maybe he's there

Junghee can feel the looks she's given. She knows they're making sure she stays in the room but she doesn't care. She knows they're waiting for her to lose it and for her to cry and trash about but she won't give them that satisfaction.

She won't give them what they need to justify the reason she's here. She doesn't need to give them a reason to confine here anyway because they believe they're doing the right thing. That they know what's best for her.

Except they don't. Nobody knows. Junghee doesn't know either. They all know why she's locked away in the smaller room, the one with only a bed. They don't want her to hurt herself. That's what they say anyway. Junghee knows she wouldn't hurt herself even if she had the opportunity to.

They think she wants to die. That's not a lie. But Junghee doesn't have the energy to actually kill herself so she doesn't. She just lays in her bed, waits for something to happen, waits for something to take her away. Physical illnesses doesn't come to those who do nothing but lay in their bed however.

The white coats come in regularly. They look at her the same way the nurses do but they talk behind her back, writes stuff on their boards and never listens when she wants to say something. Junghee is pretty sure her voice isn't working anymore.


In the beginning she had tried. They had wanted her to talk and she had talked. But they never listened. Only wrote down something that wasn't right, something that didn't fit. Something that wasn't Junghee. Something that was only her disorder, a disorder she never really thought she had to begin with.

Junghee doesn't look anymore when they place the white pill next to her. She doesn't look at them when they inject the saline to make sure she stays hydrated. Junghee doesn't look and Junghee doesn't care. Not anymore. She's so awfully tired and mentally exhausted when they let her back into the room she had left.

They smile at her as if it's a big achievement to be out of suicide watch but is it really an achievement when their looks never leave and the CCTV’s still capture her every move. She barely wants to interact with the other people in her ward but if she doesn't, they'll deem her suicidal again and they will put her back into the white room, only occupied by a bed.

Junghee barely cares what happens to her but out here is more options than staring into the white ceiling.


Junghee doesn't make any friends. Making friends in a psychiatric hospital is stupid and it'll never last. The people here are either restrained like her, here because someone believes it's the best way to treat them and because they won't be able to survive in the real world and others are only here for a night. Junghee is pretty sure they're right, that she wouldn't survive in the real world. But what does it matter when she's never going to try anyway?

She curls up in what is supposed to be a living room with a blanket and a book. There are criminals right outside the window in their fenced garden because her ward is right beside the criminal ward.

Before she got in suicide watch she used to watch them and figure out what crimes they did. Some was easy, the big guys who made a stupid decision together with their developmental disorder.
 
Junghee had never had troubles finding crimes to fit those.

There had been a person who hadn’t fit it with the rest of them before she got into suicide watch. He's still there though his hair is longer now and colored black.

When she had first spotted him it had been pale blond. He was skinny, beautiful. Strikingly androgynous and Junghee hadn't been able to find a crime that fit him.

She hears the whispers from the other people admitted to her ward. Junghee, the one who's so young. Junghee, the one who must be more insane than the rest of them combined to be here and to have been in suicide watch so often. Junghee, who doesn't fit. Except she does.

She never smiles at the elderly women who are here again after another psychosis and she never glimpses at the relapsing eating disorders as they walk through the hallway to find their own ward. They never look at her openly but she knows they gossip.

The windows are always shut to the outside world. The little fresh air they get is from the air conditions. They don't want them to run away. It has happened before, they say. The rumors go that the psychotic old women run away from time to time and die in the cold of the winter before somebody finds them.

Junghee never attempted to run away but as she watches the slim boy in the fenced garden reading she wonders what it would actually be like. Then another white coat finds her and asks her to leave the window and go to her evaluation instead.

Junghee becomes more and more enamored with the boy in the criminal ward. She doesn't know his name and she cannot even come up with a crime he could've done to put herself off of him. But she doesn't doubt that he's criminal.

In fact, she would be surprised if he was a nice guy who accidentally ended up in this hell-house.

But Junghee wants to know more, wants to be sure, wants to hear. She wants to know how people end up locked up in here when they look like they are such functioning humans.

They get eye contact through the window once. Junghee is staring at him from the window in the supposedly living room, sitting on her chair covered with a blanket while the nurses take care of another elderly lady who suddenly stood and shouted in psychosis.

His gaze makes ice slip down her spine and she shivers, turns back to her tea and ignores the garden for the rest of the time she's allowed in the open room.


She asks a white coat 3 weeks later who he is. The white coat doesn't want to answer. In fact, the white coat almost makes it sound as if she's hallucinating by answering as if it doesn't know who he is. But Junghee isn't hallucinating. Junghee knows that he's true, that he's a person and not a fragment of her imagination. Junghee knows when she has a psychosis. This isn't it.

They up her dose as if it will make her forget him. They limit her time in the living room and pulls her chair away from the window, certain that Junghee wouldn't dare sit in another chair. She's a creature of habit and true to her already established routines, she stays in her chair that now turns towards the TV in the corner.

But Junghee hasn't forgotten the man who shouldn't be in the criminal ward, the man who doesn't belong there for whatever crime he has done.


Junghee asks the nurse to color her hair. The nurse doesn't want to. Junghee almost wants to throw a fit if she believed it would make it grant her wish but the nurse will probably only tell the white coats and someone will find reason to lock her up in suicide watch again.
 
She hasn't done anything bad against herself the past months, though, not as they know of. Junghee would never tell them if she did anyway.


She has a nightmare one evening and gets up. The white coats are sleeping and the nurses are relaxing as everybody is supposed to be sleeping. Junghee stares out of the window in her room before she silently slips out and on tiptoes hurries towards the big room that faces the garden.

She gasps when she leans against the window, the cold humid surface sending chills through her nose and raising goosebumps on her skin. There's nobody in the garden but taking the steps to stand where she would have never walked before is a big enough accomplishment for the girl.


Junghee sighs as she sits in her chair and stares at the white coat in front of her. It asks her if she wants to tell it something and she shakes her head. It talks about psychosis and hallucinations and self-harm and Junghee has heard it all. She could probably recite everything it is going to say but she doesn't say anything, just lets it go through everything as if she hasn't been here for years already.

When she leaves, she casts a stolen glance towards the garden and spots the slim boy again.

The nurse wants to cut her hair short. Junghee doesn't know why but lets them do what they want anyway. They talk about her hair being too long but Junghee never found her hair interesting. They cut it in a bob cut that makes her slim face and sharp bones almost attractive.

The nurse seems happy with the job they've done and Junghee sends them a small smile and ignores all the compliments.

She gets up in the night to look at the garden, to overstep her own boundaries and she sees them looking at her when she yawns during breakfast, during lunch, during dinner.

They want to know why she's tired and she shrugs and tells them she was always exhausted. The house drains her energy and they know it. They want it to be like that so she isn't giving them any troubles. Junghee doesn't say anything about her nightly adventures. It would only turn chaotic anyway.


Junghee sits in another chair closer to the window 2 months later and the white coats whisper to the nurses and the old ladies gossip. She ignores them, gets eye contact with the boy in the garden and the ice runs down her spine and the goosebumps raise on her arms but she doesn't pull away. Just keeps looking at him and watches his lip crawl upward in a smirk before he turns around and walks back into the ward when someone calls for him.

Junghee keeps looking at the garden until she's hushed away.


When she sees him in the hallway she does a double take. But he's there, standing in the middle of the hallway, talking to a white coat as if it's something he's been doing all the time.

The white coat is ignoring him while drinking of their cup of coffee and he seems to grow more and more agitated. Junghee is pulled away by a nurse long before she actually gets to talk to him.

She doesn't see him for another 5 weeks until he's suddenly there again, standing in the hallway talking to another white coat who is writing something down on a board.

Junghee hurries over, pats his shoulder and he turns around, sends her a smirk and nonchalantly moves away to follow the white coat. Junghee doesn't know why he's dealing with the white coats but the white coat looks around and calls her name and she freezes and hurries back into her room.

Junghee wants to know his crime but she's afraid of asking him. He doesn't know her and she doesn't know him. But he's making her curious and she wants nothing more than to talk to him.

He's not like the rest of them. He's looking beautiful but as soon as she makes a step towards him he walks away and Junghee is left staring at the white coats who soon feel alarmed by her behavior and looks through her room.

She's confined to suicide watch again when they find the pills hidden under her bed.

Junghee is looking at the white ceiling. She wants to die but she's too exhausted to off herself. She also wants to know who the criminal boy is. She wants to know what he has done. She wants to know why she's confined in here with the white coats pumping saline into her veins to make she's hydrated while they keep a watchful eye on her.

Junghee is fine. At least as fine as she'll ever be.

aUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks for reading.