Chapter 7

The chemicals between us
The walls that lie between us
Lying in this bed
The chemicals displaced
There is no lonelier place
Than lying in this bed -

‘Chemicals Between Us’ by Bush

Where am I?
It was so dark . . . so incredibly black that her eyes saw nothing when they looked around. But there was something . . .
She could hear it. So soft she had to strain to catch it. What was she listening to? What was this?
Words . . . she couldn’t understand them. Foreign. Fear started to course through her at just how foreign they were. How . . dirty they sounded. Filthy.
And suddenly she remembered.
I’m back.
The large, cavernous room, that smelled like mold and rotten meat. The rafters, creaking from an invisible weight and making her feel like it would fall and bury her at any moment.
No, no no no!
She struggled to get up, get up and run blindly in the dark, but invisible hands were pushing her down, locking her in place and holding her there. She screamed as panic sluiced through her, hot and streaking down her spine. Help me! Help me! God, please! Please, no!
She kicked her feet violently, thrashed her body in hopes of shaking one of the hands, and they were hands, right? Not something else? But they were unmovable. Her eyes took in darkness, everywhere, everywhere until she looked to her left and saw the outlined form of a statue. Face like a medieval gargoyle, only more horrendous.
The eyes were red. Not any red she’d ever seen, except in her nightmares - not the color of bricks or blood, not bright, but murky. Dirty. An inner glow, like a brief glimpse of the pits of Hell, and it was watching her.
Staring through her.
Christ, why am I here? Why am I here?! Why me? Jason, why are you doing this to me?
The chanting grew loud enough to grab her attention away from the penetrating eyes, and she was aware of the swishing of clothing.
Gnarled hands in front of her face.
Get away from me! she screamed, her throat raw.
The chanting was louder, deeper, inside her. It reverberated in her ears, in her mind, in her bones. Raspy, ancient. It sounded dirty and so old, she wanted to close her ears, to be anywhere but here. The hands reached toward her -
I don’t want to be here!
Her mind fled, flashed back to years ago, bright against this place’s dark, green grass and a boy laughing, looking behind him.
Robyn, don’t give up now, the game’s just started!
This isn’t a game! She wailed.
The pain overpowered the image, and Robyn started screaming as she felt something inside her pull. Something, like the old man’s gnarled hands but they were above her, began pulling on something in her. It felt important, vital, it was hers and they shouldn’t be taking it!
Robyn started to fight, desperately, trying to hold on, but it dug in and pulled and she thought she was dying.
I’ve got to be dying. Would it be so bad? This hurt so much. The pain grew and grew - and then she felt it.
She gasped in a breath as her heart pitched and went cold. So cold it hurt - a punch to the chest every time she breathed in. A feeling like no other started at her heart and began to spread slowly, like thick syrup, so evil it choked her throat and she wanted to die. So black and dark that her spirit was screaming in agony.
Nago.
Nooo! She wailed in her mind as she felt, physically and mentally, the horrifying presence of the evil in her very soul. God help me -
Her mind flashed and fled, and suddenly, so vividly, she was five, staring into the small face with wild brown hair, blue-green eyes dark and mischevious in the moonlight. She could hear crickets singing. Fence under her hands, the white paint chipped and chafing against her palms.
“My sister said that the fairies keep the woods safe from bad things. Their magic keep people safe.”
“Where are they now?” Robyn cried, her voice young, childlike again. Her legs were bruised, and she focused on that pain instead of the pain happening in the distant present. Grass scratched against her bare feet.
Cye frowned. “It’s a full moon, Robyn. They’re everywhere. When you’re sad, they’ll help you, especially now. There’s always magic beneath a full moon, remember?”
“I can’t find it!” Her eyes began to fill. Spill over.
Cye smiled. “I can help you. You just have to believe.”
She was sucked back into the present, leaving behind the sounds of crickets and the dancing of fairies, and realized the chanting stopped.
She could move her legs.
She breathed in deep, her realized with a wild flare of hope that the presence in her heart was gone.
Everyone was shouting around her.
She got up, quickly, and Kortez in his robes made a grab for her. She jumped off the slab of stone and ran, ran so fast but their hands were grabbing, screaming for her not to get away, stop her, before -
“Stop it! Robyn, stop fighting me!”
“You’re gripping her too hard!”
“Be quiet, child. She should have been given the medicine before she went to bed!”
“I wasn’t sure-“
A prick of pain made itself known on her arm, and Robyn’s eyes opened before squinting shut against the bright light above her. She tried to pull up the arm she felt pain in to cover her eyes, but found that they were restrained. “Let me go!” she demanded.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes! . . . Thora?”
When no one said anything, she dared to open her eyes again. She could just make out three forms in front of her before her eyes went into focus and they became clear.
Angelina, Thora, and a man she didn’t recognize. When no one moved, she protested. “Could someone please let me sit up?” Hands let go of her, and she slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“God, I’ve never seen someone dream like that!”
“Ms. Reimers, if you cannot control your outbursts, you will spend the remainder of the day in the quiet room.” The blonde went silent, and Robyn absently rubbed the sore spot on her arm. She felt a band-aid, then looked up and saw a man in a white coat putting away a needle.
“What did you just do?” she asked sharply.
“It will help you calm down and sleep better, Ms. McCarthy,” the man next to Angelina spoke again. She noted the badge, the name Dr. Carter, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“Robyn, you were having a nightmare,” Angelina said, her eyes shadowed with worry. “You might have hurt yourself.”
“But I didn’t.” Feeling absurdly violated, she rubbed her hand over her bandaged arm. “I can’t control my dreams.”
“No, but we can,” Dr. Carter said smoothly. Robyn stared at him. He watched her with cool gray eyes, brown hair streaked with silver slicked back. “You should sleep more soundly with the injection.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost four in the morning,” Angelina said. She looked mutely from the doctor to Robyn. Hesitated. “This is for the best. It’s time to go back to bed. You both still have a few hours left to sleep before breakfast.” She gave a meaningful look to Thora, who slid off Robyn’s bed and back into hers. She spared Robyn one worried look before getting under the covers and turning her back on the doctor and orderly who gave her the willies.
Something felt completely wrong about this, was all Robyn could think as the three got up and walked out of the room. Shut off the light. She stayed in a sitting position, eyes blinking in the dark and reviewing the dream . . . no. Memory. Robyn felt a shudder go through her, and she pulled her knees up and laid down in the fetal position, gathering some small comfort from being far away from New York City.
Then she remembered the flashback she’d had. Of Cye. Had she just dreamed that up, or did she really go somewhere else? It had felt so real. The fence under her hands, the paint peeling and rough against her palms. The grass had been cool against her feet, and she could clearly see the wind finger through Cye’s hair.
Cye. Oh, she missed him. Just seeing him in the dream had made hope and delight flare painfully bright in her heart. He looked so real, just like she remembered him, right down to the faint freckles on his face and arms he used to get when he was in the sun too long. He’d been so calm when she was so terrified, and she latched on to that.
What was he doing right now? She once again tried to picture him grown up in her mind, but again she couldn’t do it. To think of how much she missed, all these years they grew up without each other. Just knowing that he was out there somewhere was comforting, but it the distance made her chest hurt. The thought of possibly never seeing him again was more than she could bear.
Her eyelids starting to grow heavy, and a wave of extreme sleepiness went through her weary mind, drawing her down with it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Robyn stumbled towards the bathroom, feeling more wiped out than she had in a long time. She couldn’t remember much from last night, but she knew that she was freaking tired.
Her hand fumbled for the door handle, but before she could open it, it opened for her. A short, young girl stopped and stared at her with wide gray eyes framed by short, dark brown hair. Pixie like. Robyn stared at her, and the girl stared back until Robyn remembered she should say something.
“Hi,” she croaked out, voice rusty from unuse.
The girl’s eyes widened even further, and her mouth opened as if to speak. Robyn waited, but nothing came out as the girl looked more terrified by the second. Before the redhead knew it, the teenager sprinted past her and ran down the hall.
“. . .Kay,” Robyn said slowly, thoroughly confused. She shook her head and put it out of her mind until she was back in the room. She told Thora what happened, who was fixing her hair.
“Oh, you met Leigh,” she said cheerfully over the sound of the hairdryer. “She has social anxiety.”
Robyn rolled her eyes. “That would figure.” She sighed. “I don’t wanna do any of this today.”
“What?” her roommate shouted over the hairdryer.
“Nothing.” They were scheduled to go into the lounge, an every morning occurrence from then on, but Robyn didn’t find out why until the nurses started handing out small cups.
“Robyn McCarthy.”
“Huh?” A nurse came up to her and handed her a small cup with something clanking around inside. Frowning, Robyn took it and looked in. Two pills.
“What is this?” she asked, then immediately felt stupid for asking. Of course she knew what it was. But what was it doing in her hand?
The nurse paused and raised an eyebrow. “Your medication, dear.”
“What’s it going to do to me?”
The woman was beginning to look exasperated. “It’s going to help you, Robyn.”
“But what are they?”
She sighed and looked down at her clipboard. “Tenex and Anafranil.”
Robyn’s heart started to thud in her chest. Absently, she rubbed her right arm. “What do those do?”
Clearly irritated, the nurse replied, “I do not have time to go through them with you, why don’t you ask your psychiatrist when you see him today - he can inform you. For right now, Robyn, you have to take those.”
“I want to know what they are before I take them!” Robyn protested, her voice raising into a squeak.
Most of the girls had stopped to watch by now, and the nurse narrowed her eyes. “Will I have to get a doctor in here to administer the medicine for you, Ms. McCarthy?”
“N-no.” Throat dry, and suddenly afraid of that image, though she wasn’t sure why, Robyn swallowed. She didn’t want to imagine that scene. “I, uh. . . I’ll take them,” she finished weakly. She took the cup and accepted the small cup of water before sitting down with them. She found the nurse still watching her and, feeling like she had no other choice, she put them in her mouth one after the other and took them.
Soon I’m going to wake up and this is going to be a bad dream, Robyn thought faintly. I’m not really sitting in a mental hospital and taking pills I don’t even know what will do to me. That’s silly. This whole situation is pure insanity.
A commotion down the hall drew everyone’s attention, and Robyn looked up from her perch on the side of the couch. An orderly was pulling a girl by the arm towards the lounge, and she was trying to pull herself back.
“Get me the hell away from here!”
Robyn heard one of the nurses sigh. “Bring her over here.”
The girl began to curse fluently in Spanish at the nurse and the orderly, getting in their faces as much as she could. She only slowed it down when then nurse threatened isolation on her, then she merely settled with glaring. She would have been pretty if she didn’t snarl so much, Robyn thought idly.
“I’m not taking your fucking medicine!”
“You don’t have a fucking choice, Daniela,” Evan remarked when the girl was pulled up near her seat on the couch. Daniela narrowed her eyes at Evan’s smirk, and then spit in her face. Mildly surprised, she wiped it off her face and sneered.
Robyn watched this all with interest, although she was determined to stay out of it. She was wholeheartedly sure this Daniela could kick her butt judging from the way she was able to pull the orderly back a few steps when she tugged hard enough. Her snapping dark eyes scanned everyone before she jerked her arm away from the orderly’s and crossed them in front of her chest.
“What the hell are you all staring at?”
Abruptly the girls looked away, and a nurse firmly walked up to the Daniela, whose arm was back in the custody of the orderly’s. “This is going to go smoothly, Ms. Callas. Take your medicine and you can join the girls for breakfast.”
“I’m not taking breakfast with these assholes. Try again, bitch.”
“Keep it up and we’ll up your dosage,” the nurse snapped.
There was the briefest of pauses before Daniela threw back, “I just wanna go to my room and get away from these freaks.”
“That’s fine. Now take this.” Daniela seethed and grabbed the cup, throwing her dark mane of curls back as she tossed them to the back of her throat.
Even the toughest appeared to have no control here, Robyn mused. She didn’t know what to think about that.
Just as quickly as the drama started, it ended as Daniela escorted herself to her room, telling the orderly where to shove it and muttering in Spanish as she went. A tension left the room that Robyn hadn’t realized was there, and girls either began leaving or were still receiving their medicine.
Robyn contented herself with watching tv for a while, finding some comfort in the normalcy of the sitcoms and talk shows on. Life apparently went on without her outside of the walls of this place.
After a half hour or so of Maury and Jerry Springer, Robyn started to feel off. The tv screen was slowly going blurry, like she needed glasses, and her stomach hurt. She frowned to herself. She felt weird. Not bad weird, but funny. The floor was kind of out of focus, so she looked up.
“Hey Robyn.” Her roommate walked up and threw herself on the couch Robyn was sitting on. “What’s up? You look out of it.”
Out of what? “Oh, um . . . no. I’m not . . . out of something.” She should have understood that. Why couldn’t she?
Thora laughed, puzzled. “Maybe we should go back to the room. Or watch a movie.”
“What kind of movie?”
The blonde shrugged. “I dunno . . . I don’t remember all they have, but Miette and Aurelie were watching Alice and Wonderland earlier.”
Robyn suddenly giggled, struck with a quote from that book because she had to read it in school when she was a freshmen, and do a paper on it. ‘Now I growl when I’m pleased and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad!’
Thora frowned at Robyn and stared into her green eyes, unsure of what she was seeing there. “Robyn? Are you all right?”
Honestly, she wasn’t. She felt funny and weird thoughts kept popping into her head. She wanted them to go away, and the rational part of her that was slowly getting buried was becoming scared. “I don’t like this,” she whimpered. Her head was buzzing, and her thoughts wouldn’t stay on one thing for more than a few seconds, ranging from grinning Cheshire cats to walruses and white rabbits, tea parties - mad hatters. She wasn’t mad, but she was surrounded by mad people. Mental institutes held crazy people, but she wasn’t crazy. ‘It was much pleasanter at home.’ What home? Was it more pleasant? Nothing was ever pleasant. Suddenly, Robyn’s own head had become foreign to her, and it frightened her more than anything.
She started to shake, and her forehead felt hot. Alarmed, Thora got up and yelled for a nurse, but Robyn didn’t hear it. Her head was buzzing. She clutched at it, slumped back into the couch. I don’t understand, she thought, but she couldn’t think. Her stomach was getting queasy and she moaned. She wanted to throw up, but it was hard to pull in a breath, and she didn’t like throwing up.
I want to go home, she thought pitifully, but I don’t have a home here. Where is home? Home is -
A small house, little shutters, a brown haired boy in the yard, running barefoot. Calling for her. A woman in the window, cooking, oven mits on. Humming. But she couldn’t reach them.
She was falling.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The lights were too bright again. Robyn grimaced and lifted an arm to cover her eyes.
“Too bright?”
“Yes.” She was too out of it to come up with something witty. She heard someone move around, but she kept her eyes covered for a long moment. She felt horrible. Her head was throbbing and her stomach was roiling. “My head hurts.”
“I know it does.” There was a hint of sympathy in that voice. Angelina? A cool hand touched her. “Why don’t you turn over, towards me.”
“Okay.” She did, and found out quickly that was a bad move.
Nausea came rolling back, violently rushing through her stomach until Robyn was throwing up helplessly. She heaved until everything was out, then brought in deep, gasping breaths. “Oh, God.”
“It’s all right, you were supposed to do that,” Angelina told her, and ran a hand down her sweaty hair. “You’re a sick kid right now.”
“Why?”
The nurse sighed. “You had a bad reaction to one of the medications. The Anafranil. We’re taking you off a tricyclic and putting you on a serotonin, it’ll be easier on your system. Probably Luvox.”
“I don’t want any more medicines,” she said miserably.
“They won’t make you sick like this anymore. Do you want to come to the restroom and rinse out your mouth, go to the bathroom?” Robyn looked up. The bathroom was very far away, and she wasn’t in her room. Must be a hospital-like part of the institute.
“Can I just have a glass of water?”
“Sure.”
She got it, and rinsed out the disgusting taste out of her mouth before drinking some slowly. Her stomach was still a little upset, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to do that again. She hated throwing up.
“We’re going to keep you here for the next few hours, just to see if you have another bout, and then you can go back to your room. Will you be all right by yourself for a few hours?”
Robyn nodded, knowing already that she would sleep through it. Anything to forget that her stomach hurt, her head throbbed, and she just threw up. Angelina left her with a few reassuring words, and Robyn was alone in the hospital room.
She’d almost drifted off to much needed sleep when a door flew open across from her slightly ajar one and slammed into the wall behind it. She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound.
“You were in the control room last night, right? Jesus, did you see what she did?”
“Yeah. It was pretty impressive. I told you when push came to shove, she’d give in eventually and show us the full extent of what she can do.” Two men. Orderlies, probably.
“Shit, I don’t even think that’s her full potential. You saw the monitors, she barely broke a sweat.”
“So she’s holding back still. We’ll get it out eventually. Bribery’s a powerful thing, even for her in the long run. Hey - who’s in this room?”
Robyn’s eyes widened as her door creaked a little, and she laid back quickly and buried her face in the pillow, pretending to sleep.
“Oh, she’s just one of the new patients from the mental ward.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Now or in general?”
“Both.”
“Uh, I think the chart said PTSD, depression, and brief psychotic episodes in her sleep. She had a bad reaction to one of the drugs they put her on.”
“Huh. I certainly don’t envy these kids.”
“Me neither.” The two men’s conversation grew quieter as they walked further down the hall until she couldn’t hear them anymore. Robyn opened her eyes. That was the strangest conversation she’d heard in a long time. Who were they going on about? She wouldn’t know how to go about finding out, but maybe she’d hear more of it later on. Maybe Angelina would know.
Right now, sleep was coming on too strong to deny it any longer.

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Being sick unfortunately couldn’t get her out of seeing the wealth of people she was scheduled to see the next day, no matter how crappy she still felt.
Thus Robyn sat, staring at the man sitting in front of her, and he stared back. His eyes were small and dark in a much larger, pudgier face. His hair was graying and receding to the point of nonexistence, and the shirt he was wearing stretched taut around his belly.
There was a rich, dark red office desk between them cluttered with papers, files, pens, and a coffee cup that said ‘I Love My Dad.’ Robyn almost snickered every time she looked at its bright purple and orange face, so out of place in the rest of the room. The office had the sawdust smell of wool that made her want to sneeze, and the therapist’s gaze was becoming uncomfortable.
“What brought you to Oakburg, Robyn?” he finally asked.
“A car.”
The man shifted in his seat.“Why do you believe you are here?”
To be honest, she didn’t know. “Some bad dreams, and I guess I get depressed sometimes.”
“Is that all?”
She shrugged. “Does the fact that my mother was a schizophrenic mean anything?”
“Likely not. The medical reports found no evidence of it. But there was an incident, involving the police . . .”
“A guy was chasing me.”
“Did you know this man?” Robyn briefly paused, but before she could say anything, he continued with, “It would unwise to lie to me, Robyn. It will only hurt you in the long run. Anything you say in this room is confidential, it does not leave the hospital, so you needn’t worry.”
What did she really have to lose? She’d lost everything else. “He was my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.”
“Ah.” As if he understood everything now, he nodded emphatically. “Was this a first occurrence, or had he done anything physically violent before?”
Was he beating her? No, he’d never done anything like that before. Not until it became apparent that she wasn’t going to go through with the ceremony. “No. This was new.”
“And this was enough to give you nightmares of this severity for a week?”
If you only knew. “I guess so.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe that.” He folded his hands in front of him, stared at her some more with his small eyes. “Did he take advantage of you?”
Robyn sighed. In a way, he had. Her trust. “He tried to get me to do something, and I wouldn’t do it. But it’s not what you’re thinking. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”
Thus the meeting went; him asking questions, her giving some truths and some lies. About her childhood, her parents, and finally, the hour was over. She was allowed to leave.
She’d been escorted to the therapist’s office by two orderlies, who were waiting for her when the door opened. On the walk back to the ward through the twisting, white hallways, they passed by a few research labs encased in glass. Men and women in white lab coats over khakis or white pants worked with computers, microscopes, blood samples, and various other instruments and virtually ignored what went on in the hallways. They were almost through that hallway when a door to their right opened.
Two orderlies walked out, one holding firmly the hands of a girl behind her back. Robyn was so stunned to see who it was, she stopped walking.
It was the girl she’d seen a few nights before, through the window of her room. Regan. The other girl had her head down, but once she noticed the orderlies escorting her had stopped, too, she looked up. In the mere seconds before her eyes went guarded, Robyn read an utter hopelessness and despair in them that took her breath away. My God, Robyn thought. What could have put that there? Her own heart was moved, painfully so, recognizing the emotions as ones she was feeling. As quickly as she saw it, though, it was gone when the girl’s eyes narrowed in recognition, and the two stared mutely at each other.
“Ms. McCarthy, we need to be going.”
“You’re from my ward,” Robyn said abruptly, still staring. Despite the dark bruises of color under her eyes, the girl was lovely, startlingly so. What was she doing here, of all places? She looked like she belonged on the cover of Vogue, not stuck in a mental institution. The other’s dark hair, of which Robyn had thought was black until the bright lighting in the hallway made her realize was a very dark brown, fell straight down to her chest in tangled disarray. Her skin was tan, even in the harsh light, and her pale green eyes were staring holes through her. Robyn would have looked away if she hadn’t been so fascinated.
“I’m afraid she’s not allowed visitations with the other patients,” the orderly holding her hands informed Robyn of firmly, to which she frowned.
“Why not?” What could be wrong with her to warrant that? She looked perfectly sane. The girl was still staring at her, her eyes not so much intense anymore as . . . puzzled? Her eyes were hard to read now, and that fueled Robyn’s curiosity, as well as the fact the fact that she didn’t speak - only stared.
“Her restrictions -“
“Ms. McCarthy -“
The orderly pulled on her arm. Robyn stiffened, not willing to let this go yet. Something about this girl . . . “Well, if -“
“That’s enough, Ms. McCarthy,” one of the orderlies said.
“Yes, please escort your patient to her unit,” the other girl’s orderly said, looking offended. The two pulled her away and, sorely irritated that she didn’t get to finish, she looked back and found the girl gazing back at her as she was escorted in a different direction.
“Where are they taking her?” she asked one of the aides.
“Don’t know.”
“What does she have?”
“Jeez, kid, let it go. She’s none of your concern.”
Maybe not, but Robyn had a definite feeling, a certainty that she didn’t belong in this place any more than Robyn did herself.