I hadn’t been outside the small confines of this room. I really didn’t want to go anywhere. I was
almost afraid to. We sat in silence. It was so weird. As I looked around the room, I realized how scary it was to be here. There was nothing breakable. Nothing anybody could hurt themselves with. It was nothing like my room at home. It wasn’t colorful. It was dull and morose. It made me feel so alone. No pictures on the wall. No CD player. All I wanted was out of this place. It made me feel so trapped.
"You’ll get used to it," Kian said almost reading my mind.
"Somehow I doubt that."
"No. You will."
"Lemme ask you something."
"What?"
"Do you talk to shrinks and stuff while you’re here?"
He looked at me like he was shocked that I asked that. Like I was dumb or something.
"Think about it. You’re the one who tried to kill yourself, remember?"
"I guess that’s a yes then?"
"Yeah. It’s not all that bad really."
"Do they, like, put you on drugs or anything?"
"I don’t know. Everybody’s different and I think you’ve had enough drugs to last you a lifetime."
"No shit. Kian, I’m scared of this and I don’t wanna be here. I wanna go home."
"Don’t count on it."
"You’re optimistic, aren’t you?"
"I’m just being truthful. I can’t help myself."
"I will get out of here. And it’ll be as soon as I can."
Kian rolled his eyes at me. I threw my hands up. I wanted to talk to him some more. There was nothing else to do since everything that was in a normal wasn’t allowed around people like us. I think he sensed that too.
"What happened for you to do this to yourself?" he asked me. "What was your life like before comin’ here?"
"I didn’t do this to myself. I know I didn’t. Like you believe me anyway. But really my life was just the same as any normal eighteen-year-old. I went to school every day and got good grades. I was into sports and had a lot of friends. I had a good home life and my parents never did anything to traumatize myself into this. And I had a boyfriend, but he’s probably long gone already hearing that this happened. His name was Travis. Maybe the stress just got to me. I don’t know." I thought about Travis and wanted to see him right at that instant. I missed him already.
"Kian, please don’t bring that up again. Just thinking about everything makes me so depressed and I haven’t even been in here a day."
"Ok. My fault."
He got up and moved toward me. He sat next to me and put his arm around me.
"I won’t say anything again. I promise."
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it in his. The door opened at that moment.
"Laura, your parents brought some of your things in for you."
A woman came into the room and handed me a bunch of my clothes. I guessed we weren’t allowed to have shoes because of all the safety measures. Yeah, like I could kill myself with a shoe. You bet.
"Thanks," I replied.
"After you change. You’re wanted downstairs. The doctors want to see you."
"Ok."
The woman left and I went through my clothes for some stuff to wear. One problem. Kian was still standing there.
"Would you mind?" I asked.
"Sorry," he said and walked out the door shutting it behind him.
I hurriedly threw my clothes on and went downstairs. A thought came to me as I went. How in the world did I get put in the same room as Kian Egan? The place seemed to be more crowded than I would have imagined it to be as I looked in the rooms going down the hall.

I was starting to feel nerves in my stomach churn. I’d never talked to psychologist. I’d never had any problems like this before. I went down the stairs and found myself standing alone. I looked around. This place seemed to be like a house more or less. I stopped and looked into one of the doors around me. It appeared I was in the right place. People who looked like doctors sat around waiting for me. Whatever you do. Don’t break down in front of them, I thought. Stay calm.
"Laura, I presume," one of them said.
"Yeah, that’s me," I replied.
I went and sat down in one of the chairs and they seemed to start to fire questions at me. It made me feel uncomfortable. I felt that all eyes were on me. Some of the things they asked me were really strange and I thought they had nothing to do with what had happened. As soon as they were done, I fled from the room. Leaving there lifted a huge weight off of me. I went back into the room and found Kian there staring off into space. He turned and looked when I entered the room.
"How’d it go?" he asked.
"Ok, I guess. It was just really weird. I kept telling them that I didn’t do this to myself and somehow I don’t think that they believed me."
"The rest of the time won’t be this bad," he said.
"That’s just their way of seeing how mad you really are."
"I feel so tired," I said. "I think it’s the stress of this whole thing."
I laid back on my bed. I wondered if I had had the right answers to all those questions. Or even if there were any right answers. As all these things ran through my head, I looked out the window. It was already getting dark. Daylight was fading away. Darkness covered the January sky. I closed my eyes trying to review everything that happened before I came here. The last thing I remembered was being with Travis and some of my friends at a party. Amy and Tiffanie were there. And that was all that came to me at that point. I must have dozed off after that.

***

I sat and watched Laura as she lay there on her bed. I just met her today. She’s the only bright spot in my life at this point. She’s a brilliant girl. It’s such a shame that she tried to end her life like that. Don’t think I’m selfish, but I’m a bit happy that she’s here with me. I haven’t had anyone like this in my life for so long. I haven’t had any contact with the outside world for awhile. She’s the first girl I’ve been close to since the days when I was in Westlife. Those are long gone. As she fell asleep I turned away from her and started to stare at the wall. I don’t know long I watched the whiteness in front of me. She stirred in her sleep and I heard her cry out. I could make out that she was saying the word "no" several times. She threw her arms out in front of her and seemed to scream. I would have loved to have known what was going on inside that head of hers right at that moment. She came out of it and sat straight up. She had fear in her eyes.
"Laura, love, are you ok?" I asked.
"Yeah. Bad dream," she replied.
Whatever it was it really had scared her.
"That scared the hell outta me," she said.
She went back to sleep. No sooner had I fallen asleep, I could hear her again. This time it seemed to be even more of a strain on her. She was so upset. I looked over to find her with her head in her hands. This had to be more than a dream for her. I got up to check on her. I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. She gazed up at me in the dark.
"Something’s really wrong. I know why I’m here and it’s not my fault."
All I could do was look at her. I didn’t know what to say.
"Kian, they tried to kill me. My best friends tried to kill me."
She stood up next to me and stared into my eyes, tears rolling down her face. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her. She sobbed into my shoulder. I held her there for several minutes.
"Don’t cry," were the only words I could utter. This only made her cry harder.
"Why, Kian? Why? Why would they want to do this to me?"
"I honestly don’t know, love. I couldn’t tell ya."