The Rose (standard:drama, 4212 words)
Author: Puck	Added: Sep 27 2000	Views/Reads: 3885/2466	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is a story about a the year a man spent as a psychologist in a mental institute.

There was a time when I really cared. I valued what other people
thought. Had wanted to help others. Even had supported my fellow man. 
That was why I wanted to be a psychologist. I wanted to make people 
better. Well think better at least. It all sounded so great on the 
surface. Helping people. Curing mental disorders. Having patient’s look 
up to you.  But down below it was nothing like that. When you’re fresh 
out of grad school, you don’t get the cushy hospital jobs. The 
brilliant white, sickeningly sterile corridors were reserved for the 
“seasoned” professionals. The guys with the peppery gray hair that 
looked as if it had melted off the top of their heads, but still clung 
fast to the sides, leaving the tell-tale bald spots; though they 
pretended they had a full mane of hair. The guys with the massive 
mahogany desks and brass name plates on their doors. The guys with the 
beady, unemotional eyes magnified by their three-inch thick glasses.  
The guys that nodded their heads and said, “Hmm, now how does that make 
you feel?” to every complaint a patient gave. Yet somehow in this 
hierarchy, the reigned superior to us “youngins.” Though I don’t see 
twenty-nine as young. Yet the only thing that separated them from us, 
was three letters. P-H-d. Somehow, those three little letters made all 
the difference. Without those three letters, you were a peon like me. 
You got the other jobs, in the institutes. Working with the depressed, 
the obsessive-compulsive, the dissociative disorders, the 
post-traumatics, the schizophrenics, the anorexics and bulimics. It was 
a challenge to me at first. For some reason, my masters in psychology 
made me feel invincible. I could help anyone. I could cure everything. 
Hell, I was a magician with a magic wand. Mr. Depressed? Zap! You’re 
Mr. Happy now. Mr. Obsessive-compulsive? Zap! You can stop washing your 
hands now. Drug addicts? Zap! No withdrawl, your addiction is gone. If 
only it were that easy. You wouldn’t believe what I encountered the 
first time I stepped foot into the lounge at Gibson Mental Institute. 

“Ted, take your pills!” 

“No, no pills, don’t need the pills. I’m fine, no pills.” 

A man was perched on the back of the brown and orange plaid couch in the
lounge room, trying to steady himself. The couch tipped precariously on 
its legs, threatening to tip at any moment. 

I glanced around the room. An old black and white television sat on a
worn out stand. The stand appeared to dip in the middle, as if the 
television were too much for it to handle. The couch the man was 
crouching on the back of, looked to be at least twenty years old. The 
cushions were flattened out, letting you know that many had sat there 
over the course of its life. A young man, he looked to be about twelve, 
was curled up on the end of the couch, his eyes never straying from the 
television, even through all the rocking and tipping. In the corner of 
the lounge was a brown armchair. A young woman, who looked to be more 
bone than woman was sitting on it. She meticulously picked at the 
stuffing protruding from the large tear in the arm of the chair. Her 
eyes were sunken in, and she looked as if she were no longer a person, 
but a walking skeleton. She lifted her head up and studied me, her eyes 
examining me as I stood there, letting me know she had caught me 
staring at her. She half smiled, then resumed her picking. 

“Ted, please get down and take your pills. I would rather you didn’t
fall.” A large African-American woman, dressed in full nurse’s garb, 
held out a small paper cup. 

The man noticed me and leapt from the couch. He ran behind me, hiding
his face in the back of my suit jacket. He quickly glanced up at me. 

“Mister, please help me, that woman. Pills. She has poison. The pills.
Poison. Says they’ll help. Poison!” He buried his face in the back of 
my jacket. I could feel him trembling. 

The large woman came toward us, her arm outstretched with the paper cup
still in her hand. I glanced down at her name-tag. It read “Mary 
Olsen.” 

“Excuse me, Miss Olsen?” I said. 

“Who are you? And please move away from the patient so I can give him
his medication!” Her voice was gruff, I could understand why Ted was 
trembling, her voice frightened me. 


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