Inescapable Escapism

“We just want to keep you safe, Grace,” a voice said, the tone saccharinely sweet, even with my limited awareness of what was going on and where I was. “That’s all that matters.”

I blinked, looking around at the sparse office. It looked strange, purposeful in its emptiness. There was no clutter on the desk, nothing on the bookcase apart from a couple of thick tomes, and nothing sharp. Nothing that could be used as a weapon.

That thought stopped me. It was a strange thing to notice. I didn’t normally; it didn’t usually even cross my mind, but I was acutely aware of it. Everything in the office seems so deliberately careful. Even the computer seemed like it had been specifically designed to be safe. It was housed in a clear plastic container that appeared to be built into the desk itself, making it impossible to get to or throw. All of the wires were hidden behind the plastic too.

“How does that sound?” a kind voice asked, and my eyes snapped up to the man sitting behind the desk with a smile on his face.

He was looking at me, clearly expecting me to respond to him, but I had no idea what he’d been talking about. How was I supposed to answer him? He was asking for my opinion on something, but I didn’t even know what it was. My eyes darted towards my mom, hoping she’d answer for me or help, but she was just looking at me, irritation building on her face.

I looked back at the doctor, starting to nod unsurely before stopping myself. I could ask. I could just ask him what he was talking about.

“Um… sorry, can you explain that again?” I asked.

It felt like a mistake. I wasn’t sure where the burst of confidence came from that made me think it was okay to ask him that, but the look on my mom’s face made it desert me again immediately. She seemed annoyed at me, bordering on angry, and that made me flinch. I didn’t mean to; it was automatic.

I knew the expression too well. Any time I caused my mom to look at me like that, it meant that I’d done something she didn’t like. I’d not acted the way she expected me to, and that meant that I’d be shouted at or just endlessly insulted in the car on the way home. And for days afterwards. I knew that she’d bring up how stupid I was, how I needed to learn to actually pay attention for a change and just be better for weeks to come.

But I needed to ask the doctor what he was talking about. He was asking for my opinion on something; he wanted to know what I thought, and I couldn’t just agree without knowing what I was agreeing to. That felt wrong, stupid even.

I expected the doctor to look annoyed or irritated at me, just like my mom had, but his lips stretched into a kid, well-practised smile. It was understanding and sympathetic, and that made me feel uneasy.

“Do you remember what we were just discussing?” he asked.

My heart stuttered in fear and panic, and I started to search my memories. I couldn’t recall anything he’d been saying to me. I knew that I’d been sitting in the office for a little while. I could remember that, but I had no clue what we’d been talking about. His voice was fussy and indistinct in my memories. It felt like I couldn’t access them properly. Like I’d been cut off from them.

I was in a new world. That made sense. Sometimes, when I first entered somewhere, I didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t remember anything from my life there for a little bit. No. Not from my life in that world. That wasn’t what was happening. My brain just took a bit longer to make up the details of the fantasy. My imagination wasn’t fast enough.

“Sorry,” my mother said, her tone apologetic yet sharp. “Grace has been quite forgetful lately and doesn’t pay attention enough.”

The way she said it made it seem like she was gritting her teeth or like she longed to reach out and hit me. Not hard, just firmly enough to jolt me out of my mind and force me to pay attention to what was being said. I shuffled away from her slightly, trying to move out of her reach, but the leather chair I was sitting in was bolted to the ground.

Another thing I couldn’t use as a weapon if I wanted to. The urge gripped me. I could pick it up and swing it at my mom or the doctor, just to see what happened. My hands laced together on my lap as desperation raced through me. It was just a thought, nothing more. I didn’t actually want to hurt anyone, and having that thought didn’t mean that I would. It was just a thought, just an intrusive thought that didn’t mean anything.

“That’s alright,” the doctor said, holding up a hand to stop me as I opened my mouth to apologise. “It’s part of why you’re here after all. Would you like me to explain what’s going on to you?”

“Yes, please,” I said, relief washing through me as I dug my nails into my hands.

I needed to pay attention as he spoke. I knew that, but I could feel my mind wandering again. I tightened my grip, feeling the sharp pain in my hands, anchoring me to the present.

“You’ve been struggling with your mental health recently,” the doctor told me, his words a little surprising to me. “You’ve reported low mood, anxiety, paranoia, and feeling out of control. You’ve been seeing one of my colleagues for a few weeks about it. Does that sound familiar?”

I didn’t remember seeing anyone about it, but the rest of what he was saying sounded familiar. It was true in my other world too. In reality. Not so much the low mood, that hadn’t been as bad for a few weeks, but I was definitely feeling anxiety and paranoia. I wasn’t sure if I’d say I was feeling out of control, though.

I was in control. I knew what I was doing. Mostly, at least. In my real world, it wasn’t something I struggled with. That only happened when I went somewhere else. Like, sometimes I didn’t go where I wanted to, but that wasn’t really a problem. I wasn’t trying to go to a specific world and not being able to. It only really happened when I was exploring. Or when I fell asleep. Just like I was then. I was in a dream, or I’d slipped into another world in my sleep, just like I had with the last one. The one where I’d been murdered by a fae, a mystical creature that didn’t even exist in my world.

Or any world. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. I wasn’t going to different worlds. I wasn’t exploring or becoming a spy or an assassin or anything else that I thought I was. I was just trapped in my own head. Retreating into my fantasies and daydreams and losing hold of reality. That’s what it was. That’s what the other doctor had told me it was.

I think so,” I said, the words hard to say.

The doctor nodded at me, making me feel like I’d given the right answer to a teacher in school, and looked at the screen in front of him.

“Ah, yes. It may help to hear it in your own words?” the doctor suggested. “I have some excerpts from the diary your previous psychiatrist asked you to keep. You’ve said… ‘I feel like I’m going insane. Some days, it’s like I’m watching the world pass me by, but I can’t interact with it or do anything to stop it. I can’t control what I do. It’s like I’m a puppet, and someone else is pulling the strings. I make stupid decisions that I don’t want to, like flashing people or hurting them, and I can’t control it. Now, whenever a stupid thought comes into my head, I’m terrified that someone else will take over, and I’ll act on it. I don’t know what to do, but I can’t keep living like this’. Do you remember writing that?”

My face was burning, and I could feel my mother’s eyes boring into me as I nodded. I had been in that world before. I remembered that. I’d wanted to do something dumb and impulsive and didn’t want to do that in my real world, where I’d actually need to deal with the aftermath of what I’d done, so I’d gone somewhere else. I could still remember the look on Duncan’s face when I flashed him.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay in that world for any long. I started to reach for my dizziness, fleeing as quickly as I could.

“We can help you, Grace. That’s why you’re here.”

The gentle voice stopped me. I wasn’t sure if it was morbid curiosity or what that kept me there, but I felt myself push the dizziness aside.

“You can?” I asked.

Part of me wanted that. It wanted to know what it would be like to actually talk to a doctor about my mental health and how I was doing. I’d started to feel better, not quite so numb and sad all the time, so I didn’t exactly need to speak to anyone about it, but I wanted to know what it would be like.

“We can,” the doctor promised. “I know you’ve already been on a few different medications, and they haven’t made too much of a difference, but we can try some other ones whilst you’re here. I think we’ll start by increasing your dosage of Seroquel, removing the paroxetine and trialling venlafaxine to help with your anxiety and paranoia. Just on a low dose, thirty-seven point five milligrams twice a day, to see how you tolerate it, and we can increase it if needed. How does that sound?”

I nodded, unsure what else to do. He was talking about medication, I was pretty sure, but I didn’t recognise any of the names or what they were. I didn’t really know anything about medication for mental health or what it did, but he was a doctor. He had to know better.

“Grace, we’ve waited weeks to see Doctor Johnson. You need to actually speak to him,” my mother said, her tone too pointed and eager.

She clearly wanted me to say something, but I had no clue what that could be. She normally preferred it if I just sat there and didn’t speak, though. It felt strange that she was encouraging me to talk, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but the doctor just shook his head.

“It’s alright,” he told my mom before looking at me. “I’ve already read all of the notes that your previous psychiatrist forwarded over, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”

Interest rose within me. I wanted to read those notes. Curiosity had gripped me and refused to let go. I longed to see what they thought of me and my other worlds. Did they think I was insane, or was there more to it than that? And what did they think of my mom? The doctor sitting opposite me, Doctor Johnson, didn’t really seem to like her. He barely spoke to her, looking at me more, and that had to be infuriating her.

Surely, they would have seen through her mask too. They would have seen through the pretence that she puts up. It was their job, after all. They should have been able to see straight through her feigned concern to the excitement that she was just barely able to hide. She was enjoying it too much. She was enjoying how much I was struggling too much.

It had been bad. I could finally remember that. After I flashed Duncan and a few other things happened, a few more stupid decisions, my anxiety got worse. I started having panic attacks, being unable to breathe or move or do anything. I didn’t want to go to school. I couldn’t. The thought of being surrounded by everyone who knew what I had done was too much for me to cope with. Even recalling it was making my heart start to pound.

I turned my phone off and threw it under my bed. That helped. It meant that I wasn’t jumping every single time I got a text or a notification, paranoid that it would be a message from someone in my class mocking me for what I’d done or calling me names. I couldn’t do anything other than stay in my room and refuse to leave.

There were other things too, though. I remembered those too. I kept feeling it. The creeping sense of dizziness would sneak into my mind and grip me, making it feel like I was on autopilot or like I was sitting in the backseat of a car, able to see everything that was happening but not controlling it. That terrified me. It made me constantly on edge and scared because what if it happened again? What if I was forced to watch myself do something stupid without being able to stop it from happening?

What if that was just my life? What if the doctors couldn’t do anything to fix it or stop it from happening, and I just had to live, constantly on edge and waiting for the puppet master to reappear and pull the strings again, ruining my life? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live like that.

“Do you have any questions, Grace?”

I blinked and looked up at the doctor, trying to hide my panicked and fast breathing.

“No,” I replied, the tone much steadier than I expected.

I was good. Good at hiding things from others. I’d had a lot of practice. I hid what was happening for weeks from my mom. She only realised because the school called her to say I wasn’t going in. Phoebe too. She’d called. A wince crossed my face as I remembered that. I hadn’t been answering Phoebe’s messages, and she must have gotten scared because she called the house phone and spoke to my mom.

Mom had loved that. I’d heard the gloating edge to her voice as she told Phoebe that I didn’t want to speak to her and to stop calling. She didn’t like Phoebe, never had. She was thrilled to finally be able to say that to her. Gleeful, almost, despite how much I’d been crying. My heart ached. I hated that I’d upset her so much, but I just couldn’t face her. I’d need to talk about what was going on with me, and that would just make her so worried.

I didn’t want her to worry about me. She didn’t deserve that. She deserved a friend who wasn’t such a mess, someone normal. And she’d find that. With me gone and out of the way, she’d be able to make more friends. I wouldn’t be holding her back anymore.

“Great,” Doctor Johnson said as he typed on his computer, the jarring clacking too loud in the otherwise silent room. “I believe your bag has finished being checked, so I’ll call a nurse to come and bring you to your room.”

“Checked?” I asked.

“Yes. We need to make sure that you haven’t brought in anything that isn’t allowed or that could be used to hurt yourself. I don’t think that you would have, of course, but it’s ward policy to check with every new admission.”

“The nurse explained it when we first came in. Were you not listening?” my mother demanded.

I could remember it, kind of. A smiling guy in pink scrubs had said something before I’d given him my bag, but I couldn’t remember what he’d said. I couldn’t remember any of the words.

“That’s okay. It’s completely normal to not catch everything that’s explained when you first get to the hospital,” the doctor reassured me. “It can be a very jarring experience, even when the decision is voluntary.”

I nodded numbly. Voluntary. That meant I chose to go to the hospital, I thought. I did. Kind of. It had been my mom’s decision. Well, less of a decision and more of a threat, but I don’t think she expected me to agree to it. She’d said it for a while, kept bringing it up when I refused to go to school or leave the house. She’d said that she’d drag me to a psychiatrist if I kept it up.

And she did. The faint bruise around my wrist was proof of that. She’d literally dragged me out of the house, ignoring my tears and panic attack, and had driven me two hours to a man who stared at me blankly for ten minutes before writing me a prescription for something. Antidepressants, maybe.

“I’m sure it is,” my mom agreed, but it was clear she was still annoyed at me.

“But I’m sure you’ll settle in very quickly!” the doctor said with a reassuring smile that I tried to refuse. “The nurse will be here in just a minute if you want to say your goodbyes to your mum. But don’t worry, you’ll still be able to call her once a week.”

I nodded and glanced at my mom, unsure what to say. Mom’s face changed, the mask being pulled tight as she turned towards me.

“I know you didn’t want to come here at first,” she lied, her tone solemn, “But I’m glad you agreed. It’s the best place for you right now, and they’ll be able to keep you safe here.”

That’s what I wanted. I just wanted to feel safe, but her words sounded wrong. They sounded practised, rehearsed. It was as if she’d been preparing for the exact moment for days, repeating what she was going to say over and over in her head or maybe even in front of the mirror. It sounded hollow. Empty and emotionless.

I nodded. It was all I could do. I knew she wanted me to agree with her or to thank her for taking me to the hospital, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She only suggested it as a threat, something that she thought would scare me into doing what she wanted, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She’d only followed through because she expected me to back out. I don’t think she really believed or understood how bad it was for me.

Silence stretched through the room, and I saw a muscle in my mom’s jaw twitch. Even the doctor looked uncomfortable. He must have seen awkward goodbyes before, but he looked so relieved when a knock came from the door.

“Come in,” he called a little too quickly.

The door opened, and the nurse from my memories appeared.

“Hello again,” he said with a smile. “All done here?”

“Yes, thank you, Andrew. Can you show Grace to her room?” Doctor Johnson asked.

“Of course!”

The nurse cocked his head at me, prompting me to stand. I did, anxiety thrumming within me as I walked across the room.

“Are you not going to give me a hug?” my mom asked, causing me to come to a stop.

“Sorry,” I muttered, moving back towards her and wrapping my arms around her in an awkward embrace.

She hugged me back, holding on for a few seconds longer than I expected.

“I’ll miss you!” she called as I let go and started to walk towards Andrew again.

I glanced back at her in surprise. She sounded like she meant it, and there were even tears welling in her eyes. Was she actually going to miss me? That didn’t feel right. She didn’t like having me around or enjoy spending time with me. She sniffed softly, dabbing at her eyes before sitting down and sending the doctor an emotional smile.

It was an act. That made more sense. She was trying to make the doctor think she was a better mother than she was. She wanted him to think that she was heartbroken at the thought of leaving me in the hospital rather than actually being worried about me, and it looked like he was falling for it. He smiled at her and rooted around in his drawers, pulling out a box of tissues and offering them to her.

“Yeah, you too,” I muttered as I left the room.

“I really hope she’ll be okay,” I heard my mom say as the door shut between us.

I had to fight not to laugh. It was so ridiculous and obvious what she was doing. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle about it.

“So, how’d the meeting go?” Andrew asked me as we started to walk along the corridors.

The powder blue walls were spotless somehow. That surprised me. The hospital seemed busy. I could hear voices and laughter floating out of rooms around us, and that made me nervous. I didn’t want to be around other people, especially not people my age. They scared me, even though I knew that was stupid. I had nothing to worry about. They wouldn’t know who I was or what I’d done.

“Huh?” I asked, realising the nurse was looking at me and clearly expecting an answer.

“Doctor Johnson? I told you you had nothing to worry about. He’s a sweetheart, isn’t he?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, feeling my lips stretch up into a smile that fell quickly. “It was okay.”

“Good!” Andrew said enthusiastically as we stopped outside a locked door.

He swiped his card on the reader and pulled the door open for me, but I hesitated. I didn’t want to go through it, and I wasn’t sure why. I was scared, terrified. Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t just stand in the hall forever. I needed to go through the door.

Taking a deep breath, I walked forward. The door shut heavily behind us, locking me away from the rest of the world. The heavy sense of wrongness only grew as we continued to move through the spotless ward, my shoes squeaking loudly on the spotless vinyl flooring.

“This one’s yours,” Andrew said, coming to a stop outside a door.

I had no idea how he knew it was my room. There were no signs or nameplates on any of the cream doors. It was all completely blank, but I tried to ignore that and how uneasy it made me as I stepped into the room.

It was surprisingly nice inside. Sparse, like Doctor Johnson’s office had been, but nice. There was a single bed against one wall, an empty bookcase next to it, and a desk against the back wall with a giant window above it. I couldn’t help but move towards the window. I stared at the world beyond, confusion building in me.

Something looked off about the field behind the hospital. It just… didn’t quite look real. The colours were wrong, that’s what it was. All of the colours looked just a bit too vibrant. It was as if someone had turned the brightness or the saturation up too high.

Was it the medication I was on? Doctor Johnson had mentioned that. He’d said something about what I was taking. Could that be making things look weird? Surely not. The pills couldn’t mess with my eyes, right? Then, what was it?

I turned back towards Andrew, who was still standing at the door, but my eyes moved past him, focusing on the silent corridor beyond. It was empty. I’d not heard anything or seen anyone since we went through the locked door, but there had to be other people there. We’d seen them, and the doctor had mentioned other patients. But then, where were they?

“Is everything alright?” Andrew asked.

Distrust bubbled in my stomach.

“Yes, it’s just… where is everyone?”

His smile grew slightly.

“What do you mean?”

It was wrong. His tone was wrong.

“The other kids. Where are they?”

Andrew stepped forward into the room, a hand going towards his pocket.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,” he said, his tone carefully concerned.

He was so tall. I hadn’t noticed that until he was standing right in front of me.

“Am I the only one here?” I asked.

He pounced, one hand finding the back of my head, the other pressing against my mouth. Something hard smashed against my lips, hurting them, but I clenched my teeth and refused to open my mouth. I tried to push him away from me, but he was stronger than I was. His fingers found my nose, pinching it shut.

“Just take the pills,” he grunted, his grip on my mouth tightening.

I didn’t want to. I wanted to fight against him and not take whatever he was trying to give me, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to die again, just like I had in the other world. I wanted to be somewhere safe and easy.

Without meaning to, I opened my mouth. The pills were shoved in and began to dissolve the moment they touched my tongue, filling my mouth with a bitter taste that made me want to gag. But Andrew didn’t let go. His hand was clamped over my lips until I swallowed.

“Good girl,” he said, stepping back as if nothing had happened. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“What was that?” I demanded. “What did you give me?”

His smile returned.

“Just a little something to help you sleep.”

Confusion built within me.

“But… it’s not nighttime,” I said.

The nurse’s eyes flicked towards the window.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said immediately, starting to turn.

The sun was setting. It had been so bright just moments before, but it wasn’t anymore. I could see the sun moving lower and lower in the sky.

“What’s going on?” I asked, turning back towards the nurse.

“Nothing,” he said in a reassuring tone. “We just want to help you.”

I took a step back, bumping into the desk and having to lean against it heavily as my knees became weak.

“Why?” I asked, but my voice was slurring.

My vision had started to swim. I could barely focus on the man’s face.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”