Chapter Two: The Dreams

Chapter Two: The Dreams

It was like being born into the arms of a concrete wall. Except less lovingly.

She could feel a bone break - or at least what she imagined a bone-break felt like. She was definitely bleeding, from her knees and elbows from being thrown to the ground at the very least…

Allyson was having the dreams again. Every night she would fall asleep between the crisp whiteness of the hospitals sheets. Every night she’d wake up at three a.m., the harsh light of the nursing station the only evidence of life besides the terrors that circled in her brain pulling and tearing. She always screamed after the dreams. Her crying gasps would echo. The nurses would always hurry in, not wanting Allyson to disturb the other patients. She overheard the word “delusional” stated between staff persons as she drifted into the blank emptiness of the drug induced sleep.

~*~

“We’ll have to increase the dosage to 10 mg. I can’t believe the Haldol isn’t working more effectively. Please, give her the IV as soon as possible,” Dr. Archer said.

Archer’s Monday was not going well. They had had to restrain Allyson today. The girl had been muttering about “The Returners.” She had claimed that the year was 2153 during the most recent evaluation. She believed she had been brutalized to such an extent that she had thrown herself against the wall of her room repeatedly, frightening the other clients and alarming Dr. Archer.

“She was getting better,” he thought to himself.

Just a week ago, Allyson had been far less psychotic. After over a year and a half in the hospital, Archer had begun thinking about moving Allyson to a PREP program for release into a group home. He had just started conversing with her social worker, and now this – a new delusion more violent and persistent then the last. It was clearly discouraging. All this begged the question: What had caused Allyson’s recent flight from reality, and how could he make her better again?