Sanatarium Lovestory

Enjoy despite the typos and that I kept saying sanatorium. XP

At home I have begun to read the Ten Commandments everyday. I was never so obsessive about them before, it is just that after months of being in a room all by myself, I have grown to find comfort in the repetition which soon developed into this behavior. Like every morning that I read them, I stop on the fourth one about respecting your parents. In a world that is so black and white as a sanatorium, how was I supposed to interpret something that didn’t fit like all of the other pieces of the puzzle in my life. I contemplated it everyday in the sanitarium and I think about it everyday still rolling it over and over in my head. My mind is taken back to the face of my parents not long ago as they waved to me on the platform at the train station.
As the train bumped and bustled in the beginning I looked back at them. My father with a stoic look of heroism for doing the, “right thing” for me and society and my mother’s tearful glance at me before she eventually collapsed burying her head in her hands and looking up at my father. She had always been that way. My father was like her master and she did whatever it was that he told her. From hanging the laundry a certain way, to sending me off to the sanatorium against her will, nothing had ever changed between them, and I assumed that nothing was ever going to change.
I looked at my bags on the train with me and thought, “This is it. Theses are all of my possessions from now on. I have nothing in my name but this.” I wanted to cry but wiped away the single tear that I let out by accident and stared out the window to the countryside giving way to rolling hills and plains.
As the first and second hour rolled past on the train I went over the scene that brought me there in my mind.
In early June, around my birthday, I had fallen in love with a boy at school who was also in love with me, or so I thought. Every day after class I would follow him around until he gave me a glance over his shoulder and nodded, making me scatter to wherever it was I should have been.
He was invited to my birthday party because I thought that was the perfect way for him to find out that I loved him. It was going to be perfect. After cake and presents, timed perfectly to end when the sun was just about to go down, I would take him out to my favorite spot in the woods behind my house. Then, once we were sitting on that log that I had come to love so much as a place of escape and contemplation during my adolescence, I would tell him how I felt and he would kiss me and it would be like one of those scenes in all the books I had ever read. When I look back on it, I can’t believe how naïve I really was in thinking that.
The guests all showed up extra early just to show their loyalty to me I was sure and they were all dressed sharp in the latest fashions in suits and dresses that their parents had most likely bought out of a catalog. My suit was from the Sears Roebuck catalog and had cost my mother a fortune, but I had begged for it and finally after weeks of putting up with me, she finally ordered it so that it came just a week before the party.
The girls spun around and let their dresses swing in the wind that trailed behind them and all the boys stood in a line along the fence waiting for one of the skirts to inevitably fly up in the wind. In fact, it happened quite often and when it did, you could see the guys sitting cross legged and turning red, trying to keep their eyes on the girls for just enough time to get enjoyment, but not enough to look suspicious. It was exactly this thing that had caused such an uproar in New York lately. It was that new Flatiron Building that was going up. Apparently (this is according to the conservatives in the area) the building cut through the city like a ship and it channeled the wind down the street so that the women’s dresses would inevitably fly up. “What a horrid building,” they had said. “So immoral for such an arrogant purpose as cutting into the sky where man does not belong.”
Every time the girls turned, I became self conscious of the fact that I was the only boy not on the fence row and I was also the only boy who was seemingly not interested. Even, the boy who I liked, Harry, I think, was interested in them. I could see the dresses flipping up and down in the wind but they caught my attention for only a short time until they were down again. It was mainly just the thought of it. The face that I could capture just a brief glance of naked flesh, a sense of sexuality that was never shown at any other time.
The party progressed just as I had planned. The guests all sat at the long white linen covered table to a dinner that was prepared lovingly by my mother. Their faces glowed in pure ecstasy as they enjoyed the pleasures of lamb roasted with potatoes and carrots. I could help giving off the same pleasured face as well when I bit into the gorgeous piece of meat that was set before me.
“Hey, Art!” Ruth called to me across the lawn as she came to sit down in the empty seat next to me. “I am so sorry that I was late to your party. It was dreadful trying to get here with all of the chores that mum had for me. You know how those go.”
“Yes. I understand. My mum is the same way and I could never be angry with you, even if you left me on a deserted island to fend for myself.”
She giggled and then turned straight toward me, her face right up next to mine almost and her breath coming down softly onto my neck. “You know,” she said. “I don’t think that I have ever found a boy that was so kind as you.”
“Well, maybe you just need to get out more,” I said, turning away from her and spearing another piece of lamb. “Do eat. I would be so sad if I had any reason to think that you were unwell.”
She looked back at me in horror and disgust and lunged a huge slab of lamb into her mouth looking back at me in mock defiance. “Oh, Art, I wouldn’t want you to think of me as a weakling. Your parents are so fond of me and I would hate to think that you would want them thinking your potential wife was incompetent.”
I too big piece of potato wedged in between my cheeks was immediately forced down into my windpipe. I threw the chair out from under me and then stood up, grabbing at my throat, unable to breathe. No one noticed at first but I slammed the chair against the table, knocking someone’s plate to the ground and my father rushed over to pat me on the back. He pounded and pounded until the potato went flying across the table with a stream of saliva.
Embarassed, I sat down gasping and took hold of Ruth’s hand.
“I hope that you’re okay now,” she said with a little grin that suggested she had hoped for this effect all along.
“Yes. I think that I am fine now.”
“Good. Good.” She stroked my hand and then let go, giving me a look of reproach for having done such a thing.
The evening went on despite my choking and it was good to know that people were still talking and enjoying themselves and had possibly completely forgotten about the fact that I had just had a potato dislodged from my trachea.
The boys acted much the same as they had before with the girls, only this time with the support and protection of the table over top of them. Every once in a while you would hear a shriek or gasp as a boy “accidentally” nudged a girl’s knee with his shoe. My father knew that it would be controversial to have a boy/ girl party like this, but he has informed everyone that I always behaved with great discretion toward women and that my friends would most likely do likewise. Perfect etiquette was expected from everyone.
The rest of the party was a blur to me really. The presents were opened and gratitude was given where it was due. The cake was eaten with the same faces of pleasure that had taken in the lamb just an hour or two before.
Afterwards, when the sun was starting to go down, my father set a fire and everyone sat around it. Some of the girls holding hands with each other and dancing around, others sitting with boys catching a kiss in between the songs flowing from the band father had hired to play at the party.
I walked over to Harry and sat down, putting my hand against the small of his back. He gave me a disgusted look at first and then remembering the money in my family and all of the gifts he got when he came over, softened it into a smile.
“Hello, Art. One year older, eh?”
“How does it feel?”
“How is it supposed to feel? I woke up today one year older than I was the day before. That’s it.”
“You really do make this party a little dull talking that way, don’t you think?” he said, turning away from me and looking into the fire and especially the girl that was sitting across the way.
I turned him around and drew him even closer to myself, try to get the faint smell of his breath as it wafted out of his mouth.
He looked into my eyes and then down at the ground again, giving me a look of embarrassment that almost made me want to let it go and just turn from him. Yet there was some invisible force that was drawing me closer and wouldn’t let me turn away and I turned to him, breathing heavily and whispered, “I love you Harry.”
The world started to spin as I leaned into to kiss him and his face turned into a horrible mix of hatred and humility. “Art!” he yelled into my face and it was then that I finally got a smell of his breath. “What are you doing?” He smacked me on the face but I leaned in closer to kiss him again as the crowd began to stare at me. Their faces turned about in front of the find and they seemed to have no bodies; just faces that were shocked, terrified, and looking toward my father who stomped past them all to grab me by the shoulder.
“Art,” he grunted in a whisper to me. “What are you doing with Harry here, boy?”
“I don’t know. I just…” I looked at him and then I started to cry, mainly out of humilitation.
He shook me violently so that I could here a small pop somewhere in my head. “Tell me! TELL ME! Why do you have to do something like this at every party. You are a threat to these young boys. A threat. Don’t cry, what have I told you? Tears are not for the men of this household. We have always been strong. ALWAYS!” He pushed me out of the way and I wiped my face off a little and walked back into the house amongst stares and whispers.
That was the first of many scenes that led him to believe that I was insane. It was the first of many that had led me to the train and the sanatorium.


Everyday was really the same. At about 7 in the morning the bell would ring for us to wake up and head down to the cafeteria for whatever disgusting mixture the ladies had made up for us to eat for breakfast. Each corner had is group of people being made into sections 1-4 from close to sane to insane. I was in the most sane of the groups fortunately so most of the people were able to talk. I met Paul my first morning and he introduced me to life in the sanatorium.
“Okay, that lady over there in the corner,” he pointed. “She is really tough and works the third ward at night. You don’t want to get her. Apparently she pulled a man who was snoring too loudly out of bed and immediately dragged him down to that room at the end of the hall and put him in a straight jacket.”
I looked up at him in horror as he slurped away at his soup and broke another packet of crackers over it. His face was long but still he looked old, like he had been rotting in this place for decades. When I asked him his age, he told me he was only thirty-three but I think he was lying.
“Oh, and don’t refuse the medicine. It’s just sugar anyway I think.”
“What medicine?” I asked.
“In the afternoon everyone lines up to take their medicine, some people have more than others but the stuff doesn’t do any good anyway. Some people will refuse, so be ready to wait.”
I imagined some person being chained to the wall while the nurses shot pills into their throat with a gun. I shuddered a little and then looked back at him. “Why are you here?” I asked.
He shook his head and gulped the soup down really hard before turning to look back at me. “That’s not important.”
I sat back quietly and leaned my head against the wall.
“If you aren’t going to eat that soup can I have it?” he asked.
“Sure.”
I sat in my cell reading for a couple of hours. First it was a book about cooking different dishes from around the world, and then it was The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a book that everyone had suggested when it first came out, but that I had never read. I wasn’t really big into books when I first came into the Sanatorium. I would pick one up and begin to read but my mind would immediately flow to another subject and before I knew it I was looking down at the book fifty pages later and nothing had really registered in my mind. I think when you are forced to sit down for long periods of time and read just to pass the time, your brain gets hooked on the words and once you find a certain amount of comfort in them, you just can’t stop. That was how it was for me I guess and it seemed to be that way all up and down my ward where I would look up periodically and see people reading not only magazines, but books and newspapers of every kind.
At three in the afternoon a bell rang and everyone lined up at the door to be let out of our rooms. My room was empty except for me, although there was another bed against the opposite wall and space for another person. It was nice at first but after the first month or so, I kind of wanted someone to fill the space.
“Okay, everyone take your pills in an orderly fashion, alright?”
The line was about thirty men from my ward and it was going along pretty smoothly until a man with a long beard and dark brown eyes that were constantly darting all over the room came up to the table. They dropped the pills into his hand and after looking at them with a sharp gaze he yelled, “Don’t take them, they are poison. They are trying to kill us.” The first time he said it there seemed to be no emotion in his voice, but when he repeated it in various phrases three of four more times over the next couple of minutes, he began to sound terrified and alone, like all of us were getting the good medicine and he was getting arsenic or something.
He sunk down to the floor and put his hand across his mouth. “NO! NO! That’s bad! I will give you anything you want, just don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.” He trailed off into tears and the nurses put up with it for about five minutes and the line kept moving past him. I grabbed my pills and looked to the nurse at the table who smiled at me as I tipped my head back and swallowed. I walked back in the line of men leading to my room and as I looked back I saw the man writhing on the floor as a nurse shoved the pill into his mouth. He screamed for seconds afterwards and went into what I imagined were fake convulsions. “You don’t understand. They don’t give me what they give you. They want me to die, these wretches.”
His voice echoed down the hall for about a half hour until he was dragged back to his room, which was across from mine. I gave him a smile and quick nod to acknowledge that he was back, but he pretended not to see me.
The rest of the afternoon was spent by myself looking through magazines and newspapers trying desperately to try to stay in touch with the outside world. It was my only hope of sanity and I knew that if I could just hold onto my sanity, there was a chance that I could get out of this horrible place.


“Paul, get in.” I heard the words echo loudly and firmly into my cell as a dark figure was being pushed in, handcuffed. He slumped onto the bed and gave me a blank stare as the orderlies took the cuffs off and left the room with them clanking behind.
At first I pretended to be asleep so as to ward off any confrontation with my new roommate but soon it was inevitable that we would meet so I got it over with after several minutes of peeling paint off the already almost bare walls.
“What are you in here for?” I asked trying to sound generic like somehow that is what I asked everyone when I met them, and wasn’t it the truth?
“Why does everyone here want to think that I am some kind of criminal? What did I do to you, what? Do I look like a criminal? Look me in the eyes.” He pulled me out of bed by my collar and pulled me close so that I could smell his foul breath against the side of my cheek. “Do I look like a criminal…” He said, tears starting to run down his face as his voice cracked with emotion.
I started into his eyes. Deep green with a circle of brown toward the center that immediately drew me in and caused me to want to get closer to him, but I couldn’t take the chance. I stared at his lips, full red, exactly what I had dreamt of, but as I looked at them, they suddenly became foul under the breath that poured over them the statements even more foul.
“No,” I said, trying to sound like I have calculated this all in my head before. “You are no more of a criminal than me. We are sharing the same cell are we not?”
“That’s true,” he said, sitting back down on the bed and putting his hands in his face, wiping away the sweat and tears. “How long you been in here anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“When are you getting out.”
“I don’t know.”
“We are going to rot in this place, you know that?”
“Don’t talk like that. I’m sure that it will be fine. I have been here a while and yes, maybe it is a little hard at first but you will get used to it and then it won’t be any different then the life you had before. When I was in my biology class my teacher told us that animals of all kind adapt to every situation. You know those polar bears? They are white because they blend in with the snow and they are thick-skinned, thick-furred so that they can resist the cold. Your skin with grow thick too. Just wait. I promise.”
“Why is a mentally unstable person calming me down more than a doctor who is supposed to be helping me out?”
“Because we are the sane ones. They don’t know what to do with us. They know it in the back of their heads. Somehow they must know, but they can’t admit it. People can’t make mistakes because mistakes cause trouble for them.”
“I just want out of here. I am not going to be able to take it. I will go insane. I swear I will go insane.”
“Well, then you are in the right place,” I said and winked at him as I turned back over in my bed.


Light filtered through the small window in the room between the beds and began to make it’s way slowly across as everyone was called to breakfast.
“What’s going on?” Paul asked, looking groggy and not wanting to be disturbed.
“That’s the stuff you are going to have to try to hold down the rest of the afternoon.”
“What?”
“Breakfast.”
“Where do we go and what are we supposed to do?” he asked.
“Okay, formally, no rules but really there are some and it’s important for you to know them for your own safety and sanity.”
“Isn’t that the doctors’ jobs?”
“Technically yes, but I will tell you anyway since they will not. There are four sections in the cafeteria and they are divided by the most insane to the most sane of people. You are going to want to sit with me in the saner of the four groups.”
“That’s terrible and kind of disturbing.”
“That’s true,” I said, bending my head down, trying to look like I knew everything and that I was giving him this great wealth of knowledge out of my kindness and wisdom. “Let’s start walking. If we are late, they will suspect something and we really don’t want that now do we?”
“No. I guess not.”
“There you go! And the food won’t be as bad as you think.”
We walked down the long corridor with the tile sparkling from the morning cleaning which had taken place while most of us had been sleeping. The light glinted off the white washed floors and made my brow wrinkle up as it shined in my eyes. I always found it odd that something so bright could make me feel so depressed and so alone.
We turned the corner that led to the cafeteria and as we did, I noticed the face on Paul turn from stoic bravery to horror as he saw the wealth of mentally ill people surrounding him. There was a man in the corner who was talking to himself while someone next to him was beating against the wall and crying, all the while trying to rip his clothing off at every chance he had when a nurse wasn’t looking directly at him. All of this turned into a large deep moaning sound that seemed to fill the room. It was as if misery had personified itself and showed up all at once for breakfast on this poor boys first day.
I took him by the hand and looked into the green eyes once again, this time more deeply than before. “It really won’t be as bad as you think. I promise.”
The line was starting to move forward quickly. The patients were hungry today and it showed in the way they grabbed their plates and food and hurried to the tables to dig in as soon as possible. We were never starved but it wasn’t as if we were fed well either.
“Hey Donna,” I said to the stout woman across the counter who slopped soup into my bowl. “How are you doing today.”
He face lit up every time she saw me because I was the only patient who thanked her for giving me the food. Sometimes I even gave her compliments if it was good.
“I am doing great, Mr. and you?”
“A little tired, but other than that I guess you can say that I’m okay. Have you met Paul?”
She looked him over and scrutinized every part of his body as if by looking at him she could see right into his soul an discard him as good or evil on the spot in doing so. “He seems decent enough. How long has he been here?”
“Just yesterday.”
“It shows,” she said, looking down at the new clothes and the eyes that had not yet been worn by lack of sleep and pills.
We took our trays and walked to the table where I sat everyday with the old man who had always sat next to me. Today he was not there but stayed in his room. He had refused to eat, saying that the food was making him tired and surely they were putting something in it to hurt him and he wasn’t going to be a part of it. He sat with his arms crossed on the bed as we begged and pleaded with him to come. He was already way to thin and there was no more of his body left to lose, which made me think that it was possibly a tactic on his part to leave the sanitarium early.
Paul looked back and forth across the room suspiciously as he ate and never once did he say a word. I knew that he must have had questions because even I who had been in this cafeteria several times had questions about the absurdity that had been this morning, but he sat in silence with an emotion on his face that was close to impossible to make out.

Back in the room, I looked at Paul over the top of my book and gave him a stare every once in a while just to show him that I was expecting him to talk and he was not complying. After a while I sat the book down on the bed and looked at him for a few minutes before I said, “Is this it? Are you just going to spend all of your time here staring at the walls, not doing anything, saying anything, being anything. If that’s what you are going to do then you just wait. It will start out slowly. First you will lose your track of time and once time stops mattering, then nothing matters.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, drawing his legs up to his chest and looking around the room apprehensively as if it were about to all cave in on top of him.
“It means that you have a choice. You can either try to act as normal as possible and hold onto your sanity in hopes of getting out of this wretched place, or you can sulk and let yourself rot in here like that old man across the hall.”
I pointed my head in that direction and Paul’s eyes followed to an older man of about 60 who was rocking back and forth every once in a while pounding his fist into the wall and yelling something that no one, even the doctors could ever make out.
“Why are people like you and me even in here?” he asked me, starting to tear up a little.
It was exactly what I had been waiting for. He was opening up to me and now was my chance to finally find something out about him, to make friends with him. I got up off my bed and wandered across the room to where he was sitting, knees pressed against his chest quietly weeping at this point. “We are here because no one wants to believe what we really are.”
He looked up at me horrified and then turned to look back at the wall again. His breathing became a little more rapid and I could tell that he was getting nervous. Like some secret about his past life had been brought to light and now everyone was going to know.
“How did you know?” he said in a whisper, looking across both sides of the room make sure that no one was watching us and that no one else could hear.
“How could I not know? I’ve been in here for a long time, Paul. I’ve seen all sorts of people like you and me. And remember, I had a life before I was in here. I know how people treat other people like us. The name-calling, the things they say behind our backs. We are just the unlucky ones. Our parents decided to take action instead of shrugging it off like most other parents do.”
“You know so much about this. Why?”
“I’ve had a long time to think. There really isn’t much else to do in a room that is basically a cell now is there?”
He nodded and looked at the ceiling which was starting to chip a little bit from the mold that was starting to grow in the middle.


Each morning after breakfast Paul would immediately go to the desk and start writing. At first I thought maybe it was a novel or some kind of story, or maybe a letter to his relatives begging them to let him out; any of which would have been a vain pursuit. Still I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. However enthralling my newest issue of Time was or how interesting the novels we were allowed once a week were I would look up to watch the muscles in his arm bulge and move back and forth as his hands slid across the page trailing the meaning of who knew what.
Once I asked him about what he was writing.
“Why are you interested? Do you want to get your hands on my letters so that you can scrutinize them or devour them just like those damn magazines or books or whatever the hell they are?”
Knowing that it was stupid to ask, I eventually ignored it and spent my morning the same, reading from the magazines and books about people who weren’t in sanatoriums or hospitals; people who could leave if they wanted to and didn’t have to listen to the cries of others being tortured by their own imagination. I wanted to be them and I lived through them each time the hospital fell silent enough for me to escape and not be reminded of the mental hell that surrounded me on every side and in every way imaginable.
In the afternoons, Paul’s character took on a whole new light after lunch as the shadows began to shift in our room and evening was about to set in. He sat up in bed and would stare into space for hours or at least that’s what I thought at first. He was actually looking at me and after about a week of the staring I would engage him after about an hour.
“Paul, why do you stare so much? That’s not good for your health. You will turn out like Willy across the hall.”
He looked over to the red-headed man who was licking the wall and screaming for the nurses to give him a comb for his hair even though it was constantly wild, like that of a raging maniac.
He giggled a little before answering. “I know why you’re here, that’s why.”
“Yeah, I think we already discussed that earlier did we not?”
“That’s not why I am referring to it. Come here.”
In a confused state I pulled myself up off the bed and walked across the room where I took a seat in the place on the bed next to him where he patted the blanket. I stared at him for a while, looking into the green eyes again and then without even thinking about it, the night of the bonfire and my birthday flashed before me again and I was caught up in the moment once again because even after all this time I couldn’t let it go. He leaned into me and put his lips to mine and we were in a full embrace by the time I could even think of what I was doing. At first I kept my eyes close not daring to open them but when I did I saw that he was looking back at me, the same hunger in his eyes that I was feeling but not letting out of mine.
A nurse who was apparently peeking through the small window at the top of our door unlocked the door and stepped in hurriedly with a bucket of water that she had been using to clean the floors just moments before. She doused us both with the filmy mess and slapped us across the face twice.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Her face pulled up in an angry grimace that showed both hate and delight at being able to inflict pain on someone. “You know that you will never get out of here acting like that, don’t you.”
Paul and I stared at each other and then back at the woman.
“DON’T YOU?!” she yelled almost insane at this point. I always wondered who it was who was in need of more treatment, the people in the hospital or sane nurses who were supposed t be taking care of us. She slapped us both again and then walked out the door locking it and looking through the window again especially at Paul who gave a terrified look back which seemed to delight her all the more.
“I’m… I’m sorry Paul,” I said hesitantly turning my back to him in embarrassment.
“No. It was worth it,” he said, winking at me as he pulled himself under the covers and laid his head down on the pillow. Soon I found myself in the same position only it seemed like though I was just across the room, I was miles away.


Months went by and it seemed like the whole time the relationship between Paul and I was awkward to the point where we hardly spoke anymore. I wanted so badly to talk to him, to apologize, to make him realize that I took some blame too so that maybe he wouldn’t be so cold toward me. Secretly I wanted the scene to happen all over again but in the back of my mind the nurse was always stepping In again with her pail of grimy water to throw at us.

At noon when the bell rang for us to all go to lunch I thought that it was going to be like every ordinary lunch, but what I didn’t know was that this day and the moment that was about to take place was going to change my life forever, and that I was going to loose something that was very dear to me.
We lined up against the wall in the cafeteria, waiting for the food that, while not good, we were so hungry that we longed for it each day. I took my ration and sat down at the table where I always sat next to Paul. We gave each other a cold smile and made small talk when suddenly at the table next to us a fight started. A man pulled another man down to the ground and all of us swarmed to the center of the room to try to help him get up without being injured by someone who didn’t know the bounds of sanity. The lights flicked off as the nurses came running to the scene and since there were no good windows in the place, it was almost impossible to see what was going on. In the dark there were shouts and arms and legs flailing in all directions until the most horrifying sound came from the throat of a man who was being cut badly. The lights flicked on and everyone dispersed. In the center of the room sat a man whose arms and legs had been cut badly and there was blood covering the floor all around him. He looked up at the nurses, horrified, as they carried him off to another room to be cleaned up.
“All of you, back to your rooms!” shouted one of the nurses as the others herded us in that general direction.
I looked back at the man being dragged away and he was screaming, eyes rolling back in his head with pain.
In the room I stared across at Paul and he did the same. It was the same afternoon ritual only this time I had gone through my books earlier in the week so I had nothing to look at him over and there was nothing between he and I. We just started at each other’s faces, trying to find something to say to fill the silence between us and the boring hours until sleep finally made it possible to get some rest and an escape from the hospital if only for a few hours.
“How do you think it happened?” Paul asked me.
“I have no idea. I mean the man was cut so badly but they don’t allow us anything sharp to eat with obviously so I have no clue what anyone could have used to make such big lacerations.”
“Either way, someone here is going to be in big trouble.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know exactly what I mean. Remember, we are in a place that is only a little bit above a prison. Someone is going to take the fall and I don’t know who it’s going to be but I would sure hate to be him.”
“Do you have any idea as to who might have done it? I mean, you were closer than I was.”
“I don’t know. It was just as dark for me in that room as it was for you remember.”

A nurse came into the room and called our names. We got up obediently and walked down to the end of the hall to a room where the doctors and staff were sitting with the man who had been badly cut.
I took a seat in a chair next to Paul and looked the doctor straight in the eye as he began to question us both about what we knew. Our story was told over and over again but for some reason I had the feeling that the doctor didn’t believe us and so he asked the patient to say what he had told them earlier once more.
“It was one of them!” he shouted, pointing at both of us with the look of insanity that we both saw everyday.
A tension immediately rose in the room and then the doctor scanned our faces and said, “So, which one of you was it? Huh?”
My heart started beating faster and I could tell that the same thing was happening to Paul as well. He looked over at me and then he shouted out of the middle of nowhere, “It was me. I cut him.”
The doctor, looking satisfied asked, “With what did you cut him.”
Paul took on the full character of a crazed man and stared the doctor and the lacerated patient both directly in the eyes while showing his off wildly and hardly blinking once. “A few days ago I was sitting in my room and he was just babbling, babbling, babbling and I couldn’t sleep and it happened for nights and nights in a row. I knew that I was never going to be able to sleep. He sounded just like my brother. The one who used to do the same at night before he would come in a beat me. HE BEAT ME AND HE BEAT ME! And I was the insane one right? I was shipped off here. So I took my fork and I stabbed this man mercilessly until he felt the same pain that I had felt listening to him. Listening to that constantly babbling and babbling to the point where your ears can’t hear anything else.”
I looked at Paul shocked and didn’t even have time to think before the doctor said, “Nurses, take him to the room.”
We all knew what the room was. It was where electroshock therapy was done. A patient was electrocuted to the point where they had a seizure and then they would apparently be cured of their mental distress. It had only happened once or twice and the people it happened to always came out like zombies. They were never the same.
As he was being pulled out of the room by forces I couldn’t begin to control he looked back to me and said, “I didn’t do it. I think we both know that.”


Paul died shortly after that. The seizure killed him. I wept for days but I knew that no amount of weeping was going to help me and that in fact it would work against me. The doctors would think that my depression was incurable and so would keep me in the sanitarium even longer to keep on eye on me just to make sure I didn’t do anything that made me a threat to society or myself.
I thought about Paul everyday and I read twice as much as usual, pulling the book closer to my face so that I wouldn’t be able to see the spot where he had once laid down, where he had looked me in the eye so many afternoons. Where we had kissed and for the first time it had been consensual. I remembered the green eyes the most and it was them that I was thinking of when the door to my room was swung open late one evening. A nurse pulled me out and grabbed my hands dragging me down the hallway. I was terrified. I wondered if maybe they thought I had something to do with the crime and so I was going to be tortured in much the same way Paul was. We reached the end of the hall but instead of turning right into the doctor’s office she turned me right toward the exit. My mother was waiting there with open arms and I ran into them and we embraced for several minutes before I could even begin to ask questions to understand the great breadth of what was going on.
The nurses looked at me with a smile and said, “You are free to go.”
I couldn’t believe it. After all these months of being in this terrible place that I thought I would never escape sane and here I was about to be released into the outside world. The thought of it filled me with ecstasy, but at the same time I thought of Paul and immediately my mood was different.
My mother pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Why did you never write to me? I was worried about you and that was one of the promises you made. I thought that you would never speak to me again.”
“I could never do that. I wrote to you everyday and you never wrote me back anything.”
“Because it wasn’t you.”
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
“Every other week I got a letter from the sanatorium from Paul. He wrote letters and put them in your name to send to me.”
“Why would he do that? Is he crazy? He doesn’t even know you. The nerve…”
“Wait,” my mother said, putting her fingers to my lips. “At first I threw his letters out because I knew they were not from you, but then I began to feel that he was my only connection to you and so I read them; every single one. He knew a lot about you so I’m guessing you told him a lot. He knew about your father and I and how I always gave into him and how weak I was. I knew he was right but what was I supposed to do. I sulked in my selfishness for a while, feeling sorry for myself but then he encouraged me. He told me about you and how you were doing and his love for you. And then I realized that my love for you was stronger than my love for your father.”
“Mother, don’t say things like that. You know you don’t mean it.”
“Yes. I do. I walked out. The way he used to beat me and abuse me, I couldn’t handle it anymore so I left and now I am living with my sister. Those letters Paul sent to me gave me the strength and now I know your father was wrong and you are coming home with me.”
The nurses smiled and handed me a Bible and on the inside was a note from Paul.
I hope that my mind is still functioning and I can remember you and the amazing person you are after they do to me whatever it is they are going to do. I know that one of us is going to be blamed for cutting that man in the cafeteria and so I have decided that it should be me who takes the fall. You have family waiting for you and you deserve a life outside these walls more than I do. I hope you enjoy Exodus. It is my favorite book of the Bible. You can find comfort in every page though. Enjoy you life and I will always love you wherever I am.
-Paul
I held the book against my chest as hard as I could and walked out of the sanitarium into the outside world. The flowers were beginning to bloom and I leaned over to smell one of them and as the smell permeated everything a tear rolled down my cheek and I couldn’t hold it anymore. I stood at the edge of the garden and wept for the outside world. I wept for the people in the sanitarium who would never see these flowers again and I wept for the man whose lacerations may never heal, and I wept for Paul who was part of everything I did now. He was in the air, in the flowers, and I knew that no matter what happened in life, I would never be without him.