Amongst The Chaos

Chapter 2: What Comes After

Two cards were placed on the table and slid to two of the three girls at the table. Each waited anxiously for their hand. Jaqlyn—A-2, but nobody called her that unless they worked here, dealt fast. Her fingers moved with the practiced ease of a true gambler. The pile in the center of the table was a sorry excuse for a pot: snapped crayons in uncommon colors, a cookie wrapped in plastic from yesterday's lunch, and quite a few rubber bands torn from the end of a latex glove, often used as hair ties. The stakes were high, but not in the way they should have been. No one here had money, but this felt just as gratifying.

The funniest part of this mess was that they weren't any good at poker. Jaqlyn could read them like a book. A-4 grinned too wide, but she could tell that something about her smile was false. A-3's expression was blank. Too blank. That meant she had something.

Jaqlyn flipped a card onto the table: a six. So, she drew 6 more, face-down, and discarded them all. Finally, she got to the fun part. She laid out the first three community cards: a Jack of Spades, a Queen of Hearts, and a Queen of Clubs.

"A-3. Do you check or raise?" Jaqlyn asked, just the slightest hint of a taunt in her tone.

A-3, Maria, tapped the table twice with two knuckles. "Check."

A-4, Isabel, followed eagerly. She knocked as well. Jaqlyn flipped the fourth card. A Ten of Diamonds.

"Check?" she asked.

"Ooh... No, I'll raise." A-3 smiled, pushing a black oil pastel into the pile. Those were worth something for sure.

"Oh, come on, I don't have that! I guess I'll fold," A-4 groaned. She pushed herself back from the table and crossed her arms.

Jaqlyn met her raise with her prized possession: a dragonfly pin, pulled straight out of her hair. A-3 looked at it with a smirk. Then, the final cards were burned and then flipped. The last card was a King of Spades.

"Alright. Reveal." A-2 said.

A-3 held up a Jack and a kicker 6, grinning. She stood from the table. "Two pair! I win!"

"No," A-4 said, chuckling. "Jaqi won. Look!"

Jaqlyn smiled slowly. She held her cards up beside her face: a Queen of Spades and a Queen of Diamonds.

"Four of a kind," she said, dragging the winnings toward her. A-3 groaned. She couldn't help but laugh.

A-4 took the burn pile, her folded hand, and the deck, and then shuffled them together.

"You know, I heard there's a new patient joining us today."

The reaction was immediate.

"Really? What does she look like?"

"Have we met her?"

A stern health worker intervened from the other side of the Dayroom. She shushed them obnoxiously. They were silent for only a moment before the conversation started over. 

"Do you know who she is?" A-2 asked.

A-4 responded with a slam of her hands on the table. "I heard... she's an alien, like the staff!"

The two girls looked at each other, baffled.

"Come on, now you're lying." A-3 scoffed.

"Am not!" A-4 shouted.

"Let's just wait and see. She'll probably be here soon. It's almost 5:00." A-2 said, shrugging.

So, they dealt another round of cards, but the game had lost its luster. The thought of the new girl hung over them like a storm cloud.