to your room?” she asks when she spots me walking by.
I shoot her a glance, but I’m relieved when I see that she looks normal right now. I have to be careful with her and a couple other ones who work here too.
It’s always the same people who trigger my hallucinations. I call them flickers, because that’s more or less what happens. Sometimes, Nurse Anika has blonde hair and blue eyes, but other times, she flickers and is covered head-to-toe in short silvery spikes, no hair to speak of, and dead puce-colored eyes. Luckily, I’m seeing the blonde-haired version today.
“Yep,” I say without slowing down or stopping.
I never linger around her when I don’t have to, and I always try to make sure we aren’t in the same room for too long. I never know when an episode is going to hit me.
Sometimes, I can go days without having one. But the last thing I need is to get so caught up in my flickers that I panic and go catatonic. It can take me hours, sometimes even days, before I can pull myself out of the blackness that takes over. I don’t want to risk falling into that—not when I need to prepare myself mentally for the move. I can’t shut down. I need to be aware and ready for the changes that are coming. I’ll need to protect myself in the new place and be on guard.
I keep my eyes trained on the ground as I make my way back to my room. I pass the common space and hear some judge show blaring on the TV, and Weston asking the others to play chess with him. He hasn’t had a lot of takers since Rose lost an eye to the queen in a fit of rage. All because she was beating him. I’m not even sure why they would give Weston back the pieces after he disfigured another resident with them, but we’re all pretty much throwaways here, so I guess no one could be bothered to care. It keeps him occupied, and that’s what really matters to the orderlies.
After a quick walk down the hall, I reach the door to my room and walk inside, only to find my favorite nurse, Tyson, pulling the quilt his partner made me for Christmas off my twin bed and folding it up.
“Hey, McLeany, what are you up to?” I ask, smiling at the Grey’s Anatomy rip-off nickname I gave to the tall, graceful nurse when I first met him.
“Hey, Sabe the Babe, how was your last session with Dr. Gupta?” he answers back, not missing a beat. He folds the quilt and sets it gently in the open suitcase that I just noticed is spread out on the ground.
My brow furrows as I spot my things in it, and I look up curiously. Tyson’s warm eyes feel like they wrap me up in a tender hug as they take me in, his ever ready smile already in place.
“Looks like they’re springing you from the joint early,” he announces, gesturing to the suitcase I rolled behind me when I signed myself into this facility and decided I would never allow anyone to let me back out.
“They?” I ask, a surprising hint of sadness in my tone.
I truly don’t care about leaving Serenity Peaks. Dr. Gupta was always kind and worked very hard to help me in all the ways he could, but that’s because he couldn’t accept what I already knew—that there’s no hope for me. I’ve never made many friends amongst the other residents either, but admittedly, Nurse Tyson will be a hard one for me to leave behind.
He’s one of those people that I think is actually an angel hiding in disguise. My illness should have flickered his wings into existence at some point over the four years I’ve known him, but oddly enough, I’ve never hallucinated Tyson’s angel wings. Doesn’t mean they’re not there though.
He treats everyone he comes in contact with as though they’re the most precious thing he’s ever encountered, and what’s more, I’m pretty sure he truly believes it. He’s such a bright spirit that he could lighten the darkness of a black hole. Not even Nurse Anika flickers into her other self when Tyson is near. He has an uncanny ability to chase all the bad away simply by being.
I’ve never had a family, which is the case for many residents that find themselves wards of the state. I was dropped off by