They we’re an unlikely pair, more to say, they were an improbable pair. Both boys, the same age, arrived at Harbor View Mental Care Facility on the same day at roughly the same time. Both were well below the average age of the usual patients and neither was there under the suspicion of drug use.
Unlike their fellow inmates who generally were under the charge of possessing a great disregard for the pain they caused their legal guardians, both boys were committed for failing to kill themselves. Though the accusations were strangely similar in both cases, the two boys were certain to have a different breed of trial.
They watched their older compatriots fight and cry; they learned to swear then and to defend themselves and never once thought, among abortion tales and confessions of manslaughter, that they’re lives appeared better in comparison. The two boys would never be treated as victims, none of them would as a company policy, but in the case of the teenage patients the illusion could serve as a carrot on a stick for as long as the counselors saw fit.
The counselors were great phonies, overworked and undermanaged croakers, checking down the list making up most of their allotted time. The boys watched them very closely as they’d humor a patient with a moment to plea, reassuring them with every step that they too believe their incarceration was a result of undue and unfortunate circumstances, and when their appeal was through asking them with absurd confidence, “Now don’t you see where you went wrong?”
But that kind of sadism was spared the two boys. They were to be seen separate from the group, in tight, bright rooms and emptied gymnasiums. The doctors and counselors would first note the boys’ strange way of speaking, their intellect and shared disassociation with their fathers. Then they’d see stranger similarities, the boys’ accents seemed to switch between them or merge into a whole other dialect, they simultaneously devolved into more reclusive states and answered only with short and contemptuous condemnations.
A different strategy had to be developed and the boys could see the doctors were grasping at straws, breaking down the old habits and rethinking how again to communicate with children. The pair fed them false information, manipulating their every move, when they were restrained they would escape and sit on the stretchers in the darkness and wait for the counselors to unlock the door. The counselors were at their collective wit’s end and when they’d come through the door the boys wouldn’t say a word no matter how they yelled at them and struck them.
The decision was made a month into treatment, the boys were in some way feeding into the other’s illness and if only separated they would be both be cured. The boys saw the flaw in this logic and yet, over the next two weeks, they were transformed. Each settled into an accent all their own, though neither doctor nor nurse could remember what they sounded like upon their arrival, that concern was quickly overshadowed by their change in outlook. They confessed time and time again to their fault in all that had previously occurred and spoke of every incident with an unprecedented clarity of thought.
They were deemed a landmark success and slated to leave the facility and return to their families with only the prerequisite follow-ups with a local counselor. The success of each boy’s treatment had miraculously erased all previous association between them in the minds of the gleeful staff and so not a second thought was giving to their coincidental simultaneous release date. The doctor was certain whatever they may have shared would now become just another part of the sad story they would abandon there on the day of their departure.
So the doctor was not surprised when the day came and both boys spent their mornings, taking account of their few possessions, cleaning up and quietly containing their joy from the other patients whose release dates were still pending. Neither boy even shared the same space until one counselor called all the patients into the rec room to ask them, as an assignment, to each write a letter addressing themselves. The two boys were encouraged to participate, despite the fact that they would be leaving before lunch, perhaps under the hope that their success stories would result in self-affirmations the whole group could benefit from.
The boys, now in their own clothes, were an unlikely pair, more to say, they were an improbable pair. Now, no one in the room could see any reason why they would be anywhere but on either sides of the room, writing. But the letters they left would make that day forever a blur in the mind of all who witnessed it, for when the counselor that night, in the boys recent absence, sat down to read every letter aloud to the group he read their letters back to back and they read:
Dear me,
I know we haven’t spoken in some time now but it doesn’t mean that I don’t think about you and how you are. They’re giving me pills now, I think in the end they figured that the source of my problem was that I couldn’t tell the truth. I hope its not a truth serum, I hope it just stops me from talking at all instead of yapping out whatever’s in my head all the time. Anyway, I’m heading home to find out if I’ve changed as much as they say I have.
Good Luck,
Me
Dear me,
It’s great to hear from you and I’m glad you get to leave this place. I’ve missed you a lot too and I know you weren’t allowed to speak to me. They’re giving me drugs too; I think they said I just had a hard time remembering what was important. I think it’s a drug that is supposed to help me focus. I hope it doesn’t make me remember everything. They tell me I’m going home today and everything will be better.
Good Luck,
Me
