Pure Torture: a Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 42

Katniss

"Cause I'm broken when I'm open, and I don't feel like I'm strong enough." -Seether

The warmth from my body on the hospital bed has long leached into the air from the sheets. Probably because I haven't been there. Not in bed, I hide in a supply closet. I sit, wedged between metal shelving units, trembling. So tired, but not allowed to close my eyes in fear of what sleep will bring me. Guessing that it's around 1 in the morning, I count the hours since my last pill. Three.

I've learned by now that the side effects heighten at around 4-5 hours after taking them. But now, at 3 hours, I feel worse than any 4 or 5 hour mark. I have a skull-crushing headache. With nothing to focus on, my mind wanders often. And the depression brings the most insane hurt I can imagine. But not in the way I had imagined.

It's like climbing a steep wall to get out of the pit of depression. You can try to climb, but you can only get so many feet up before slipping and scraping down the side of the wall and falling back to the bottom. Each time you fall, you lose a little bit of hope of getting out. Each time you fall, a new bone breaks. Each time you fall, you get more scrapes on your already raw skin.

My trembles turn to shivers as I crouch pressed against the cold metal shelving. I picked a bad hiding spot. Anyone could find me here, as I didn't even bother to try to leave the hospital. They wouldn't have let me, though. If only I could have made it to the Laundry Center, where I could lie against a warm pipe or something.
Once again, Good job, Katniss. I think.

Now left to drown in the icy waters of my own thoughts, I sing in my head an old song I used to sing with my father.

"Are you, are you,
Coming to the tree?
Where they strung up a man,
They say he murdered three.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree..."

I sing the verses of the song over and over again.

"Are you, are you,
Coming to the tree?
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree..."

Unfortunately, I'm somehow found in the closet before I reach my next stanza. Too cold, too tired, and too defeated to fight back, I let the shadowy figures pick me up and get me back to my bed. Once I lie there, they ask me questions about what I was planning on doing in there, and I just shrug my shoulders. I was planning on hiding and never coming back, I want to say. But I don't. Of course I don't.

Then they question me about my medication. Have I been taking it? Is it helping? Are you feeling better? Did I take it recently? Are the side effects okay?
To make them feel better, I tell them yes to everything, even though I'm telling dead lies. Yeah, I have been taking the medicine, so that's not a lie, but the rest....
I've given up entirely. So entirely, I don't protest when they give me IV sleep medication. Sleep. The entire reason I didn't want to be found.

I pray I don't have dreams. I can't deal with the darkness in my sleep now, too. But I don't have such luck.
--

When I wake, it's almost lunch time. The doctors reluctantly allow me to leave the hospital. I'm discharged. It feels as if it's been forever since I got to be out on my own, without the IV or the hospital gown or anything of the sort. It feels so good. I'm happy. Actually happy.

I walk into the Dining Hall in my unusual good mood. I get my food, which tastes pretty good, although I'm not very hungry. I eat anyways, just because I can, and lose my focus on my surroundings. It's after I've returned my tray to the Collection Area and sat back down where I sat when I realize something's off. Something's different. The Dining Hall is abuzz, everyone talking. But I can feel the tension. The buzzing off everyone's voices surrounds me, cutting me off from the norm.