• I awoke with a start to the soft voiced nurse that had raised me from my slumber for the last six months of my life. She was sweet, and knew how to do her job. No one could do it better than her. Her name is Nancy; she loves strawberries and coming home to her six children each night after putting us to sleep. All this she told me over the course of the last six months. She told me about her children, and how her husband grew strawberries just for her in their backyard. All this she told me without even thinking I wasn’t like the others, without even thinking I could comprehend what she was saying, comprehend her family’s love for one another.

    What a surprise she has today, for today is the last day she will wake me up. The last day I will be in this wretched cell, which cages my mind. This is my last moments of sanctuary that I have left because I will never come back here.

    I looked up into Nancy’s “Oh So Blue” eyes, they looked troubled. She looked away, that was unusual. She sighs, “You never even spoke to me, not one word. Yet here you are leaving me not even knowing the sound of your voice, not even knowing you. Child can you at least bless me with the sound of your sweet voice?” She turned to me tears in her eyes. Even though she had never even heard me utter a single syllable, she stands crying over
    the thought of me leaving, and even presumes my voice is sweet.

    I sat up slowly lowering my bare feet to the cold, concrete, morning floor. I looked up at her, my green eyes staring into her blue ones, “Nancy, I could have never left you with a clear conscience knowing that I had not thanked you. Thank you, Nancy.” She breathed out the breath she had been holding and burst into tears.

    “Oh Tyler how could I have ever been so blind? No child it is I who should be thanking you!” She wrapped her arms around me lovingly like my own mother had the last time I had seen her. She sobbed and held me tighter while I simply sat there waiting for the episode to pass. Slowly she untangled her arms from my shoulders and straightened her white uniform and blonde hair. She looked back at me one more time with pain in her eyes before she left me to myself, giving me time to look over my cell. It’s a very bland cell, white walls, white sheets on the twin sized bed mattress that filled a white metal barred bed. Not to mention the small night table that occupied a small portion of the small cell.

    Before long another nurse appeared at my door with a pile of clothes neatly folded in her hands. She laid them on the small night table and left me so I might change into them.
    I did so. The shirt was blue and had the words “Peaceful Meadows Mental Institute” in big yellow letters on the front, and for pants they had given me a pair of gray “Peaceful Meadows Mental Institute” sweatpants. The blue shoes even had the “Peaceful Meadows Mental Institute” stenciled on the sole. That’s when it occurred to me that they must have a gift shop in order to have such things as shirts and shorts, even shoes with their name on them.

    Shortly after lunch was distributed among those of us who are able to feed ourselves, another unfamiliar nurse barged into my room with a wheelchair. I was ready to leave the Institute but the fact that they felt the need to wheel me out like a disabled person put me off track. I was back to full health so why did they feel they needed to wheel me out?
    I refused to get into the wheelchair, and after many attempts to convey to the nurse that I would not get into the wheelchair I resorted to speech. “If I must leave than I will walk out, not be wheeled like someone who cannot walk on their own.” The nurse tried to stare me down as a final attempt to budge my stance, which it did not, because I still refused to get into the wheelchair. So after thinking it hopeless she pointed me to the door and huffed, “Okay, fine...you win. Just please get out of the room before I have to call the doctor.” I smiled at the hopeless nurse as I walked out the door pushing past the pitiful wheelchair.
    She followed me out and directed me down the halls of the Institute, until after about ten minutes walking we found ourselves in the lobby. People were there already, people waiting for me to come to them. Those people are my family.