Chapter One
Chapter One
Two weeks earlier
April 2018
There’s a protocol to walking through these halls.
When I first arrived in Highwaters, I’d walked like someone in a military camp. Disapproving glares from the nurses, ice-cold threats in the form of a look, made me feel as though I had to stand tall, keep my shoulders back and my chin out, a marching cadet. Over the passing weeks I learned the correct stance when trudging the halls of the institution is quite the opposite. Patients walk with their shoulders slumped and a sleek curve in their spine, making themselves as small as humanly possible. The kind of bad posture your mother used to tell you off for is something of a safety net here - vulnerability and fragility is exactly the kind of impression you want to give off when the nurses pass you in the halls. If you look like every other patient here, meek, afraid and ultimately harmless, you’re more likely to be overlooked. Invisibility is crucial for getting through the day.
I’ve been here eight months now. I know the protocol very well. I’ve mastered the art of walking with my head down enough that I can avoid eye-contact with anyone I pass, while keeping it tilted upwards enough so that I can still see where I’m going.
I turn a corner and instantly there are butterflies taking flight in my stomach. Nerves have become an automatic reaction to this particular hallway. I’d skip it if I could, because I know I cannot pass her room without needing to look in, and I cannot look in to her room without feeling the same rise and fall of emotions – jittery nerves, crushing disappointment, annoyance with myself for getting my hopes up yet again. The whole process is tedious, but unfortunately, there is no other way to get to the common room. I’m forced to walk this hall numerous times a day.
I stop out the front of her room and cup my hands to the tiny, box shaped window in the door, peering inside. I suppose, technically, this room isn’t Jacinta’s anymore. I’m trying to get myself into the habit of referring to it as ’’Jacinta’s old room’’, as if to reinforce that she isn’t here anymore and that she isn’t coming back. As much as, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t wish imprisonment in Highwaters on my worst enemy, a part of me just wants them to hurry up and bring in a new patient to live in this room. Maybe that’s what I need to finally break this stupid routine of looking into her room four, five times a day, like there’s any chance she’s going to be in there.
Her room’s been empty for over a month now. For thirty-seven days, her bed has sat in its corner, pristine and untouched. The stark white sheets have stayed firmly tucked under the filthy, shit-caked mattress, with no one to untuck them, no one to try and find sleep on the impossibly uncomfortable bed. The chest of draws sits collecting dust, free of the photographs Jacinta once sat there. One closet door is open, swinging slightly on its hinges, exposing a row of coat hangers relieved of their duties and not a single garment. The whole room taunts me. It’s tidy emptiness cruelly reminds me of her absence and forces me to think about the things I don’t want to think about. That she’s somewhere else, and that I don’t know where that is or what’s happening to her.
I pull my face away from the glass. The rush of disappointment whenever Jacinta’s room is empty – which is always, every time I’ve looked since the morning when we discovered she was gone – is something of an odd sensation. I know Jacinta isn’t going to be in her room, and in fact, a deep part of me knows she’s probably not even alive. But I want her to be there so badly, sitting on her bed and braiding her flowing, shiny brown hair the way she did whenever she was bored. It’s an odd a sensation of being completely unsurprised when something doesn’t happen, but somehow crushed with disappointment anyway.
As I continue to walk to the common room, with my arms wrapped tightly around myself as though I can make my body so tiny it will simply seize to exist, I try not to let my mind wander to Jacinta. I take note of the diamond patterns on the white tiled floor. My eyes flicker over the other patients I pass, with the same, withdrawn, introverted posture, and take note of how we all wear the same grey t-shirt and tracksuit pants, yet it seems to sit so differently on each one of us. I do whatever I can not to think about Jacinta.
It doesn’t work very well. I can’t help it. It’s a vicious train of thought that follows looking into her room. Jacinta’s not there, clearly, but if she isn’t here, then where is she?
I turn a few more corners and stride down a few more of the labyrinth like hallways that make up the living quarters before I’m at the common room. The entrance is through a thick set of double doors like the kind you see in old hospitals. Someone painted them blue in a failed attempt to brighten this place up a little, but I imagine it was quite some time ago. The colour is now so faded it almost looks white, and when you push on the doors, tiny chips of paint crumble away and end up stuck to your palms.
My first ever visit to the common room had been an alarmingly glance into the reality of my new home. As soon as I’d walked in, my eyes had been drawn to the only nurse in the room. She looked about fifteen, but as I was to learn, was twenty-six. I would later come to know her as Heaven. The first thing I noticed was that her hair, which sat in a long plait all the way down her back and stopped just short of her hips, was the brightest shade of blonde I’d ever seen. I wondered if it had taken many bottles of peroxide to achieve, or if perhaps she was just naturally blessed with a platinum colour.
The second thing I noticed was that she had a bedside alarm clock threatening raised above the head of a young boy, who was cowering beneath her.
I gasped sharply as she bought the clock down on him. I turned quickly to see if the guard who’d ushered me into the room, tasked with the seemingly unpopular job of giving me an orientation, had seen what she’d just done. Meanwhile, the boy rubbed the spot on the back of his head and appeared to be fighting tears.
The guard had seen it. He gave brief acknowledgement to the incident with sideways glances, then pressed on through the common room, unfazed by what had just happened.
‘’Good morning, Nurse Heaven.’’ He smiled seedily at the scowling nurse who was returning the clock to a table. I noticed his eyes wander down Heaven’s body, which was clamped in scrubs that clung to her and seemed a size or two too small.
’’What’s good about it?” Heaven groaned, flicking away a stray piece of blonde hair that had escaped her plait. ‘’They’re behavin’ like little shitheads today.’’ She looked up to meet the guard’s eyes and gave him a fleeting smirk, which he happily returned. Her eyes then settled on me and the hard-hitting scowl was back.
‘’Who’s that, Don?’’ She hissed, in a whisper loud enough for me to hear from across the room.
‘’New charge.’’ Don replied. ‘’She’s a wanderer.’’
I didn’t know about the nickname given to schizophrenics then – I’d been at Highwaters for all of twenty minutes. I thought Don meant I was going to wander off and go places I wasn’t meant too. I wanted to tell him the last thing on my mind was stepping out of line after what I’d just witnessed, but my mouth had dried up. That may not have been completely true anyway, as another part of me was attempting to fight the shock rooting me to my spot and run as fast as I could.
‘’Bloody hell.’’ Heaven muttered. ‘’Just what I need.’’
Heaven had been at my side in a flash, pulling me by my elbow, barking out something about the rules, but I wasn’t listening. I was too focused on the other sights the common room had to offer.
A woman was thrashing her head in a violent manner against the wall, with such force that she was creating a noticeable dent. A girl who didn’t look much older than me was picking at the skin on her forearms, staring with a captivated gaze, completely fascinated while her nails drew blood. A man sprinted across the room with a woman in tow, dragging her by her hair, only to throw her into a table and giggle wildly as she fell over it and a crack erupted. Meanwhile, Heaven slapped and cursed at nearly every patient that came anywhere near her.
As I walk into the common room today, I almost trip over Sally and Peyton, two of the younger patients, who are rolling on the floor and viciously clawing at each other’s faces. One of Peyton’s eyes appears to be sewn shut from the assault, and she has bundles of Sally’s black hair wrapped around her fingers.
I step over them. The common room is one of those many, many things in Highwaters you just learn to block out.
I make my way across the room to where I can see Taylor, Ellie and Giselle sitting around a table and playing some card game, raising their voices to be heard over the noise. I sit down with them and take immediate notice of Cody and Jayden’s absence.
‘’They’re alright. I saw em’ this mornin’.” Giselle has barley glanced up from her cards, but she’s already registered the look of panic on my face and knows what it’s in relation too. It’s almost a form of greeting between us – when one of us isn’t present, those of us who have seen the absent people report that they’re safe and well instead of bothering with hellos.
I give an audible sigh of relief.
‘’Do you want to play next round?’’ Taylor asks while drawing another card.
‘’No thanks.’’ My voice trails off as my eyes find the forming bruise on his cheek. Taylor realises where my gaze has landed and gives me a small smile.
‘’I got in Maggie’s way this morning.’’ He nods over at the nurse in the corner, who’s rocking back in her seat and reading a novel. ‘’She elbowed me to the side, I hit a wall.’’
Taylor places his cards face down on the desk and shuffles his seat slightly closer to mine. A horrible clawing sound gives out as it scrapes across the floor. He adjusts his weight in the chair, so that he’s leaning towards me, allowing me to see the injury up close.
‘’It’s not too big.’’ He says, using his thumb and his index finger to trace the outsides of the purple-blue mark, indicating its exact size. ‘’And it’s come up a bit blackish, but it’s not real bad either. I really only hurts if you touch it.’’
I give a nod, one that tells Taylor I’m grateful for the documentation of his wound. He knows how important it is to break down to me the severity of any injuries the nurses give to him. The others know that too. They’ve learnt the way my mind exaggerates details, and how my own judgement cannot be trusted. I hadn’t had the chance to properly look at Taylor’s bruise before he’d dissected it for me, but if I had, it’s likely I would have seen something a lot worse than what was described too me.
A lot of patients consider the schizophrenics lucky. It’s where the nickname ‘’wanderers’’ originated from. It stems from the implication that we live in a consistent daydream, that our disease is simply an inability to stop our minds from wandering off. It used to annoy me, even infuriate me. It’s all built on such a misconception of schizophrenia and such a fundamental misunderstanding of how terrible it is to live with, that I’d wanted to find whoever started the trend and shake them until their eyes rolled back into their heads. Now, I’ve come to accept it. It’s just a stupid nickname, and I know it wasn’t started with malicious intent. It came from ignorant patients who perhaps figured that a life of consistently doubting your own judgement and a lack of ability to decipher what’s real and what your mind has conjured, was a life to be envied in Highwaters. I assume they, like a lot of patients, think it means we can ignore what they must face head on. We can chalk everything up to being over exaggerated and we don’t have to admit that any of it is really happening.
They don’t understand that it is, in fact, quite the opposite. My struggle to distinguish what I should really be afraid of and what is simply misjudgement and paranoia makes living in this place a thousand times more terrifying. I’m constantly on edge, always relying on those around me to judge the safety of situations for me, never being able to tell for myself. If I hadn’t met this group of people, if I hadn’t become one of them, I don’t know how I’d get through each day.
I give Taylor a sympathetic look and gently rub the bruise on his face. There’s nothing I can say. There never is.
Instead, what I say is ‘’Maggie’s on common room today? That’s new. Where’s Heaven?’’
‘’Off sick’’. Giselle says with a smirk.
‘’Coincidentally, so is that guard she’s fucking.’’ Ellie adds, placing a card down.
‘’Which one?’’ I ask, matching my friends’ smug looks. My remark earns laughter from the three of them.
At this table, I’m the only teenager. Giselle and Taylor are both in their twenties, and Ellie recently hit thirty. Yet here we all are, gossiping like middle schoolers.
We’re not the only ones. Gossiping is a favoured past time amongst the patients. I suppose it gives us something to think about other than the nightmares our lives have become. And in Highwaters, there’s plenty to gossip about. Heaven’s antics will more than likely be the subject of choice today.
Heaven’s supposed to be one of those hard-core Christians. She certainly puts on a good front. Day-to-day, she’s screaming at us about the Ten Commandments we need to learn to live by, and how we’re all sinners and headed straight for Hell.
Behind the scenes, however, she’s a lot less of a saint.
‘’She gives the male patients special treatment if they sleep with her.’’ ‘’She promises she’ll find a way to get them out if they agree to be her slave.’’ ‘’I caught her with that really tall guard, the one with the green eyes.’’ ‘’Heaven once told me if I did exactly what she said, she’d protect me. I was so terrified that I went along with it.’’
In all honesty, I don’t know how much of what I hear about Heaven is true. I don’t know how much of any of what I hear through the rumour mill is true. But when the stories all have an eerie similarity – Heaven offering frightened patients something in return for their submission – it makes them just that little more believable.
The stories give me goose bumps, and my heart breaks for the boys who find themselves desperate enough to fall into Heaven’s trap. I wonder if they’ve ever stared at their bodies in the mirror and struggled to believe it even truly belongs to them now that they’ve traded it for something in return. I think often about if they’re able to sleep, with the feeling of her hands still crawling over their skin like I know it must. I hope the guilt gives them a few minutes of peace, at least a couple of times a day, the way it never did for me.
‘’Cody’s here.’’ Taylor’s announces. He gives an affirmative nod in the direction of the main doors.
‘’A or B?’’ Ellie asks without looking up.
‘’Ask Rosie. She’s the best at guessin’.’’ Giselle looks at me expectantly.
I turn and look over my shoulder. Cody has spotted our table and is making his way to us. One hand is brushing his scruffy blonde hair out of his face, the other is in his mouth as he nibbles away at his nails.
‘’A.’’ I reply with confidence, turning back to the others. ‘’Cody B never bites his nails.’’
All of Cody’s personalities came with names except for his main two. When I’d first met Cody, I’d only ever seen cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder in movies and TV shows. I’d never known someone who frequently switched between an abundance of personalities in real life and I hadn’t quite known what to think of it. My attraction to Cody was instant but getting used to the fact that being around him was like being around eight people took some time. Once I’d adjusted, I found that it could be kind of fun, meeting a new persona for the first time. There’s Corey; the foul-mouthed, sexist and racist buff in his mid-thirties. There’s Stanley; the wise old man that only seems capable of speaking in paragraphs. There’s the little kid named Tom, the shy and insecure boy named Myles, and even a few female personalities, like school captain Riley and medieval princess Alice.
Most frequently, however, Cody alternates between two personalities that only refer to themselves as ‘’Cody’’. Jayden had taken it upon herself to nickname them, ‘’Cody A’’ and ‘’Cody B’’, and it just stuck, although he remains unaware of the nicknames. While I’ve seen the other characters on multiple occasions, Cody A and Cody B are the two that dominate his brain. He spends an average day switching between the two, with the others making appearances every now and then.
‘’Good morning, guys.’’ He says, in a tone that seems a tad too chirpy, out of place amongst the angst of his environment.
He grabs a chair from a table opposite ours and swings it around so that it’s perched next to mine. Sitting down, he plants a brief kiss on my cheek before he adds in a hushed whisper ‘’good morning, Rosie.’’
Months and months ago, when I was still new to Highwaters, Jayden had given me a complete breakdown of the differences between Cody A and B and the rest of his personalities. ‘’All the others are totally different people.’’ She’d said, sprawled out on my bed, her dirty blonde hair sashaying across my pillow. ‘’Different names, different ages, different backgrounds, the works. A and B, though, they’re like two separate people both living Cody’s life. They’re basically both Cody exactly the way he is, his real name, his real age, his real past, you get the point. It’s just sometimes, Cody’s sweet and shy and other times he’s an obnoxious jerk. It keeps things interesting, I guess.’’
I too had thought Cody B was an obnoxious jerk for the first few weeks. I’d favoured Cody A, who was bashful, quiet and kind, and gained an adorable crimson colour in his cheeks when I maintained eye contact for too long. I didn’t like the fact that sometimes he was the polar opposite. I detested that sometimes, rather than bitting his nails and speaking softly and offering up sweet compliments to me, he was loud and cocky, classing cheap pick-up lines and vulgar remarks as romance.
Now, I must admit, while Cody A still has my heart, Cody B has won over some portion of my affection too. It’s kind of amusing, the fact that every now and then, my gentle sweetheart of a boyfriend becomes confident and flirtatious. It’s a bit of fun, flirting back, and I’ve developed a quick tongue and skill for comebacks when he tries his tacky comments.
Cody’s fingers interlace with mine under the table, and his thumb begins to stroke the back of my palm with a gentle consistency. He’s not looking at me though – his eyes are scanning the table, no doubt doing a silent headcount, realising that not all of us are here.
‘’I won!’’ Ellie cries triumphantly. She slams her cards on the table as Cody and I turn our heads. I still have no idea what they were even playing.
‘’Rematch?’’ Giselle, suggests, then looks at Cody. ‘’Do you wanna join in, Cody?’’
‘’Where’s Jayden?’’ Cody ignores Giselle, his eyes widening with the same panic mine had.
‘’I saw her this mornin’.’’ Giselle says, though with less certainty than she’d had when she said it to me. She looks at the doors on either end of the common room. ‘’I am beginnin’ to wonder where she’s gotten too, though.”
‘’She’s fine.’’ I say, though I don’t know if it’s more to my friends or myself. ‘’She’s not a target. She still has a family.’’
‘’Rosie’s right.’’ Cody backs me up, faithful to Cody A’s tendency to be the voice of reason. ‘’Naomi’s not stupid. She wouldn’t mess with a sixteen-year-old girl who’s come from a loving home. She only touches the patients that don’t have anyone to ask questions.’’
A brief silence falls over us as we exchange sideways glances, like we’re all telepathically daring each other to say it out loud.
‘’Like Jacinta.’’ Ellie accepts the challenge.
‘’Yeah.’’ I agree in a quiet voice. ‘’Like Jacinta.’’
‘’Does anyone here actually believe she got discharged?’’ Giselle asks, shuffling her set of cards just for the sake of doing something with her hands. ‘’Or that any of them got discharged?’’ Her voice has dropped a few notches, ensuring our conversation is lost in the noise of the common room. We shift in our seats, elbows resting on the table and heads titled forward so we can hear each other.
‘’Sure, they do.’’ Taylor agrees with ease. ‘’Nobody else pays enough attention.’’
‘’Nobody else wants too.’’ Cody adds.
‘’We can’t be the only ones that’ve takin’ notice.’’ Giselle persists. ‘’They’re here one day and gone the next. Jacinta just went to bed and then- ‘’
‘’Can we not talk about Jacinta?’’ I interrupt.
’’How can we not talk about her?” Taylor hisses under his breathe. ‘’Are we just supposed to forget about her?’’
‘’Of course not.’’ I grit my teeth in a defensive way. ‘’But I don’t know what the point of talking about her disappearing is. It’s not going to help her, it’s just going to upset us.’’
’’Did no one teach you to play black jack properly?” Ellie suddenly bellows, louder than necessary. ‘’Put your cards down, I’ll show you.’’
I’m sitting on the opposite side of the table to Ellie, and I know without even glancing behind me that Maggie has approached. Ellie’s quick change of topic is a dead giveaway of the nurse’s presence. Sure enough, a few moments later Maggie crosses into my vision, walking past our table with a disinterested look on her face.
It’s a protocol within our group, as much as walking with a hunch is a protocol to all patients in the asylum. When someone abruptly changes the topic, you don’t question it. You don’t make yourself look suspicious by glancing around, trying to figure out which nurse is nearby. You don’t risk being seen giving any kind of gestures or raised eyebrows or questioning facial expressions. You just go with it.
We’d be dead if the nurses were aware of what we know. If they knew that we’ve seen things the other patients have missed. That we’ve noticed things the other patients haven’t. That we’ve put things together in a way the other patients are yet too. We’re the special few that have learnt things about this place, witnessed things that haunt us when we try to sleep at night. We know more about this place then we ever needed too. We know enough to know that we can do nothing except shut our mouths and deal with it.
Nobody in Highwaters thinks they’re safe or living in a pleasant place. Nobody in Highwaters has even the slightest clue how much danger they’re in.
Our group is formed of those who came together based on knowing something the others don’t. Jacinta, Taylor, Ellie, Jayden and Cody had already created the group when I came to Highwaters. They welcomed me with open arms following that night, three weeks after my admission, when I’d seen it. It had happened so quickly that I’d missed bits and pieces of it, and when I think back, I question the specifics and wonder the accuracy my mind processed the situation with. I know I could always ask Taylor, but I don’t see the rhyme or reason in that. There’s no purpose in making him relive what I can only imagine is the worst night of his life for the sake of my own curiosity. It doesn’t matter, because I remember the important part – the unadulterated fear coursing through my veins, the way my jaw had fallen slack, and my mouth had widened in a silent scream. The tears that had come unbidden, the way my chest had risen and fallen with such force I could see it in my peripheral vision. I remember running back through the halls, hearing my feet slap against the floor, pulling the sheets over my head in my bedroom as though they were some kind of protective barrier. I remember the way I’d pulled Jayden aside the next morning and spluttered incomprehensibly, trying to get the entire story out at once, trying to make sense of what I’d witnessed. I remember the way Jayden had somehow known exactly what I was talking about even though I wasn’t making any sense. ‘’Come with me.’’ She’d said solemnly, taking my hand, without a single element of shock written anywhere on her face. ‘’I have something to show you.’’
‘’Jayden.’’ Cody utters with a breathy sigh from beside me. ‘’Fuck.’’
He’s on his feet in an instant. Either with intent or just out of instinct, his grip on my hand tightens and I’m pulled to my feet with him. The others are up too – we’ve all seen it by now.
Jayden has stumbled into the common room with a bleeding forehead, unable to walk in a straight line.
We don’t ask what happened. It’s pointless and irrelevant. In a heartbeat all five of us are surrounding her.
‘’Gimme some space.’’ Jayden murmurs, trying to shoo us with her hand.
‘’Taylor, give me your shirt.’’ Ellie orders, swinging into her mother mode.
Taylor obediently strips off his grey shirt and passes it to Ellie. She fastens it around Jayden’s head, while Jayden babbles out something that sounds like a protest but is incoherent.
‘’Shhh.’’ Ellie coos. ‘’We need pressure on the wound.’’
Of course, no one around us pays any mind to what’s going on. There’s not so much as a lifted eyebrow or a second glance from anyone.
The common room is one of those many, many things in Highwaters that you just learn to block out.