Let the windows Fog
Let the windows Fog

(A short passage/story I wrote describing how waiting feels like in a psychiatric facility)
-Pranjal Dhaka
(04/02/2018)
I had been waiting all day in my pajamas, staring out of the window. It would keep getting foggy and I’d have to get up and wipe it with the sleeves of my sweater till I could see the cars entering and leaving the hospital parking, clearly again. I was supposed to go back home today. Mother was going to reach the hospital office by nine in the morning and as the nurse said, I’d be out in not more than 10 minutes. She even allowed me to take a few books with me from the hospital library that I hadn’t finished reading entirely. “No one hardly ever reads them here anyway”, she said. It was four in the evening by now, and the staff from the hospital office is cleaning up their desks. The resident patients ward would soon be locked in a couple of hours. I don’t think mother is coming today.
I think she did mention that she might have to go to my brother’s school. I remember going to these school meetings with her. She would meet every single teacher of mine and buy chocolates if the teacher said something nice. Sometimes, she would even argue with the teacher if they complained too much about me. She would look at me for hours as I pretended to sleep in her lap; quietly, trying to match my breath with hers, knowing that she is awake and looking at me. Sometimes, she would sing too. I would always tear up a little first and in sobs eventually, whenever she would sing. These kinds of things always made me feel guilty of the fact that I hated her immensely (arduously, spuriously but passively). I think she always wanted to live a little more, through me. I just could never hurt her, till I eventually did. But somehow, I feel a deep sense of loss today, like a silent metaphor of utter doom, an impending swallow of nothing but dead air, a tremor in the tummy. I think my nausea is coming back.
But today was somehow different. This is the second time that I was admitted in the psychiatry wards. It is a little far from home. It’s a one-hour drive on the outer-city highway, and another twenty to reach home through the city traffic. Mother takes two hours to reach. I have been diagnosed to have adjustment disorder by a team of two psychologists and a psychiatrist who would meet me every alternate day like routine. The discussions were the same everyday. “Why did you run away from home at night? Were you not happy?” the nurse would often say as she passed on half a dozen pills after breakfast. “Most of these scars don’t really go away easily, why would anyone hurt himself like this.” she would almost scold me as she changed the dressings. I liked her more than the pasty and dull faces of the white coats, taking notes and making observations. I felt like a naked body kept in a drawer, like the ones that are in a morgue. Every question is an incision right through my guts. I could feel the pain, as my intestines would run in knots with every single progression of their postmortem.
I really miss mother today. I wanted her to come. I wanted to go back home and arrange the books in the shelves according to their genre and not their height (it would annoy mother so much, but she would let me do it regardless). I wanted to go to the kitchen she prepares the dinner and eat the raw carrots till she would throw me out of there. I would go running with my brother, and maybe play some tennis later. I won’t play chess with him though, he has become really good lately. But I guess mother would not be coming today, and then she has work for a week. She should have told me, she wouldn’t be able to come. I don’t feel like unpacking anymore. Another week in the hospital ward till I get to go back home, might as well let the windows fog.
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