Chapter 3

I used to spend much of my time listening to the small talk between nurses while pretending to assemble Lego sculptures. I once heard a comment that made perfect sense about the sounds I heard during the night.

The men were standing and leaning against the double door that kept me and twenty other crazy people locked in the recreation room, talking casually about the constant headaches they felt from the echoes that crossed the concrete walls and went down to the floor where the doctors rested.

Everything is audible in this place, said one of them. I think that's why those who arrive with simple memory loss leave with dementia.

Everything has always been audible in this place. The screams during the various attempts of the nurses to sedate the patients, the chairs that crawl in the lobby, and even the cough of those who occasionally catch a cold.

The sounds echo because they cannot find the exit through the small windows covered by grids and dark screens, and it is this same echo that finds the most paranoid, wrapping them in a bubble full of nightmares and insecurity.

The end of the staircase allows the view to the east of the psychiatric campus, circumvented by its imposing walls of thick and heavy blocks.

Before reaching the last steps it is possible to see through the windows — which are too high for us to get close — the trees swinging hard in a clear sign of rain approaching.

Noelle is just a step away when she follows my gaze and smiles at nothing. She once told me that she loved the rain, especially the noisiest ones. He said that the loud sound was not able to muffle the voices in his head, but it was enough to reassure them.

Unlike her, the rain usually indicates one of my worst moods. I know that due to my total aversion to the weather, somehow, the rain is linked to some memory that my subconscious has taken away from me.

As soon as we cross the extensive east corridor, we are divided by sex. The boys accompany the male nurses, while the girls stay in the initial line. When we split up, we are observed as creatures that can attack at any time.

The looks of pure disdain that nurses throw are not threatening enough, so they are always carrying small suitcases.

During one of my attacks, I discovered in the worst possible way that there were sedatives in the briefcases. Before completely erasing it, I could see the smile of satisfaction on the lips of the nurse who caught me and it was at that very moment that I realized how intense the happiness of nurses was in sedating a patient.

I could imagine her saying, "I got one!" And the others applaud your success.

Yawning, I look away from the sedative briefcases and find the reflection of a bright smile in the line of the boys. I narrow my eyes and guide my attention to the number of boys and men who should. I recognize the sound of laughter before I even see its owner.

He is standing on his side, almost leaning against one of the cold walls, smiling as if he were in line in a public bathroom and not in a psychiatric clinic. Besides Noelle, he is the only intern with whom I was able to have some kind of conversation.

The friendship with Noelle made all the difference because we are always together, as for the boy, he belongs to ward three. Our conviviality boils down to light implications during meals and occasional bumps through the corridors.

I learned some time ago that when we make new friends, are completely crazy, or almost get there, a kind of link is created. Even if their world collapses, they will always be there to collect each of the shards and unite them again.

Noelle is the only person to whom I can tell all my dreams and forebodies without feeling truly crazy, but it is the aura I always see around that boy that guarantees me a promise of complicity never made.

Her brown hair which reaches shoulder height is fastened with a thin, black alloy. He keeps his arms crossed in front of his body and one side of his face glued to the wall.

When he smiles again, I see one of his dimples appear on the right side of his face. I don't recognize the boy he talks to, but for a moment I'm fascinated by his black hair and blue eyes.

The eyes of the unknown, torn like that of a cat, have some kind of light of their own, a glow that makes me question what a person like him does in a place like this.

I'm about to divert attention when the boy with dimples moves a millimeter of his body and smiles at me. Your happy and clear smile would fit better if we were in some kind of hotel enjoying the holidays, and not hospitalized in a clinic for crazy people, still, I correspond with him.

I would like to say that we started to be friends because he also realized that I may be crazier than him, but he would be inventing some kind of situation that could never have occurred with this boy.

The courtyard has always been the most inhabited area by crazy people. That day though, it was just me, Noelle, and a nurse. The area that disaggregates from all the rest of the cement path because of its two small steps has 80 square meters, divided into black iron tables and a flowerbed where colorful flowers are born.

The cement floor of this area is decorated by pebbles that usually get slippery in rainy seasons. The flowers in the garden were stained by the rain that had fallen earlier, the perfume strong enough that the memory could be fixed as a reminder in my brain.

As I was still at the beginning of my treatment, the bad days were very frequent. Feeling the earth on my fingers was an attempt to find any distraction to keep my mind busy, even if that activity seemed like something I would never do in good conscience.

Noelle was sitting in one of the seats around a table and eating ice cream in a cup. The nurse walked from side to side, his hands inside the white coat and his eyes attentive to my movements.

There were a few days when the nurses tried to please us with some privileges. We could ask for anything and they were obliged to fulfill our request. It was some kind of reward that made St. Carolin's preference for tired family members of relatives with mental problems.