Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesday’s, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a meme which she calls

“Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

This week's words are:

1. actual

2. spontaneous

3. remedy

4. fanciful

5. mesmerized

6. cranium

and just to increase the challenge, we have...

07. listen

08. glisten

09. christen

10. moisten

11. hasten

12. penicillin

Here is my story:

 Wrapped in the restraining jacket, Annemarie's actual life bore no resemblance whatsoever to the fanciful dreams and monstrous terrors inhabiting her cranium. She gazed as if mesmerized at white padded walls that she did not see. 

On the other side of the heavy, locked door with its tiny barred window, her parents spoke anxiously with Dr Robinson and Dr Jerrie.

"Is there nothing we can do? No remedy we can try? I hate to see her like this, that's not my little Annemarie at all."

Dr Robinson looked very downhearted. "I'm so sorry Mrs Tark. I've seen this many times, all this hippie, flower power, free love the kids are into these days, wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the drugs they're all taking too. We've had patients who make spontaneous recoveries once the drugs are out of their systems, others come back to reality more slowly, some never make it back at all. They never come out of the worlds they've created in their heads."

Tears glistened in Pam Tark's eyes, her husband Roger sipped at a paper cup of water to moisten his lips before speaking.
"Are the restraints still necessary? She seems calmer, there are no new scratches on her face.....it's been two weeks...."

Pam said, "we never had her christened, I want to do that now. I know we always thought it wasn't necessary, but I want Annemarie christened, as soon as possible."

Old Dr Jerrie spoke up, "Pam, Roger, we've kept a close eye on Annemarie for the last 4 days and while she seems calm now, that's probably because she's close to falling asleep. There's a pattern here that we didn't notice at first, 36 hours of raging, screaming fear, then she stays huddled in that corner staring at nothing until she falls asleep. She's been staring now for about five hours, if the pattern follows, she'll be asleep by four o'clock."

"If only we knew what is in those drugs out there on the streets. At first it was just that Marijuana, then LSD, but there is something new, and kids are taking all kinds of combinations of pills," said Dr Robinson. 

Dr Jerrie said, "I wish this was a physical illness, an infection....we could hasten a cure with a shot of penicillin....but mental breakdowns like this....there's just no way of knowing what the damage is or why it happens. We just don't know enough yet about the brain and why it does what it does."

Roger asked, "if she has a calm period every day, would it help if we sat near her and spoke? We could tell her how things are at home, give messages from her friends, maybe she would listen....maybe something would get through?"