Jacob sat, staring out the window, watching the breeze make the leaves on the trees in the courtyard dance. He loved this time of day when no one was bothering him. There were no group meetingsto attend, where he was expected to listen to all of those idiots scream at each other, some crying on the floor, and the doctors sitting amongst them taking notes on their tablets, all claiming that it was helping. Nothing helped, nothing kept these animals from the realization that they were trapped in a cage, that the outside world couldn’t handle their quirks, that they needed to be protected. Perhaps it was the outside world that needed to be protected from us, he thought, watching a bird land on a branch of the tree and begin to sing.
He thought of her often, practically every day. They wouldn’t let him keep his pictures and kept taking them away whenever he forgot to put them back in their hiding spot, but he could close his eyes and see her perfectly. The crinkle of the skin at the corner of her eye when she laughed, the small mole at the base of her throat. He had kissed her there and had tasted the sweat on her skin, and he remembered it as though it were yesterday.
The doctors told him it wasn’t natural, the way that he continued to think of her as his after all that had happened. They didn’t know what he knew, that she had wanted to run away to be with him, and that he was only doing what he was doing to make her happy. And so they kept him here, in this prison, locked away where he could not get to her and could not rescue her from his wretched, conniving, selfish asshole of a brother.
A sour taste rose like bile in his mouth when he thought of Rick, and he fought to keep from throwing up on the tile floor of the day room. His brother thought that he was doing the right thing, keeping them apart and taking her all for his own. The doctors had told him how she and Rick had been married and how they were starting a life together. They had hoped that it would convince him that she was happy where she was now. They hoped that it would help him let her go. But he knew, he knew that she was only marrying his brother so that she could remain close to him, so that someday they would be together. She was biding her time until he could convince the doctors that he was no longer crazy, no longer a threat, and then he’d walk through the doors of this cage and back out into the light.
“Jacob,” said a nurse from the doorway.“It’s time for lunch. Would you like to join us in the dining room?”
Like he had a fucking choice. He wasn’t hungry, but if he didn’t follow her like the obedient little puppy that he was expected to be then they would pump him full of tranquilizers and tie him to the bed. He needed to cooperate and convince them that he was better if he had any hope of escaping this place any time soon.
“Sure,” he said, unfolding his legs from beneath him and standing from the couch that he had been resting on for the last few hours. The nurse smiled as he passed, holding the door open for him to walk through, and he turned, returning her smile sweetly, putting on his people face.
The dining room was a large space. Tables and chairs were in a circular pattern around the room. Each table had about six chairs, where the patients and doctors sat together to enjoy their meals. The staff thought that having them eat together created a sort of bond between the doctors and their patients, making the crazies more comfortable so that they were more likely to open up when they were in session.
Today was meatloaf day; Jacob could smell the canned gravy as soon as he entered the room, and his stomach turned. He plastered on his smile, crossing to the nearest table, and slid into one of the open chairs. Dr. Jacobson sat to his left, a note pad open on the table before him, reviewing his notes of some group meetings as he waited for the lunch to be served.
“Hi,Doc,” said Jacob, fiddling with the plastic silverware on the table. They were not allowed real utensils, no metal forks, definitely not knives. Each place was set with the plastic silverware that one would find in a child’s toy box, a tea set fork with rounded edges, a cartoon butter knife with no blade. If soup was served, they were brought the large, flat spoons used by people from Thailand. He couldn’t think of how someone could hurt themselves with a metal spoon, but it was better not to question such things, not if you were trying to convince them that you were really sane and didn’t need to be locked in this place with all these crazies.
“Hello,Jacob,” said the doctor, closing his notes and turning to make eye contact. The doctors made their best efforts to approach the patients as if they were real people, not the lunatics that they really were.“I want to commend you,” he continued,“for your excellent listening and sharing skills at group this morning. I think that you really helped Gina come out of her shell.”
Gina. The new one. They really didn’t know what to do with her, thought Jacob. During the group meeting, she had sat with her legs pulled up in front of her, not engaging in the group conversation in any way, only glaring at those around her. Jacob had known what was going on inside her head. He could see from the look in her eyes that she knew that they all thought that she was nuts and that she was going to explode and run screaming from the room at any second. He had leaned over to her and whisperedin her ear,“If you don’t share, they’ll shoot you full of drugs and you won’t be able to move. They’ll leave you like that for days. People will come in and out of the room, pushing food in one end and pulling shit out of the other, and there will be nothing that you can do about it.”
She had shared after that. Told them about how her father had sent her to stay with them when she refused to eat the food that her mother had prepared for dinner.
“She hates me,” said Gina.“Always has, I’m not going to eat anything that she cooks. Who’s to say that it isn’t poisoned?”
“Why would your mother poison you?”asked the doctor, pencil poised over his notepad.
“So that she can be rid of me,” said Gina, as if it was obvious.“I’m an inconvenience;I’ve heard her say it myself. Since I was born, she has spent her life cleaning up and cooking meals for us. She was a powerful, successful woman before I came along. With me out of the way, she could get her life back the way that she likes it. I’m sure that she was the one whoconvinced my father to stick me in here. I guess that she finally did find a way to get me out of the way.” She chuckled uncomfortably and looked around at the group.
“He just sent you here,” said Jacob, turning to her,“because you wouldn’t eat?”
“Well,” she said, twisting her dress in her hands.“Not just that, no.”
“What then?”he asked, giving her all of his attention, looking to the others as though he were really interested, really listening to what this crazy, snot-nosed lunatic had to say.
“I,” Gina said, hesitating,“I may have tried to run her over with the car.”
Now Gina sat at a table on the other side of the dining room, tearing a paper napkin into small pieces and making a pile of the pieces on the table in front of her. One of the nurses sat the table with her, the only other occupant in that group of empty chairs, and looked around the room nervously, obviously hoping that someone else would come and join them so that she would not be stuck spending the entire hour with the girl who tried to murder her own mother only a few days before.
“Glad I could help,” said Jacob, reaching out for the pitcher of punch that was always placed on each of the tables before the meal was served. Whether or not to drink the juice was up to each patient, a modicum of choice to make them feel as if each aspect of their lives wasn’t entirely ruled by the staff at the hospital. Each day was divided into time slots, and each time slot had an assigned activity.
Every morning a nurse would arrive at his door at exactly 7:15, alerting him that it was time for him to“rise and shine” and make himself presentable. He would pull a t-shirt over his head, make sure that all of his belongings were successfully hidden from the prying eyes of the orderlies, who would surely take them away if they were found again, and make his way out into the day room.
Breakfast was served at 7:30, and each patient was expected to be in a
ttendance—whether or not they agreed with the idea that it was the most important meal of the day. They were not allowed coffee, as it wasn’t good for the nerves of the high-strung patients and often interfered with the series of medications that differed with each person’s level of mania. So Jacob would often sip tepid orange juice with his eggs and toast, while trying to appear chipper and well rested, his performance starting each day at sunrise.
After breakfast the loonies were expected to attend a group session, as before mentioned, in hopes that they would become accustomed to the presence of other people, giving them the opportunity to learn from each other how one is supposed to behave in polite company. What a joke.
After lunch, the men and women were separated and shipped off to the group showers. They were not allowed to clean themselves while unsupervised, as patients in the past had been known to try and harm themselves when left alone for too long, or worse, to spend an hour masturbating furiously under the heated spray.
Once everyone was clean and redressed, they were left to their own devices unless they had therapy sessions to attend with one of the doctors. Most of the patients spent their time in front of the television, the medications lulling them into a tranquil state where they would spend hours staring at the idiot box no matter what shows the orderlies decided to put on the screen. Like children, they were not allowed to watch anything involving violence or sex, so they spent most of their time watching old black and white movies, or cartoons made to entertain very young children. It drove Jake insane, however ironic that may sound, to see them staring at nothing day after day.
He preferred to spend his free time watching the sky, seeing that the outside world still continued to thrive in light and shadow—even when he was trapped behind the walls of this hell. He fantasized about how his life could have been different. If his family would have accepted him—instead of throwing him in this place when he didn’t conform to their standards of normalcy. He knew that they watched him, that they talked about his behavior after he went to bed each night. He could hear them—when they thought that he was sleeping—talking about what they needed to do to change him, to make him an acceptable member of society.
He thought about his brother, who in childhood had been his best friend, only to turn on him so completely in adulthood. He had thought that he had rid himself of the bastard when he had shot him that night in the bunker, but the fucker had pulled through, and now was happier than ever, living the life that was supposed to be his.
One of the servers, the young girl with the unfortunate condition of having the worst acne that he had ever seen, slid a plate in front of him.
“Thank you,” he said, blessing her with one of his best smiles before lifting his fork in preparation of scooping whatever gruel the kitchen had decided to bestow upon him today. Looking down at his plate, he felt the bile rising in his throat again as he took in the congealed lump of gravy atop the cardboard looking attempt at meatloaf. A mountain of instant mashed potatoes, now cold, a cube of butter standing at its peak, no chance of it melting amid the tepid plate. He poked at the meal disgustedly, sighing resignedly before picking up a forkful and placing it in his mouth.
Salt, all he could taste was salt. He picked up his plastic cup of juice, gulping it to wash the rancid taste of the meal out of his mouth.
“Delicious, huh,” said Gina, who had slid into the chair next to his, abandoning her previous dinner companion who looked relieved to be sitting by herself, poking listlessly at her own meal.
“Um,” said Jacob, hesitant to use that particular word to describe the plate before him. He wouldn’t even call it food, not really, but he didn’t want to seem difficult, not when the doctor was sitting at the table with them.
“It’s alright,” he said, scooping another bite into his mouth, desperately trying to ignore the protests of his stomach as he swallowed the cold lump of meat and gravy.
Gina poked at her own meal, lifting the meatloaf with her fork and letting it flop back on her plate, splashing gravy on the table top between them.“I can’t eat this.”
“You should eat,” said Jacob, gesturing with his eyes toward Dr. Jacobson, who was nonchalantly taking notes on his pad, as if he were not listening in to their conversation and writing down Gina’s reaction to the food that she was served. He knew that it would come up in group tomorrow—how the staff goes to great lengths to prepare nutritious food for them and how they should be grateful that they are so well cared for.
Grateful, he thought as he watched Gina nudge the bowl that had just been set next to her plate containing her dessert, orange gelatin with bits of unidentifiable fruit hovering amidst the cloudy form. He could see that she was regretting her decision, that she should have just eaten the food that her mother was cooking for their family. That maybe she was trying to poison her, but the food in here was actually going to kill her, and these people knew the correct doses of poison to get the job done where her mother was only an amateur.
“So,” she said, pushing her plate away and pulling her feet up on the side of her chair,“what’d you do?”
“What do you mean?” Jacob asked, sipping at his punch.
“To end up here,” she continued, gesturing around the dining room.“What’d you do?”
“I,” he hesitated,“I stopped taking my medications.”
“Ok,” she said, her tone implying that she didn’t believe him, not for a second.
“I suffered a manic break after not taking my medications for several months,” he said, clarifying to satisfy her curiosity.
“Did you do something crazy?” she said, leaning in, her interest piqued.“Did you try and kill yourself?”
“No,” he said.“I didn’t try suicide.”
“Come on then,” she said.“Out with it. You don’t get locked in a cage just for forgetting to take your pills for awhile. What did you do?”
“I hurt my brother,” he said, frustrated,“and his wife.” Why wouldn’t she just drop it? Leave him alone and let him choke down his dinner in peace and quiet? Why did she have to prod him so?
“Are they dead?”she asked, her voice hushed, as if the doctor couldn’t hear her from the three feet across the table if she just whispered.
“No,” he said.“They are not dead.”
“Well,” she replied,“at least there’s that. At least I’m not sharing this lovely dining room with a murderer.”
“You sure about that?”he said, looking around the room.
Her eyes followed his, taking in each patient, some drugged and drooling as they stared vacantly at their plate, some twitching, their eyes darting from person to person as they cut their food into tiny pieces before shoving the whole meal into their mouths at once.
“That’s enough Jacob,” said Dr. Jacobson, looking sternly at Jake.
Well, shit, he thought. Now she’s done it. He had this doctor thoroughly convinced that he was as placid and normal a human being as any who walked the streets, and now she had gotten him to say something stupid right in front of the man. She is going to pay for that, he thought. He didn’t know how, but he would find her weakness, and he would use it.
Chapter 3
The darkness of the room comforted him. Like clockwork, the nurses did the rounds each night, tucking the crazies into their beds and making sure that all the lights in the hospital were shut off by ten o’clock. Jacob reveled in this time, his time, where he didn’t need to suppress his feelings anymore anddidn’t need to pretend. He peeked out the door into the hallway, noting with satisfaction that the orderly was sitting at his desk at the end of the hall, his feet up, his attention glued to whatever sitcom was on the small television in front of him. He wasn’t paying attention to anything that the patients did. Once they had had their after-dinner dose of tranquilizers, they were down for the count, as far as this guy was concerned. He had a cake job, minimum wage to sit in the dark and watch TV all night. Couldn’t get any better.
Satisfied that he would b
e left alone, he pulled the door to his room closed, irritated at the click that the mechanism made as it settled in place. No matter how soft it was, he was afraid it would draw attention to the fact that he was still awake. He scurried to his bed, kneeling down beside it and reaching as far beneath it as his arms would allow. He stored his things here, his treasures, deep in the darkness below his bed where no one would think to look. He slid the empty tissue box toward him, sitting cross legged on the floor and settling the box between his feet. He kept his back to the closed door, ready to shove his treasures back into their hiding place should he be found out of his bed. He wasn’t going to let them take his things, not again.
Unfolding the edges of the box, he gently inserted his fingers into the space inside, a tingling sensation spreading through his belly as the rough edges of the paper ruffled passed his fingertips. He knew what they were, could tell each one from the other, the size and shape of the pictures so familiar that he could see them in his mind’s eye as he brushed passed each one. This was the one of them together, his beautiful, powerful princess and his conniving brother, taken on the steps of the courthouse where they stood together only moments after telling the jury that pack of damned lies about him.
Why would she do that? he thought. Sit there, in front of all those people, and tell them that he had kidnapped her? He had taken very good care of her; she had not been harmed. He had done nothing but cherish her, love her deeply, like she always wanted. He knew how she needed to tell those lies. His brother had taken her and was guarding her from her own happiness. She must be afraid of him, trapped in that life with him, when the life that she truly desired had been snatched away from her right at the moment when she could see it coming to fruition. He should have died. He should have bled to death on the floor of the bunker, his poison spilling into the drainage grate in the middle of the floor. Then they would be together still, holding each other, instead of miles apart.
The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 3 Page 2