating the book enough for my red, tired eyes to see the terrifying picture Stephen King was slowly painting perfectly. To this day, I hold that book in high esteem in my heart as it was the book that provided me an escape from the most horrible prison I had found myself trapped in. When I was reading about Jack and Danny and Tony I was no longer in a mental institution, I was in the Overlook Hotel, being haunted not by nurses and doctors, but rather by Grady and Lloyd. The third day into the second week, Lauren was released. She hugged me goodbye despite the nurse glowering down at us and told me to take care of myself. I watched her leave and felt a mix of jealousy and a sense of loss. The heavy door buzzed open and then clicked shut with a hollowness that resounded through my core. Lauren was free and I was still trapped. I managed to stand still, ignoring the strong impulse my legs had to run after her. If I couldn't go with her, I'd drag her back here because it wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. She got here the same day I did. Her wrists were bound up, mine weren't. And so she could have a civil meeting with her mother? So what? That didn't prove she was more stable than me, more sane than me, more recovered than me, all that proved was that she either had kind, understanding parents, or she was a talented young actress, using her skills to play her stupid parents and that stupid therapist. I wanted to grab hold of her mouse-brown ponytail and drag her across that disgusting, coarse, rainbow-vomit carpet back to the "living room" where she belonged. Because if I was crazy, so was she. But I didn't. I just watched her disappear behind the heavy door to freedom and then I went into my temporary marshmallow room. After Lauren left, I finally got proof that it was possible to leave, and so I buckled down and focused on my next parent meeting, the meeting that, if amiable, would lead to my release just like it did for Lauren. All week I rehearsed what I would say at my parent meeting. I came up with a "recovery plan" that my parents would buy, and I practiced making my face look remorseful, appreciative, and above all, innocent in the bathroom mirror. My last Friday had come, the day before my second parent meeting, and I was called by a nurse to go see the psychiatrist for the first time since I had been there. I don't remember his name-I struggled to remember it while I was in Marillac-but I remember him. I remember the smug, scrutinizing way he looked down at the open file before him then to me, sitting as small as I could, then back to the file. The second I met him instant hate stirred up in my belly, thick and hot, swelling slowly, burning deep down to bottom of me. He hadn't looked up when the nurse brought me into the office leaving after saying "Miss Angelino to see you." I had stood there unsurely in the doorway, beads of cold sweat springing up across my forehead, twisting the bony fingers of my one hand with the damp palm of the other. Finally, I walked quickly and quietly to the beige, stained couch along the wall across from his desk and sunk into it, feeling the cushions give in uncomfortably too easily and it made me think of just how many crazies, like myself, had also sat in this same spot feeling the same way I was feeling. What had they been told in their meetings? What will I  be told? "Shut the door," he said, still too engulfed in the papers on his desk to look up at me. Even though his words registered in my head, my body didn't seem to be on the same page because I just sat there dumbly, my mouth hanging open slightly, all I needed was a nice, opaque, thick string of drool dangling from my lower lip to complete the psychiatric patient look to a T. I guess the stream of light still flooding through the door, still propped widely open even though he had told me to shut it was more interesting than the papers on his desk because he finally looked up at me. Black, beady eyes, the eyes of the snake he was, peered up at me, half brimmed in stylishly rimless crescent moon spectacles which he removed and set down on his desk. He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his thumbs, spun his chair to his right and got up. His khaki pants swished between his thighs as he walked past me and shut the door. Leaving me choking in a thick cloud of designer-impostor cologne, he sat regained his seat at his desk and continued perusing the open file all about me. After another few moments of ear-shattering silence he said, "So, you're a cutter." I chewed the loose piece of skin hanging from my bottom lip and stared vacantly back at him. His brown loafers extended out in front of him and he pushed his chair back away from his desk. He rested his neatly folded hands across his stomach and just stared at me. I didn't know if he expected me to speak but I wasn't going to. Not if I could help it, I wasn't. He pointed to a cork board hanging on the wall beside his desk, the fake gold watch on his wrist slid down to the middle of his forearm; it was either broken or too big. My eyes traveled up from the Faux-lex around his hairy arm and up to the cork board his finger was aiming towards. A piece of white cardstock hung from a clear push pin. On it was stamped: I AM UNSTABLE, some letters floated up towards the top while others sunk to the bottom. "When you uh...cut yourself...you may as well be wearin' this around your neck 'cause that's what you're tellin' people, kay?" I kept on staring, kept on willing him dead with my eyes. "Do you think people want to make friends with an unstable person? Do you think boys want to date an unstable person?" I'm in Marillac, buddy. Do you really think I'm caring if the Northwest High boys don't want to go steady? "You uh, you think you're ready to change what your sign reads? Think you're ready to get better?" I stuck my chin up then let it fall back to my decolette in a gesture of reluctant consent. I would agree to running buck-naked down the center of Shawnee Mission Parkway doing the chicken dance if you said you'd let me go home today, is what I thought. "Absolutely I am," is what I said. "Great," he said. Then he jotted down something in my file, closed it and said, "Then your job is to have a good parent meeting, which shouldn't be hard, I met your parents and they seem like nice folks," Every little muscle in my eyes strained to keep them from rolling up in utter aggravation. "And then we can see about gettin' you home." I nodded once more and got up off of that hideous couch. I wiped my sweaty palms on the seat of my pants and begrudgingly shook the hairy hand extended out to me. After that I left, the door to his office shut heavily behind me like all the doors here did, and the nurse who had walked me in was already waiting to walk me back. I dragged my slippers across the carpet; I had no energy to much more. It was still too early to be in my room so I collapsed on the couch in the "living room." It was weird; despite all the times I'd had Sunny D and vodka for breakfast, sitting there sober as a dog in Marillac, I had never before felt so messed up. Like I had taken a handful of painkillers and washed them down with a fifth of Jack Daniels. My brain sat amid a constant fog that grew thicker and thicker with each little ketchup cup of colorful pills. The bruise on my arm ached for my perpetual attention but I lacked the strength to roll my sleeve up and examine it. Over the past two weeks the muscles in my legs seemed to gain in density making walking feel as though my atmosphere were composed of 78.08 percent nitrogen, 20.95 percent molasses and then more molasses. All I ever wanted to do was lay on my cot and read. Or lay on my cot and fantasize about cheeseburgers. But mostly I just laid on my cot and cried, repeating quietly, "I want to go home...I want to go home...I want to go home..." The last two weeks had drained me of everything, but mostly tears. I sat there on the couch in the "living room," my eyes heavy from tears, drugs and sleep-deprivation. If I had anything to do with it, this would be the last time I ever sat on this couch again. Tomorrow was my parent meeting, my possible release date. I felt simultaneously excited and scared out of my mind. Tomorrow I could go home (home!) but the flame of relief was quickly extinguished by the thought of my mom. I had really done it this time. I had landed myself in a mental institution. Surely people knew, maybe not all of them but some had to. Even though this was in no way my idea, I was still going to get it. Because I had embarrassed her. If I had learned anything from living with my mom for the past sixteen years it was that the fool-proof way to make her hate you instantly is to embarrass her. Well, awesome, because I had done that flawlessly. I knew that tomorrow she would furrow her brow in feigned concern in front of the mediator but the second we got home...boy would I be in for it. Not like she'd hit me. She never hit me save for the time I rolled my eyes at her and said "Whatever"  before church in sixth grade and she slapped me across my mouth . I went to Sunday school with fat, red duck lips and she found me in between services to say she was sorry. Other than that and maybe a few times when I had attitude as a kid, she never hit me. Her punishments always just straddled the line between strict parenting and abuse. It was more the things she said rather than did. I knew when I got home I'd be told what a burden I was on the family. What an embarrassment I was and how difficult I was to love. I knew that while I may feel physical pain right now at Marillac, I was going to be hurting much deeper when I got home. But at least I would have my bed. And Fergusson. At least I would have him. I didn't sleep that night. I stared back at the cameras that watched me endlessly. I imagined my mother. I imagined the things she was going to say, the expressions her face would make while she said them. I rehearsed the lines I would feed my parents and the mediator, the lines I hoped would sound like the lines of troubled teen striving to change her ways. I laid there staring at the camera. Staring and whispering "I want to go home...I want to go home...I want to go home..." The parent meeting went well. I spoke the words I had rehearsed, I tuned out the words my mother spoke, and finally heard the words I had been waiting two weeks to hear. "Alright, Miss Angelino. If it's fine with your parents I think it's about time we get you home." Hope fluttered in my chest, I could hear the blood swoosh through my ears. But then Mom, she said, "Maybe not today. I want to make sure she's really better." I saw white. "Well, Mrs. Angelino," the mediator said, "We can keep her until tomorrow but then I think she should get home. We'll continue her treatment through our out-patient care program for another week but I don't see a reason for her to be in in-patient any longer." My mother's eyes flickered in that way they always did when someone questioned her authority. "She is my daughter," she said. "I'd appreciate it if you kept her until tomorrow and then, yes, if she's better I will come take her home." My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands leaving a row of white little half moons. Fury swelled up inside of me, hate pulsed through me so thick I could taste it. I nodded and the mediator walked me back to the ward. Hot tears were flowing freely down my cheeks by the time the first door clicked shut. It was too early to be in my room, I knew that, but I walked there anyway. I was crying with no signs of stopping and I wasn't about to do it in front of a bunch of crazies. I cried in my room that night and nobody bothered me. Not the nurses. Not Chad. Not Tyler. For the first time since I had entered Marillac, I was left alone. Eventually, I cried myself to sleep. I was woken up to get blood drawn for the last time but I was too excited to fall asleep. Instead, I gathered the few things I had into a neat pile on my cot. The Shining lay on top; I had finished it days ago. I picked it up and reread the last few pages anyway. Time was eking by. My last four hours in Marillac somehow seemed longer than any of the other days. My mom was ten minutes late picking me up, of course, but the second I walked out of those doors and into the sun, I didn't care anymore. My eyes felt like they were shriveling beneath the radiant sunshine, but I couldn't stop looking up directly at it. I loved how golden and glowing it was. It wasn't white and constantly flickering. I breathed the brisk spring air greedily through my nostrils, relishing the lack of hospital smell. I threw my stuff in the back of the Dodge Caravan and climbed into the passenger seat. Mom got in and started the car. She didn't really say much. She said, "You ready to go home?" and I nodded and she drove away. I watched Marillac disappear in the rear view mirror and felt relief wash through me. I may very well be in for it at home but for the time being, I was free. "Can we stop at McDonald's? I've been craving a cheeseburger for weeks." I ended up eating four double cheeseburgers that day. Then we took the family Easter picture out back in front of that big tree in the yard. I really did get it when I got home and I ended up crying myself to sleep but I was in my own bed with no cameras or needles or nurses. And I had Fergusson right beside me.