Burlap

12 - Slide

Six months passed me by in an anticlimactic, even pleasant daze. For all the buildup and stress of everything that came to pass in my first short week at Rosenton, the next half a dozen months felt like a vacation at the spa in comparison. Each week brought the same routine, the same people, the same food, and the same attempts to just get in and get out of my appointments with Shilling and Paul in group therapy. 

My relationships with my ward mates became more and more relaxed as I spent all my time with them, day in and day out. My wariness of their intentions shrank down to a small pinprick in the back of my mind the closer I got to them, and only Power ever gave her suspicious thoughts of their kindness. As time went by, my expectations that George would throw some other condition to his blackmail on me were proved wrong when he never so much as gave me a calculating look. Instead, once or twice a week he would pull me aside and nod toward Lottie without a word, expressing that I should stick by her like glue until he returned from either his own appointments with Shilling or wherever else he needed to go. I never asked, and he never pried into what Lottie and I did together while he was gone. 

Which, to be fair, was nothing but idle chit chat and sometimes a couple rounds of Old Maid with Marcie. 

And Marcie still had yet to act on her still transparent jealousy. Instead, whenever she caught John and I holding hands or smiling those secret smiles we had just for each other, she would jerk her gaze away and throw herself into the nearest activity she could. Sometimes, that activity included flirting with the orderlies, and while John seemed to not notice, I always kept her in my peripherals when it happened. Had something happened to her because of her reaction to me, my heavily burdened conscious might have just cracked and spilled Power out in all her vile glory. Otherwise, Marcie and I had become quite close. Often, I found her waiting for me in my room at he end of the day, giggling and bouncing on her feet to tell me the latest juicy morsel of gossip from her mother about her old friends from her hometown. I felt as though I knew all the people she told me about personally, as much as he chattered endlessly about them. 

Esther took over the role of my surrogate mother with gusto, and I basked in it without restraint. I needed her and she needed me. The fact that we had been thrown into such a lucky situation where we had found each other was the best thing that could have happened to either of our sanities, I think. Although, we did have a silent agreement to never speak of our rather mushy feelings toward each other. She didn’t fancy herself an emotional, weak woman, and I felt all too happy to go along with that. The fewer weaknesses I showed to Power, the less chance she would pounce. 

And, then there was Ed. The enigma. The behemoth. Ed remained the dark, terrifying giant with a nervous tic for the first half of the day, and the demeanor of a cheerful giant with a secret from three o’clock until light’s out. I didn’t know what he did in the gardens at three in the afternoon, but whatever it was changed him from a timid Chihuahua into a confident, smirking brick wall of a man. The only clue he seemed to leave behind was the slight scent of woodsy smoke lingering on his clothes as he ducked into the lounge upon his return and the occasional trace of black soot on his hands or smudged on his face. He towered over the rest of us. Poor Lottie only reached his midriff, while the top of John’s head barely brushed the mans collar bone. His tremendous height and width coupled with the eerie lime color of his large, always wide opened eyes made Ed the scariest of the seven of us, by far, upon first glance at our strange group. 

And yet, he was easily the most harmless from what I’d seen and experienced. Ed kept to himself, though in the most friendly way possible. Something about him, despite his shakiness and seven foot tall stature, made all of us comfortable around him. He was the proverbial kitten in a bulldog’s body. 

Or, more accurately, the David in Goliath’s body, inside a mental institution. 

“Kate?”