Page 247 of Deep Cover

34

Annie

Routine is the killer of brain cells.

Nope. That wasn't good enough.

Routine is the death of creativity.

Argh. The attending psychiatrist or whoever he was had the empathy of a sledgehammer and the subtlety of a sociopath. Or maybe those were backwards.

Maybe they weren't.

The hospital operated around the theory that routine was good for dangerous cases. Probably not far from true. It was easy to get lulled into something so stupefying. Bells and humans and printed instructions wafted me through each day. Where in the past I'd certainly adhered to schedules, even when undercover there are unmistakable rhythms to life that need to be followed, here there was no chance to be late, to oversleep, to hurry and get something done early.

We existed in routine.

Zach was the only part of the routine that kept me from going nuts. He had split days off which irritated him – he'd gotten together with a girl we'd both known in high school and wanted to spend time with her but they had different days off – but meant I only had to go one day at a time without news of the outer world.

I was slowly bringing him around to the idea that I might need his help to get out of the ward and out of the hospital when the time came and Zach, surely a frustrated law enforcement type or possibly a frustrated superhero – I wasn't sure of his grasp of reality – was coming around so quickly to my side I was afraid he'd try smuggling me out before I was ready.

I was waiting because I didn't have a phone and I didn't have a number for Cole. I didn't have a credit card or cash, and only by dint of screaming and yelling and acting like I really needed to be committed for my own good was I able to keep my jeans and t-shirt, even after they were laundered and returned to me.

Because escaping in the colorless, shapeless sweats emblazoned with the hospital name and no ID or money, I wouldn't make it long on the street without being picked up and returned.

Two damn weeks of antidepressants that turned my stomach to mush, and one-on-one counseling with the sledgehammer did the same to my brain. Then there was group therapy, but since I refused to say what had happened to me, I was in a sort of general group, which despite the ineffectual yammerings of the "leader," revolved around the complaints of the inmates.

Until the morning the call came through.

Mark and my father called daily. At first there was a lag time between being told I had a call and being given the call. They came to visit, too, but not as often, which was good, because sitting and refusing to talk to them or trying to get them to answer my one question – "How dare you?" – got old.

But the phone calls. Initially it was the notification that I had one. Then I was taken to where there was a phone. Then the call went through after a delay. And that, I assumed, was some kind of verification process. Because the lag time kept getting smaller each day until there was none.

The hospital staff was used to Mark and my father calling.

And then that morning, two weeks and one day in, April already colliding with tax day, and I had a call coming in.

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