Evergreen Everleigh - The Wattys 2020

Chapter Three - Traffic Light Eyes

A/N - Hi All, Jen here! I just wanted to let you know that this chapter does not discuss any major themes outside that of inpatient treatment for an eating disorder. Read at your own discretion! I hope you enjoy x

Chapter Three

Traffic Light Eyes

Fractured light streams through the hospital window. Rainbow droplets cling to the windowsill. The succulent my mother placed on my bedside table looks almost emerald. Jazz music rings through the ward as the nurse on duty does anything she can think of to introduce happiness to the ward of paper dolls.

That's what they call us here. Paper dolls. I overheard them say it one night when I couldn't sleep.

Yet, now, I don't feel as much like a paper doll as I once did. Here, they have bound me and fed me with liquid weight. The tube entering my nose is itchy as it is taped to my unstitched cheek.

It keeps coming loose, pulling with it small hairs of fluff that cover my whole body.

A loud bang sounds behind me and I see a girl in the first bed to the left of the nurses' station pulling the tube from her face with too much haste. She knocks over her water jug.

This is enough of a trigger for me to snatch my journal from my bedside table and slip my fluffy boots on.

"I'm just getting some air," I tell the nurse at the ward's entrance, feigning a smile. To her, I appear to be the sanest girl on the ward, despite the truths my psychiatry notes likely tells.

I ride the elevator to the reception and ignore the eyes of strangers that follow me.

Outside, I sit on a bench by the entrance for ambulances. Technically, I'm not meant to be here, but no one has ever made me move.

A flower basket overhead swings in the wind and water droplets fall down the back of my neck. It is cooling in comparison to the stifling suffocation of the ward. I flip open my leather-bound journal and pull the blue ribbon open on my last entry.

My eyes hone in on the scraggly writing of when I told my mother about the events of Crippen Orchard and the psychiatric assessment that followed shortly after. I wrote the word 'hallucination' in red over and over and it still didn't feel real. That is what my experiences of the dead have been reduced to.

I feel the other side of the bench dip slightly under the weight of a stranger. Almost unconsciously, I pull my hair tie from my dry, blonde curls and flip my hair over my

shoulders to cover my cheeks from immediate view. I don't want the judgment of my scarred left cheek or the tube taped uncomfortably to my right and entering my nostril.

I suck the tip of my pen and think about what to write.

No matter how much I am encouraged to document my time in the hospital here, I cannot bring myself to reflect upon what I wish I could escape entirely. It would be like experiencing it twice.

There is not a single ink stroke on the page when I let out a shriek as something distinctly wet touches the exposed ankle of my crossed leg, where my flannel pyjamas ride up slightly.

I look down to find the most peculiar cat staring attentively into my eyes with an intensity I have never seen in an animal. It is small, grey, with a purple collar jingling around its neck at its every move. Attached to its collar is a little yellow ribbon.

Yet what strikes me most are the cat's eyes. One is amber, whilst the other is a pale green. Combined with the red rim around the waterline, they look like a perfect set of traffic lights.

Slowly, I unwrap my legs and sit back against the bench, tucking my feet back underneath it. The cat does not blink once. As though I did not feel quite unstable enough in my opinions, I could have sworn that the cat eyed me up and down.

Before this, I had not believed it possible for a cat to appear derisive.

"He's frightfully rude, I'm afraid," I start once more and drop my pen onto the ground. It is my new bench friend, speaking to me in a high and clear voice. I turn and face her reluctantly.

She's a woman all dressed in lilac, with dark curls that seem to grow outward from her skull in defiance of gravity. She looks young with her smooth skin and dimples, but for some reason, I feel this could be deceptive. Her eyes are almost navy. Though I cannot be sure, I feel that if she were to stand, she would tower over most women and many men with her broad shoulders.

She smiles in response to my gawking expression and bends to pick up my pen. Handing it to me, I notice that her long nails are painted silver with golden gems pressed onto the cuticles. I hesitate slightly before taking the pen from her.

"He's my little friend. Mr. Flurry is his name," She says, beaming widely, exposing a set of large, even teeth which almost blind me. A large gap can be seen in-between her upper front teeth.

"Oh," I say lamely, slowly closing my journal. "He's got very interesting eyes," I add, nervously shifting in my seat.

I suddenly want to return to the ward as this is the first conversation I have had with anyone other than my mother or my therapist in weeks. Its intensity has disarmed me. Immediately, I begin to sweat. With a single index finger, I begin to scratch my bandaged wrist, savouring the pain.

I wonder what she sees, this peculiar stranger. My pyjamas are covered in rose petals and my hair is a haystack of poor quality straw, starved of nutrition. The tube attached to my face is telling of why I am here. I do not want to know what she must think, seeing the bandages that adorn my wrists.

A paper doll that cut too close to the edges. Yet not close enough to change anything but the location of my suffering.

She does not speak again. The woman simply smiles at me as though the very sight of me has made her day. It has been so long since someone looked at me which such genuine joy that I begin to fidget, my eyes dampening.

I glance back to the cat – Mr. Flurry – to see him sniffing my pyjama leg with apparent curiosity. The situation was becoming too much.

Though all an outsider would see is a too-thin girl and a big-boned woman on a bench with a cat at our feet. I could not quite place my finger upon why I felt as though this was no ordinary encounter.

Perhaps she's dead, I think, fearing another hallucination like the one after my grandmother's funeral.

As if reading my mind, the woman's smile widens. She stands, patting her purple suit jacket down from dust. Several stray cat hairs float away from her and land on the bench. Mr. Flurry moves to her ankles, rubbing himself against them affectionately.

"I had best be off." She says and I wonder how she can make a smile audible.

I nod, awkwardly.

"I'll be seeing you soon, Everleigh." She says quietly when she is five feet away and almost impossible to hear. My neck makes a grotesque snapping noise and my food tube pulls against my face painfully as I look at her quizzically. How did she know my name?

"Wait!" I call, standing, "How did you..."

I don't get a chance to finish the sentence before she has turned the corner and disappeared. The last sight of the peculiar pair I see is Mr. Flurry's bushy tail moving brusquely to at the woman's side. I consider following her but decide against it, knowing that I was not allowed to wander far from the ward.

And anyway, the psychiatric unit houses a great variety of mental issues, not just mine. For all I know, she could be even crazier than I am.

Yet in my gut, I know that she is not.