* * *
When Tiara came to, she was being wheeled out of the hospital. Her eyes fluttered, and she heard the hazy voices of people around her. Then she heard the sound of doors opening and the sunlight hit her a second later. She clenched her eyes shut, and then eased them back open, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the light.
“Hey, she’s awake,” she heard a man’s voice say.
She let her head fall to the right, and then to the left. She saw two men holding on to the sides of her bed as they pushed her to an awaiting van.
“W-where am I going?” she asked them.
“You, my dear,” one of them grunted, “are going straight to hell. Doctor Pierce is going to love you.”
Before Tiara could ask him what he meant by what he was saying, they pushed her up a ramp, into the back of a vehicle, and shut the doors behind her.
The first day at the Elegant Juvenile Help Center and Psychiatric Institution wasn’t so bad for Tiara. The nurse, Clarice Chambers, checked all her vital signs and told Tiara that she would be able to walk by herself. She was prescribed some pain medicine and told her to wait for Doctor Pierce to come in and speak with her. She shut the door behind her and left Tiara alone in the room. She looked around from where she sat on the examining bed. It looked like any other doctor’s office. She smiled while she reminisced about how she used to steal Band-Aids whenever Stephanie took her to the doctor when she was a little girl. Stephanie always made it a special day whenever Tiara had to go to the doctor to get shots or her regular physicals. She would always take Tiara out for ice cream afterward.
Thinking about her childhood brought a smile to her face, but it filled her heart with sadness at the same time. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and those happy days were long gone. Stephanie was gone, her father was gone, everything and everyone she ever knew was gone from her life. Just when she was about to burst out crying, there was a knock at the door signaling that the doctor had arrived.
“Come in,” she said weakly.
A handsome man with straight white teeth and golden skin entered the room. He had a bald head and a thick, clean-shaven beard.
“Miss Tiara Rogers,” he smiled at her kindly. “My name is Doctor Pierce.”
“I know who you are,” Tiara gulped.
Doctor Pierce’s voice was pleasant enough; however, there was something about his presence that didn’t sit right with Tiara. It was if he had a dark aura around him, and it made her squirm in her seat.
“No need to be nervous.” Doctor Pierce saw Tiara’s body stiffen as he approached and patted her knee. “We here at the Elegant Juvenile Help Center strive to assist in helping all of our guests feel special. I know you’ve had a tough past, Tiara, and I know it’s not easy to stomach the fact that you were sent here, but you don’t have to worry. I don’t feel like you’re crazy or anything like that. I just think you need somebody to help you feel good, that’s all.”
He continued to talk to Tiara, patting her knee a few more times during the conversation before he told her that she would then be led to the room she would be staying in. She was informed that all of her things had been put there.
“OK,” Tiara said, and before he could completely leave the room, she called him back. “Excuse me, Doctor Pierce?”
“Yes?”
“When will I be able to call home?” Tiara had no intentions to call home to speak to her mother. She actually wanted to call Stephanie.
“Unfortunately, your mother has put you on the no phone privilege list. You are not allowed to call home, or anywhere else, for that matter.”
Why is that woman so determined to make me more miserable than I already am? Tiara felt a surge of hatred toward the woman who had given her life.
“Tiny will show you to your room,” he told her and exited the room.
Tiny was a guard who was anything but that. He gripped Tiara’s arm tightly as he led her through the hallways of the facility. When he finally reached the room that would be hers, he unlocked it and pushed her full force into the room. Before he slammed the door behind her, he eyed her lustfully. Tiara was on her knees and pushing herself back up, so she didn’t even notice the man salivating over her.
“Hopefully, the doctor will allow me to sample you,” Tiny whispered before shutting the door behind him. Tiara was too busy looking around the room and rubbing her knees to have paid attention to his comment.
The room felt cold and looked very dreary. There was a small lightbulb in the center of the ceiling which was the only source of light for the entire room. It wasn’t a huge space, but that tiny lightbulb didn’t do a very good job at lighting up the room. It wasn’t very bright at all. Tiara looked around at the beds in the room before taking the one that did not seem to have an occupant. She busied herself by putting her things away and realized then that she didn’t ask Doctor Pierce exactly what it was they did there for their patients. She’d read about facilities like this in her health class, though, and she hoped that she would be able to sit down and talk to a counselor about all of the things that were bottled up inside of her. She had also read in a blog before that sometimes
