So-Called Normal by Mark Henick

So-Called Normal by Mark Henick

Author:Mark Henick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-11-18T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 12

THE TEACHER TOOK A STEP FORWARD.

He came into my room, without asking, uninvited. With that one small step, my inner alarm was pulled. My heart pounded hard, and my breathing turned heavy and fast. I sat straight upright in bed, book still in my hand. I felt as though every muscle and joint and organ inside me tightened simultaneously, from my knees and fists to my heart and lungs. My mind raced, but my body was frozen. He stepped forward again, into the split-leg boxing stance that Gary had taught me. Gary taught me more than I realized: to be afraid, to feel ashamed, to know my exits and to hate change.

Jim raised his right arm, his bottom three fingers and his thumb curled into a tight fist, his index finger jabbed forward like a meaty little dagger.

“You got a problem with me,” he said, “then you don’t squeal. You come to me. Got it?”

It sounded like a threat.

“Get out!” I screamed. “Get out of my room!”

He didn’t move. He seemed to smile a little—at least in my mind he did.

“Get out!” I screamed again, with all the air in my constricted lungs, gasping hard for breath.

I raised the book in my shaking hand and hurled it at his head. He dodged to the left. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and he lunged at me. I pushed past him on the right and escaped through the door into the hallway.

Two other patients were standing nearby. A few nurses had come out of the nursing station. I felt sweat on my back and in my palms. I turned in my sock feet to the right, toward the common room. I didn’t know where I was going. It was a fight-or-flight reaction: I fought, and then I took flight.

Near the end of the dead-end hall I turned, only to see the teacher stalking toward me like a bulldog.

“Stay away from me!” I screamed. “Keep him away from me!” My voice was high and raw.

Someone in plain clothes grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. Two nurses and an orderly advanced toward me. The common room was to my right and the exit from the unit on my left. There was no safety in the common room; he could still get me there. And the unit was locked, so there was no sense in trying that door. I felt like a scared rat in the corner of a cage, about to be subjected to some cruel experiment. They were coming at me fast.

There was a bathroom in the dead-end wall. I ran in there and secured the lock, seconds before the staff could reach me. A moment later I heard them pounding on the door.

“Mark, come out,” someone shouted.

The speaker in the ceiling above me beeped, then spoke in a clear, professional-sounding voice: “Attention, attention. Code white, four south, room . . .”

The voice warbled away. I leaned against the cold porcelain sink as the pounding intensified on the door, in my chest, in my head, all around me.



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