Disclaimer: I don't own 'Mumble' the Penguin, or rather, the idea of it. It belongs to the makers of the film "Happy Feet (2006)"

“Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.”
----Voltaire

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION

Rivera Psychiatric Hospital

Admission Report

Riley Summers
Case No.: 9,634
Building No.: 1
Admission Date: 27/12/02

PATIENT ADMISSION DETAILS: First inpatient admission for this 14 year old, single, white female who has 10 years of formal education and has recently been removed from the system altogether due to her psychiatric condition and its incompatibility with her previous lifestyle. She has been admitted for a recently diagnosed bipolar disorder. Appears to have symptoms inconsistent with any of the specified types of the disorder, thus the diagnosis remains Bipolar Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) for the time being, but observation shall continue to confirm whether or not her behaviour progresses to suit Type I, II or Cyclothymia. Patient referred to us after multiple suicide attempts during the major depressive episode of her disorder.

MENTAL STATUS EXAMINATION: Individual referred to us in what is confirmed to be the manic stage of her disorder. The symptoms of this stage are very evident in patient’s actions. The patient’s attire is of very bright colours reflecting her current mental state.

Befitting her disorder at this stage, her speech is impaired and the patient is unable to remain focused but continues to attempt to answer the questions asked. This manic state is further amplified by the patient’s behaviour that does not normally accommodate her personality, particularly in the form of aggression. As her pupils are dilated, it is possible that the patient has some how come into contact with more than her prescribed daily medication to relieve her anxiety. Further investigation is necessary to determine where she may have acquired this medication. This could also explain her irritability and tendency to break from reality as her parents have indicated that psychosis occurs sporadically.

TRANSCRIPT OF VERBAL EXAMINATION (patient’s responses underlined):

Riley, do you know why you’re here?

[OBSERVATION: Patient can’t sit still and bounces up and down on her seat. Tone of voice is very cheerful.

I don’t actually know. All I wanted was to dry my hair in the shower and then – oh it doesn’t matter. Can I go now?

Not yet, Riley. I have only a few more questions for you. How are you feeling right now?

[OBSERVATION: Speech is rushed.

I’m fine. Great. Never been better.

How long have you been feeling this way?

[OBSERVATION: Patient shrugs shoulders. Attention appears to be becoming diverted elsewhere as Patient begins looking nervously around the room.

Dunno. A week?

Do you have any feelings about being in this hospital?

[OBSERVATION: Patient is experiencing a sudden burst of anger; gestures wildly with her arms.

I SAID I’M GREAT! WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME! I WANT TO LEAVE!

Thank you for your time, Riley. We’re finished for today. The nurse will show you to your room now and I will speak to you in a few days to see how you are settling in.

[OBSERVATION: Patient stands cheerfully, all evidence of her aggression gone. She takes the nurse’s outstretched hand and skips off.

Evaluation by Dr. Henry Freeman

Psychologist, Rivera Psychiatric Hospital

Date: 27/12/02

6 years later

Present Day – 14/11/08

Have you ever had one of those days where you want nothing more than to jump out the nearest window without a single fear about the pain that would meet you at the bottom, simply because pain and nothingness would be relief? No? Well, when you do, you’ll know what its like to be me for ninety days in a year. And it will continue that way, a quarter of my life spent wishing those bars on the window in my room would just disintegrate into dust.

Why are there bars on my window? Because regulation demands they be there: four centimetres thick and spaced five centimetres apart; just enough room for the sunlight to filter through on good days and rain to splash against the glass on bad ones.

Although it feels like the last six years of my life have been one consecutive bad day after another, even when the depression hasn’t taken over every inch of my body to the point of despair: when I can feel it deep within my bones, in the pores of my skin, in the blood thrumming powerfully through my veins.

If someone had told me seven years ago that I would spend the next six years of my life in a mental hospital, I would have told them that perhaps it was their fate they had predicted for me. Seven years ago I was the most normal girl around; I went to school, I had sleepovers with my friends, I loved my family. I was happy. And, no matter how hard I try, I still cannot fathom how I ended up here. But some how, some way, it happened.

Where is here?

Rivera Psychiatric Hospital, located in the picturesque Dolomite Mountains of Northern Italy.

“Where your health is our first priority”

Or that’s what they claim, at the very least.

Rivera Psychiatric Hospital is the most exclusive of its kind, or as exclusive as a hospital for the insane can get.

And, with exclusivity, comes loneliness; the type that seeps right into your bones over time because nothing ever changes. The past three years have been an accumulation of one monotonous day after another because nothing ever changes. There hadn’t been a single new admission to our hospital in three years…

Until yesterday…

So someone new walked in, just one more crazy person in an hospital for the insane. What was so exciting about that? Why did everyone need to make him the focus of their attention? Like he was the sole person worth anything in the entire place, they flocked to him. I expected it of some of them, Kevin, Humphrey, Adder, Shaniqua. But even my friends were there, watching him: Lyra, Skye, Ivy and Richard. Even they couldn’t hide their curiosity towards the new arrival: Blaze Taylor.

As for me? I couldn’t care less. I didn’t watch him, speak to him or hear him. He was just there, in the background. But it was impossible to ignore him completely because no one else could seem to take him off their minds, their words dancing around me continuously.

“Do you think he’s a criminal?”

“What do you think his illness is?”

“I wonder if he has a girlfriend on the outside.”

“Not like that matters now! He isn’t on the outside.”

“I wonder if he likes the moon.”

A multitude of questions that, in the end, meant nothing. All pointless queries made by people with nothing better to do than to fuss over another meaningless existence; something to just stop them thinking about their own senseless lives.

I was just so sick and tired of it all.

“Riley.”

Tired of living here.

“Riley.”

Tired of these people.

“Riley!”

Tired.

Of.

Everything.

“RILEY!”

I glanced up at the sharp calling of my name to find a very agitated looking Nurse Hillsburg standing over me, glowering.

“Riley please pay more attention to those around you. We will be cutting a cake for Adder’s birthday so would you come over to the dinner table and join the rest of us?” Lazily turning I found a large portion of the group sitting and waiting with expressions varying from boredom to excitement on their faces, with Adder at the head of the table wearing a beaming smile.

There was one more person missing from the table and I could see Nurse Hillsburg registering that at the same time I was.

“Where is that Shaniqua?” she wondered aloud, looking around the room.

“I’m right here!” A loud voice exclaimed, the owner emerging from her room with her dark brown curly hair ruffled, like she’d just rolled out of bed. Her dark skin contrasted with the light colour of the hospital gown she was wearing rolled up, shortened like a miniskirt.

Only seconds later a male orderly emerged, stumbling and looking around dazedly, his gaze zeroing in on Shag and following her advance towards us. Shag, the nickname given to her the first day she arrived: Shag the exhibitionist.

“How nice of you to join us, Shaniqua.” Nurse Hillsburg said, watching the orderly with disapproval clear in her expression. Shaniqua is mentally ill, the orderly should know better. That’s the logic they use.

When we were all seated, Nurse Benson brought in the cake, a thick slab of chocolate covered in cream with one measly candle downing in it. A chorus of Happy Birthday led by Nurse Hillsburg began, the voices all out of sync and the tune completely catastrophic but it was the best a group of mental patients could do. As the song ground to a halt, Adder blew out the single candle and everyone cheered.

The sound killed me.

It grated against my nerves and I clamped my eyes shut, desperately trying to not cry out or lash out at somebody.

Depression is not accommodating to loud noises.

Then they stopped and it was bliss. Slowly opening my eyes I found myself looking into a pair of piercing green eyes, watching me passively.

I shook off his gaze and looked away, watching Adder again in his celebration.

There was, however, one person looking particularly dejected. Kevin, his blonde hair in disarray atop his head, was swiveling his head back and forth between the other occupants of the table.

Kevin has histrionic personality disorder. Simply, this means he’s excessively emotional and attention-seeking.

“Look at me. Look at me. People! People! Pay attention to me!” His loud whining I was sure could be heard throughout the entire facility. Yet everyone ignored him, as we often did. After a certain point you become immune to hysterical outbursts like this. Well, most of the time at least.

After the painful wait of cutting the cake we withdrew to our isolated beings again. Everyone with a slice of cake in their hands, apart from Skye, Ivy and I. They asked me if I wanted to have a cigarette with them. As always I refused and moved to the sofa in front of the television. Everything still just routine.

Chandra wound up sitting in the far corner, her thin frame hunched over, studying her lunar calendar, mumbling to herself as she read eagerly through the dates. Suffering from a phobia of the moon, this is her regular pastime. Suddenly, in a brief moment of silence she speaks up eyes looking around, unfocused, her voice soft but in creepy, distant tones, “The moon is full tonight. I’d better be prepared.”

Galina, with high hopes of going unnoticed glided to the pile of presents and began touching them, licking them, her eyes shifting from the presents to the people in the room as she made the presents a symbol of sexuality. Her sexual interest in inanimate objects was her disorder. Though there wasn’t very much for her to discover as the presents were made with the little resources the hospital had to offer.

At the same time, Dennis came running out of the bathroom with his arms flailing, yelling “my period hasn’t come again, I’m sure I’m pregnant this time!” He then continued to rant about the reasons he was “sure” of his pregnancy. Gender identity disorder must be a very hard illness to live with.

Time did not stand still in the hospital. People didn’t start caring just because it was someone’s birthday, everyone was too consumed in their own worries...and Adder knew this. I knew he did. He knew that although they cared about him, the other patients had only celebrated his birthday because the nurses had made them. I watched him grip his chest with his hand. It had started again, he often told me about it. His heart began to beat BOOM BOOM BOOM, slowly becoming irregular and weak, yet I knew it was only in his mind.

Unable to focus on the flickering licks of the television, I began studying the movements in the room. Kevin tripped over Alei’s foot while walking by, accidentally knocking Humphrey’s plate of cake onto his lap.

For any ordinary person, this would not be something to become overly aggravated about. A piece of cake on the trousers is hardly a catastrophe. This would apply to anyone other than Humphrey. Humphrey, with his 5’3’’ size, glasses, braces and overtly skinny physique, who looks like a slight breeze would blow him over, would not seem like a particularly intimidating individual. So when anyone who doesn’t know him witnesses one of his outbursts, it comes as quite the shock.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU! CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SITTING HERE! WHY DON’T YOU LOOK AROUND YOU IDIOT!” Swinging his arms around wildly, gesturing madly, Humphrey jumped to his feet and picked up the dining room chair he was sitting on and threw it forcefully against the wall before storming off to his room, muttering to himself.

Fizzy, in the meantime, completely oblivious to Humphrey’s tantrum, moved to cut himself a third slice of cake and fell asleep, knife poised above the now non-existent cream layer. His little relapses of sleep throughout the day often brought a smile to my face, but not today. No, today I felt offensive, vulnerable. Today, Blaze was breathing in the same stale air as us. And I was not used to this change.

My attention glided to Alei, who from her position on the recliner, sat up suddenly, icy blue eyes bright with alarm, asking “it’s someone’s birthday?” Collective groans sounded around the room. Despite having heard the effects of her Tourette’s syndrome on a daily basis, it never failed to irritate everybody, and Fizzy suddenly opening his eyes voiced it this time. Shaking his head sadly, he whispered to Blaze who sat beside him:

“Some poor village is missing their idiot.”

I didn’t hear this, all I heard was Kevin and his loud “ME! ME! ME! PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” as it cut through me like a knife. The noises he made were knocking the breath out of me. I was sure that my skull would crack if I listened to him for a second longer. I…just…couldn’t.

“CAN YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP! Stop making everything about yourself. I can’t stand to hear your pathetic cries or your little tantrums anymore! Can’t you see how you’remaking everyone recoil from you? Just grow up Kevin, grow up and realise you’re not the only person in this world who wished someone gave two shits about them!”

The words left my mouth before I had a chance to filter them. I didn’t want people to see the desperateness or sincerity in my eyes as I uttered my last sentence. I didn’t want people to know I needed someone, anyone, to hold on to; to give me purpose to keep going.

Startled by my outburst everyone regarded me warily. I was hyperaware of Blaze’s gaze on the side of my face from across the room. Little ripples of goosebumps broke out across my skin. Kevin’s eyes were wide as saucers as he watched me. Then, as quickly as the shock had come, it disappeared and he turned to his side, speaking quietly to the non-existent penguin by him:

“Don’t listen to her, Mumble. She didn’t mean it.” Then louder, “did you, Riley! Apologise to Mumble NOW!”

I felt Kevin’s burning look on me but I had no intention of apoligising to his imaginary friend, and in a desperate attempt to conceal what I had just said, the vulnerability I had displayed, I calmly looked back at him and sat back down while saying “You have no clue what the hell you’re supposed to be doing?…Join the club.”

I knew what I said made no sense in the context, but I was so beyond caring that it really didn’t matter. I readjusted myself in my seat so that I was facing the television again, the bright colours and lights doing wonders to distract me from the commotion that continued around me. I wrapped myself in my cocoon with no interest in any of the trivial things going on. But just as I was sealing myself up from the world I felt the sofa I was seated on shift with the weight of another body, breaking me from my trance.

“That was quite the outburst there,” a quiet voice commented from my left. I didn’t need to look to know that it was Blaze, the one person whose voice I wouldn’t have recognised in a heartbeat after having spent so much time with them all...except him.

He wasn’t discouraged by my lack of response. “Finally. It’s nice to find somebody that will cut through all the bullshit in this place. If I hear that nurse call us ‘chickens’ one more time I’m gonna flip shit.”

He watched me steadily, eyes slicing through me in a way that shook me to my core; like he could see through all the barriers I hid behind. I hated the feeling.

I didn’t even stop to consider that I was the first of the patients he’d spoken to, nor that he sounded like he even cared about why I snapped the way I did. None of it mattered. He was just another nuisance in a long line.

Without even sparing him a glance, I said “Don’t be nice, I don’t wanna have to like you.”

His eyes flickered over my face one last time, bringing with them the same disconcerting feeling. Shrugging, he got to his feet and trudged off, but not before throwing a quiet “I think you’d be surprised,” at me over his shoulder.

And those were the first words I ever said to Blaze. They would by no means be my last.

Hunched over slightly, the tall figure strode around the room, footsteps heavy on the moth-eaten carpet, the old floorboards beneath creaking with every shift of his foot. His probing black eyes swept from wall to wall. They passed quickly over the few pieces of decrepit furniture which resided there, stopping only when they reached the far corner where a lone figure sat cowering in a wooden chair, illuminated by a single flickering light. No sound escaped his lips as he shook in fear, save for the occasional creak of the rotting leg of the chair; a steady creak creak creak.

Feeling eyes on him, he glanced up slowly to meet the fierce, unwavering gaze.

“It starts tonight.”

With one last sweep of the room, he turned and left, the door slamming shut behind him on his way out. The room shook.