Doomsday

3. Life at Sunnyside-2

Kara nodded in agreement. “Mr. Crockett told me you took all your meds this morning. I’m glad you’re not fighting us anymore.”

“Me too.” Little did she know Kelly was fighting them. If she had taken the meds, she’d be a mental blob now hardly able to communicate clearly. And she’d sleep a lot more, too, and be trapped in the nightmares. Whenever Crockett, Patrick, or Nurse Agnes came in to give her the meds, she went into their mind and convinced them she’d swallowed the pills without a hitch. She needed sleep, but not twenty-four hours a day. They gave her the pills, and after she made them think she’d swallowed them, she waited until they left to stuff the pills into a hole in the back of her mattress. She’d made the hole by tearing the material with her teeth.

was“I have a surprise for you,” said Dr. Arndt. “I want you to go to the activity room today. You’ve started a very good painting, and I’m hoping you’ll continue with that. How does that sound?”

Kelly nodded. “Good.” She enjoyed painting. She wasn’t an artist, but somehow it soothed the pain and fear that built up inside her while she tried to sleep. Plus the focus helped keep her awake.

“Before you go, however, I want you to promise me you’ll open another door the next time you dream, okay? If you are ever to beat these bad dreams, I think you’ll need to open every door in the house and face down what’s inside. The answer to your fear lies deep in the mansion some place, probably hidden in a closet, or in the attic or basement. Will you promise?”

Kelly nodded again. “I promise.” She had opened a fourth door once, way back when she’d first gotten to Sunnyside: the door to the basement. A horrible, rotten-fish odor had risen from that dark, terrible place, and it frightened her even more than the guy on horseback trying to stab her with his sword. It was worse than falling from the balcony, which always made her wake up screaming. “Dr. Arndt?”

“I wish you’d call me Kara. I want to be your friend and your psychiatrist, Kelly.”

Kelly shook her head, deciding not to call her anything, except maybe hey you! “What you’re telling me to do sounds a little like what my brother told me to do with bad dreams. He said I should just get mean as heck and fight back. But when I try that, it always blows up in my face. The dreams get worse when I fight back.”

heyyou“You may not have to fight them, Kelly. You just need to see what they’re hiding. Once you know what’s there, then you can decide whether or not to fight them.”

KELLY

Kelly worked hard painting her picture of the red flowers that grew like tiny ornaments on some plants in the courtyard. Having one entire wall of the courtyard made of unbreakable glass had been a great idea, whoever had thought of it. It gave the patients something to look at that made them feel better. Other patients seemed to like it too. Doris Williamson nearly always stood and faced the glass, staring at the greens, yellows, reds, blues, and browns that made up the plant life in there. She was a catatonic schizophrenic who never spoke anymore, as far as Kelly knew. She just stared. Kelly supposed there was something going on inside her mind, maybe some fantasy she lived in that nobody else would ever know about. Kelly would never know about it either. She couldn’t read the mind of anyone who was mentally ill.

While Doris stared and drooled a little, Kelly painted the tiny, bell-shaped red flowers that grew next to the glass right in front of her. She sat at a small table that Mr. Crockett had placed there for her and worked hard to make her painting look real. She liked realism, which Dr. Arndt had said was a sub-category inside the much broader subject of art. Kelly had the green stems looking just like real stems, but painting the flowers was tricky. Some of her flowers looked so real she could have hung them on the plant, and nobody could have seen the difference. But they took a long time to paint because there were so many of them, and she messed them up every time at least once or twice.

Another patient walked around the room like he was in search of something very important. Crazy Horse was a toothless old man that somebody had found living on the street and brought him to Sunnyside. He seemed harmless, but Kelly could never be sure because he wasn’t allowed to hold pointed objects. He always needed a shave, and the staff shaved his beard twice a week. She didn’t name him Crazy Horse and did not know what his real name was, but that’s what he liked to be called, according to Mr. Patrick. Crazy Horse came over and put his arm around Doris like he always did. She never blinked or appeared to notice as he got close enough to her ear to whisper. But he never whispered.

He leaned forward and said, “Bubbly bubbly bubbly bub!” Then he released her and marched with purpose to the other side of the room. The first time Kelly met him she’d stuck out her hand to shake and introduced herself. He had looked at her with distrusting, bloodshot eyes and said his bubbly bub thing. Then he’d gone over to a potted plant and said it again to the plant. Kelly had never heard him say anything else.

“That looks real good,” said a shy-sounding voice from behind her. She turned and saw Denny Martinez studying her painting.

“Thanks, Denny. You’re out of the room, huh?”

“Yeah. It gets stuffy in there. Real stuffy.”

Real“You don’t have to tell me.”

Denny wasn’t like the other mentally ill people because Kelly could read his mind. When she’d first met him, she’d thought he had to be as sane as the rest of her family. Then he’d come to the activity room once and freaked out when he thought he saw a monster hiding behind one of the round columns that supported the ceiling. Nobody else saw anything, of course, and Denny had literally run back to his padded room. He told her once that the monsters couldn’t get through the padding. Kelly told him that was a good thing, but she wanted to point out that the ceilings weren’t padded, so it made little sense. She decided not to say anything about it.

“Are you going to paint something?” she asked. It was only the second time she’d seen him.

He shook his head. “I can’t. If I get too busy out here, the monsters sneak up on me. I don’t want them to eat me.”

“That would suck.” Kelly usually tried to humor him. “Travis once told me he thought it was better to be eaten later rather than sooner. I’d prefer not to be eaten at all.”

“Does Travis come to visit you? I’d like to see him again.”

“He’s too young. The hospital has rules about that. I really miss him, though.” Well, she missed seeing him. Angie and Chris always brought Jon and Travis to visit, and sometimes Dante, too, but Travis stayed in the minivan while the others took turns seeing her. Whenever she knew they had arrived, she’d go into his head, and they’d talk for a while. A hug from her little brother would have gone a long way, though.

seeingDenny suddenly looked stricken and took off back toward his room. “See ya, Kelly.”

“Bye, Denny. Nice talking with you.”

“You, too. If you see Travis, tell him I said hey.” Mr. Crockett guided Denny down the hallway.

All that talk about family made her miss them more than usual. She’d see Josh again in two days, but right now she really missed her brothers, Angie, Chris, Dante, Granny, and Parrish. She wanted to talk to Lindsey, too, but Lindsey wasn’t a relative, so she wasn’t allowed to visit. This place had some rules that Kelly didn’t get along with, but she followed them anyway. She hoped everybody at home was okay and wouldn’t forget to come see her in two weeks. She tried to guess what they were up to right then but became sad and returned to her painting.