Medicine Man (Page 3)

It’s where I hear the name Simon Blackwood for the first time.

I’m in the dining hall, waiting in line for a breakfast of watery oatmeal and cut-up fruit when I hear it. The name, I mean.

It comes out of one of the nurses talking and keeping an eye on the long breakfast queue. For some reason, these lines are a breeding ground for meltdowns, so they always have someone watching them. I have yet to see it, though, and I pray that it never changes. Just the thought scares the fucking crap out of me.

“By Blackwood, you mean, The Blackwood?”

“Yup,” says one of the nurses as I trudge my feet past them.

“Oh geez. Like I needed more problems in my life. I bet he’s got a huge ego.”

“I know.”

“Ugh. I don’t wanna deal with him. I was only now getting adjusted to the long hours they put me on two weeks ago. Why’s this Simon Blackwood coming here? Is it permanent?”

“Who knows? Beth is super hush-hush about it. Which I don’t understand, by the way. We’re the ones who have to deal with him, not her. She’s gonna be locked up in that big administrative office of hers, while he’ll be roaming around the floor as if he owns the place.”

“Exactly! Why are the nurses last to know about these things?”

“I don’t know. Like we don’t matter, right?”

Then they start bitching about the fact that they were last to know the changes in their yearly vacation days. As if nurses aren’t overworked as it is.

And just like that, it’s over. The topic of Simon Blackwood.

A little thing about me: I’ve overheard a lot of conversations in my life. During family gatherings and at school. I’m an expert eavesdropper. I don’t do it intentionally. It’s just that I’m kind of invisible and a weirdo, what with my pale, almost translucent skin and silver hair. People don’t notice me or don’t take me seriously if they do notice me.

So they talk and, well, I’ve got ears. So I listen.

Generally, I forget about these conversations as soon as they occur. Not this one, though.

Nope.

It sticks in my head.

Not the conversation itself, but the name.

I don’t know why. I’ve never heard it before. I don’t know who it belongs to, except that whoever he is, he’s coming here. And Beth, the administrator, isn’t telling the nurses about it, and they are pissed.

Whatever.

Time to forget it and move on. So I do. Move on, I mean.

I don’t forget though. I remember the name for some very strange reason.

Floorboards creak under my bunny slippers as I get my breakfast and walk over to the table by the large windows. They overlook the gray skies and the wet grounds.

Ever since I got to this place, it’s been raining every day. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of making me even more miserable.

It’s no secret that I hate the sun; I burn too easily. Rain’s my only respite. I love the rain. I love the water droplets crashing into my body, sliding down, clinging to my skin, washing me clean, making me new.

It’s raining now, more like drizzling, and I wish I could go outside and feel it, but I can’t.

I put my tray onto the Formica-topped table and plop down on my seat. Plucking a strawberry from the fruit bowl, I pop it into my mouth.

I’m sitting next to Renn Deschanel, my red-headed neighbor.

She was the very first person to talk to me the day I arrived here two weeks ago. She saved me from the creepy stare of a guy who lives on the other side of the hallway and is here for some sort of addiction. I don’t know his exact diagnosis though.

At the time, I was panicked, angry and completely devastated that my own family thinks that I’m crazy enough to be locked up. I thought they’d believe me when I told them that I didn’t need to be here.

Anyway, Renn as usual, is staring at her crush of the week. Her crushes come and go, and she has a type. Silver fox – her words, not mine. This week, it’s Hunter, one of the techs, who’s probably closer to her dad’s age than hers.

I shake my head at her. “What’s the damage?”

She sighs. “I’m guessing at least twenty-five years. He’s like, a couple of years younger than my dad. I can’t believe I didn’t notice him before. Like, this guy’s been around forever. How did he not catch my eye?”

Yeah, forever is right.

Renn loves Heartstone. She loves it so much that she keeps coming back.

I think this is her fourth time on the Inside. Every time she comes in for a couple of months, has the time of her life – according to her – and gets out to come back in again.

This time she’s in here because her dad is getting married and she can’t stand her new step-mother. So, in her infinite wisdom, she made herself throw up and she’s severely anorexic. When her dad found her passed out in her bathroom, he did what he always does: sent her on the Inside.

She knows everything and everyone. Nurses are her best friends. Techs can’t get over how pretty she is. Renn’s the queen bee.

I pop another strawberry in my mouth and say, “Could be the fact that you didn’t know he was married until last week.”

“Hmm.” Renn drums her fingers on her chin. “You might have a point. I like a challenge. It makes me feel better about myself if I can get an unavailable guy to like me. It’s my pathetic self-image.” She stabs her fork into a piece of watermelon. “Maybe I should somehow try to get Hunter as my escort after meals. Imagine the things I can do to him while he’s watching me with those dark eyes.”

After every meal, a tech stays with Renn for about an hour to see that she’s keeping her food down. She’s known to give them the slip and throw up every chance she gets. She’s super proud of her pokey bones and the fact that you can count all her ribs.

“Or you can shut up about it and not force us to listen to what is clearly one of the most inappropriate things ever,” Penny chimes in, glaring at her from across the table.

She’s got a book in her hands and up until this second, her eyes were glued to it and her lips were moving as she muttered the words to herself.

Penny, aka Penelope Clarke. She was the second person I talked to after I got here. Actually, all we did was say hi to each other after Renn introduced us, and Penny went back to doing what she always does: read.

From what I’ve gathered in my time here, Penny loves reading. I love reading too so I definitely get that. But her love and my love are vastly different.

For Penny, reading is oxygen. She can’t live without it. She needs to be reading something or I’ve seen her get shivery.

On the Outside, she read textbooks; she was a pre-med. On the Inside, she reads all the cookbooks that she can find in the small library. She says it’s to keep her mind sharp and active for when she gets out of here in fall. A few weeks after me.

Penny suffers from crippling anxiety with a touch of paranoia mixed in there. When she failed one of her classes, which she claims was a set-up against her, she broke down. Renn told me she tore pages out of her biochemistry textbook and ate them. Literally.

“Um, hello. How’s liking someone inappropriate?” Renn turns her focus on Penny.

“He’s a tech and you’re a patient.” Penny flicks the page angrily. “Not to mention, he’s married and older. You’re not supposed to like him.”

“Well, as Willow said, I like him because he’s married. It’s a sickness. My heart happens to beat for him, okay?”