I stayed locked in the Dispensary room away from all contact of the other girls and everyone for that matter. The Dixie cup of juice continued every morning and now was brought in the evenings after my uneaten dinner was collected. I remember asking to talk with my counselor and being told she was no longer my counselor. No one came to see me the first week I was isolated. Continuing to find sleep my only escape, I drank the juice when it was brought to me.

It was the beginning of the second week on the Dispensary so I thought. I became physically sick. I woke one morning sitting up and vomited all over the bed and myself. I hadn’t gotten sick to my stomach like that in so long it startled me. I called out for help knowing no one would answer, no one was coming by my door till the next meal when they had to offer me food and remove the previous uneaten tray. Before, lunch, I had vomited again this time making it to the vessel on the floor. I laid quietly on my mattress waiting for the nurse to come with lunch, when finally the door opened with my tray. I told her I had gotten sick on my sheets and needed to change. I’ll never forget that cold reply “why did you go and do that, you’ll have to wait till I can get some help in here.” I had been waiting all morning for help, but that was okay after all who was I? I was finally given clean sheets and allowed to take a quick shower. I couldn’t eat, my stomach wouldn’t allow food in it without forcefully expelling it, so I didn’t eat. The juice was making my stomach hurt and I was seeing double at times, but the nurse didn’t allow me to refuse the medication in the juice. When I wasn’t throwing up I had diarrhea, again with no answers to my calls for help. The nurse became increasingly impatient with me deciding I was doing this to myself to annoy her or for attention. I was able to reach my fingers between the diamond shaped metal covering the windows and open it a crack, the smell from being sick was making me sicker.

I’m not sure how long this went on but, I don’t remember feeling any better until that pervert Psychiatrist came to see me. This time he didn’t talk about boys touching girls or ask me any obscene questions, instead he looked at me then walked out the open door down the hall to the nurse’s station. I remember laying on the bed too weak to move and looked out the open door thinking, that doctor is going to catch hell for leaving the door open like that. The nurse returned with the Psychiatrist looking totally shocked at me laying on the bare mattress too weak to hold my head up and said “she wasn’t like this earlier.”

They took me from the little pink room and helped me onto the hospital bed in a locked room at the other end of the hall. The Psychiatrist came back to talk with me asking “how do you feel”? I remember telling him I want to die, just let me die. Not another word, he left. That evening before dinner a nurse came in with my clothes and asked if I needed help getting dressed. I remember she helped me tie my shoes. Knowing I was going back to the cottage and going to have to fight to be able to rest in my room till I felt better, I still asked where am I going. To my complete surprise she answered “somewhere to get the help you need.”

A heavy blanket of snow had covered the grounds and I hadn’t even noticed it from the little pink room. I walked unsteady in clothes hanging loosely on my shoulders and state stompers flopping up and down on my heels to the security car waiting outside the Dispensary.