The patients sported mint green waffle knit sweaters as they communed around the plastic furniture in the psych ward. The overhead radio came on and played a lullaby as the ward was attached to a maternity ward at the Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut. On the television in the gathered living area that only play VHS a rendition of 1957 Les Girls played.

Vanessa, looking pale and bugged out from a 2-week psychotic episode, played with a strand of her dirty blonde hair. She had ballet pink acrylic nails and a tattoo on her middle finger of a cross. She made a bowl of peanut butter oatmeal and had used hot coco packets mixed in with the oats to make it chocolatey.

 On the corner of her folder that Silver Hill had issued including the patients’ rights she had taken down Nate’s phone number that she had got from her mom who contacted him through Facebook. She was meticulously writing down the schedule for the day to leave the psych ward sooner through outstanding behavior – the goal of any patient.

The overhead radio went of again this time summoning the patients to the cafeteria. They rose from the plastic furniture and lethargically dragged their feet as they created a single filed line and walked to the dining hall. Once they arrived they grabbed plates and made their way down a buffet of blueberry muffins, cantaloupe, sausages, hashbrowns, and orange juice.

Vanessa grabbed her food and sat it down at the table before pivoting towards the decaffeinated coffee dispenser. She saw Jack sitting across the room and admired him for a moment. He looked exactly like Foster, her true love, and like a lot of trouble. She could only imagine what kind of trouble he had got into before landing in there.  

She had noted his last name from his patient bracelet when they sat next to each other at dinner the night before. They were having salisbury steak with mushroom gravy sauce and roasted potatoes. Vaness wrote his first and last name that evening in her patient folder so she could find out more about him when he got out.

She had been in the ward for 42 days now, so her plan to get out wasn’t working. She had followed everything to a T; wake up 8am, shower time 10am, group therapy 2pm. The days were long and boring, and she had now seen an array of movies she never planned on.

She had made friends with many of the patients who many would not survive in the years to come.