Sazdanoff v. Adolescent Psych Ward

LIZZIE ~*~*~INSIDE THE INMATE'S CELL~*~*~
THURSDAY, 7:43 P.M.

I lay quietly in my cell after kicking my own mother out of visitting. It had been about a week since I'd been moved to the death house, and any more appeals or chances for a stay were seemed highly unlikely. Oh yeah, forget all about a pardon. I glanced at a clock on the wall down at the very end of the tier, and noticed with suprisingly little emotion that I had about twenty hours to...live. In less than a die, I would be a pile of lifeless matter, an inconvenience once again in the way to be disposed of and forgotten about. This thought had made me so ill that I curled up into a ball on my bed and pulled my shirt over my eyes, hiding from myself, the world, and my unyielding and imminent fate

"Lizzie?" A gentle voice with a German accent startled me out of my tiny, false sanctuary. I glanced up to see Warden Wilkinson peeking at me through the bars of my cell.

"Is it time for me to record my final statement?" I asked dismally, my voice somewhat muffled from my shirt clinging to my face. The warden seemed, but simply said, " No, I would just like to ask you and talk with you about what happened with you tonight." So I explained to him about how I felt to ill and upset to even face my mother the day before my scheduled execution, I knew neither of us would be able to handle it. But then, Warden Wilkinson informed me of something unexpected: I was not to be executed tomorrow.

"I've been pardoned?"

"Not quite, there's just some issues we need to straighten out, but things should be ready by Sunday or Monday." *Dammit,* I cursed mentally, *just a stay.* But, a stay was better than nothing, so I thanked the warden for his time, and he left. I didn't sleep that night.

DR. WILKINSON ~*~*~MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL~*~*~
THURSDAY, 8:00 P.M.

My patient Lizzie had mentioned something about last words...what in hell could she have meant by that? I mean, it WAS a psych ward, and people come here for a reason, she was there for depression and suicidal attempts, not insanity and paranoia of capital punishment. Then again, it probably didn't help that she was reading "Dead Man Walking" at the time. I guess when she'd mentioned a "pardon" she must have been referring to going into a residential unit so she'd never have to go home, but I believe I'd be speaking for myself and the rest of the staff here at Forest Ridge Adolescent Psychiatric Unit when I say that it was a little unnerving the way Lizzie was always talking about things as if she was on death row. Maybe she was obsessive compulsive, maybe she was crazy, or maybe she just did it to be a smart ass. Who knew. I will admit, however, it was fairly amusing the way she would cringe and sob whenever our RN James (or "Nurse Nazi" as Lizzie had called him) would come by, and Lizzie would start going off about how she didn't want the last thing she saw to be the hideous face of evil.

CINDY ~*~*~THE SPIRITUAL ADVISOR~*~*~
SATURDAY, 9:30 P.M.

Lizzie just cracked me up. I figured she wasn't truly crazy, and she would frequently have me laughing myself into a hernia when she would say the most nonsensical shit; she would just put it so subtly, like calling the other inpatients on the ward "inmates" or telling random visitors, "We don't mind being tethered to eachother and forced to work out back in the soy bean fields all day, but we had to draw the line when Chaplain Francesca tried to make us dance around in goat skins last night."

I strode down the white hallway to Lizzie's "cell," chuckling quietly as I pondered the many reasons that Lizzie might associate being discharged and going home with an execution. Maybe being here on the ward was a freedom and a prison built into one; a locked-down, nearly barren medical facility with strictly specified visitting and phone hours, but an escape from the overbearing and demanding outside world.

So I knocked on her door and went in. I brought up what I had been thinking about in the hallway, and she "kinda agreed, kinda not so much."

"This whole world is a prison in itself," Lizzie sighed. "I mean, society gets to choose what people think, how they think about it, how to live--and if the working-class, chimney-sweep-class, or left-for-dead-and-forgotten-about-class citizens don't abide, it's BAMMO-" she clapped her hands suddenly for emphasis quite close to my face, causing me to recoil and lose my breath for a few moments.

"Bammo?"

"Indeed. If people don't abide by how the elite-congressional or famous-but-anorexic-class decide they should behave, then us down here at the bottom are trodden on and harshly chastised...so really, is it all worth it? In the end, capital punishment is the fate of us all anyway..." The patient trailed off and broke eye contact with me, so I waited for a silent, sullen moment to see if that was "it." When Lizzie strolled over to the little corner desk and prepared a game of sollitaire for herself, I knew the conversation was over. I straightened up and saw myself out the door with a heavey heart.

AUTHOR ~*~*~AN ANNOYING, RANDOM INTRUSION OF WRITER'S BLOCK ~*~*~

Elizabeth the author stared blankly like a deer in the headlights of a car at the wall in front of her, irritated at the fact that her once- jubilous and comical idea had taken a dark turn. An individual whom shall remain anonymous for privacy reasons (or, He Who Must Not Be Named, if you'd rather) had expected it on Friday, and he'd already agreed to extend the deadline to Sunday. Now, right here at the end, Elizabeth's mind was as blank as frigging cardboard, and she somehow sensed computer viruses in the near future. It seemed as though for some time, exhaustion and doom stalked her shadow like...uh...two giant stalking things.