fog

fog

It wasn’t the drugs they were pumping into him that bothered him the most. He kind of liked the numb fog. It was nice to be free from his usual storm of thoughts. He was more concerned about his lack of freedom and privacy. Even though he had a private room he could never be alone for too long. Every half hour someone poked their head through the doorway to make sure he was still breathing. At night they would shine a bright halogen flashlight through the door’s small windowpane, looking for the rising and falling of his chest as he slept. He couldn’t even take a shit without someone knocking on the door. With each passing day this concerned him less and less and the fog grew thicker. Suicide had always been an escape plan at the back of his mind, but it wasn’t easy in here.

They took away his belt and shoelaces; in fact they took away his clothes and shoes altogether. They were replaced with loose fitting dark green scrubs and cheap, foamy green slippers. Perhaps he could fashion a noose from a bed sheet, but where would he tie the end that wasn’t around his neck? There were no closets with hanger rods or showers with curtain rods. The few hooks he had for his two sets of scrubs were designed to break from the wall if there was more than the weight of a few scrub tops on them. Hanging yourself was a cliché anyways.

Another “guest” had been creative. She took the orange plastic cap from one of the Gatorades they were constantly drinking and used its rough edge to gouge her wrists until her white, flexing tendons were exposed. Her shredded radial arteries pumped bright red blood onto the fresh white tile floor of the isolation room. Good thing there was a drain in it, because she made quite a mess.

He remembered watching her through the small, double paned window in the closet sized room’s padded door. Normally it would have been quite a disturbing site, but the drugs took care of that. It was more like a TV show now. Eventually she slipped from the plastic bench in the corner and slid to the floor, face down in the expanding red puddle. Minutes later bubbles stopped foaming from her mouth. Her black hair seemed to darken as her skin paled, slowly adopting the porcelain white of the surrounding room.

The show was over so he turned and shuffled back to the rec room. The ping-pong table with plastic paddles was available. A nearby chair seemed like a better idea. He was so tired anyways. With a deep sigh he dropped into the rough, faded yellow armchair and dropped his head back. There was an interesting water stain on one of the ceiling tiles. The kind he could stare at for hours. Hours of numb, thoughtless existence as an oxygen processing, food consuming, shit and piss generating machine.