Chloris

They brought April, no last name, to our facility during the middle of the graveyard shift.  I worked as a psychiatric intern on the graveyard shift. I was there when the cops brought April in.  According to the reports, April was 5150 PC, a danger to herself or others, and required psychiatric evaluation pending in voluntary commitment.  Involuntary commitment, what a laugh!  The best that was likely to happen is that for 72 hours we'd work to stabilize the patient, see she was cleaned up, and fed before releasing her back onto the mean streets of the City.

Someone reported a naked woman pounding on residential doors at midnight.  An hour later  April was in custody, booked for disturbing the peace and tested for the most common drugs.  She came up negative for drugs and alcohol, so that left crazy.  Unfortunately, that's become increasingly common since mental patients have acquired the right to freedom and homelessness. 

I scanned the paperwork on April before going down to see her on the ward.  She appeared to be physically healthy, well fed and in her late twenties.  When apprehended she was nude, except for garlands of flowers in her hair and around her neck.  She displayed no violent tendencies, though she was definitely loud as she rampaged through the quiet streets of Glendale.  The police were checking to see if she matched any missing person reports, but the preliminary search turned up nothing.

At our facility patients dumped on us by the police were temporarily given a private room on Ward C until staff had an opportunity to assess just how dangerous they might be.  The moon was full and so was our facility, so April got our last vacancy, C-12.  I could see through the little window in her door that she was pretty.  Of course that wasn't relevant or mentioned in the reports.  She wasn't your normal homeless street person either.  Our nurses don't leave new patients as clean, perfumed and powdered as a baby, yet there she was.  Instead of tangled tresses, her long, blond hair looked like an ad for $25 shampoo.  Most patients brought to us by the cops were incapable of caring for themselves, but April had no bumps, bruises, cuts, or abrasions.  That wasn't the sort of person who fell through the cracks in our society.

She sat on the bed in a hospital gown watching something invisible, as it moved around her little room.  She was murmuring, or perhaps chanting something just this side of inaudible.  I introduced myself, and asked if she'd mind answering a few necessary questions.  She looked up into my eyes, and it was like looking down into the depths of eternity.  She nodded.  That was good, she was still relating to the world outside of her own mind.  I drew up a plastic chair in front of her, and began to work through our standard checklist designed to determine what sort of mental disturbances we might be dealing with. 

She could speak, and knew her name was April.  April's responses were mostly kinetic; she would nod, shake her head, or flutter her hands to each question posed.  When pressed, her answers were delivered in a rational and pleasant manner.  Either she didn't know, or refused to answer questions related to who she was, where she came from or her personal life.  After half an hour, I was more perplexed than when I began.

April didn't appear to exhibit any of the characteristics we've come to associate with mental disorder, yet it was equally certain that her behavior was far from the "normal" Glendale citizen.  As I got up to leave, she smiled and said, "don't worry, it'll be alright in the Spring." 

What did that mean?  I was at the top of my grad school class, but April needed someone with a lot more training than I had.  I got a cup of coffee, and went back to my desk to begin putting April's patient file together.  It didn't take long, so I took a chance and called the Duty Officer at Glendale PD to see if a missing person answering April's description had been reported. 

"Wish I could help you, but so far no one is reported missing that matches our subject.  I've found three missing Aprils. One is little kid in Pasadena.  Number two is Black, and the third went missing twenty years ago.  That one was also a kid, aged 9, Blond and blue.  She was presumed kidnapped from here in Glendale and never recovered.  I'm still looking and if I get something before the end of my watch, I'll call."

I thanked the Sergeant, hung-up, and tried to figure out why someone wasn't frantically looking for our April.  That's when Nurse Pritchet, Babs, got my attention.

"You had better come down to C-12 and see this for yourself, Don."

As we walked down the corridor it suddenly struck me how quiet the facility had become.  It's a short corridor, so we arrived at C-12 before the quiet completely registered.  I looked into the bare little room lit by a bulb behind wire mesh.  It didn't look as if April had moved in the hour, or so since I last saw her.  It took a moment to register, but I finally noticed she was wearing a garland of flowers in her long hair.  The pace of her muttering, or chanting was faster, and it seemed that occasionally a blossom fell from her lips.  I shook my head in disbelief.  I was cracking up from studying mental cases too long.

"Babs, why did you give her those flowers, and where did you get them anyway?" 

"Since when does anyone send flowers to us?  I have no idea how or where our patient got them.  Do you want to take them away from her, or just let it be?"

It didn't seem dangerous to leave April with hair full of flowers, so I opted to leave her alone.  Besides, my shift was ending in less than two hours, and I still needed to study a chapter on abnormal behavior.  My professor probably would have applauded my choice, but the mystery of where and how April managed to get flowers inside a locked psychiatric ward just wouldn't go away.  I put away my textbook and went back to have another look.  The Ward was still preternaturally silent.

I looked into April's room and almost collapsed.  The room was filled with flowers; maybe enough flowers to empty out a couple of florist shops.  I called Babs from her station, and together we went into the room.  April was no longer in the room.

Nurse Pritchet and I called our supervisor at home.  Mr. Krantz wasn't happy to be called and didn't believe us at first.  His displeasure only got worse after he was forced to get out of bed and come into the facility wearing a pajama top.  The facility was in an uproar long after our shift ended.  A dozen cops took turns interviewing the graveyard staff.  Shucks, they even interviewed the patients on both sides and across the hall from where April vanished.  A team of Crime Scene Investigators left dark stains on all of our doors, and tore up April's room looking for any clue as to how she escaped.  No one answering April's description was ever reported missing, and as far as I know the case is still open.  April might have descended from the moon, or been the pagan spirit of the season, or she might have been the little girl who vanished twenty years earlier, reappeared for some inexplicable reason and just as inexplicitly vanished again?

Mr. Krantz ended up firing Babs, and me though neither of us should have been held responsible for the "embarrassing situation".  I kept one of the flowers from April's room, and it still holds its color and perfume after twenty years.  I missed all of my classes for three days, but passed my examinations and went on for my Doctorate in Psychology.  April remains the most unforgettable patient in my entire practice.

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