Helping Hand

I wake up with the sound of a girl screaming. I quickly jump out of the hard, cardboard-feeling mattress I was sleeping on. I look around and see a metal bucket, a few books, and a light brown shelf. I quickly knew where I was, as my mother died when I was 5, and I started having hallucinations. My father never liked me and as soon as my mother died he was quickly looking for excuses to send me away. I tried for months to keep my hallucinations hidden, I knew what would happen once he found out. One day, according to my father, I screamed my mom's name while looking down the bedroom hallway. I remember that day I was having one of my hallucinations. I saw her, her image was so vivid. She was calling my name and the next thing I knew, I was at Golden Hill Mental Institution, screaming and crying as the nurses took me away from my father. The last thing he ever said to me was, "Scotty it's okay. You will have fun, don't worry. They will take care of you until Daddy gets back" I never saw him again. I waited and waited for 17 years, until i eventually grasped the fact that he would never come back for me. One day while reading the paper I saw his name in the obituary. He died in a head-on collision. The paper said he was found drunk and had killed the other passengers in the car that he had hit. He later died while in the hospital. I didn't feel bad, I knew something bad was bound to happen to him one day. I also felt somewhat angry, that he died so easily, that he never got what he deserved for putting me in a mental institution for most of my life. Maybe he did. Maybe he did get what he deserved, but never will I know.

Why am I here? I thought as I looked around the room, panicked.

I ran up to the rusted metal door.
"Help me!" I said as I started pounding my fists on the door. Soon they started to turn red from the hard, cold metal. "Where am I? Someone please-- oh you! Help me please."

I saw a muscular man through the bars on the metal door. He had healthy brown hair and a short beard. He looked like he was in his 30s. He turned and looked at me with fury in his eyes but did not say anything. He stared at me for what felt like forever.

"Do you need something?" The man said sternly.

"Help me get out of here. Please."

"I can't do that," The man said as he looked down to read the name tag on the front of the door, "...Scott"

"You don't understand. I don't belong here, sir."

"Yeah, right. Scott, I don't think you understand that our fellow technicians found you passed out under a bridge. You had 5,000 mg of Olanzapine on you"

"I was a patient here once, they prescribed me that for my hallucinations, after..." I was silent for a moment. I haven't mentioned my mother in 20 years. "my mother died"

"Exactly my point. I will call you once lunch is ready" The man said as he walked down the dark hall.

I threw myself on the bed and started sobbing. This can't be real. I'm dreaming. I thought. All of the past trauma that I had drowned before started to rise to the surface. I never thought I would see these people, or even this place once again.

~
As I'm looking at the blooming trees through the window I notice this is the same glass they used years ago. Annealed glass, is very easily broken. I think about the time when I was 8. I became friends with a girl named Sienna. She was very sweet, but feisty whenever someone pushed her buttons. As Sienna and I were eating our lunch-- potato soup, our favorite--a boy came up to her and yanked her hair. His buddies and him were all giggling, Sienna on the other hand looked like she was about to blow steam out of her ears. Sienna grabbed the boy by the neck and shoved him up against one of the windows. The glass broke and a shard punctured him in the back of the head. I never saw her again after that day.
As I was thinking about Sienna, an idea developed. I went to the other side of the room, grabbed the metal bucket, and threw it at the window. The glass shattered and I soon heard the technicians rushing towards my room. Quickly, without thinking, I broke the rest of the glass, slicing my hand in the process. A crimson river trickled down my arm as I jumped out of the window, praying I would land in the bushes.
Everyone was at lunch, as the buff man had called me down a couple of minutes prior. No one would know I was out here. I started sprinting toward the huge metal gate surrounding the grounds of the institution.

Ching I heard a metal sound.
I looked down and there was my foot, pouring blood.

"No no no no," I said to myself. "How did I not see that?" I looked down at my foot, throbbing as I am trying to pull it out of the beartrap

"Let me help you with that Scotty" I quickly turned around, and looked up into the woman’s big brown eyes.

“Mom?”