literature

Suicide Hotline Butterfly [ch3]

Deviation Actions

sweetXtea's avatar
By
Published:
403 Views

Literature Text

Chapter 3


Standing in the hallway, Candice had just finished her blood-pressure check and received her morning medication. Candice had borrowed some red lip-gloss from a female patient who had been there for two weeks, as well as finally giving into that patient’s urging to allow her to put mascara on Candice.
“Please,” she said, her brown ponytail pulled back tight. She was probably a bit younger than Candice but certainly thought Candice was a teenager. “You’re normal and I’m bored; no one else talks to me or lets me put makeup on them, they just yell at me.” Candice smiled.
“Fine. I don’t usually let people touch me…but there are no mirrors in here and I’m going to trust you.” The girl smiled back and spent five quick minutes very close to Candice’s face before they were called for medicine.
“Thanks,” the girl said, putting away her makeup.
“Thank you,” Candice replied. The girl winked at her.
Candice was feeling calm, and maybe a little energetic for someone who slept perhaps two hours. She had spent much of the night poking around at the window in her room, so thick she couldn't see what was on the other side, much like if she weren't wearing her contacts or glasses. She spent time poking at the screws holding the metal plate to the vent. She snapped her toothbrush in half, stood on her bed, and tested it out. I’m stuck.
“Candice Kraus, follow me, it's time for you to see Dr. Thibodaux,” said one of the female nurses, wearing all blue. Candice kept her eyes fixed to the ground and followed the small, hurried blue shape down the hallway to the only room in the hospital that Candice had not contemplated escaping.
Dr. Thibodaux opened the door and Candice entered, the nurse nodding politely to the doctor and turning around. Dr. Thibodaux shut the door and turned to Candice, who stood with hands clasped behind her, looking like a high school girl rather than a mental patient. She was wearing the gray and white polka-dot dress that was just short enough to reveal the bandaging on her left thigh, and a few older scars. Her hair was pulled to the side of her head into a long ponytail which her make-up friend had insisted upon, one eye mostly covered by flaxen. Candice had not seen herself in anything other than glass windows, but she had been assured she would look a bit more presentable today.
“You look very nice today, Candice. Very out of place in the ward, but not out of place at all in my office,” Dr. Thibodaux said, smiling at Candice.
“Thanks. Another patient did my makeup.” She moved from the bookshelf to the chair in front of his desk, sat in it and curled her legs under her. He went to sit at his desk.
“Did you sleep?”
“Not really,” she said softly but steadily. She played with the hem of the dress she was wearing. “I read the Bible, I read Logic, I wondered around the room...”
“No one else stays in your room, so you have that freedom.”
“Yes...why don't I have a roommate? The girl who put makeup on me has one and she hates her.”
“I requested you be alone unless there was no more room. From speaking to you, I knew you would want to be in your own room. With your diagnosis, they were very cooperative.”
“My diagnosis,” Candice scoffed. “They can't make up their minds about me, and they get paid to figure me out.” She pursed her lips and grimaced for a moment. Dr. Thibodaux grinned at this display – Candice clearly had an opinion about something.
“Asperger’s Syndrome, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, ADHD, Paranoia, Social Anxiety...”
“They just can't seem to wrap me up into the right package.”
“I don't think you quite belong in a package any more than you belong in this ward,” said Dr. Thibodaux plainly. “I do think you may have Aspergers Syndrome, and I think what you have been through in your life has caused you to depersonalize, to separate. You're not like them, and you know it, and you can't change it.” Candice thought about this for a moment. When she spoke to Toby, who turned out to be Dr. Thibodaux, on the phone on bad night, she had told him that she didn't feel like she was a person, or that the people around her weren't really people. She felt like either she or the others had to be an imposter on reality. She said she felt like she was in a movie – a long, dramatic, yet somehow dull movie. She escaped this cartoon-land of emptiness by tracking the movements of what she believed to be an active serial killer in the area and studying abnormal psychology.
“I can live with that,” she said finally. “Personality Disorders are simply amplified personality traits…and everyone displays the symptoms when life presses too hard…” Candice glanced at Dr. Thibodaux for approval and he nodded. “I don't need to connect to people to be happy.”
“You may not need as much connection as a Neurotypical may need,” said Dr. Thibodaux, looking at Candice intensely as she avoided eye-contact, “but you do need some. That will come in time. Right now, my concern is that you're not sleeping.”
“I never sleep normally,” she said. “The nightmares have been so bad. I wake up trying to scream, not really sure if it was ever real or not. Dr. Rao didn’t but that in her fucking notes?”
“Tell me about the nightmares.” Candice sighed and breathed in deeply, wondering briefly how her dream-world would translate into a statement. This is going to make me sound fucking insane.
“Last night, I don't even know how to describe it. I was in a canoe with a man, but I don't remember what the man looked like. I was...different somehow, I felt like I was bigger. I can't speak in my dreams so I just sat in the canoe, passing this tall wall – an old wall like they would have hundreds of years ago. I looked at the wall, and there were faces...just the faces of people, like masks, splattered onto the wall. It was so real. Like someone had used a knife and pulled the faces off, and splattered them. The man with me told me it would be my turn soon...and suddenly I was trapped in a tower...” she stammered.
“Are you afraid of masks, or are you afraid of your own mask being removed?” asked Dr. Thibodaux. It was becoming clear to him that repeating the nightmare was distressing Candice, as she was wringing her hands and rocking a bit while talking. She stopped and looked at him.
“I...I'm not afraid of anything. I don’t wear a mask…everyone else does.”
“You feel terrified in these nightmares. You feel afraid.”
“Intense fear... Panic. I'm not afraid of masks...”
“Are you afraid of people? Do you feel that all people are wearing masks, and does it scare you that you can't read them, that you're blinded to the cues to see through them?” Toby looked dead-on at Candice and she froze. Unwilling to show her nervousness to the man across from her, Candice spoke deliberately,
“No one else admits that everyone is wearing a mask over their own faces because they would be disgusted with the truth,” Candice picked up quickly. “Everyone is fake, but no one knows that everyone is wearing a mask. They're making connections with each other through these masks, but I don't see how. Are their masks connecting? That means it isn’t real. Is this whole world just a big inside joke that I got left out of?” Candice stopped to breathe for a moment. Dr. Thibodaux watched the girl who looked no older than sixteen as she gathered her words, poising herself, overflowing with thoughts and nowhere to apply them. “The fact that they're lying to themselves and everyone around them, but that some are aware that they're hiding and I can't read people well enough – no matter how much I practice – to find them, is one of the worst things.” She looked up at the doctor for a moment, briefly looking at his green eyes, and then back at her hands in her lap. She nodded. He wasn't writing notes on her, she noticed. Is he actively listening, or am I just boring him?
“Which ones are harmless, and which ones are not?” he asked rhetorically. “And why do you need to know?”
“I need to know which ones are predators,” Candice said flatly.
“So you can avoid being prey?”
“That would only be a convenient side-effect,” she smiled briefly. “I just need to talk to them.”
“Is that why your best friend is a severe Narcisistic Personality? To talk?” Candice’s mind flashed to Daniel. He hasn’t even bothered to visit…
“That’s how it started. Now I’m just his soundboard.”
“It isn’t a relationship?” he asked. Candice thought for a moment. Relationship.
“A friendship, if even. Nothing…no, God, hell no. Not a…romantic…one,” the word romantic felt like a snake trying to escape her mouth. She laughed nervously.  
“Haha,” Dr. Thibodaux laughed. “Yeah…that wouldn’t end well.”
“I…don’t do well with romance, which I told you when I called the hotline. No one wants to deal with me” Toby nodded.
“Yes, you mentioned being very alone,” he said quietly. “You’ll meet someone who understands you, and vice versa. Be patient.” Candice nodded slowly and somewhat sadly.
Candice stood up from her seat and walked around the square room slowly, her fingers running along the books and then stopping to lean against the wall, dizzy. Dr. Thibodaux watched her as she thought, as she tried to process her own thoughts and words. She seemed to be aware that she was vulnerable, that she had little control, which is something Candice obsessed with. Vulnerability is what she loathed. Candice pulled her hair down in front of her shoulders, removing the rubber band that had kept it to the side, letting the golden lengths fall down to the middle of her back.
Dr. Thibodaux stood from his desk and walked slowly towards her, and she noticed he looked more professional today than the days prior, wearing gray pants and a jacket. Perhaps there was a meeting.
“When you go to sleep, I want you to control your dreams,” he said, now standing near enough to her to notice the citrus scent on her hair.
“Lucid dreaming?”
“Yes. So, you’re familiar with it. I want you to practice. Here,” Dr. Thibodaux gently pulled Candice's hand away from her other and pulled a red pen from his pocket. Candice stood very still and watched him from beneath her hair. He pressed the tips of the pen to Candice's palm and wrote a small capital “A.”
“The “A” means awake,” he told her, tracing his finger along the lines of Candice's hand gently. “I want you to look at your hand often throughout the day to be sure you're awake. This behavior can translate into your dreams – if you see no A, you are dreaming, and you can try to take control.”
“This can help me know when I'm dreaming?” she asked quietly, Dr. Thibodaux returning her hand to her slowly. Candice cocked her head, mildly confused by his statement and by the feeling that rushed through her body. Her cheeks flushed.
“Yes. Then you need to try and control the dream. Practice and see what happens.”
“I will. But even if I'm the one controlling the dream, I cannot promise the end result won't still be a massacre.”
“What did you do wandering in your room last night?” the doctor asked. “The rooms aren't big.”
“Nothing,” Candice lied. “We don't get enough exercise so I paced. I wish I had access to music, but no, headphones can somehow be used to commit suicide.”
“You'll be out of here soon,” Dr. Thibodaux said firmly. “Don't make things difficult by trying anything.” He looked down at her and she nodded slowly. He knows. Even if she escaped, where would she go? Back to the apartment with no utilities? She still had not figured this out, and she was beginning to wonder what life would be like as a homeless traveler.
“I still don’t understand… why you wanted my case,” Candice said finally as the doctor let go of her hand. He shrugged.
“Since I already know a lot about you – things you told me mostly anonymously – I figured this would speed the process along. It’s not like I can’t take interest in some of the more interesting callers.” Candice nodded. She imagined a lot of the callers were in an impulse-crisis, not a long-term one. Could be rather dull.
“Okay. Am I going to keep seeing you, when I get out?” she asked nervously. “Therapy?”
“That would be standard, yes,” Dr. Thibodaux replied quietly. “You will keep seeing me.” He smiled and led Candice back to the chair where she sat down. He leaned down slowly and whispered in her ear. “Don’t worry about that.”
Candice’s hear went into hyper-drive when she felt his warmth, and she gasped. She turned her head without her permission and was eye-level with Dr. Thibodaux, they noses nearly touching. He smiled and slowly stood back up straight, walking back behind his desk and sitting down. Candice knew she wasn’t hiding whatever was happening to her very easily. The doctor watched her closely.
“I’m going to request you to be taken off of the anti-psychotic,” he said gently. “Since you’re not taking it anyway.” He smiled at her and she smiled back – a genuine smile, rather than her usual forced grin. “I’m glad you came to the ward.”
“Why?” Candice asked, surprised. The ward is awful.
“Two reasons. First, if you had not, you may be dead,” he said flatly. “Secondly, if you had never come in, I may not have met you.” Candice turned her head to the side and looked away. She blushed and forced herself to stop smiling.
“It may be better for others to never meet me,” she whispered. Toby rested his face against his palm where he propped himself against the desk and shook his head.
“No. A thought occurred to me last night when I went home.” Candice looked at him.
“I was lying there and had a small bout of insomnia… I was waiting for the melatonin to kick in and you popped in my head and all I could thing was… tu me manques.”
After her session with Dr. Thibodaux, Candice went to the day room to draw on the white board. Someone was singing, and eventually the staff got tired of it and made him stop. Candice checked her hand. She was still awake. She thought about having control over her dreams; maybe she would even look forward to sleeping someday. While drawing, her mind drifted to Dr. Thibodaux running his fingers across her palm while holding it steady in his other hand. She smiled for several moments and rocked on her heels. He missed me last night. Why? Did he mean it that way?
She had drawn a girl in a field of bluebells, standing alone.
“Pretty,” said someone standing behind her. She turned to see a very thin woman, probably in her thirties, with light brown hair. She had been silently watching her draw. She was wearing jeans and an orange hoodie.
“Thank you...” Candice said quietly.
“Cute flowers. Anyway, what meds do they have you on?” she asked quietly. Candice immediately felt like this was going to be an uncomfortable conversation.
“Klonopin and Gabbapentin and Risperidone. You?” She had learned that asking questions what a key part of conversing with others. She had the underlying feeling that she was doing it wrong.
“Xanax and some other shit, Gabapentin is one…” she said bitterly. “Xanax isn't for me.”
“Half-life too short?” asked Candice.
“Pretty much. I need to be coming down from it, not getting all fucked up and…And then they won't give me any more until after a full day of panic attacks. They want me stuck here. Fucking conspiracy.”
“They don't listen when you tell them that,” Candice said, taking tiny steps towards the table and then hopping up to sit on it. “They look at you like a junky.”
“I am a junky. That's what I'm in here for,” said the woman. Oops, thought Candice. “That's what most of us are here for really. I like pain pills mostly. Why are you here?” she asked.
“I tried to kill myself,” Candice replied gingerly. The woman looked at Candice's thigh and nodded.
“Oh, I get it.” She leaned against the wall opposite Candice, and Candice wondered what there was to get. “So, when they do meds tonight, you want to trade Benzo's?”
“I can hide it in the back of my mouth,” Candice said, actually feeling positive about this risky idea because Xanax would help her fall asleep.
“Well then so can I. I'm Terri. I'll sit next to you at supper, and we'll trade.” Candice nodded and Terri gave what was probably supposed to be a smile, but came across differently after so many years of a bitter face. And probably a bitter life.
After Candice showered, supper wad delivered. The exchange had gone well, no nurses noticing. Terri took the Klonopin immediately but Candice waited until she was through eating so she could keep the pill under her tongue.
Candice checked her hand on the way to her room after supper and sure enough, she was awake. She'd be out of this place soon enough, but she would miss Dr. Thibodaux unless he was right that they would still have sessions. She could still call him at the hotline...if she had a phone. Candice ran her hand down her body to her panties and she ran her fingers along the lace. Stop thinking about him like that!
With a Xanax under her tongue, Candice sank into her bed and into a peaceful state giving way, finally, to sleep.
And tension builds.
© 2014 - 2024 sweetXtea
Comments7
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Comment Flagged as Spam