Fall Again (a Michael Jackson fanfiction)

22. An unsettled day

Hopes POV 🥀

I barely concentrated all day at work, there was an alarm for a patient named Alan, who was trying to attack another patient, screaming and banging at the patients door.

The patient inside barely seemed aware of what was happening, a young man with dissociative identity disorder. He was humming and smiling, in his own little world as Alan pounded at his door and yelled abuse at him.

"Come on, Alan." Lucie pleaded. "Come back to your room, I'll get you some toast if you like."

"I don't want toast!" Yelled Alan. "I want to kill this mother fucker!"

"Alan!" Snapped Smithson. "Do you want me to call Derek?"

Alan was terrified of Derek, who was much bigger and stronger than him, so he spat at Smithson and stormed back to his room.

Smithson wiped the saliva off his shirt in annoyance, and we went back to the Nurses office as Lucie followed Alan back to Room 16, which was his.

Then there was another alarm, for Xavier, a 19 year old manic depressive who kept running into the door, blood running down his face from whacking his head.

"Hey, hey, Xavi!" I soothed. "What's going on?"

Xavier's main nurse was Jaylene, a big African American woman who was like the female version of Derek.
She was on break and Xavi was very attached to her, so we tried to distract him until she came back.

It was a surprisingly unsettled day, which we hadn't had in a while. Only an hour after calming Xavier down, Walter - an old man with a walking stick, started hitting staff with his stick and shouting racial abuse.

"Ignore him." Sofia muttered to me. "He'll get tired soon and go back to his room for a rest."

So we did, and he eventually got bored and retired to his room. I asked Sofia if there were any updates in Michaels case, and she shook her head sadly.
"Is there anywhere he could have gone?" I pestered. I ran all out conversations through our mind, but couldn't remember him mentioning any particular place he felt safe.

Sofia shrugged and turned back to her spicy chicken wrap and I rolled my eyes. I decided to go looking for him after work, it would be dark but I was no longer afraid of the dark.
Anyway, Michael was out there somewhere alone in the dark - and I felt it was my responsibility to find him and bring him back safely.

If he was even still alive.