PEARL

FOUR

TRACK 4
FREAKS
SURF CURSE

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IDA couldn't have hated hospital room twenty-three any more if she'd tried. 

She hated its pale pink walls, which were paler than the oddly-coloured bathroom doors, and its sterile and somewhat soapy smell. She hated its overly-starched sheets, its cold metal radiator, its lack of fresh air and its even greater lack of anything sharp.

Not because she wanted to hurt herself or anything, but because she didn't.

Because, for the last fucking time, Ida wasn't sick. Sure, she'd taken a life-threatening amount of pills and was constantly clawing for ways to distract herself from feeling as empty as one of those washed-out seashells little kids pick up on the beach, to hold to their ears and swear through gaps in teeth that they can hear the sea. But that didn't make her sick, hence Ida found the suicide-proof window, overly-softened edges and all of room twenty-three's other little protective touches as mirror-shatteringly patronising as Dr. White taking her pearl earrings.

Ida hated the silence, too. She hated how small standing entirely alone in a dead-silent bedroom (wearing the cardigan of a mother she hadn't spoken to properly since she'd stopped feeling properly) made her feel, and hated having no AHS Asylum screams ringing around the corridors to divert her from feeling that way. She hated how loud the silence made futility as well, and hated how feeling so small and empty hurt less than her newly-bandaged hand.

In short, Ida Bluestone really hated how small and seashell-like the silence made her feel.

Due to that silence, the limited number of items in her hateful hospital room and her reluctance to smoke her last sock-hidden cigarette just yet, Ida's list of potential distractions was incredibly slim. Ida couldn't let that to be the case, though, so she had to use her creativity. 

Misplaced creativity, seeing as she'd wanted to be a writer before her tears and pen dried up.

Although she may not have exactly wanted to hurt herself like the blue-eyed, burnt-handed boy who'd wasted her penultimate cigarette clearly did, Ida's imagination led her to push up the pearl-gray cuff of her cardigan and press down on the sock-white bandages that the nurse who'd taken her to her rueful room had covered her cut with. She pressed down until she felt fresh blood pool beneath said bandages and felt tears well up in her silver-blue eyes, wincing sharply and hating the equally sharp pain, but hoping that it might distract her for a while.

It did, but Ida only forgot to feel nothing for a few tear-soaked seconds. After they had slipped away, it was back to feeling nothing at all; back to being a seashell girl, pretty and hollow.

Utterly gorgeous and gutted.

Ida sighed shakily, yanking her cuff back over her sore, scarlet-spotted hand. She knew that she couldn't afford to feel small and sucked-dry if she wanted to be out of that hateful room and hospital anytime soon, and if hurting herself like Nate didn't work and her last cigarette was off limits due to rationing, then she would just have to keep abusing the remaining shreds of her imaginative talent until futility went away without filling its favourite tooth-gap in her soul.

For a while, at least. 

The first thing Ida tried, stupid as it may have been, was changing her clothes.

After closing her bedroom door, fiddling with its lock and throwing her boring bag down on the boring, bone-white bed, Ida discarded her blue jeans, blouse and mother's cardigan (trying her best to ignore its familiar smell of flowery perfume and how little an effect it had on her) in a heap on the coarse carpet. She then removed her mud-stained Mary Janes, pink lighter and practically-disembowelled pack of cigarettes, added her frilled socks to the pile, and took Nate's advice (however faintly annoying he may have been) to stash them. Under her mattress.