Coming Home

You realize your mistake too late. You get home from school and your mom is at the kitchen table crying. You wouldn't even have noticed if she hadn't called your name because your mind was set only on executing your plan. The sound of your name snaps you back to reality for a second You turn around to face your mom, and she makes a gesture for you to sit across from her. Sighing you practically fall into the chair and fix your mom with a blank look, anxious to finish this conversation that hasn't even started. It's only delaying you from completing what you have so carefully planned.

"I got a call from your school saying one of your friends reported to the counselor that you were planning on killing yourself." You stare at your mom in silence but you can feel your heart pounding in your chest. You run through your head of everyone you talked to that day and realized you made a slip up when talking to Olivia.

"Well, what do you have to say about this?"

You can't bring yourself to respond. Every ounce of caring you had left in your body already long gone and all that's left is the panic and emptiness. Your mom starts crying again and you avert your eyes to the floor but you can feel panic slowly clawing up your throat. Months of hard work, stealing one pill at a time so that no one would notice to add to your growing stash, the bottle of vodka stashed under your bed, the note you had written and rewritten, all of it suddenly rendered useless in this moment of being found out.

 

"We're taking you to a hospital," you make out your mom saying through the fog that has covered your head.

"NO!" Finally rips through your chest in an almost guttural like sound. That's when your memory goes foggy. You remember managing to lock yourself in your room for a little but your brother unlocks the door. You know at some point they must have gotten you into the car with some of your things packed and drove you to this place, but you have no recollection of the journey. All you know is that after two hours of waiting to be seen and one hour of a counselor asking you every invasive question you could think of, your mom is hugging you goodbye and you are being led by a nurse to another ward.

You see some other people milling around, but they take you to a separate room and the nurse starts going through your stuff. She has two piles she is making of stuff you can keep and stuff they have to keep. They let you keep your essentials, clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, your favorite stuffed animal, but some things go in the other pile, pencils, razor, sweatshirt strings, shoelaces. You are assured that you will get your shoelaces back when you are taken off suicide watch. In the fluster of getting you here you suppose nobody really thought to pack anything else which is fine by you. They bring you some dinner since you haven't eaten yet and explain how the place runs and what is expected of you. You pick at your food as they give you the rundown but don’t have much of an appetite.

When they finally release you from the room apparently it's ten minutes before lights out and everyone is required to be in their rooms. A different nurse goes with you while you get changed and ready for bed, watching you even as you go to the bathroom, and leads you back out to the commons area. You are told you can’t sleep in a room tonight as you are still on suicide watch so you have to sleep on a couch in the commons area where all the night staff nurses can see you. The lights are on all night, and every couple minutes you can feel someone hovering over you, but you eventually drift off into a dreamless sleep.


First Morning