The Mercy of Birds

CHAPTER 1: PENROSE

CHAPTER 1
PENROSE

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The ripple of smoke he exhaled evaporated into the misty air with a hypnotizing swirl, yet the sensation of warmth and tanginess of the tobacco in his tongue couldn't occupy his mind to either be distracted or pacified. The lean fingers that tucked the cigarette in between their rosin-powdered curvature, cold and chafed; the silver ring that adorned his thumb and pinky frozen.

He glanced once again at the building only a small distance away from where he was leaning next to his car in the parking lot. A couple of other owners of the vehicles, who had seen him linger from the time they arrived to when they exited the building around thirty minutes later, gave him an odd look. He hadn't been moving from his spot outside of the state hospital in this godforsaken winter for some time now, just standing there like a creep, did he want to catch a cold or something? Was he a part of the patient treated here somehow?

The truth was he was just early. Too early in fact, he had come an hour and a half before his supposed conference with a psychiatrist inside. He figured that the spare time would help him to be more prepared for the things to come, but it just backfired into making him more anxious, his stomach stirred and surged with nauseating anticipation. If he thought to stay inside the car for any moment, he might just relent to the urge to just drive away, change his mind with a flick of his wrist on the handbrake, and never look back and he would hate that. Wouldn't he hate that? Was this a good decision after all? Or better yet, was it a sane one?

He checked his watch that showed 10:44, only a few minutes more until his meeting and he had to go up there. Now he hesitated whether he felt relief after waiting for so long or he dreaded it even worse.

He inhaled a deep intake of smoke for one last time before dropping it into the snow and crushed it under his boots. Then he crouched to pick the bud up—the nearest trash can gave him a glare of a warning sign. He discarded the litter and took another appraising look at the state hospital building. The expansive, red brick structure stared back at him in provocation, as though making a bet with itself whether he would turn around, giving in to the comfort of living life in ignorance or continue his way inside to look for the answers of questions that had been haunting him.

"Excuse me."

A voice snapped him out of his reverie and he looked over his shoulder to see a stocky man, dressed in a navy blue, security guard uniform, approaching him. The man fixed his cap and regarded him with narrowed eyes. He assessed his plush, dark attire and tall stature for a second. The suspicion in his gaze wavered as he seemingly contemplated the kind of tone he would use on him.

"Saw you from the gate up front. Can't help but wonder why you're lingering around." The guard beckoned his head back to the direction of the heavily-guarded entryway where one must surrender their identification as a warrant.

"Cameron Crane," a different security officer had said back there, enunciating his name as if he was burning it on the back of his mind, a silent implication that his presence here would be recorded and kept under close surveillance.

Cameron tried to relax his expression when he faced the seasoned guard. Revealing the visitor card from out of his pocket, he displayed it up to him. "Yes, sorry. I was just on the phone."

"That's gotta be a long ass phone call. You sure you're not missing your appointment?" the guard eyed the card warily. "They gonna want you to put that on if you wanna come inside."

He nodded as he fastened the pin behind the card on the left side of his chest.

"You sure you're not missing your appointment?" the guard repeated, this time louder in volume.