..Part II..

“My family doesn’t really have enough money to do much so for us, you either joined the army, became a priest or went to work in the steel mill like my dad,” Joe said on the afternoon of Nora’s eighteenth day at Raven’s Ridge as they sat on the front steps of the hospital, sharing a candy bar that they had been handing out in the kitchen in celebration of one of the patient’s birthday. There would be cake later that evening during that dinner as well. Apparently, at Raven’s Ridge, any of the patients living to see their next birthday was cause for much jubilee. Nora had learned that many of the patients there had suicidal tendencies and had tried more than once.

Joe broke off one section of the Kit-Kat before handing it to her for her to take her share and he pulled the dog tags he always wore from out of his tee-shirt. Nora reached over and gently took them in her hand so she could look at them. J. Griffin.

“I always wanted to join the army but when I was twelve, I was already having hallucinations and becoming a danger to myself so… my older brother did though. John was in Iraq for a couple of tours and when he got back, he gave me these. I never take them off.” Joe sighed, chewing on his chocolate bar as he tilted his head up to look at the crystal blue sky. It was a beautiful day.

Nora looked at him as he seemed to lose himself in his thoughts for a few minutes. Since she had arrived at the hospital more than two weeks ago, for some reason, Joe had attached himself to her and now, the two had become somewhat inseparable. She still wasn’t speaking but he sometimes spoke too much so in an odd sort of way, it was a balanced friendship. It was odd to Nora but she felt comfortable around him. He never asked her why she cut herself or why she had tried to kill herself or why she refused to utter one syllable. He just… let her be and Nora liked that about him.

He knew she wasn’t going to talk so he didn’t ask her questions. He didn’t ask about her cutting or her suicide attempt. He didn’t ask about her dad. He didn’t know that eight months earlier, her father had hung himself in the garage and that Nora had been the one to find the body. He didn’t know that her mother had filed for divorce days before his death. He didn’t know that the Parker family used to be happy and that Nora would give anything to live out those days again. She would do anything to have her father back alive and to have her parents love one another like they used to. She just wanted things to be as they were.

She was finding out a lot about him though just from listening to him as he talked on and on about seemingly nothing at all. He was twenty-two years old, the youngest of six children – all boys - and since schizophrenia did not run in his family, when he first began showing symptoms when he was twelve, his parents thought at first that he was just acting out for attention. He had been in and out of institutions since and he figured that he had spoken to more doctors, psychiatrists and therapists more than actual normal human beings. He sometimes went off his medications for no reason other than that he got sick and tired of taking up to eight pills a day and when that happened, he was uncontrollable.

She also found out that he was terrified of spending the rest of his life in hospitals but he didn’t know how he would ever survive the world outside though if he ever left. He doubted it. After spending much of your formative years locked away in hospitals, your view of the outside world is slightly askew and fearful.

“Would you hire a person with a mental health record like mine?” Joe asked her and she had truthfully shaken her head in the negative. “Exactly. What the fuck kind of life will I have if they ever decide to release me?” He shook his head slightly then took another bite of the quickly melting chocolate bar. “It’s a fucking catch-22, Nora. You’ll be fine when you get out. You’re sixteen, this is your first time in a place like this. Probably your only time. Me on the other hand. The rest of my life is fucked. They try and cure you so you can be released but then when you’re out there, nobody wants you.”

Nora stared at him for a moment and then slowly lifted her arm, sliding it around his shoulders. She hoped he didn’t feel weird with her doing it. Noticing their growing friendship, Dr. Tracey had already warned her that relationships between patients were not encouraged but Nora didn’t see anything wrong with her becoming friends with Joe. There was no harm in it. They were both stuck in the same place with nothing else to do. She wondered if there had been an incident in the past between two patients that had dictated Raven’s Ridge policy.

Joe smirked for a moment, turning his head to look at her before such a sadness rolled over his eyes, Nora couldn’t help but reach her other arm out, wrapping it loosely around him and hugging him.

She couldn’t imagine what it must be for him. She was barely surviving her days there. She couldn’t begin to understand what it must be like to be there day in and day out for months at a time. Joe had already been there for a year but this was just one of the dozens of other hospitals he had stayed in. She felt horrible for him. It wasn’t fair. Joe was one of the nicest, funniest people she had met in a long time. He was a bit odd, a bit off kilter but most people nowadays were. It wasn’t his fault that his brain was different than what people considered to be normal. She had read about schizophrenia in health class during her freshman year of high school and she knew how dangerous and scary the illness was. But what she had seen from Joe, that wasn’t him at all. Surely, he deserved something better than Raven’s Ridge.

He turned his head and rested his cheek on her upper arm as the hug continued and he sighed softly. It had been a long time since anyone had hugged him. It felt good.

“Want to know why I started talking to you?” Joe asked her quietly. He was always asking her questions even when he knew that she wouldn’t answer. “Well, my first reason was a shallow one. You were hot. But then…” He sighed, pulling his head up from her arm and they looked at one another. “I wish you would talk to me sometimes but then sometimes… I don’t know. I’m glad you don’t. I can just talk and I know you’re really listening to me. The doctors here, sometimes I get that they’re just talking and listening but they don’t really get what any of us are really saying. At least with you, I can just talk to you without knowing that I’m being analyzed.”

The front door opened behind them and a nurse stepped out, stopping as she saw that Nora was hugging Joe. In the eighteen days since her admittance into the hospital, Nora Parker had made no physical contact with anyone else and in fact, recoiled when someone got too close to her. But there she sat, hugging Joe Griffin. The nurse knew that she immediately had to report this to Dr. Tracey.

“Lunch is over, you two,” the nurse said, signaling for them to get up and get back inside. “Time for your one o’clock session.”

Raven’s Ridge thrived on schedules and every day was the same as the one before it. Breakfast between seven and eight o’clock, group therapy at nine. Every patient was divided into different therapy groups based upon the psych evaluation they had each taken upon entering the hospital. Those usually lasted for two hours – sometimes shorter, sometimes longer depending on the patients and their cooperation that day. Eleven o’clock was class time for one of the sessions the patients had signed up for. Nora had signed up for cooking, drawing and a math class. She had always enjoyed math classes back in school. Noon to one o’clock was lunch followed by another group session. Two to six were filled with other class times, private sessions with the therapist and visits with the physician. Six o’clock was dinnertime and then until ten o’clock, which was lights out, the patients were allowed to spend time in the common room or spend time by themselves in their rooms.

It was a busy exhausting day and Nora was still getting adjusted to everything. She didn’t really pay attention to the therapy group sessions. She never spoke during them and instead, would look out the window, wishing her mother would magically appear to come and pick her up. She wanted to go home but not the place home was now. She wanted to go back to how it used to be. Her mother and father used to be so happy together. They had been high school sweethearts and got married too young in Theresa’s opinion once she got older but they had been happy together. Nora had been an only child and they had showered her with love and attention. She remembered that she used to be happy too growing up. Dance classes, horseback riding and piano lessons, playing Hi-Ho Cherry-O with her parents because she really did find numbers fascinating. When she had entered junior high, she had tried out for the cheerleading squad and had made it. In high school, she was captain of the junior varsity squad her freshman year.

People had looked at Nora Parker and knew that she had the perfect life and family. She was beautiful, smart, nice to everyone, funny, extremely well-adjusted and the apple of her parents’ eyes. It was shocking how quickly everything had down spiraled though. Henry Parker had lost his job at the same time Theresa had gotten a promotion at hers and she began working more and more. They began fighting more and more and Nora began spending more time away from home because of it. She occupied herself with school, friends and cheerleaders. Henry hung himself three days after Theresa filed for divorce and the last sound to come out of Nora’s mouth was her own scream when she had come home from school and found him.

Nora didn’t understand how she was expected to react to her father’s suicide. She didn’t understand what these doctors wanted from her. This was her way of coping. If she had acted as if nothing had happened, that would be a cause for concern from everyone as well. It seemed no one was satisfied with a way to grieve. Either she fell silent and began hurting herself or she acted as if nothing was wrong. It didn’t matter how she had acted after her father’s death. She was immediately placed under a microscope and people constantly asked how she was doing with the situation. To everyone, her father’s death had been dwindled down to nothing but a situation. Her father had been a great man in life and then, in nothing more than a few hours since his funeral, it was nothing more than a situation.

She began cutting herself with her compass from geometry class, dragging it down her arms and sometimes her thighs. Sometimes, she used other things. The metal tabs she had pulled off pop cans. Knives in her mother’s kitchen. A box cutter from her father’s workshop in the garage. It made her feel good. It made her feel as if she was getting control back with everything in her life. She also began burning herself – holding cheap lighters from the 7-11 and Walgreen’s nearby that she had bought to her fingertips and underneath her upper arms. She didn’t do that as often as cutting but it still brought her the same amount of odd pleasure.

She sat in the group sessions, not saying any of this, not saying anything at all. Dr. Tracey ran her particular group and tried several times to get her to talk but his efforts were in vain. Nora wasn’t ready to talk yet. She knew that when she was, she would. It was as simple as that. Talking was the last thing Nora wanted to do right now. She wanted to think things through more. She wanted to deal with a few more things before she began saying things that were over analyzed and studied. When she had something to say that meant something then she would say it.

One of the best things about befriending Joe was that he never purposely asked her questions that couldn’t be answered with either a shake or nod of her head. He never pried and he never pleaded with her to talk to him. He just let her sit there as he went on and on about any topic that popped into his head. It may have seemed weird since he knew nothing about her but Joe was probably the best kind of friend she had ever had. He understood her whether she talked back to him or not.

Nora woke up in the middle of the night upon hearing someone scream. She sat up in bed with a jolt and listened for it again. She looked at the clock. Just after two. Another scream ripped through the hall and she jumped slightly. It was, or at least it sounded like that it was coming from across the way. Nora shoved the blankets off of her and hurried to her door, standing up on the tips of her toes to look through the small square glass window.

Joe.

He was in his room, screaming and shouting and she could hear crashes of furniture and breaking of glass. Oh no. He had been taken his medications, hadn’t he? They watched the patients so carefully in the hospital to make sure that all pills were swallowed upon distribution. Why hadn’t Joe been taking his? He knew what happened when he didn’t. His schizophrenia had to be controlled or else… he had spoken of what happened to him when it took over him.

Several orderlies and Dr. Tracey were at his door across the hall and Nora could see a syringe in the doctor’s hand.

“Joe! We’re coming in!” Dr. Tracey called out to him over Joe’s unintelligible yelling. He threw something at the glass window making everyone in the hallway duck though it did not break through and instead only cracked the glass like a spider web.

Nora felt her eyes prick with tears as she continued listening to the shouting and shattering of his belongings. She turned her back against the door, sinking down to the floor and hugging her knees to her chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she held her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees as she cried. She heard one of the orderlies open the door and she heard Joe try to fight them off as they attempted to get him back under control. She clenched her eyes shut and she felt her heart twist in her chest as the shouts almost immediately died down.

She scrambled over to her nightstand, crawling across the floor towards it. She had taken the small drawer the first night she had been there and managed to splinter the wood by carefully breaking it over the windowsill. She didn’t break it – merely splintered the inside wood and she now took a piece of it, pushing the sleeve of her shirt that she wore to bed up to her elbow. She couldn’t take it. Tears continued rolling down her cheeks as she took the small piece of wood. She turned her right arm upwards and dragged the sharp tip of the wood down her arm, small drops of blood dotting her pale porcelain skin. More tears rolled down her cheeks as she cut herself again and again.

Hearing the door across the hallway close again with a loud bang, Nora quickly shoved the piece of wood back in the drawer and scrambled back into her bed in case the orderlies did bed checks. The hallway was silent, the hospital was silent, the night was silent. Nora laid there, pressing her hand over her opposite arm, feeling the warmth of the blood from the cuts on her palm. She stared at her clock, watching as each minute passed and she knew that she would no longer sleep that night. She got up slowly and went to the door once more.

They didn’t lock the doors at night. They were patients, not prisoners, but Nora wasn’t sure if Joe’s door would be unlocked. She carefully, slowly, opened hers and peeked her out, casting her eyes down the hallway. Empty. She took a sigh of relief and then looked at Joe’s door directly across from hers. Her footsteps were light as she hurried to it, taking the cold metal doorknob in her hand. It turned easily and she took another breath. She wondered if he was even in there or if they had taken him to the hospital wing for more medication and recovery.

He was there though, lying in the bed, his arms and legs strapped down. Nora felt more tears in her eyes as she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. Joe had had posters, pictures and postcards decorating his room but during his outburst, he had ripped them all down. His dresser was lying on its side and most of his other belongings laid broken or tossed onto the floor.

She thought he was asleep but then he turned his head on the pillow and stared straight at her. He smiled faintly and she slowly went to him. He scooted over on the bed, giving her some room, and she climbed next to him, laying down on her side facing him, her back to the room. Her hand rested hesitantly on his chest and he sighed as she tilted her head up to look at him.

“Whatever you do, don’t untie me and don’t fall asleep. They’ll come back to check up on me,” he whispered and she nodded her head. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and they laid there together in silence. He didn’t say why he had stopped taking his meds and he didn’t explain to her what had happened that night to him.

Nora felt him take a shaky breath and she propped herself up on an elbow, looking at his face. He moved his eyes, meeting hers, and she lifted a hand to his face, her thumb brushing across his lips and then her fingertips swept over his skin: across his cheek, his chin, the bridge of his nose. His eyes fluttered closed as her fingertips went to his lips again.

“You should get far away from me, Nora. I’m… unstable,” Joe whispered and for the first time in a long time, a sound passed through Nora’s lips. She laughed softly. He stared at her for a moment, shocked to hear such a noise, but then he smiled. “Yeah. I know. No one in here is exactly stable. But I’m one of the worst.”

She stared at him for a moment. He didn’t know it but he had taken care of her since she had gotten there. He looked out for her. Like he had told Dr. Tracey, he had taken her under his wing. He took care of her in his own way and that was exactly the way she needed.

She bent down and pressed her lips in a gentle kiss that lasted no longer than a few seconds but it left hers tingling. He stared at her, that shocked look in his eyes again and she smiled faintly. She took a deep breath and kissed him again.

“It’ll be okay, Joe,” Nora whispered to him but with firmness so he would believe her, staring into his eyes. “Everything is going to be okay.”

The End.