A Long Way from Home

Part II: The Solution, Chapter 15

Saint Helen's Home for the Clinically Insane wasn't too bad the first month Amity was there. The company- which consisted of a variety of crazies along with the staff- could have been better, but at least she was far away from Daphne. Some of the other patients were even somewhat pleasant to talk to. The neighbor to her left seemed to be on the saner side and struck up a few conversations with her through the thin walls of their room.

Her name was something very long and Russian, and Amity had trouble remembering it or even pronouncing it. She hadn't realized someone was even in the room next to her until she heard a girl arguing with one of the guards. After he slammed her door shut and stormed off, Amity heard her mutter, "Stupid guards."

Amity, who was sitting on her bed at the time and listening through the wall said, "I didn't know you were even in that room. You're awfully quiet."

She heard the girl laugh. "I like to play nice sometimes. Other times I like to wreak a bit of havoc. I'd die of boredom in here if I didn't. You'll learn to ignore me."

"What is your definition of 'a bit'?" Amity asked. "Why are you here?"

There was a smirk in her voice as she replied, "I used to sneak out. Smoke, drink, steal, and do all kinds of other fun things. Finally, my otets had enough and sent me here."

"Your what?"

"My father. So why are you here?"

Amity sighed. "I don't really want to talk about it. Let's just say being here is my best option."

The girl shuffled around her room and gave a couple of bored kicks at the wall. "I find that hard to believe. This place is a prison."

The brunette looked down and began to fidget with her white shirt. "It's not that bad."

"Not yet, maybe," the Russian said. Amity didn't reply.

As for Amity's own room, it was a tiny thing that contained an awfully hard cot, an itchy blanket, and a hole in the floor for a toilet. The cot was strangely, but easily, her favorite part of the room because every night she could go to bed warm. Luckily, the room also had two windows, one on the door and one on the wall opposite to it. Whenever she was restless, she would go to one of the windows and watch. She spent many hours at the glass, sometimes tracing the crossing wires that kept the glass from breaking. Occasionally, she was even allowed to take short walks outside with Dr. Baker. Outside she would roam about the grounds, admiring the garden that was full of colorful flowers or observing the other patients in their natural habitats. There were even times when rabbits could be spotted dining on the plants in the garden, but they were quickly shooed away by frustrated workers.

Dr. Baker, who she was quickly warming up to, had put her on a light dose of some kind of medicine that was contained in a little round, baby blue pill. She wasn't sure what it was, but it seemed to work most of the time. Amity didn't feel the constant strain of sadness, loneliness, and anger that had overwhelmed her before coming to Saint Helen's. At times, she even caught herself smiling.

Whenever she and her Russian neighbor spoke, though, the girl would tell her that Saint Helen's was nothing but a prison. Amity tried hard to convince her otherwise but gave up once she realized how stubborn the girl was with her opinions. So instead, Amity just shook her head when she heard those words. Saint Helen's is a prison. It wasn't a prison for Amity. It was hardly even an asylum; that word was too harsh to describe a place where Amity could finally feel at peace. However, the best part of talking to the Russian was how she would accidentally slip into her native tongue, particularly when she was frustrated. Amity had always dreamed of learning to speak another language, and after enough begging, the girl agreed to teach her a few important Russian words and phrases.

Besides going on walks outside and talking through the wall, there were three times a day that patients were allowed to formally interact with each other: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The three, filling meals were also foreign to Amity, who had only ever eaten two at the most. It was during one of these times- most likely dinner, but Amity couldn't quite recall- when she overheard a young girl bickering with another inmate. She had long, sandy blonde hair that had been woven into a braid and bright blue eyes that were almost the same color as the pills. The color looked even bolder against the purplish circles that had been painted around them from many nights without sleep. The girl was a skinny thing with thighs barely thicker than Amity's calves. When she spoke, Amity noticed she had a slight gap in between her two front teeth that she would sometimes poke her tongue into. It took her several minutes that the girl was speaking Russian, and Amity could finally match a face to the voice of her Russian ally.

"Wow, Amity! You look a lot different than I thought you would," She said when things had calmed down, and Amity had introduced herself.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No! Not at all!"

The girls spent the rest of their hour talking as they always did, and Amity thought it was nice to be able to talk to someone so casually. To have them respond, though, that was the part she really liked. The dinner, which the Russian refused to eat, consisted of chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, and pudding. Amity had never had pudding before, but she found it was so amazing that she asked for the Russian's helping, to which she allowed without a second thought. With a mouth full of the yellow dessert she said, "Why don't you like the food?"

"I do like the food," the girl replied. "But eating it would be letting them win."

"I say let them. I haven't had this much to eat in years."

The Russian glanced over at her, her bright eyes laced with what seemed to be pity. "Maybe you'll understand one day. Hopefully not."

Amity only had one problem with Saint Helen's, and it was the therapy. She would meet with Baker in his quaint office which contained a black wooden stool, a red velvet couch that was laced with golden colored rope, a matching rug with a few bald spots, and a desk cluttered with different papers covered in the thick black scratches that were Baker's notes on his various patients. There was also a stone fireplace that was lit most of the days she was in his office. Above it was the head of a buck whose unblinking and wide glass eyes seemed to stare right into her. Looking at it made her slightly queasy, but somehow she could still feel it watching even when she tried to ignore the fact that it was there.

"How are you feeling today?" Dr. Baker would always start.

"Nervous," was her usual answer.

From there, they would spend the rest of their time talking about Amity's past and the events that led her to him. She would always shut down when they talked about Daphne, and she said as little as possible. The thought of the woman reminded Amity that the heart inside her had been destroyed beyond compare. It reminded her of when she was a child and how she could pick at her scabs until they bled. Every so often she'd have to stop speaking so she could remember how to breathe. Breathing is hard when one has a tight throat, deflated lungs, and tears behind her eyes.

"I can't do this anymore," she proclaimed one day. Baker had asked about their last conversation. The part that brought everything crashing down. "I can't talk about her."

"Amity," he said patiently. "We must continue. These sessions benefit the both of us. They help me better understand you, and they help you get over your fear of talking about her."

The legs of the couch scraped against the floor as she jumped from her seat yelling, "I said no!" In one swift motion, she turned and fled from the room. Dr. Baker sighed before poking his head out of the door and sent the guards after her.

It was after that incident when the treatments began.