Photography © Shannon O’Connor

 

Christmas on South 2

On Christmas morning, in the locked ward, the patients attempted to eat their breakfasts of soggy pancakes and sausages, but nobody had the energy because they were thinking of holidays in their collective pasts, when they might have been happy, and would have been opening presents, and laughing, enjoying the holiday.

Now they cried inwardly, because they didn’t want the employees to see, and get written up.

Tracy and Jim took it the hardest because they were the youngest. They had become friends, but they had nothing in common. Tracy had delusions, Jim anger.

Tracy lifted her pancake to her mouth when Jim screamed, “Squirrel!”

“Is there a squirrel here?” Tracy screamed. “Where?”

A squirrel ran around the day hall, down the walls, and over the table.

The small animal looked frightened, like it didn’t know how it ended up inside a locked ward.

“Go squirrel, go!” Carla screamed. “I want you to win the race. I want you to win it for all of us.”

Mark the mental health worker came into the day hall. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Squirrel!” Tracy screamed.

“How the hell did that get in here?” Mark asked. He tried to shoo it to the door of the unit, but it didn’t work.

“We should call some grounds people to get it out of here.”

“We should make it our pet,” Jim said. “We could use a mascot.”

Tracy and Carla laughed.

Mario, the older man on the unit, scratched his head. “I ain’t never seen anything like that before in here, and I been here off and on for years.”

“Maybe it’s a Christmas miracle,” Tracy whispered. “It’s God sending us a sign.”

“Don’t start rattling on about God again, Tracy,” Jim said. “I know how you can get.”

“But God sent me here to save all of you,” she said. “I think the squirrel is the miracle I needed to let me know I’m the one.”

“Let me think about this,” Jim said. “How did the squirrel get in here? If it got in, could we get out?”

“It would have to be a very small opening for it to get in here,” Mario said. “A vent?”

“If it’s a miracle, then it wouldn’t need a vent,” Tracy said. “Maybe we could wish hard enough, and we could get out.”

“I need to get the hell out of here,” Carla said. “I got kids, and they need their mom. I keep telling the doctors I’m not crazy, but they don’t believe me.”

“Tracy, you need to come down to reality,” Jim said. “You’re not wishing yourself free.”

Tracy sat next to Jim and looked at the ceiling and the walls, searching for a hole that the squirrel could have come from.

A makeshift Christmas tree of rolled-up green construction paper sat next to the TV. Red paper ornaments hung on the windows of the day hall. The patients had made them in crafts group.

“I don’t want to eat this breakfast,” Mario said. “They’re trying to make us feel better, but being here is horrible. I have nothing in my life worth living for.”

“You have to stop saying stuff like that,” Jim said. “You’ll never get out of here.”

Tracy closed her eyes, and put her hands together in prayer.

The rest of the patients in the room became silent.

“Please God, if the squirrel got in here, could we somehow get out? Released, and live normal, happy lives?” She closed her eyes tighter.

“The world is a messed-up place,” Jim said. “With the new administration, and that dumbass evil president? We’d be better off staying in here for the next four years.”

“They won’t let us stay that long,” Mario said. “I know, I been dealing with this demented place forever.”

“Then we should stay as long as we can,” Jim said.

Tracy continued to pray.

A worker from facilities came in the day hall.

“I heard you got a squirrel in here,” he said. “Where’d it go?”

“Don’t kill it,” Tracy said softly. “It’s our miracle.”

The custodian stepped into the hall.

“The squirrel ran over there,” Mark said, pointing.

“I’ll find the bugger, don’t worry.”

The patients sat in the day hall silently. Tracy prayed.

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright,” someone sang from their room.

“This really sucks,” Jim said, clenching his fists. “It’s not really like Christmas.”

“We have to find miracles where we can,” Tracy said. “If you want miracles, they’ll appear.”

“We’ll never get out of here,” Jim said. “And if we do, what then?”

Christmas is bleak on the locked ward, as it is everywhere in the world when little hope exists. But if there is a glimmer of something good, should we reach for it? Nothing is forever, except death and tattoos. The entire country and the patients on the unit will do their best to survive, searching for miracles whenever it’s possible.

 

Shannon O’Connor has an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has been published previously in Oddball Magazine, as well as 365 Tomorrows, Sci-Fi Shorts, Ginsoko LIterary Journal, and others. She lives in the Boston area, and works at a hospital. She doesn’t like most Christmas music.