THE PSYCHOTIC HIGHNESS (ON HOLD)

CHAPTER TWO: The Accident

“Okay, it’s your free time. Let’s go to the common area.”

She looked up at the nurse that opened her door. She thought this free time with the other patients was useless and demeaning. It was no way to treat someone with her stature, mixing her with the filth. She loathed this time with the sickly commoners.

“Your Highness, I have done as you have wished,” a female patient said, bowing.

“Very good, you have pleased me.”

The two female patients spent their time observing the other patients and talking to no one, but each other.

***

After a long drive to his apartment, Sean had an evening of rest planned, which did not involve much of resting. He checked his answering machine and saw there were three messages. The first one was a telemarketer who was offering another fantastic product no one, especially Sean, wanted or even needed.

Beep.

“Hello Sean, it’s your mom here. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Give me a call when you can. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom. Note to self: Call Mom next week.” He mumbled as he scribbled on a notepad next to the phone.

Beep.

“Sean, it’s me. Lily. I know this isn’t a great time for you to hear my voice again. It isn’t even a good time. I know I’m terrible for calling you after what my dad did and especially after what I did. I was hoping we cou—”

“Not in this lifetime, princess…” He immediately pressed the ‘delete’ button on the machine. With an ice-cold bottle of beer in hand, he sat at his desk, which was occupied with piles of books and documents. It was always his habit, no matter how inattentive he might be at times, to have his head in books and updates that would help him analyze and treat his patients. He currently had four patients to manage. There was one with paranoid schizophrenia, two with mood disorders, and one with anorexia. It saddened him to see three unstable young adults and one eating impaired adolescent. He was not upset that they were there getting help, but how they ended up that way was what rubbed him the wrong way.

“How could a mother be so insensitive to constantly pick at her child for being fat when she only had twelve percent body fat?” He sighed and tried to think of a possible answer. He took out a black notebook and began writing as he read it aloud. “Have Patient Carrie’s mother called in for further interview and personal evaluation…”

***

“Nurse Mike?”

“Yes, is something wrong, Barry?”

“I think there’s something wrong with my soup. Can you take a look at it?”

The nurse walked over to the patient seated at one of the dining tables in the hospital’s mess hall. It was dinnertime and all of the calm patients were preoccupied eating. Some were busy telling overelaborate tales of their imaginary travels around time and space. A few were talking to the air around them. The nurses calmly brought them back to eating their dinner.

“Your soup appears to be fine to me. It was sealed when we gave it to you. Remember, you were the one to open it.”

The patient looked at his perfectly normal soup.

“I think my soup is contaminated. It’s not hot enough and I’m sure there’s a whole colony of bacteria thriving in it. The cook wants me to get sick and die. I always knew he was out to get me,” Barry spoke as he focused on the soup. Mike sat at a safe distance next to him.