Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Patient

Prologue

When we dream (we are told), no more vines of good or bad bind us to the earth. There are only endless possibilities. We are free.

When I dream, the tangles only seem to gnarl and thicken. I become foreign to any beauty or love I once felt. I wake up begging––for help, help to undo their grip.

No one is there.

What beauty can I behold? What love beholds me? I will know––only when I pull loose the vine roots, freeing myself, and we fall together.

1.

The synthetic calm seeps its way into the twisted crevices of my mind and hits me like the moon shining fractured light on the anticipation of a creeping shadow. I sit here, my vision cloud-rimmed, as they tiptoe around me, all too familiar ghosts.

Familiar. I despise this word. Everything about my life is familiar, and everything familiar is a torment.

“Oleander?”

A girl, crooked jawed, light toned. She has been assigned to aid me. “Aid my discomfort.” But I have quickly learned that erasing my familiar ways isn't part of the assignment.

I suppose the faculty remain unclear what disorder I have that she is assigned to aid in comforting. And there are ones worse than me. So I often wonder why she was given this task. I have narrowed it down to three possibilities: guilt, religion, or Stockholm syndrome. Without doubt, after many nights, I am leaning towards Stockholm syndrome.

A psychological response most commonly seen in an abducted hostage, in which the hostage shows signs of sympathy, loyalty or even voluntary compliance with the hostage taker.

“Oleander? Are you still with me?”

I shift my gaze towards the sound of my name. Penelope’s eyes are focused, full of intent.

“Your parents,” she says. “Can you tell me three words to describe them?”

This is exactly how she works. She knows how I want to ace these little exams, beat my own time in this marathon. But she doesn’t know the game I’m really playing.

Three words to describe my parents?

What are the words they speak to me? What are the words they don’t speak, the ones I want so badly to hear?

A chill shivers from below my belly button to simmer at the surface of my skin. It creeps across my abdomen, reaches down to the pit of my spine. My heart rises in a sickening sort of way, stretching my throat, threatening to fall in her lap.

There’s one word.

She appears oblivious, waiting impatiently for me to gather my thoughts.

Emotion is a foreign immigrant who doesn't speak my language or share my traditions; a part of me is curious about its ways while a larger part of me feels invaded by its presence. 

Family is as much a burden as it is a support. I learned this through the eyes of my parents, two volunteers with a mission to please. I have never understood volunteers. Volunteer. A misplaced term for people who define their own morals, or want to. And for people who work for free. Their payment? A good result. You add baking soda, and it must erupt.

All dandy if this volunteer is an expert, but they never are. No. And their definition of a good result can only be met if their patient cooperates.

My parents weren’t working for money, but they were working for a result. It took them seventeen years to realize I didn’t understand how to cooperate. Then they sent me here. The thing about volunteers is that even if their “volcano won’t erupt,” they can still go home feeling like they’ve accomplished a good deed. They can still enjoy a 5 month vacation in Venice.

In front of Penelope, I ticked off three with my fingers, as my stomach turned once more.

“Volcano, won’t, erupt.”

Penelope scribbled something on her daisy printed notebook. She walked towards a whiteboard and popped open a blue marker. Very carefully, she began to draw out the words I had just said in big blue letters.

Glancing at my fingers, I realized my long auburn hair was tangled tightly around them.