Watch Over Me

It might have been the smell that brought him back.

The entire hospital was cleaned with some sort of citrus cleanser, which smelled like chemicals that wanted desperately to be oranges. Ben found it comforting, he had missed it. He was in a bathroom in a bus station when he smelled it again, and it smelled like where he had to be.

The hospital was a 'voluntary' unit, meaning that you were there of your parent's free and willing accord, and therefore there was very little security. When he returned, he walked right in the front doors, down the halls he knew so well. It was past lights-out, so the halls were quiet except for Ben's footsteps and the murmer of nurses, talking in voices too low for him to hear. He stopped in the doorway of the nurse's station and waited.

Ben stood there for what felt like hours. Finally one of the nurses, Susan, turned around and saw him there. There was silence for a moment. Susan put down her clipbard. "Come on, Ben, let's get you to bed." she said quietly, and led him to his old room. She got some hospital clothes he could wear as pajamas, and put fresh sheets on his bed. Get some rest, she said. There would be plenty of time to talk tomorrow.

Ben Ledgar lay his head on the white hospital pillow and slept.

A week earlier, Ben would not have thought of escaping. He would never have admited it to anybody, but he was comforted by the hospital's tight schedule and ever-watching eye. For a while, he was convinced it might actually help him get better. He wouldn't have said this to anybody, of course, because nobody was supposed to like bing in a mental hospital. Liking it would mean you must be really crazy.

Ben was in for clinical depression and suicidal thoughts and actions. Those were the clinical terms for it. Ben hadn't know this for quite a while.

His biggest mistake, he thought, was letting people know that he was smart. If he had just pretended to be dumb through elementary and middle school, people wouldn't be expecting more of him. But every once and a while he'd do something that would amaze the teachers, and so it was well known in his high school that he was "not living up to his abilities."

Or: "an underacheiver"

Or: "not reaching his potential"

Or: "not doing nearly as well as he could be"

Or, basically, a failure.

Ben had tried very hard to focus, but his mind was elsewhere. At first, in his room, his eyes would stray to his bookshelf and he'd be reminded of some book he wanted to re-read. Or he'd glance over at a stack of papers and go to root through them for old letters.

More recently, his parents had seated him at the dining room table, in hard wood chairs, with little else but the salt and pepper shakers to distract him. But again, he couldn't bring himself to focus no matter how much he tried. He would offer himself bribes, sitting on one foot until it fell asleep and promising he wouldn't shift positions until he had a certain number of problems done. But he'd end up staring off into space, and his foot would slip to the floor, and he'd curse himself.

Every night, he would sit there and try to do the work, he would know how important it was, how his parents were counting on him, how they had given him another lecture just a few days ago, and yet he couldn't do it. He would cry in front of his math book, wanting to take up his pencil and work, but just lacking the energy.

When Ben was admitted into the hospital, he was quite happy to find he was clinically depressed. He had not known there was a word for it before, he had previously thought he was just fucked up. Later, he realized, they meant pretty much the same thing.

Dr. Salzman was not somebody you could take very seriously. He was almost 7 feet tall and wore red and white pinstripe suits that made him look like a pepermint giant. And his voice sounded like a grown man trying to do an impersonation of Marilyn Monroe, although for all Ben could tell he always spoke like that. Breathy and low.

"Let's talk about your problems at home" Dr. Salzman said.

"Okay," Ben mumbled and stared at his shoes.

"Do you have trouble communicating with your parents?" asked Dr. Salzman.

"I dunno." Ben said.

"You don't know if you have trouble communicating with your parents?"

"Maybe, I guess."

"Why is that?"

"I dunno."

The conversation continued like this for a good half hour. Ben would try to dodge a question and Dr. Salzman would try to narrow the focus. They called it therapy. Towards the end, Dr. Salzman would always look at his notes and say, "So, Ben, have you had any dreams lately?"

"No," Ben would always say, and he wouldn't be lying.

Chris was much easier to talk to.

Chris was Ben's roomate, a few years younger than Ben but in some ways a lot older. Chris grew up in the city, surrounded by sex and drugs and guns and the myriad of other things that Ben came to know as awful, dirty things. Ben, of course, grew up in the suburbs.

"What's up with your parents, man?" Chris asked.

"They just don't listen, you know? They just, I dunno... they keep talking without really understanding what's up."

"I hear that" Chris sighed. "I'm lucky, my parents are almost never home. When I get out of here, man, first time they're away I'm going to call up my girlfriend, get a couple of six packs and have a par-tay!"

"A girlfriend, huh? I'd heard of those, I'll have to pick one up some time," Ben said sarcastically. They both knew that Ben was a geek, with very little chance of having a par-tay.

"Shit, man, when we get out of here you have to come over some time, I'll get you laid."

Ben told Chris he'd like that, although they both knew that this would never happen.

Ben was on Level III. This was pretty high up in the hospital's patient's food chain. In the hospital, you had to gain levels by showing good behavior and progress. The higher your levels went, the more privledges you got.

Most of the rest of the kids there were on Level I, which meant they got just about no privleges. They had to be escorted to the day room, the dining hall, or the school, and they weren't allowed outside phone calls or visitors except parents. On higher levels you got the freedom to roam the mental health section yourself and even have friends come visit you.

Ben did not use these freedoms too much, though. Partially, it was because he just stuck with his friends who couldn't do all of the things he did. But he wasn't comfortable communicating with the outside, really, and the day room always creeped him out. It was full of adults from the rest of the mental health unit. Ben didn't like the adults very much.

They tended to wear their bathrobes all day long, and watch television as if they were staring right through it. Sometimes Ben would find half-finished crossword puzzles laying about, the only hint that the adults had attempted anything productive with their day.

As Scott had said once, "It's like, you'd think they'd have figured it out by now."

It was past lights out Monday night, and Ben and Chris were laying in bed, staring at their ceiling. When Ben first was admited to the hospital, he had visions that his bed would be one of those adjustable things that was raised and lowered with the push of a button. He soon found out it was just a normal little bed, and worse, he had to make it every morning.

"So you've never slept with a girl before?" Chris was asking.

"Nah... I never really had the chance." Ben answered.

"Man. That's fuckin' weird"

Ben thought it was weird somebody as young as Chris had already had sex, but he didn't say so. There was a lot Chris had done at an early age, Ben found out over time.

"And you've never gotten high, either" Chris continued.

"Nope... I may have been the one kid that D.A.R.E. worked on" Ben said.

Ben heard a rustling and looked over. Chris was staring at him.

"Fuck... I'm jealous of you, man. Serious. There's a lot of stuff I've done already, a lot that I can't take back... I'm only fuckin' 13, you know? You've got something I can't have, you know? I'm fuckin' jealous of that."

Chris's eyes broke off from Ben's, blinked a few times, and went back to staring at the ceiling. Up until that moment, Ben had been extremely jealous of Chris's experiences. Now he wasn't too sure how he felt.

The thing Ben dreaded most each weekday was school.

It wasn't really school, of course. It was a few rooms down the hall with blackboards hung on the wall and Scholastic magazines laying about. The teachers there would get your lessons from your school and tutor you on them as you were inside, so you could keep up on your work. They had to "go to school" every weekday at 9am.

Tuesday morning, Ben tried to skip it. He told the nurses he was sick, that he felt like vomiting. He should have known better than to try to put one over on a staff of medical professionals. They reccomended he skip breakfast and offered him a bucket to put beside his desk. Ben groaned. Not only didn't he get to sleep in, he also didn't get breakfast.

School was bareable only because of the teachers, Mrs. Bedford and Ms. Basilton. The B's, as they were known, were in their mid-fifties, trained and battle-toughened teachers of the harshest types that the Clarke Hospital Adolescant Mental Health Unit. Rather than the velvet-covered steel toes that most nurses pranced around most issues with, the B's were refreshingly blunt.

"You ready for some Trig?" Mrs. Bedford asked Ben. Ben didn't answer. "Ben. I'm talking to you." Mrs. Bedford said. Again, Ben didn't asnwer. "Ben, you're obviously in a snit. But are you really angry at me?"

"No..." Ben admitted.

"Then why are you taking it out on me?"

Ben shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry."

"I know. I hope it all comes out, okay? You want to talk about it a little or get down to math?"

The B's knew that Ben was perfectly able to do trigonometry but unlike his parents or teachers, they were willing to sit next to him for hours upon a time to make sure he actually did. Ben thought this was a huge pain in his ass, but it was effective. In school, almost everybody had given up trying to deal with him, having neither the time or patience. The B's had both.

Ben reluctantly sat down in front of his Trigonometry book and with Mrs. Bedford walking through each problem, began to work.

The two rooms down the hall were officially part of the West Clarke school district. Once, during a snowstorm, all schools were closed and so they had a "snow day" from the school 20 yards down the hall. Ben thought it was funny that in the hospical, the rules presided over logic so much.

There were seven patients on the unit, all of them under 18. The youngest was Chris, who was 13. People came and went every couple of weeks, depending on their isurance money, mostly.

Ben was clinically depressed and suicidal. Scott was manic-depressive. Kerri was anorexic. Chris had violent flashbacks to being beaten by his father. Charles had left a suicide note in his mom's purse and she found it before he had a chance to finish the deed. Susan was depressive and drank too much.

Inside, these things didn't matter too much. The other kids didn't really care exactly what got you in there, for the most part. A few weeks back, a kid had left who had admitted to spending hundreds of dollars a month on phone sex lines. Even with such a easy target, nobody made fun of it.

Out where they came from, everybody was categorized by what their problem was, so in here it was best to forget it. They all focused their attention on something else, anyways.

"This is a fuckin' joke!" Scott was screaming.

Scott didn't want to take his medication, again. Scott never wanted to take his medication. But today he had a particularly bad day, a few hours in family therapy with his parents pleading with him to get better. If he knew how, he would.

Nell stood over him. She was not the sort of nurse who cared too much about her image with the kids, she viewed her job as more of a rule enforcer.

"Scott, come on, you don't want me to have to take points off, do you?" she said.

Points were taken off of your daily chart for anything you did wrong. Points were added when you did things right. At the end of every day you reviewed your chart and what problems you had and goals you met. Points helped you get levels.

"You can take all the fuckin' points off you want," Scott said, "I'm not taking this shit! It makes me sick!" Scott was on Wellbutrin, which made him dizzy at times and made his mouth constantly dry and pasty. He had only been on the drug for a week, not long enough for the benefits to take effect but enough for the side effects to kick in.

Scott picked up the little plastic cup that held the Wellbutrin capsules. He threw it across the room and stormed out of the cafeteria. Scott lost his level that day. The nurses asked him, "Do you realize why you're losing your level, Scott?"

He said, "Yeah. Because you're all fucking assholes."

Dr. Salzman had been asking Ben about his suicide attempt that day. This always put Ben in a bad mood.

When Ben attempted suicide, he had opened his parent's medicine cabinet and pulled out a big bottle of his father's medicine. He proceeded to the kitchen where he got out a 2-liter bottle of coke and a Muppet Movie collectable glass he had gotten at Burger King when he was little. He went into the rec room in his basement and poured himself a glass of soda. He put one pill on his tongue, washed it down with coke, put another pill on his tongue, and again, washed it down.

Ben had been figuring this out for a long time. His mother was at a PTA meeting, his father away at some convention in Cleveland. He knew he'd have the house to himself for another 3 hours, at least, and so with slow, methodical precision he emptied his father's medicine bottle.

And he sat, quietly taking assesment of his own body. Reviewing his choices, he had decided pills were the best way, because he didn't have the constitution for a messy or violent death. Pills would just have him drift off to sleep.

But on the orange, courderoy couch in the basement, Ben didn't feel sleepy. He was feeling antsy, he was tapping his foot over and over, and his stomach began to hurt. He began to wonder exactly how he'd go. His stomach was hurting. Maybe he wouldn't just fall asleep after all, perhaps he'd have a stomach rupture. He didn't know exactly what his father's pills did. He cursed himself for not investing in a bottle of Nytol.

And so, hand clutched over stomach and tears streaming from his face, he grabbed at the phone and dialed 911. Soon after, he was in in the emergency ward of the hosptial, stomach freshly pumped and doctors asking him far, far too many questions. Now was the time he'd rather sleep. But he'd caused too much trouble for that, now.

It turns out that his father's medicine wasn't even dangerous in the doses Ben took, and that the pains he felt were gas from drinking so much soda. Ben hates talking about his suicide not because of the feelings that brought it on, but because he feels that he completely failed at the one thing that he thought would solve all the other things he was failing at.

"Ben, will you tell me what 'Epidermoid' means?" asked Dr. Salzman in their Wednesday morning session.

"It means skin. It's somebody who's got skin, that's all." Ben replied.

Ben was enjoying this. Epidermoid was an insult Ben had traded amongst his friends outside of the hospital. Taken from an obscure science fiction novel, it generally was used to refer to anybody who just didn't get it. He had begun to say it in the hospital, and soon all of the patients were refering to nurses they didn't like as "Epidermoids."

"I think it means more than that, Ben," said Dr. Salzman.

"Well, that's what you're bringing to it, then, I guess," Ben smiled. The nurses and doctors of the unit knew they were being insulted somehow, but they couldn't be quite sure how.

"Ben," Dr. Salzman continued, "we've all noticed you've got a lot of leadership potential. But to use it in this way is hindering everybody's progress."

"I don't know what you mean," Ben said.

"Don't you?"

"No."

"Ben, we're not getting anywhere with this. I think we should return focus to your family again."

They did, and Ben's replies once again dwindled to single words. But the next day, the patients on the unit were told that "Epidermoid" counted as a swear, and points would be taken off if anybody said it again. Ben considered this a victory, and began to circulate the word "Diomredipe" as an alternative.

The day was tightly scheduled for the patients, depending on the day of the week. It was Wednesday, the day for Physical Activities, which Ben was not much of a fan of. Running around and attempting to be coordinated was not what suited him. Nevertheless, he participated in volleyball and basketball games in the courtyard of the hospital, rather than make a fuss.

Of course, playing basketball was difficult when you couldn't touch the other person. The hospital had a strict rule against physical contact. One patient couldn't touch another. The nurses said this is becuase victims of abuse sometimes have a very hard time dealing with touching, although the alterior motives were to keep kids from fighting or getting romantically involved. It was strange, being so close to somebody but not being able to touch them.

That day, after an hour of running about, the coach brought them inside. She lay out mats for everybody and had them lay down. She told them the meditation was a way of releiving stress and that they were going to learn some meditation and relaxation excercizes. She said that working on relaxation could help them control anger and depression.

Ben lay back and listened to a man's voice on a tape giving him instructions on tightening and relaxing muscles, one by one. The man talked in low monotones and described a trip, in a canoe, down a river. Ben tried to hold the picture in his mind, of a canoe in a river in a peaceful forest. But his focus began to waver, and he nodded off.

He woke a while later when the coach was calling out for people to put the matts away. He didn't tell her he hadn't spent the time meditating, but napping, but he felt like she knew anyays. Ben was glad he was not being graded.

Ben had asked for a typewriter, and was clacking away at it in his room. One of the nurses had brought an old electric one from home, becuase Ben said he wanted to write and needed a computer to do it. The computer remained squarely in the classroom, but the typewriter was something Ben could use.

The old thing, dug out from the bottom of a closet, clunked satisfactorally with every key punched. If he hit a key too soon after another one it would jam up, so Ben worked himself into a simple rhythm. He was reaching the point where it didn't so much matter what he wrote as the simple steady process of writing.

There was the time, Ben wrote, that I was down by the stream in back of the house. I must have been 10 or so, I don't really remember, but a bunch of older kids came up to me. They were in high school, I don't really remember their faces but they told me I had to watch out because a gang called The Avengers was out and they would beat up little kids like me. They said if I came with them they knew a place that was safe. So I went with them, down the stream, further than I had been before until they brought me to a really muddly place with trees hanging all around it. They pushed me on my knees and shoved my face in the mud. They told me they were the gang and that I had better watch out from then on out. I kicked and struggled at first, but the more I did so the harder they laughed and pushed me down. Pretty soon I just went limp and they told me not to look up for 10 minutes and if they saw that I did they'd kick my ass. I didn't move for at least 15 minutes. I wasn't angry or afraid. It was just easiest to lay there and play dead.

Ben did not like group therapy. It was fine when they were talking about other people's problems, because Ben very much enjoyed helping them out. He was always good with sympathy, or advice, or just listening. But too often the focus turned on him, and Ben retreated into himself.

It was easy to help other people. They always seemed to have some definate problem to solve. It might be abuse or addiction, but it was usually pretty drastic and clear.

"What's your problem?" Scott had asked Ben when he was first admitted. Ben shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't quite sure. At first he explained that he tried to kill himself, which worked for a while, but soon the question arose: "Why?"

Ben himself couldn't answer. His household, while not perfect, wasn't abusive or broken. His parents didn't exactly give him a lot of slack, but it wasn't horrible. He wasn't terribly popular in school, but he had his small group of friends. He was certainly smarter than most people, as his mother was constantly reminding him, and so had bright prospects for the future. So what was wrong?

Ben didn't know, and this made him more depressed. He felt like a failure in everything he did. He was failing out of school, even though he was supposed to be a genuis. When he did do something people liked, he felt that it was a fluke, that they'd really discover who he was soon enough. He felt that he just didn't understand anything that was happening to him.

This is what Ben knew: He didn't like life and it was just getting worse.

Ben Ledgar grew up with pressure. He was quite the focus in his household once it was discovered he had a very high IQ. Ben himself always doubted the validity of the test, since he didn't feel very smart most of the time. Often it seemed like he was far behind everybody else, that they were running through life with an instruction book he was never issued.

Ben's mother was very active in the community. She was on the board of the PTA, and served as his little brother's Den Mother for cub scouts. Every year she would send out a letter at Christmas chronicalling that year's events. Even though he was oldest, Ben always was mentioned last.

Art Therapy meant you were supposed to draw something to explain your feelings. Everybody pretty much considered these to be very silly excercizes, and after the fourth or fifth time of being aksed to "draw an animal that looks how you feel" they all were pretty sick of it.

Ben was in no mood to draw at all. He fiddled with the pencils and crayons, sharpened them all, and lined them in rows next to his paper, but didn't pick any up to make a mark. The nurse who ran art therapy, Nora, had remarked that Ben had considerable art skills, and so now he felt like he was expected to come up with some sort of theraputic mona lisa every time he sat down.

Half an hour later, when Nora came around to look at everybody's work, she stopped at his easel. "Ben, you were supposed to draw how you feel..." she scolded. "I did," Ben said, pointing to the blank paper. He argued a bit, but still got points taken off for not participating. Nora obviously didn't appreciate art.

It was free time Thursday afternoon, and they were watching The Breakfast Club for the 3rd time that week.

The hosptial had a small library of videos that were available for the paitients to watch. Most were sickening Disney stories, or educational films on the dangers of something or another. The Breakfast Club had snuck in there, even though it was rated R because, as Nurse Mary had said, "it shows people interacting in a helpful and positive light"

By this point they had all seen it many times, and were chanting along to Judd Nelson's monologue: "Stupid worthless no good goddamn free loadin' son of a bitch retarded big mouth know it all asshole jerk! You forgot ugly lazy and disrespectful- shut up bitch! Go fix me a turkey pot pie!" They all liked this part. It gave them a chance to swear.

"I swear," said Keri to Ben, "I love this movie, but it's so unrealistic"

"Well, yeah, it is John Hughes, but I stll think it's pretty cool." Ben replied.

"I mean, really. It's like what Anthony Michael Hall says, you know? What's going to happen on Monday?"

"They all decided to still be friends, though? Remember?"

Kerri looked at Ben sideways, exhaled, and went back to watching the movie.

Friday was field trip day. When Ben first arrived, he found it strange that they would take a bunch of kids from a loony bin ("Adolescant Mental Health Unit" the nurses would always correct him) out into the world. They explained to him that getting out into the world was very theraputic. You had to be at least Level II, and there was a nurse for every two patients, anyways.

It was a wonder to Ben, at first, that nobody attempted to run away. After a while there, he realized that most people didn't even have the strength to try. At least you knew were you stood, inside.

Keri, of course, had a fit. "I can't go out," she cried, "What if somebody sees me?" She was told she'd be docked points if she didn't participate, and she eventually conceeded that none of her friends would be at the roller rink to see her anyways. It was three towns over and nobody where she went to school would think of roller skating as a social activity.

Ben was enjoying his anonimity. At the roller skating rink, he affected a British accent. He feigned confusion converting his shoe size into "American" and asked earnestly for the people at the snack bar to explain exactly what sort of cheese was on the nachos. Since he wasn't very good at roller skating, staying mostly to the side and making people beleive he was British was a much more enjoyable option.

Unfortunatly, Scott grew bored of rolling around in circles and soon joined Ben and attempted to put on an accent of his own. He ended up sounding like Julia Child with a speech impediment. Ben was certain that they could see through Scott's phony accent, and know that he was faking it, too.

"Shut up!" Ben hissed. "They'll find out who I really am." But Scott didn't let up. Ben sulked for the rest of the trip.

"Hey, there, Sport, what's up?" Andy, one of the new male nurses on the unit, was talking to Ben. He called just about everybody Sport.

"Not much. How's Charlene?" Ben replied. Charlene was Andy's on-again, off-again girlfriend. Andy was the sort of person who beleived you had to talk about your own life to get trust with a patient, and Ben had been getting regular reports.

"Man, I don't know. Yesterday she was all talking about moving out, she even packed up all of her makeup. Today, she was saying she didn't want to ever leave. I don't know if I'll ever understand her."

Ben had never met Charlene, but he was intruiged with her. She was always doing something bizzarre, unexpected. Sometimes Andy jokes that she should be in the hospital, but Ben was sure she just needed somebody who could take care of her. Andy was nice and everything, but he was certain he wasn't giving her the attention she needed.

"So what's new with you, Sport?" Andy asked. "I heard you had family therapy again the other day."

"Yeah"

"And..?" Andy asked.

"And... family therapy still sucks." Ben replied, and walked away.

Weekends could be dangerous. There was very little scheduled, and huge clumps of free time. It was Saturday, and Ben was engaged in a game of poker with Kerri and Charles. There wasn't a lot to do inside during free time, so they played poker for chips. They made an elaborate system for how chips could be cashed in for other people's food (a white chip = somebody's chocolate milk, a blue chip = a dessert, etc...) but nobody ever redeemed them.

Over the pager came the call, "Dr. Armstrong, please come to the Adolescent Mental Health Unit room 13, Dr. Armstrong, please come to the Adolescent Mental Health Unit room 13." There was no Dr. Armstrong at the hospital, it was a page used when an emergency situation called for all available staff to help with an unruly patient. Room 13 was where Ben lived. With Chris. Ben darted down the hall.

From ahead of him came screams. Ben recognized the cries as Chris's. Chris would have flashbacks of his father, and become wrapped in the visions, punching and kicking at anybody within distance. Chris had gone over a week and a half without incident, and Ben had begun to hope Chris was clear of them.

Ben was stopped ten yards from his room by Agnes, a huge nurse with a mothering quality. "Don't go any closer, sweetie, we can't have you in the way..."

"What's going on? Is Chris okay? You'd better not hurt him..."

Ben heard a struggle from his room. Chris was screaming, and there were voices of nurses telling him to calm down. "Chill out, there, Sport... just relax..." Chris could not hear them, of course, he wasn't anywhere near this world.

Chris didn't like to talk about the flashbacks very much. When Ben would ask them what he was like, Chris said that it was a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from. Chris remembered every detail, though, even if he had no real control. If Ben continued to ask about it, Chris would merely begin to brag about his assault on the nurses. "You should have seen that asshole," he'd say, "I kicked him right in the nuts!"

Ben waited in the hall with Agnes and Kerri and Charles. After a few minutes, they brought out Chris, still screaming. He was in The Bag, which was a full-body restriaint. "Get him out of there!" Ben began to wail to Agnes, "Please, let him go...."

"Darling, we can't, you know that, he's not safe...."

Ben watched as they brought Chris to the Time Out Room, a room you could go to if you needed a place to calm down, punch the padded walls, or scream. The room was soundproof, with a big window so a nurse could sit in the hall and make sure you didn't hurt yourself.

Chris stayed in The Bag, in the Time Out Room, for the rest of the day. When Ben would pass by and look in, he'd see Chris, face flushed, screams echoing around him but not reaching outside.

The next day Ben met with Dr. Saltzman again. The session proceeded as usual. The Doctor had read the charts and reports from the night before. He asked in his breathy voice, "So, how do you feel about what happened with Chris?"

"I dunno... it sucks."

"Why does it 'suck'?" Dr. Saltzman actually managed to pronounce the quatation marks around "suck".

"It just does."

They danced around the issues for another 45 minutes like that. The session was drawing to a close, where Dr. Salzman usually asked what Ben had been dreaming. Instead, he looked into his notebook and said, quietly, "Ben, I spoke to your insurance company today."

"Yeah, so?"

"They want to know... what we need to know, Ben, is if you can be safe outside of the hospital?"

"What?"

Dr. Salzman looked up. "Ben, will you be safe outside the hospital?"

Ben looked down. "No," he said.

Dr. Salzman exhaled, long and breathy. "I'll talk to you again tomorrow, then," he said.

Ben's father took a very hands-off approach to his son. He owned a small business, selling wholesale auto parts, and he spent most of his time in his office. What little interaction he had with his son usually revolved around homework or some discipline issue. A few months ago, Ben had gotten into the habit of walking away from school. By the time Mr. Ledgar reached Ben's room, he had been briefed on the issue at hand and came in fuming.

"My God, Ben, instead of going to English you, what, you just walked away?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Why in the hell did you do that? Where did you go?"

"Just the park, that's all. I didnít think anybody would miss me."

At that Mr. Ledgar would launch into a lecture on how dissapointed he was, how Ben was wasting his God-given talents, and how he was hoping for far far better things from his first born son. And, while he was at it, heíd bring up Ben's grades, the state of his room, how he sleeps all day, never gets anything done. It was a regular laundry list of Ben's failures, and after he was done, he'd leave and Ben wouldn't really talk to his father again until the next time he got in trouble.

Things tended to feed off one another, inside. Frustration lept from person to person, who were angry at seeing their friend break down, angry that nothing could be done, and angry that they were in the same boat.

There was tension throughout the next day. Chris was back, but still shaken up by his flashback, even if he would never say so himself. They slogged through school, mostly silent. Ben had been inside for almost a month now, he knew silence wasn't a good thing. When everybody complained all of the time, that was normal. When they shut up, it meant something was going to go down.

And so it went, all day long, silence ringing in the air, tension pulling eyes towards the ground.

Ben's father was particularly uncomfortable during the family therapy sessions that were held every week. "Well, Jesus, Ben, why donít you talk?" he'd say to his son, who was staring at the floor.

Ben would shrug.

"Look, we want to help, you know that, right?"

Ben nodded sheepishly.

"Every time we get you in these sessions you just clam up! can't you just say something?"

What Ben would have liked to have said was "I want to do something. I want to not be this way. I just donít know if I can. I know everybodyís on my case to do something, get better, be smart, get good grades, shape up. I just don't know how. I may never know how. It might just be who I am, and that scares the hell out of me." Ben did not say any of these things.

Ben forced the word "Sorry" through a dry throat.

"Jesus, Ben, we're not here for us, we're here for you!" his father said.

Ben did not respond to his father's opinion.

When Ben came back from his family therapy, late Sunday night, he knew something was up. Kerri was sitting silent in the hall, staring striaght ahead.

"What's up with Kerri," he asked Agnes.

"I don't know, honey, she won't talk at all..."

Ben walked over and sat next to her. "What's up, Kerri?" he asked.

"Nuthin."

"'Cause, you know, you don't seem very happy."

"How the fuck should i feel?" Kerri blurted, "I'm in a fuckin' mental hospital."

"Kerri," Agnes called over. "Watch the language, or I'm going to have to take off points."

"Fuck points" Kerri mumbled.

"What's that?" Agnes said.

Ben could see Kerri was shaking, her nails were digging into the palms of her hand. "Please, Agnes," Ben said, "not now, just leave her alone"

"I'll leave her alone if she can handle herself alone." Agnes said.

"I can't handle a damn thing!" Kerri cried, "If I could I wouldn't be in this place! I wouldn't have to have people watching over me 24 hours a day. I could go out and live a normal life like everybody else, but I can't, can I? I'm going to be like this all of my life, it's fuckin' useless..." Kerry's voice trailed off into sobs. She'd surfaced from tears for a moment to begin a sentence. "I just can't..." and then she couldn't go on.

Ben reached over and pulled Kerry into a hug. "I'm sorry, Kerry," he said, "I know..."

"Hey!" cried Agnes, "No physical contact!"

"For God's sake, she needs somebody to hug her!"

"That's what we're here for, darling."

"No," screamed Ben, "you're here to get on our fucking cases for every fucking thing!" And Ben began to cry. And he and Kerry sat, in the hall, each balled up in a sobbing mess, a few inches from one another, each fearing that they'd never stop feeling this way, each fearing that soon, people would stop caring.

That night, Ben lay in bed and tried to sleep. Anger flushed his face, his muscles tensed. There was a sense he had no place to go. And tomorrow would be Monday. It would all start over again.

Leaving the hospital could be as easy as pushing open the fire doors and running. But Ben had smuggled a spoon from his tray a few days back and discovered that with it he could unscrew the screen covering his windows. He stashed it inside of a slipper in case he ever needed it.

That night, fists clenched with anger, he had taken the spoon out of its hiding place and opened the screen. He looked out into the cool night air. His window was on the second floor but the ground sloped up near his room, making his jump only ten or fifteen feet. He braced himself against the sill and lept.

For a moment, he was in midair, and it felt like he was floating. There were no forces pushing against him from any sides. For Ben Ledgar, it was the most frightening feeling in the world.