Journal Sketch

Susie Patterson did not look through the window. She couldn’t. The glass was what she believed they called frosted, so all that could be seen through it was a softened bluish light and an occasional patch of shadow passing. 

Susie leaned against the door anyway, looking at the single pane of frosted glass, and through a haze of medications, guessed by the speed in which the darker patches moved by, which might be doctors, patients, nurses or visitors. 

This was not Susie Patterson’s first visit to this wing of the hospital. The Mental Wing, a coworker, Diane Billings had called it once. Diane’s father had been brought here, when his mind could no longer restrain the urges of his body and he was found one too many times walking the town square, naked but for his shoes, socks and oddly enough garters, held in place by his still impressive calve muscles.

Susie’s first visit—that’s what they called these trips, ‘visits’, although she had little say in her coming—her first visit had been when she was fourteen. Her mother had brought her, telling the doctors only that Susie had been extremely agitated lately, that she was having difficulty sleeping. Asking if maybe they could, ‘give her a little something’. 

In truth, her mother had found Susie several nights, sound asleep. Only not in her bedroom. Susie had been found in the back yard, curled into a sort of burrow she had dug out in the lawn, near to the tool shed, with her bare hands.