The Blue Pills

"I promise you, my dear, this is for your own good Elysia." My mother said reluctantly as the doctors loaded the few things I was allowed to take into the white van labeled 'Arsmid Mental Hospital'. If it wasn't clear, my mother is shipping me off to a mental institution. Not because I'm crazy or in the least bit mental, but because I'm different. Mom says I have had my 'disability' since I was a child. I have always been able to see things before they actually happen. 
She says that I must have got it from my father, whom I have never met. She says I get a lot of things from him. I don't understand why she had never let me meet him. Did it ever cross her mind that he could have helped me with my 'disability'? I guess not. As the men closed the van doors I shook my head disapprovingly at my mother through the window and watched her look away from me, feeling too much shame for what she had done to even look at me.
The hospital wasn't like what you see in movies. It wasn't scary, but at the same time, it wasn't nice. It felt dull. Everything about it felt bland. Everything was a dull gray and all the patients had bleak expressions, yet all the workers had fake, plastic, even Barbie-like smiles plastered to their faces. I now understood why these people never left. 
There is no way you can get better if you're in a place like this, it would make anyone crazy. They told me my mother had said I wasn't violent but I also wasn't very social so I would be in a single cell by myself and would have access to things like the library and garden as well as art and writing supplies. They also said I would have group therapy every day at 2 PM, breakfast was served at 8 AM, lunch would be served at noon, and dinner at 8 PM.
A few weeks passed and I didn't really like group therapy. Not because it was an invasion of privacy or not very helpful, I just, already knew what was going to happen and what we were going to speak about. I fiddled with the small metal cross that hung around my neck as 2 PM rolled around to 4 PM and we were released from therapy. 
The way therapy was set up was that everyone had group therapy from 2 PM to 4 PM but in separate rooms. When we were released it was like walking into a school hallway right after the bell rang for next class. Crowded, stinky, and loud. I have always hated loud sounds so everyday I waited for everyone to leave the hall before I left. The only downside was that Nurse Latisha the therapist always tried to get me to talk during this time, but she never can.
Three full years passed that way and my 16th birthday rolled around. I never really liked my birthday either. I used to love the idea of getting older and going to college, but when the government came to the asylum and started running test on me because of my "disability" I knew that my dream wasn't coming true anytime soon. 
My birthdays always consisted of the same thing. Wake up, take meds, breakfast, government test, lunch, therapy, government test, dinner, take more meds, lights out. Just like every other day. Sometimes I wonder if I had stayed with my dad since I was born instead of my mom maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't be here being poked and prodded like the subjects in the Russian Sleep Experiment. I knew I would snap someday. We always do. But I never knew it would be that day.
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I woke up that morning with the usual pills laid out on my bedside table for me to take. But something was off about them. They were usually a light blue color. But today they were yellow. A deep, dark, depressing yellow. I took them anyway since it wasn't the first time the government had switched my meds. 
Everyone else that day seemed different too. Not their usual self, they all looked at me like I was an outsider, even though I had been there longer than most of them had. I was tripped in the cafeteria more than once and the government lady kept sticking the needle all the way through my vein on 'accident'. The nurses gave me weird looks and all the doctors didn't want to speak to me.
I had had enough. I wanted to know what the hell was going on, and now! The nurses station was left unoccupied between 7:45 PM and 7:55 PM for their break. I took advantage of this and grabbed a needle from the medicine storage behind the counter. I knew that if you were to push air into a blood vessel it would be extremely painful. And when it reached your heart, your dead. 
My long sleeved sweater made it easy to hide the needle when I asked the guards to see the man in charge of the government testing. At first I asked if he had told people to act weird and maybe it was an experiment, but he didn't know what I was talking about. Then I asked if he had switched my meds which he also denied. I was getting upset now, I knew he was lying. He had to be! Who else would switch my meds!
I tried to keep my cool as I told him what had gone on all day, he tried to pass it off as if I had just had a bad day, but he said he would consult with a few more people and see if they could find who switched my meds and make sure they write down that neither the blue or yellow pills are the right kind to help me. I told him thank you and left the office not needing the needle after all. The pills were back to light blue when I got back to my room. I took my nightly dose and laid down to sleep.
The next morning I wasn't called for testing like usual, but I didn't think anything of it. When I got to therapy Nurse Latisha pulled me aside and told me the man who was in charge of my testing was dead. She said they ruled it a suicide because he supposedly took a needle and pumped his jugular vein full of air. I don't know why she felt it was a good idea to tell a sixteen year old girl in a mental asylum that the man who was treating her killed himself, but she felt like I needed to know I guess.
I knew he didn't do it though. He couldn't have. I know I did it. It was so obvious that I did, I was surprised that I hadn't been arrested yet. Then I realized it. The route I had taken to get to get the needle and to get to Mr. Deeley. I had stayed in the blind spots of the cameras the entire time. I didn't even know the blind spots, but apparently I stayed in them. The needle had been in a first aid kit so it wouldn't be missing from the log. There were no guards on duty because it was dinner time and they were in the cafeteria. 
They would have noticed the note on his desk the wrote that said blue and yellow pills were bad for me, but they didn't because I hadn't mentioned it. Because there were no yellow pills, they were blue all along. My mind just needed a reason to talk to Mr. Deeley. So I imagined the pills were yellow and not blue. I imagined the mean looks, the tripping, the needle going through my vein. I imagined having the conversation with Mr. Deeley.
I imagined it all.
But yet, I didn't see it coming.
Why not...?
Was it the pills?
I haven't seen anything since I started taking the blue pills.
But I never killed anyone before I started taking the blue pills either.
But I did say staying in Arsmid Mental Hospital would make anyone crazy, didn't I?
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