An Odd Kind Of Wonderful

Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"I'd recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone." (Alanis Morissette)

    "What are you doing?" says someone standing behind us.

    "Shit," Joel swings around to face them, blinking. "We're, um."

    "I'm Nathan." I say. I just now realise how useless that bit of information was.

    "He's not well." Raisa adds.

    The person is in the dark, mostly, until we step back out into the corridor, and I see it's Georgia.

    "Georgia." I say. "How are you?" She gives me look. "Okay, so that may not have been the best question to ask someone in a mental hospital. What I mean is, are you okay?"

    Georgia crosses her arms. "Am I okay? Nathan, are you okay—what are those bandages?" She touches the top of one bandage gingerly. "Oh my God, how bad is it that you've needed a bandage? I'm so sorry, Nathan. I should've..."

    "Shh," Raisa says, "There's nothing to worry about," and she offers a smile to Georgia. Georgia smiles back, but it's so obviously fake it may as well be made of plastic. "Do you know where Josh is?"

    "Yeah, he's in the art therapy room. The nurses are letting us stay up to see the fireworks...are you, like, official? Why do you want to see Josh?"

    "I'll talk to you later." I say to Georgia. I thought she'd gone to the eating disorder ward? There's a part of me that's glad she's allowed to stay here. I don't know how she would have fitted in with a group of people all suffering exactly the way she was. Sometimes that can be overwhelming. The art therapy room is down another corridor and to the left, after three rights. We lose Joel once because we walk past a vending machine, leave him behind, and then have to go back and rescue him. The art room is empty when we walk in.

    It's like a really big art classroom's storage cupboard. There's a blue table in the middle, where six plastic chairs are tucked in, and various Tupperwares full of beads and ribbons lie on top of it. The walls are lined with more boxes and containers holding much the same cargo, pastels and felt tips and the like, exactly how I remember it. "Josh?" Raisa asks. "You in here?"
    "I don't think he is."

    It's silent. Something rustles the cellophane.
    "Are you going to make me go back?"

    "Josh?" I answer the small, scared voice. I kneel down, thinking it's come from under the table, but I'm wrong. "Is that you?"

    "Nathan?" Josh wanders out from behind a bookshelf. I didn't know he could fit there. He brushes a stray black curl from  his face. He goes straight from bemused wonderment to intense panic. "What—what are you doing here?" He scans me over. "You haven't got a wristband. You haven't been checked in. Why are you—who are they? Why are they here? Are they supposed to be here? I—"

    I know better than to touch him, so I edge Raisa and Joel backwards to give Josh more space. I frabricate so many ways of dealing with this and almost all of them end with Josh running out and me wanting to defenestrate myself. So I decide to tell the truth. "These are my friends," I say, waving a hand behind me, "And I told them about the people I've met, and they wanted to meet you." I use a calmer tone, and it seems to work, Josh's shoulders losing some of their tensity. "What did you mean before; 'are you going to make me go back'?"