FicWad

Chapter 4

An indeterminable amount of time passes. I think I stay in the emergency room for less than a day, but it’s hard to tell with the cycle of sedation the doctors have me under. Bert stays in the emergency room with me the entire time. Each time I wake up and open my eyes, he’s there, smiling warmly at me. Once or twice I wake up while he’s knocked out, but for the most part, he watches me sleep. Strangely enough, I like it. It makes me feel protected somehow.

Bert is so cute when he sleeps… Awake, it’s hard to imagine him as cutesy. Bert is more sexy than cute. But the little sighing sounds he makes when he sleeps are so adorable they make my heart flutter.

I’m so preoccupied admiring Bert that I don’t notice the nurse enter the room with a wheelchair until she begins removing my restraints. Her cold hands brush my skin, abruptly bringing me back to reality.

“Please get into the wheelchair.” she say in a monotone. Her face shows no emotion whatsoever.

“O-okay.” I say, my voice cracking and going down to a whisper. I don’t want to leave Bert. I don’t want to leave him… Pain fills my heart and I feel like bursting into tears. He’s the first nice person I’ve talked to in five years and he understands me. I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want to leave him.

But I have to. A single tear rolls down my cheek and I climb into the wheelchair. My limbs are sore and stiff, a result from not shifting position for nearly 24 hours. I wish I could wake Bert up and say goodbye, but it’s hard to wake someone from a medicated sleep. I’ll never see him again…

It’s all I can do to keep myself from bawling as the nurse pushes me out the door and down an endless, silent hallway. The absence of noise is somehow deafening. Even the wheelchair and the nurse’s footsteps are silent. I hiccup, shattering the silence like a bullet through a flock of doves.

We come to a set of double doors. The nurse presses a card to a scanner on the wall and the doors slowly open. Blinding light hits me and I cover my eyes in shock. Sunlight. Real sunlight. I hear wind. I feel wind. Fresh air… Are those birds chirping? I uncover my eyes and blink at the stunning blue sky in awe.

Then I’m lifted into the back of a van and it’s all torn away from me in an instant. I press my palm against the window, longing to be back in the outside world. Somebody puts a mask over my eyes.

The ride is short. I feel like the van is moving uphill. The pain inside of me builds until it reaches my eyes and pours out as tears. The cloth of the mask absorbs my tears. The dampness is cold on my skin.

When I’m lifted out of the van, I get one more taste of that fresh air. Then I hear the squeak of a door being opened and it’s torn away from me once again. Just like Bert was torn away from me.

The mask is removed, and I see that I’m in the institute again. Berkman’s, as Bert told me. A female doctor gives me a cold, unfeeling smile and helps me out of the wheelchair.

“Follow me, please.” she says commandingly. I follow her down a hallway. We must be going to my room, I thought. But she walks right past my room and instead leads me down a hallway to the left and opens the door to a different room.

Inside, it looks exactly the same as my bedroom, but it has two beds instead of one. A cardboard box sits on one of the beds.

“This is your new room.” the doctor tells me. “The door will be locked most of the time. Press the help button on the wall if you need to get out for anything.” And with that, she left.

I wonder why there’s two beds. Maybe I’ll be getting a roommate. Ugh. People. I look inside the box and find my possessions packed inside. I start unpacking my things, putting my clothes and comic books in the same places they were in my old room. Everything is back in it’s place now, except for my dream journal. I’m guessing the staff threw it away or rolled joints with it or something.

I notice that the air vent on the floor is awkwardly bent, as if someone had tried to pull the sharp metal off. The thought freaks me out and I whimper slightly. I want my old room back… even though the two rooms are nearly identical, this one just doesn’t feel right. The light is dimmer and it’s colder. I wish things could go back to the way they were before… Before my suicide attempt… Before I got here… I wish I had never been haunted by demons and spirits that now seem to leave me alone…

Tears cloud my vision and I sink onto one of the beds. That’s when I notice the tight bands around my wrist. Two plastic hospital bracelets. One reads Gerard Way- Mentally Distraught. I’ve seen this kind of bracelet before. They’re sported by the truly insane residents at Berkman’s. The ones who roam the halls in their pajamas, babbling to themselves and bouncing rubber balls against the walls infinitely, like a metronome that never shut up.

And now I’m wearing one. Great. The other bracelet says Gerard Way- 06129. Don’t really know what that means. I don’t know what anything means anymore. I just… aghh…

I’m burying my face into a pillow when I hear the door swing open. I look up and see an angel accompanied by a nurse. Bert.