Page 64 of The Truths We Burn

“There is only one mayor of Ponderosa Springs, and his face is plastered on a billboard downtown. There is no getting it confused with your family. Shouldn’t you be excited?”

To see the man who had my sister killed?

“Overjoyed,” I say sarcastically.

She leads me back inside, and my washed-out blue scrubs rub against my thighs as we waltz down the dull hallway.

It always reeks of sterilizer out here, the pungent scents of alcohol wipes and latex gloves. It pisses me off that out of all things, that’s the one thing I can’t get used to.

The hall is loud today, sort of chaotic for a place that’s meant to promote peace of mind.

Almost all of my fellow patients are more dangerous to themselves than to anyone else. This notion that mental illness is a warning sign of psychotic behavior was a myth debunked years ago. I read about it when I first got inside of here. I’ve read about a lot of things I never thought I would since leaving the outside world.

However, there are times when some tremors or hallucinations get out of hand. Usually always when one person is having a bad day, it triggers everyone around them.

I hear Hallmark Harry inside of his room, singing Humpty Dumpty repeatedly. He’d gotten his name for the same reason women cry on their couches during Christmas—he loves Hallmark movies.

One patient is banging on their door, demanding a shower; another is fighting a nurse about how the CIA is watching him through the radios, broken radios that don’t even have antennae, mind you.

Reagan in 3B is quiet this morning, sleeping off the sedatives they’d filled her up with last night. Some people never learn, and she’s one of them. She’s been here longer than I have, but every single night, I can hear her screams.

Bloodcurdling.

They make my teeth ache.

I toss and turn in my sleepless state, covering my ears with the flimsy sheet while waiting for the night shift nurse to come on shift and knock her out with medication.

That’s the worst side effect of the meds.

The insomnia.

The nightmares.

Lying awake hearing the cries, the screams, and knowing I don’t belong here.

We make it into the dining hall, where the smell of cinnamon is pouring from the kitchen.

Circular tables, the grayscale decorations, and an older gentleman whose wheelchair is parked next to the only window.

His name is Eddison, and he has schizophrenia.

It had gone untreated until he was well into his thirties, and now they keep him so doped up, his brain can’t even form complete sentences. There are rare times when he doesn’t seem any different from me, but most of the time, he sits silent, trapped inside of his head.

Sometimes, I like to think it’s better in there, that he’s happy and not locked inside of a facility, but I know that’s not the truth.

I’ve spoken to him once, and in that one conversation, I swore that I’d never say schizo ever again even if it was a joke.

“Pip.”

Trauma stabs its claws into my heart.

With my routine panic attacks, it’s a gradual plunge into different bodies of water. Sometimes it’s a lake; other times it’s the ocean. More often lately, it’s inky black sludge that absorbs me, eating me up limb by limb until I disappear beneath.

This is anything but gradual.

I can feel his sticky hands on me, just before he shoves me completely under the surface. The abrupt water my lungs inhale catches me by surprise, so much so that my eyes start to water.

Sitting next to each other, across the room from me, are two of the men I hate most in this world.