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I’m unsure of how long I’ve been here as time passes funny.

Even sleeping doesn’t help to mark the passage of it.

They’ve also been forcing me to take more medication when I get back to my room.

I always flail and fight the best that I can, but the second my nose is pinched, my lips open, and the pills are shoved into my mouth.

The feeling of suffocating when they pinch my lips shut and keep my nose closed is awful, forcing me to succumb to swallowing down the hateful pills. Fuck, I hate all of this so much.

“Come on,” the nurse mutters, pulling me out of the shower to dry me off. I want to scream at her that it’s the medication, I’m not usually this inept, but I keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to be pinched.

This nurse enjoys hurting me when she’s annoyed, finding the skin where my thighs meet my ass to grip tightly between her fingers until I scream. She’s got a terrible bedside manner.

Soon I’m dressed, and she’s yanking a brush through my long hair as she mutters to herself.

“Fuck this shit,” she says disdainfully. “I’ll be right back.”

Those feel like famous last words, but I can’t get my heavy limbs to even twitch. The very air feels like sludge to my body. My eyes feel as if they’re glazing over as I stand fully dressed in front of the mirror, but then suddenly hair begins to fall into my vision.

I’m not sure for way too long if I’m having both tactile and visual hallucinations from the meds as it showers over me. I can vaguely hear someone humming behind me, but I can’t shift my head because of how tightly they’re holding me still.

Please, please, no. Don’t be cutting my hair. Not again. How much can I take?

“Please,” I groan, forcing the word past my lips.

“You’re not allowed to look pretty for a husband that fucking hot,” the nurse barks at me, chopping wildly at my hair.

When a huge chunk falls to the floor, I can’t help it, I begin to scream and throw myself to the side to get away from her. My crab walk into the corner must be laughable, but my tears are hot and terrified as I begin to rock back and forth.

“What the fuck, Marie?” an orderly asks, yanking the scissors from her hand. I guess my noises brought him inside the bathroom. I can’t get my eyes to focus as I cry, completely miserable.

I know my hair is long and difficult to care for. I know that it was probably knotted and tangled. But fuck, it was mine.

“Shh, honey it’s fine. Your husband wants to see you,” the man says, pulling me up. “God, it’s such a fucking mess. Marie, get the fuck out of here, but clean this up before you leave.”

“Ugh, can’t someone else do it?” she asks, laughing wildly as she pulls on a butchered piece of my hair.

Life is cruel, because it chooses this moment to allow my eyes to focus enough to see myself in the mirror. My hair is short in the front, with uneven longer pieces in the back. I look as if I have a strange type of mullet. I think that being bald would be better.

I’ve never been so angry in my life. That’s what I blame on my next actions.

Screaming, I backhand the nurse, words unintelligible as I grab her scrub shirt and pull her toward me.

Plucking the scissors that have been forgotten on the counter, I plunge it into her neck, ignoring the blood that spurts out.

It’s red as it pours out and I twist the offending steel with a snarl.

“Oh fuck. Rachel, don’t do that honey, come on,” the orderly croons as he attempts to pull me off of her as I yank the scissors out and shove them into Marie’s body again and again.

I don’t think it’ll ever be enough. If they wanted to see what a psychotic patient can do, I guess they will now. I’ve completely fucking snapped.

“I need some help here!” the orderly yells, wrapping his arm around my waist and grabbing my bloody wrists to pull me away with the scissors still shoved inside Marie’s body.

Another nurse runs inside to gaze at the melee, before calling in back up. My arms are shoved into a hated fucking straitjacket as I begin to mewl loudly. I sound like a wounded animal as I carry on, but I can’t find it inside of me to stop.

The nurse I stabbed lays on the ground with various wounds on her body I don’t remember making. I only stabbed her twice, right? Maybe?

Could it have been three? Everything is moving in a bloody haze, similar to my blazing anger.

“I guess you’re not seeing your husband today, trouble maker,” a doctor breathes, striding into the room with a syringe.

“No!” I scream, kicking out as I struggle to get away. It takes several people holding onto me before he can get close enough to my neck to push it into my skin.

“It’s just a sedative,” the doctor sighs as if I’m the drama queen in this. “Is someone taking care of the nurse in there?”

“Oh yeah,” someone mumbles, walking to check on her. Everything is beginning to get very fuzzy and I sag in the arms of the orderly behind me.

“There we go,” the doctor mutters. “Take her to the seclusion chamber. She needs time to chill out, away from everyone else.”

“Ah, I think we’re going to need an ambulance, doctor,” a voice complains as my knees buckle underneath me. The orderly lifts me, ignoring the voice, and begins to move my body without help.

“Let me take a look,” the doctor says, his voice getting farther away as my eye lids threaten to close. This sedative is hitting me hard. “Well, fuck. There’s no pulse. We can’t afford anymore attention this week. I’ll have to call someone to quietly take her to the hospital morgue. She’s dead.”

I can’t feel anything about her death, my entire body is cocooned in numbness as I float.

“What happened? Is that blood?” a voice I know asks. I gurgle as drool slips from my lips as I’m dragged away. “Who cut her hair?”

“One of the nurses had her own mental breakdown,” the orderly says as my eyes continue to close.

No. I want to know whose voice that is. Fuck, why do I know that voice?

“Tell her husband today isn’t a good day. Tomorrow or the next day won’t be either. She’s getting stuck in isolation,” the orderly carrying me grunts.

While I know I’m not heavy, I’m essentially dead weight. I can’t help it, and if I wasn’t drugged, I doubt I would be helping him even then.

Who is this husband they keep talking about? When did I get married?

“Shh, just let the sedative do its thing,” the orderly murmurs.

“What’s isolation?” the familiar voice asks.

“It’s a small space where we stick unruly patients,” the orderly says before the darkness finally pulls me under.