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Breathing

yoha_ahoy · 2006-12-13T00:46:06Z

Breathing I knew he was clinically crazy. I visited him more often than I visited any other patient at the McCorkle Hospital of the Mentally Ill. He wasn’t as bad as Alison Lorie down the hall who could only ever sing children’s songs. Old MacDonald was her favorite recently. It at least allowed for some creativity in making different animals noises. Last week she made up a Bluber that make a screeching snorting noise. Either way, he definitely wasn’t the least mentally ill there. But sometimes, on rare occasions, you could actually carry of a normal conversation with him until he blew up at you. His condition was unable to be diagnosed. Even the best doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him. He had extreme swings of emotions all through out the day, sometimes becoming quite violent, throwing objects and occasionally injuring the nurses. He couldn’t concentrate on anything except art. He never received a full education, before it got bad. He only made it part way through middle school. His parents couldn’t even take care of him now; his condition had gotten so horrendous. He was an eighteen year old boy, living in a hospital room. I have been coming to McCorkle’s after school for a year and a half. It started out as volunteer hours for school that a bunch of us did together. But I had become attached here. I don’t know why, but I kept on coming once a week for a long time after everyone else had fulfilled their hour requirements. Sometimes I’d come and visit twice a week. Then sometimes I’d come three times a week, until eventually I was coming everyday. Halfway through my junior year in high school, last year, all the staff here knew me by name. Now, I know all of their names too, as well as patient’s names. A few weeks ago, Robert painted a picture. He normally paints gorgeous landscapes and still lives from his head, but never before had he ever done a portrait. This portrait was of me. One of his psychological nurses had asked him about the painting and he would grow eerily calm until their questions would get too annoying, and then he’d explode. This had happened on a couple of occasions, and was an interesting development. It was a new pattern found in his usual random explosion of extreme nonsensical emotions. So, they got permission from his parents, some corporate whoop-dee-do’s, to let me see him regularly as some experimentation. Of course, they had no idea how much this delighted me. I had been visiting him more often than usual already. I didn’t even care that I was paid to write down my observations of him in the time I spent with him. I am in love with Robert. Nobody knew it. But in those few moments of normal conversation, I had fallen for his very bright and creative mind. He was quite handsome too, if you looked past his demeanor. He had nice sandy blonde hair, somewhat shaggy from a slight lack of consistent grooming. You see though, I don’t think that he has control over his actions. His logical mind is trapped inside his emotionally and creatively centered left-brain. Yes, and that would explain why he is so artistic. I think that is what’s wrong. Either was, I record his actions and mood swings each day. He never gets angry anymore; at least not when I’m around him. The nurses always informed me that he was usually angry or depressed when I wasn’t there. Nowadays, I can walk into his room and he’ll light up like a child on Christmas. “Hello Robert!” I’ll say with a cheery grin. He will stand up out of his chair and shuffle a bit, turning around from side to side as if to check his room for something hiding from him. His tall and slender 6’2” body was framed by the second story, barred window facing the street outside. I shut the door behind me. “What are we doing today, Robert?” I would ask him. Usually we would watch TV together or people watch quietly out the window. Occasionally he’d show the rare feeling of happiness when a particular character would show up on TV, or certain people would walk by outside. He would get excited, bouncing and squeaking while smiling. On one or two of these instances, he shouted my name. “Cari! Cari!” “I am right here, Robert,” I’d say. He would turn from the TV or window to look at me. He would always look confused. Once, he placed his forehead on the windowpane and sighed, stroking the window where he saw the brunette woman standing. One day I walked into his room and he jumped up from his chiar shouting, “Cari!” as if he had been waiting for m, as if he knew that I was coming. “Hello Robert!” I said with a smile. “Cari!” he said again coming up to me and taking me by the shoulders. “Yes, Robert, it’s me,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t go into a fit of rage while also wishing that he might actually know me by name. “What are we doing today, Robert?” I asked him my usual question. He had a serious and concentrated look on his face as he turned me around, still keeping me towards his easel set up in the corner of the room. From there, he pointed at my hand to the paintbrush teetering in the open jars of paint below on the easel’s small tray. I picked up the paintbrush warily and looked at him. He smiled at me and then pointed from the paint to the empty, white canvas. “Pretty,” he said. “Yes, Robert. You make very pretty painting. Then are very nice,” I said. His brow furrowed as he struggled to say, “Make pretty.” “Oh, I don’t know how to paint, Robert,” I said. He frowned, looking very unhappy, on the verge of another episode. But then, fortunately, he clamed, and then slowly become excited. His breathing rate increased rapidly, coming close to hyperventilation as a giant goofy grin spread across his face. Then, the next thing he did was the most surprising thing he had ever done yet. He took my hand, still holding the paintbrush, into his own big gentle hands. We dipped the paintbrush into the dark green paint. We lay down the first stroke, the green smearing over the pristine white canvas. We made several small vertical strokes before reloading the brush. As we continued this way, Robert’s breathing slowed, as did mine, until we both relaxed into a state of flow together. Together we painted until I had to go. When it came time for me to leave, I turned around, laid a hand on his shoulder, and smiled. “We’ll continue this tomorrow?” I asked. He grinned. I took that as a ‘yes.’ I so wanted to kiss him right then, but I resisted. On his records, I wrote that I watched his TV all afternoon while he painted. The next day, the same thing happened, but also, he was more normal and we had one of his rare conversations as his left-brain attempted to reboot. “It’s so calming,” he said out of the blue as we painted what just looked like blotches of colors so far. “Painting?” I asked. “Yeah,” I agreed. “No,” he said quietly. “Being with you.” “Oh,” I said, slightly blown back. “Well, painting is too, but…” he trailed off. “You’re so pretty. I love your brown hair.” I blinked and stopped my hand. He looked at me. “I’m sorry. Was that wrong to say?” he asked innocently. I turned around to face him. “No. Not at all. I just didn’t expect that. Why do you talk now and not at any other time?” I asked my most persistent question that I always wondered about. “I don’t know. My mind won’t let me. Today is a good day,” he responded. His voice was deep and a bit crackly from under use. “It is very hard for me to communicate on my average day,” he said with intelligence. “Yeah?” I asked him to continue. He walked over to the side of his bead and sat down. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m usually limited to one or two words before I get frustrated and give up. That frustration, the emotion part of my brain is the only thing my brain can express. But it can only express it in extremes. Hence the emotional explosions,” he chuckled sadly. I walked over to and sat next to him, listening intently. “You always seem to calm me though. I didn’t know why for the longest time,” he said, “until I think I found the answer on TV and in my books. “TV?” I asked confused. “I think,” he said taking my hand, “I love you.” I just stared at his hands, still amazed at the fact that he was holding mine. Nothing else registered. “What did you say?” I asked looking up. “I love you,” he repeated, looking me in the eye quiet sincerely. “You what?” I asked, just noticing that he had the warmest brown eyes ever. He breathed out a laugh. “I’m not completely ignorant,” he said. “I know what love is.” “I- I never said y- you didn’t,” I stuttered. I laughed at myself. “What?” he asked looking slightly upset. “That- that makes me incredibly happy,” I said. He cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. “I love you too,” I said smiling. “I’ve had a crush on you for the-“ I never finished my sentence because he had smothered me with the most enthusiastic amateur kiss ever and I loved him for it. That day my report read again that he had painted and I watched TV. For days after that, all we did was paint together. He never did speak normally again, beyond shouting, “Cari!” when I came in each day. For days the report read that he painted and I watched TV. One day, the head nurse, Matilda, told me that no progress was showing in Robert and they could no longer pay me to visit him. “That’s fine,” I said. “Can I come see him anyways?” I asked. Matilda quite reluctantly allowed me to. Then one day I came in to see Robert as usual. “You can’t see Robert anymore Cari,” Matilda said, stopping me in the hallway near his room. “Why not?” I asked alarmed. “His parents don’t want him to have anymore visitors,” she said sternly. “Why not?” I repeated like a dumb parrot. “I am not at liberty to say,” she said. “You are not family.” My jaw dropped and I ran out of McCorkle’s as fast as I could. I darted across the street and collapsed onto a bench under a naked tree in the park. If Matilda couldn’t tell me, then that could only mean one thing. Robert was dying. He couldn’t die. I looked at the face of the McCorkle building. Robert’s light was on in his window and I could see his silhouette. He was leaning his head against the window, his finger picking at something stuck on the pane. No, he was stroking the window. He was looking at me. Then it clicked. All those times he shouted my name at the TV and at the window, it was at girls that looked similar to me, medium, long brown hair, a little on the short side, and slender. He really did love me. That was it. I had to see him again. That was the only think I could think of for the longest time. Finally, after two days of fretting and planning, I figured out that I could use the big ladder from the garden shed to sneak through his window at night. So, the next evening, in the early hours of the morning, I snuck out to the hospital and quietly set up the ladder. It was a small town; no one would notice anything. Once I clambered into his window, I noticed him lying in bed. I tiptoed over to his sleeping form. He was pale. His breathing was shallow, with few breaths in between. He was hooked up to a machine that beeped slowly. The numbers barely changed. I sat next to him on his bed. His eyes flew open and the beeping sped up. He couldn’t smile because of the tube in his mouth, but I could tell he would have been because his gorgeous brown eyes simply glowed. I took one of his hands in mine and squeezed it. He weakly squeezed mine back. I smiled and ran my hand through his hair and sighed. He sighed too, his heart rate slowing. I laid my head on his chest and I soon felt his hand in my hair. It stopped down on my back and he sighed again. The machine next to his bed beeped spastically once or twice before it set out a long, high-pitched tone. Matilda rushed into the room and gasped as my tears soaked into his shirt. Then I saw it. In the corner of the room sat out painting. It was finished. It was set in a field. It was the two of us lying in the green grass, just as we are now. And he is smiling down on me, just as he is now. Kinda weird, I know. But hey, I haven't written a short story in ages. Plus, I think it's pretty good for it being written when I was half asleep anyways. :P Only very minor editing has been done so far. Critiques are appreciated! Thanks! :D

sunxkissedxme

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Points 797

Reviews 22

Tue May 31, 2011 8:00 pm

sunxkissedxme says... · Tue May 31, 2011 8:00 pm

I really liked this story. Robert is so sweet, and the ending was amazing. I like how that got to finish the painting. This was very well done, I couldn't stop reading until I finished.

Fantastic job!

So many people treat you like you’re a kid
so you might as well act like one,
and throw your television
out of a hotel window.
–Gerard Way

Quote

People say I love you all the time - when they say, ‘take an umbrella, it’s raining,’ or ‘hurry back,’ or even ‘watch out, you’ll break your neck.’ There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen for it, my dear.
— John Patrick, The Curious Savage

Breathing

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