Just Not Her Day

'Isolation' they called it but she thought of it as 'privacy'. Now that she had her own room Margaret treasured the hour or so in the early morning when the mindless lassitude induced by the medication had worn off but before the visions and voices returned. Most mornings she only had the visions to contend with before that pig Jamison arrived with the drugs, but sometimes the voices started badgering her before the pills sent them packing. She feared this would be one of those mornings.

The room brightened as the sun came up and she slipped out of bed to open the venetian blind. Before she reached the window, four stubby fingers protruded through the blind and held down one of the slats. She knew that the sparsely furnished room was on the third floor, that there was no balcony outside, that the small window could not be opened and the sun was shining brightly.That made no difference to the reality, to her, of the unblinking eyes which peered malevolently through the slit at her. She stumbled back to bed and turned her back on the staring eyes.

When she next peeked into the room, the middle-aged woman, who now sat in the uncomfortable armchair knitting, did not answer when she said, "Hello Mother."

Her mother died just two years ago while Margaret was still in the open ward; the voices rarely came when she sat there. At other times, it would be Kenny, her fidgety eight year old brother, who had been knocked off his bike and killed by a hit-and-run driver when she was just a little girl. On rare occasions a tall, gaunt, gloomy looking man sat there. She presumed he was her father who died just a few weeks before she was born. She hated it when he came; he looked so sad and forlorn it made her cry and the loud, raucous voices filled her head. But today her mother seemed unable to fend them off. She could hear them now. Faint at first they became louder and louder in a never ending, unintelligible crescendo. Where was Jamison with her drugs?

The scream began to form and grow in the knot in her belly as she lay tightly curled with her hands pressed ineffectively over her ears. She tried desperately to hold it in. It escaped just as Jamison's keys jangled in the lock.

"No pills for you today, my girl. It's a jab for you."

Through tear filled eyes she saw the nurse snap on the rubber gloves, caught the glint of light on the hypodermic, felt the chill of the antiseptic on her thigh, then the sharp prick of the needle. With gritted teeth she knew she only had to endure the voices for another long minute before she and they were submerged in oblivion.

She felt Jamison insert the first of the drips which would sustain her during the day into the cannula on her arm. But they wouldn't fill the aching void in her stomach. She was hungry. She wanted her breakfast.