Cry Until You Bleed

4- Baby Blue

Baby blue. Out of all of the colors in the rainbow, these patient uniforms have to be baby freaking blue. I know that they’re supposed to promote happiness or something considering everybody here is either suicidal or some other type of mentally troubled but the color of my scrubs are not going to change my decision to commit suicide or not. I mean, really? How many people are like ‘You know, I want to commit suicide but these uniforms are a pretty color so I think that I’ll hold off for now.’ Nobody.

At least we get to wear jackets- along with our scrubs, we also have a uniform fleece jacket but it’s not very warm and it itches my arms but I refuse to leave the room without it on because it hides my bandaged cuts. These people aren’t stupid though- if they see bandages on my wrists, they’ll know what’s underneath. Luckily, the fleece covers the bandages but I keep subconsciously tugging on the sleeves just in case as I prepare myself to go downstairs again for dinner. It’s also not baby blue- it’s a light tan color, which is another reason that I want to wear the fleece. It’s annoyingly light colored but at least it isn’t baby blue.

There’s digital clock on the wall, hiding behind a small metal cage, that tells me that it’s almost six, which means I should probably go down to eat dinner and then I can call my dad at home so that he knows that I got situated just fine in my new temporary home. I put on my white nurse-like shoes that are part of the uniform, and pull my hair into a pony tail before leaving my room and heading for the elevator to go downstairs.

I wonder if everyone is as friendly as those three people that I saw in the hallway earlier today because it’d be really cool if that were the case. In Alaska, nobody was particularly friendly but they weren’t mean either, everybody was just pretty quiet and liked to keep to themselves, which was fine by me but it didn’t leave a lot of room for human interaction. Of course, I’ve been back from Alaska for a year now so I’ve been acclimated to the real world again, just to be thrown back into the world of insanity, but it’s not like I don’t know how to talk to people.

Downstairs, the cafeteria is full of people in the same light blue scrubs and a few of them are wearing the tan fleece jackets. By the looks of the trays that I see as I walk through the large room towards the front where the food is, I see that today, they’re serving lasagna.

I get my plate of salad and lasagna with a small carton of chocolate milk from the cafeteria line and then I turn around to find a place to sit, which is one of the hardest parts about being new- even in mental hospitals, the rules of a high school cafeteria still apply.

“Hey, you’re the new girl. Ana, right?” I hear somebody say to my left and I turn to see the tall Flynn-looking guy from earlier standing there with a crooked smile on his face.

“Um,” I start off awkwardly and then clear my throat, deciding that making friends here isn’t the worst idea ever. It won’t hurt to maybe not hate this place like I hated Alaska. It’s not like I have a choice anyway- I’m going to be here no matter what so I might as well give it an effort. Geez, I’m starting to sound like my mother. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“You can come sit with us if you want,” He says, motioning over to a table where Mia and Renée are sitting at the two end seats. The guy- I remember his name is Johnny- doesn’t wait for a response, he just walks away towards the table and then glances over his shoulder to see if I’m following him, which I am.

Johnny sits down on the side with Mia and I sit down beside Renée and start poking at the lasagna with my fork.

“Oh, looks like Johnny’s making friends,” Mia chuckles.

“She’s new,” He reminds them as he starts eating his dinner. “Everybody needs friends when they’re new.”

“So how do you like your room?” Renée asks me curiously. “When I first got here, there was a pudding stain on the carpet and it looked like poop and it was really gross. Anyway, I could still smell the freaking pudding until the carpet cleaners finally got it out. For a whole month, I lived with the smell of pudding which isn’t a bad smell but I just craved pudding all of the time.”