The Art of Drowning

Chapter Eight

Song for this chapter - Ferrari by Bebe Rexha

I browsed through the fully stocked shelves of the gift shop for around thirty minutes before finally settling on a little black notebook that could fit into the front pocket of my hoodie. Green is my favourite colour so if I had the option of a plain one I would've chosen it, however the only green one I could seem to find was leprechaun themed. I supposed it must've been left over from St. Patrick's day, still it felt like an odd thing to find at a hospital.

Truthfully, I think I actually spent the majority of my time in there flicking through the pages of the sad selection of books that lined the walls. I like to read. It's an escape, I guess. An escape to far-away lands where a glass slipper could magically solve all of your problems. Where talking animals ran wild and, 'nothing was impossible, if you just believed'.

I hate that saying. I think it's only easy to believe nothing is impossible, if you've been given a reason to. I don't think it's in a human's nature to just have hope. Hope isn't something that's predisposed in your genetics, it's something that's nurtured into you. And I don't think my parents were ever the nurturing type.

Nature vs nurture aside, once I had left the shop after not actually buying any books, I slowly made my way back to the ED ward. Dawdling at every opportunity there was to dawdle. It's not like I dreaded being there, it was just I didn't really have much to do. It was only 3pm and so it would still be another hour at least before Lily got back, and that's assuming she didn't hang out with her friends or something. Technically, you were allowed to go wherever you wanted in the hospital, provided you were back in time for your meals, medication, checkups, therapy, etc. Although, if you were under eighteen, they generally expected you to be back in your respective rooms by no later than 11pm.

From the way that Lily had described herself, it seemed that she was a very social person (the complete opposite of myself), and so it seemed unlikely that she would sacrifice spending time with however many people there were in the school just to spend time with me. It wouldn't be fair on her either; just because a lot of her freedom had been stripped away from her it didn't mean she shouldn't have a life. To put it shortly, I wasn't counting on seeing her until later this evening.

It had only just passed 4pm when I finally got back to the ward. It was unusually vacant for it being only 4pm, there must've been An Incident with one of the patients. Incidents are relatively common in ED wards. They can range from someone rioting about a new meal plan to having a feeding tube put in to a good old fashioned mental breakdown. I wondered what the cause of this particular Incident would be.

At least most of the nurses were elsewhere. Not that I disliked any of the nurses, by any means, I just liked being left to my own devices.

I was just about to go to my room (probably to have a flick through the pages of my new textbooks), when I had a thought. The chefs most likely being on break and the sudden lack of nurses meant that the kitchen would be unoccupied.

I tried to suppress the small smile that was slowly climbing onto my face as I turned to walk to the double that led into the kitchen. With every footstep I seemed to grow hungrier. To give myself credit, I had done a lot of walking today.

As soon as I pushed open the doors I began to rifle through the various cupboards until I found a small bowl and a salt shaker. Then, I marched to the freezer and pushed open the door with as much force as I could muster. The inside was definitely not as fascinating as the fridge had been. For starters, it was mind-numbingly cold which made every single hair on my body stand on its end, and secondly, it wasn't colourful at all. The only food it seemed to contain all came in pre-packaged bags, or was lying in a lonely looking sack on the floor. Frost coated every shelf and hung from the ceilings, making the whole room seem like it was cloaked in misery.