Room to Breathe

         A chubby girl in a blue dress sat plucking petals off a daisy she held in her hand. “I love me. I love me not.” Two petals fell onto the blue linoleum floor. “I love me. I love me not,” she chanted as the white petals slipped out of her hand. “I love me. I…”

         “Would you shut up!” A voice boomed from a young, callous looking girl sitting by a bay window in a beat up chair. “Is that all you do? Play with flowers?” The young girl in the blue dress started to whimper as she held the flower with 5 remaining petals tightly in her hand. “You aren’t even smart enough to find a decent way to keep yourself pre-occupied.”

         A woman wearing a white nurse’s uniform approached the girls. “Eleanor, how many times must I tell you to leave Cecilia alone? Neither of you will get better if you just sit around arguing,” she said in a crisp, forceful voice.

         “Don’t make me go back to my room,” Cecilia pleaded as she played with her blue flannel dress, kneading its hem into a ball. Her brown hair hung limp around her shoulders and her pale face was contorted into a frown.

         “It’s alright dear,” the nurse said, taking Cecilia’s free hand. “We’ll just give you a sedative so you can take a nap.”

         “No! No, please. I don’t want to be alone in the dark,” she cried as she walked down the hall.

         Eleanor swallowed hard as the odd couple walked to Cecilia’s room. “It’s Ellie, damn it.” She called to their retreating backs. Ellie got out of her chair and started to pace around the small living room until the nurse returned.

         “Ellie,” she said as she adjusted the nametag on her shirt that read Nancy, “being disrespectful to other patients will cause you to lose your privileges. Not that losing privileges matter to you considering you never go outside. Every girl in this hospital would love to enjoy some fresh air.”

         “Well then let them go outside! It would do some of the Anna’s good around here. A tan would make them look less like skeletons,” Ellie spat as she grinded to a halt in the middle of the living room floor, arms crossed in front of her chest. “Oh, and another thing Nurse Nancy,” she said sarcastically, “where are these privileges you speak of? I still have to go to the bathroom with a nurse like every Mia and Anna on the floor, and I don’t do the shit that they do.”

         “Well, for someone who was sent in here for a suicide attempt, you look pretty lively to me. And one more thing, stop calling the anorexic patients Annas and the bulimic patients Mias. Those helpless girls don’t appreciate it and neither do I,” Nurse Nancy said as she turned on her heel and headed back to the nurse’s station. Ellie hunched over, defeated and her mind clouded, she trudged off to her room. She shared her room with a bulimic that has been at Shattacon Mental Hospital for 2 years and was the self-proclaimed queen of the institution. Ellie entered the room to find Taylor rearranging her collection of angels to keep herself occupied.

         “Why don’t you take your self denial some where else?” Taylor hissed without looking up.

         Ellie sighed, “Well, excuse me for living. I must be polluting your precious lungs with the after taste of dinner.”

         “Oh please,” Taylor laughed. “You know they care more about the eating disorder cases then the poor little depressed suicide cases like you.” She forced her mouth into a smug smile then turned back to her angels. “You’re a waste of space, Ellie.”

         “You know one day…”

         “One day what?”

         “One day you’re going to get sick of throwing up three times a day.”

         “And one day you’re going to get sick of living just like you did before.”

         Ellie fled her room after Taylor had invaded her private thoughts. She felt as though she had no more privacy with all of the counseling sessions and group therapy. Now, on top of everything else, she had Taylor to worry about. She found her chair by the window in the 1970’s style living room complete with wooden panel walls and disgusting linoleum. Ellie sat down and sunk into the chair as far as she could. It was after eleven o’clock and the moon was shining onto her pale complexion and throwing beams of light into her jet-black hair. The nurse’s station was vacant and the room was silent except for the ticking of the only clock on the floor. Ellie turned to open the window but stopped when she saw the white, elevated scars on her wrist.

         “I can’t get away from you, can I?” She questioned the lacerations as she slumped back into her ragged chair and closed her eyes. She dreamed of the previous summer before everything happened. Before her father was in the accident. Before her mother started taking ivory colored pills out of a bottle she refilled at the pharmacy every other week. Before she sat in her room as the lilac scented air tried to suffocate her with its sweet illusion of happiness. Before she tried to die.

         When Ellie opened her eyes she saw the clock moving, the second hand pointing to four. She rubbed her eyes, crawled out of the chair, and hobbled down the hallway back to her room.



         “It’s seven o’clock, everyone up!” Nurse Nancy called as she walked down the hall to wait for the patients to emerge in their bathrobes and perfectly matched white and black stripped prison type looking pajamas.

         “Well you look wonderful Ms. Doom and Gloom.”

         Ellie pulled off her headphones, the music still blaring out. “Well, excuse me Ms. My Face is Always in the Toilet.” Cecilia bumped into Taylor as the group descended into the cafeteria.

         “Watch it fatso,” Taylor yelled as she sauntered into the food line for breakfast. Cecilia sat down at the nearest table and put her head in her hands and shook violently as she started to cry. Soon she was screaming, and the nurses on duty ran over to help her, leaving the group of mental patients unattended. Bulimics, anorectics, and mental cases created as much havoc as they could by starting a food fight. Ellie took this as a welcome opportunity to leave and walked quietly out of the cafeteria.

         Once in the living room, Ellie started to pace again, her steps matching the ticking rhythm of the clock in the background. As she was pacing something in the waste basket caught her eye. “What the hell?” Ellie muttered as she stepped closer. It was Cecilia’s daisy. She reached and brought it out into the morning sunlight to see the 5 petals still attached to the flower. Ellie remembered back to the night before and started to pluck the petals were Cecilia had left off. “I love me not. I love me. I love me not. I love me.” There was one petal left on the flower. From faraway Ellie could still hear the screaming as a result of the food fight.

         Ellie sunk to the floor and sighed as she ripped the last white petal off the innocent flowers stem and forcefully tossed it back into the trash. She curled into a ball on the chipped linoleum floor and whispered, “I love me not. I love me not. I love me not.” Ellie stopped when her voice became hoarse and closed her eyes as she tried to block out the sound of the nurses coming upstairs to find her.