crash&burn.

   This is pretty much exactly what my arm looked like when my vein collapsed from my IV in the hospital last year.
   I remember how upset Michelle was when I told her that it was collapsed after she asked 'did you do that to your arm?'. I remember her sobbing and saying that I was going to die. I hugged her quickly before the staff saw and told her that it was okay, that they said it wasn't a problem. I laughed and told her I just had to work on starting to eat. She sniffed and looked pensively at my art, then smiled slowly and giggled.
   Michelle was sweet. She was twelve, half asian, and genuinely one of the most fucked up people I'd ever met. She was planning to kill her mother then herself. She heard voices, saw things. She'd been raped and beaten her whole life.
   I loved her and she was beautiful and sad. I screamed at staff for trying to force her feelings out and then for trying to force them back in. I got pushed down levels and privileges taken away, but I defended her because she was small and needy and I was a caged animal ready to bite helping hands.
   She cried for hours when she had to go home. She said they didn't believe her that her mother let her boyfriend hurt her. I held her hand and gave her my number. She looked at me, truly sad. "What am I supposed to do with this? I don't have a cellphone. I don't have a house phone.'' I wanted to cry, looking at her with stars swimming in my eyes. "It's a lifeline," I whispered. "You won't always need it, but it's there. Call me. From a phone booth. From a stranger's cell. Call me, Michelle." She promised she would. I watched her walk down the long sterile white hall and out into the light.
She never called.