COLLECTING VOICES NIGHTLY

Collecting voices nightly

The doctors headed down the hall to her room where they watched her, made dosage changes and still were left scratching their heads. They had a new stack of question, flashcards, and other "impossibles" for Tina today. They rolled their eyes and sighed skeptically until she got them right; repeatedly. And yet, she was elusive to the simple workings of “today”. She was able to perform most tasks they gave her ,although there were times when she seemed to only dabble in reality. She might be able to put the dishes away or take the trash out but to answer and converse on the phone or shop in a market where she might have to ask questions; she failed. Initially, they dismissed her behavior as shock to the sudden loss of her son. The incident had been brutal. She had somehow managed to ward off a brutal attack from her abusive ex-boyfriend and managed to drag both herself and her small son from the burning building he’d left in his wake. She was the only survivor…if they could call it that. She was listless, unresponsive for so very long they had almost given up. Then she had tried to swallow a ton of meds stolen from the patients all over the floor. They had fought for their little Nostradamus. She had shown a propensity for “fortune telling” as they joked. They asked her impossible questions; well above her simple education which she always answered; the next morning. She even predicted accidents and deaths of those close to her “study team”. They scanned and tested, finding nothing to explain her behavior or her accuracy. They even tried “blackmail”; letting her know that it was her odd habits that kept her within the walls of the asylum. They showed her their tapes of her, asking repeatedly who she spoke to. Her predictions were over eighty percent correct. They often bowed their heads and discussed that too. Her room was always full of energy and commotion.

She sat in the window waiting for the sun to give up and go away. It was all she could do to focus in her workday. She waited and fidgeted, begging for dusk to appear. Tina began her collecting the same way all the time: “ If today was hard, tell me about it”. She would continue to mutter, laughing sometimes through the night until exhaustion at last permitted her to sleep. Rarely did the conversations venture into light hours but on occasion, people heard her and had seen her swat at invisible hands, quick to giggle “Quit it!” Loony was the verdict in these instances. Most shook their heads sadly and did their own share of whispering. Tina didn’t care. She had to laugh when the doctors got angry because they just wouldn’t listen and simply couldn’t see. It was all right there in front of them; beyond the trauma, the loss; not just the physical but emotional; spiritual. She had talked and talked but no one heard a word. The accident had left scars on the inside and out. Medicine healed some but not all wounds; no different than time she sadly understood. But she had found a way around that pain or rather it had found her. Realizing she was the survivor, she was left not only with the wounds but also with anger and confusion. She yelled at God, threatened and screamed. Nothing. Then she took the pills; all of them to go back and be with him but when even that failed and she was sure hope was gone and then she began to see; to talk, and not just to her son but to all of them.

She now understood even if hecould not come back to her she would never be alone; the whispers and breezes through her room reassured her of that. Like misty Rumplestiltskins they were able to provide the answers to the doctors’ confusing and silly questions. Lord knew she didn’t care what the hypotenuse of a speculated triangle through the extrapolation of the race car versus the drop of a second car from 10,000 feet would be. Often the doctors scoffed while clicking their pens arrogantly and dismissing her statements (Why do you want to worry about that when your son is so sick?) but they usually came back after a while to seek more personal information or achieve understanding on a more gentle yet higher level. She understood they kept her for their own selfish reasons.

When “friends” would come, she often felt jilted of that time not spent with her boy, but she saw their need for her and their want to reach over one last time. Some stayed; lingering softly. Those were the breezes that swirled around her room. Some were a little more friendly and eager to talk to anyone.  Those were the ones that often kept her from the phone or interrupted conversations she was having with those like herself.  And then there were the others that she had asked to leave; their disquiet and foul tempers being too much for her soul to handle. There had not been many to excommunicate, but she had been strong enough of spirit to know they had to go. They were the cold spots and the chills; even in the 90 degree August days.

All in the window at night she collected voices for her heart until she had lived her life as best she could; to enjoy it and her son again. Her “moving life” was quiet and she kept it simple; content to stay anonymous in a little asylum where she could enjoy her son; ghost or not. When time finally stopped and she was gone for good, the answers remained in the whispers in the halls, the playful movement of things and the breezes that always swirled around in room 510.


I'm dabbling again.  I'm doing some research and want to write somethingin this vein but needed to practice.  Thanks for being my guinea pigs.  It's not bad, but I want to work on it.  Let me know what you think; here or in my email per norm.

Thanks guys.  I appreciate it.