fucking child posing as a man, his dick distractingly hard because he’s got nowhere to put it, and now he’s been robbed of his potential vessel, he’s looking for a fight. Carolyn is just a body with a prick-shaped cavity to Charles, he’s not interested in her brain. If he has her once, he’ll want her again.
The music offers our hero some contentment. He can imagine himself elsewhere… the air isn’t stifling and he can lay in the grass under a tree. He’s robbed himself of this freedom for his own benefit, he’s committed himself and has to be committed to the process. This is going to be the last time.
He’s not going to go home and drink himself into a stupor. He’s going to empty all the bottles, and be a good citizen and recycle them. He’s going to go back to work, stop being a nuisance, be productive. Be normal. He’s going to fix things, make amends… call people he’s neglected to speak to for over a year.
Forcing himself to stay awake, he returns to the rec room with his notebook to continue his musings. Carolyn is back in the same armchair, wiping her eyes, staring at her book as the words blur from the film of her tears.
Jeffrey doesn’t want to ask her what happened. He waits, his train of thought now derailed, his next sentence deconstructed into nothing but a lost memory. He waits for her to glance at him. He can roll her a smoke, pay her back. Scratching another inmate’s back gets you all kinds of free things: sometimes even the painkillers they don’t swallow, or the Ativan they’ve been stockpiling. It’s basic bartering, and they form a society unto itself that can commodify all kinds of things. A chocolate bar and a soda from the vending machine for two Ativan and three cigarettes. There’s no hard stuff, no booze allowed. The hand sanitiser is kept behind the nurse’s station due to its high alcohol content. But the free pills are more effective and he’s never been desperate enough to resort to drinking hand sanitiser.
One of the saints — the nicer orderlies — a woman in her fifties who appears genuinely sympathetic, goes to Carolyn’s side to ask what’s wrong. Carolyn shakes her head and mumbles her complaints, her hands out as if to say, “I don’t know what to do.”
A common cry among their kind.
The orderly rubs her arm while offering her something to take the edge off. Carolyn refuses at first but is eventually talked around. She’s tough and has a strong stance against the pills she’s offered. Doesn’t want to be dependent. But why stay like this if you have a way out presented to you? Why suffer? The orderly goes to fetch her a calmative, an Ativan most likely. The little white pill of unnatural peace.
All this time, he’s been rolling a smoke under the table for her, thinner than what he prefers. He holds this up to her when the orderly is gone and she nods. There’s something plaintive about her stare. She’s been dumped, no doubt. Or the cheater has confessed his sins and given her the chance to break up with him.
Jeffrey waits outside for her, dusk setting in. The clattering of cutlery goes on in the kitchen behind him, part of the symphony of cheap crockery and laughter from the underpaid kitchen staff. They have little to prepare. Most of the weekend food is all prepackaged and thrown in ovens for longer than required. The inmates eat it anyway out of false hunger and boredom, often asking for more. They sit and chew like cattle, their fine motor skills, as well as their jaws, hindered by the medications, and they’re staring vacantly and chewing. Placid.
Carolyn emerges, a cup of shitty day old coffee in one hand and her pink lighter in the other. She carries this lighter with her, slipping it into her pocket during the day. She knows how easily these little things go missing if left out in the open. Pilferers, liars… common thieves roam the halls and pick up anything not tied down. He’s lost several pens from absently leaving them behind.
She takes his gift, smiling slightly. She’s not far off her little high, and she’ll be drowsy too soon before her night meds, so the coffee is to keep her awake.
‘I hate it when I give in,’ she says as she lights her cigarette, wincing from the strength of the tobacco. ‘Jesus, how are your lungs not shredded by now?’
‘I’m used to it. Goes well with bourbon on a hot day.’
She snickers lightly. ‘I’m a vodka girl myself. Pretty trite, huh?’
‘Each to their own.’
‘You got any books here?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head, takes a drag and remembers his mistake once more. ‘Didn’t think to bring any.’
‘I have a few. Mostly required reading, I haven’t finished my year. You can borrow one.’
‘Sure, I’ll check out what you have.’
She agrees to bring the books to the rec room. She’s been studying there, off and on; he’s seen her trying to focus with the haze of medication getting to her and frustrating her further. She’s dedicated, more than he is. Fixated even, he observes.
‘You’re the only normal one here,’ she says out of the blue.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Even when Mike was throwing shit around and screaming last week, you didn’t even flinch.’
‘You get used to people pulling that shit. Amateur theatrics, I call it. And I can’t judge, I’ve had bad days, too.’ Few and far between as they are, he can’t claim to be innocent. Projectiles are common in this zoo; it’s minimum security, you can move the furniture, disrupt things, make the cleaning staff’s lives more difficult. It’s not hard.
‘I hear they’re moving Charles,’ she says, and Jeffrey is surprised she’s not mentioned it sooner. ‘He’s going to the Blue ward. A bed just opened up.’
Charles will be with the rest of his kind. Clearly he’s been classified incorrectly and placed in the wrong pen of the zoo. He’s now going to be with his species, homo raptorem. The zookeepers finally get it right.
‘I tried keeping him off your back,’ Jeffrey says as earnestly as possible.
‘I know. I was suspicious of you at first, and I heard him muttering that you just wanted to get your dirty paws on me. Circling your prey like hungry hyenas, the two of you.’
She sees the same analogies as he does. She’s adept with words, she sings softly to herself; there’s a brightness in her eyes not yet dimmed by her medication. A little flame, hungry for oxygen. He knows she dances alone in her room, her headphones on, lost in her music and blotting out the things around her, just as he does. Tries to do. She lives in her head, where it’s safe. Where there’s no judgement and she can be as she is, not constrained by expectation.
He rarely covets such fragile things, but if she were his, he’d protect her and whatever she holds precious. He would offer her patience where he’d failed to with others. He isn’t capable of romance, but Carolyn isn’t one to be won over with overt affection. She needs something else. An honest girl needs an honest suitor. He doesn’t see himself fitting this role.
She’s lost her appetite. Over dinner, he watches her push her food around, mimicking her and eating little himself. The water is too warm to quench anyone’s thirst, the coffee too stale to swallow. Monday means fresh things; stocks are replenished, but Sunday nights are always spent hearing the complaints of the inmates. No more stevia, no more creamers… how dare their keepers punish them like this? Being free of life’s responsibilities leaves room for petty complaints. Free of the confines of adulthood, the inmates revert to childish behaviour. Charles is not the only manchild here. It’s another thing he hates about this place, another reason to work harder to not come back.
After the food they’re given is consumed or disposed of, the night staff come to relieve the afternoon shift. Another nurse is assigned to him for the night, and she brings him his medication dutifully with word from his physician. He’s been summoned to see her tomorrow morning at nine. Where once he made demands to see a doctor, he now leaves this up to whomever he’s been dumped on. This new woman, he’s only spoken to her twice before. He’s yet to build any kind of relationship with her. He’s guessing she may ask him to leave; someone in more dire need of a bed is coming and she has
to build a case for Jeffrey’s discharge. And perhaps this isn’t a bad thing. He doesn’t need this vacation as badly as he’d first thought.
Still, he finds himself pitying Carolyn with the thought her incarceration will continue in his absence.
She brings in her books as promised, and he’s glad not to be staring at anything familiar. She’s taking courses in modern literature, there are contemporaries here he’s heard of and he takes one of the books to read with a promise he’ll return it before he leaves.
‘You’re leaving sooner?’ There’s no hint of disappointment here in her tone. The Ativan’s kicked in, she’s less emotional, more logical and detached. Numbed.
‘Perhaps. Depends on how my appointment goes tomorrow. I underestimated how long my recovery would take.’
‘So unfair,’ she mutters, her chin on the heel of her palm, her eyes on the TV, watching the same news bulletin that aired a half hour before. Repetition is vital; routine is everything. Here is where they should be gaining life skills; habits suited for the outside world to reform them and make them productive again, rather than the loose cogs falling through the system and landing on the factory floor. A tired metaphor, but still so apt. So little has changed.
‘I’m sure if you spoke to someone, they could get your sentence reduced,’ he suggests.
‘Tried that. They didn’t listen.’ She turns to him, the same bored eyes now full of mischief. ‘Maybe when you get out, you can bust me out.’
He laughs, actually laughs, for the first time in… that doesn’t matter. She amuses him, trips a wire he thought too broken to fix. The twitch in the corner of his mouth feels almost foreign.
‘Not that easy.’
Her mood is lighter once more until her nurse comes with her night meds.
‘Sleepytime tea tonight?’ she asks. ‘Or am I getting the Seroquel again?’
‘Same as always, Carolyn,’ the male nurse says, condescendingly. ‘You talk to your doctor about med changes, remember? Not me.’
Jeffrey knows this guy, this is probably his third shift. He’s attractive and tall, probably slightly older than her. Carolyn bats her eyelids at him and he watches her swallow her pills as per the rules. As soon as the nurse turns his back, she flips him off and scowls.
‘Hate that guy,’ she mutters. ‘I had him last week. He’s so full of himself. Thinks he’s smarter than me.’
‘He did seem cocky to me.’
‘Not my fault he flunked out of med school and this was the best gig he could get.’
Again, Jeffrey is smiling. She’s mordacious and gorgeous, full of indignation and just the right amount of cynicism to make her nicely vicious and not overtly bitchy.
They keep talking, the echoes of security buzzers and doors opening and slamming shut now just part of the nighttime symphony. The air conditioning is blowing colder than usual, and Carolyn is in her heavy college sweater. She brushes out her hair, braiding it loosely so it won’t tangle in her sleep. This ritual is so personal and yet she’s so accustomed to this place, she’s making it a home without even realising it.
Finding comforts in unfamiliar places makes sense to him. He’d be lost without his music and his notebooks. He sees her yawn, the chemicals building up in her system to render her zombified. She’ll sleep with little dreaming, and wake with a dry mouth, drool on her pillow. She’ll be irritable, morose.
He isn’t fond of Mondays, either.
The night staff offer the inmates leftovers from the kitchen: tubs of yoghurt that will only be tossed out and warm drinks like cheap cocoa that barely has any sweetness to it. Carolyn doesn’t ask for cocoa as usual. She gathers her things, mutters a goodnight to him and wanders back to her room.
The new meds make him sweat more than the old ones. His skin crawls, and he can actually feel his metabolism slowing to a grinding halt. All of the body suffers when the mind refuses to behave itself. One thing can’t be righted without a grievous wrong being committed in turn. Basic chemistry. It’s why so many don’t stick with it. The numbed out feeling has them reaching for something else. There’s never any satisfaction; no middle ground where they can comfortably sit. You want peace of mind? Well, you’ll have to take it with a shot of blurred vision, muscle aches, flu-like symptoms. The pharmacos haven’t come up with a better solution. Not yet.
There’s no money in curing anything.