Insane.

Chapter 1

As I walk down this long, sterile hallway, I feel a strange sense of silence that is extremely unwelcoming. I feel like the walls are slowly closing in on me, threatening to swallow me whole. But that's probably just because it's my first day working here, and I am aggressively nervous. I round the corner and hear a faint scream from a patient from a distant corridor, which sends chills down my spine. I finally reach the front desk, where a plump middle-aged woman is sitting in front of a computer with a Bluetooth headset connected to her right ear. She's got short, fiery red curly hair that could only be accomplished from a bottle of dye. It suits her well, though. She smiles when I approach her.

"Hello, I'm Harley Evans, the new nurse."

Her face brightens like a lightbulb, "Oh, welcome, Harley! Come, follow me." She gets up from her chair and leads me to another corridor. She takes a left at the first door, and inside is a group of women. Other nurses, I suppose.

"Dr.Styles, this is Harley Evans." She says.

Dr.Styles, a younger man with dark brown curly hair and big green eyes smiles with massive dimples on either side. I had my interview with him a week ago, and we really seemed to hit it off. He's a super sweet man and I'm so glad I got a job here, at Bridgewood Mental Hospital, one of the best mental hospitals in Oregon.

"Welcome, Harley!" He says, then turns to a pretty blonde woman and asks, "Noelle, will you show her around? Give her her schedule and show her what to do? I've got a meeting to run to!" He pats my shoulder and tells me, "If you have any questions, these ladies won't bite. They look like it, but they won't. Trust me." He winks and prances out the door.

Noelle hands me a white scrub and tells me to change out of my blouse and blazer. She shows me to the staff bathroom and I change there. My dark brown hair was down, but I pull it to a ponytail so I don't need to deal with it anymore.

When I return, Noelle hands me my schedule and shows me around the massive hospital. This whole place seems so sterile and lifeless. Hopeless, almost. It makes me feel like people just come here to waste their lives away and the thought breaks my heart. But I need this job. I need to pay off my college funds and get my feet stable on the ground. I've just moved here, to Portland, Oregon, in a small rental on the outskirts of the city.

After discussing with Noelle what I need to do for my list of patients, I notice that my schedule revolves a lot around a patient named Niall Horan.

"Why do I have so much to do with Niall?" I ask Noelle.

She pauses briefly for a moment before answering, "He, well, he likes similarity and feels comfortable with one set nurse, so you're basically going to be his nurse."

I find this strange that they are putting a brand new nurse to one certain patient. It sounds a little bit risky, I guess. "Why me?"

She sighs for a second before answering, "He hates the rest of us," she says with a shrug.

We make our way down the long lines of white corridors until we reach the cafeteria, where Noelle takes me to the counter, which is lined with trays filled with oatmeal, oranges, and milk.

"This is where you get his meals. And then you come over here," and she leads me to a long line of lockers, where she opens one and says, "This is his locker, where we keep the patients' daily medicines and their personal items."

I look inside the locker, but there is only the pill bottles and nothing else.

"Why is it empty?" I ask.

"He doesn't keep things, I should say." She shrugs again, leaving me to wonder what she meant by that. Why wouldn't he have personal items? I get it that some mentally ill patients don't really have hobbies or things like that, but they usually have some kind of personal item.