the Kaufman Unit.two

The Kaufman Unit was impenetrable. First class confinement at its worst. Two parallel doors blocked its occupants from the outside world. They were standard galvanized steel-sheet, fireproof doors. Much like the ones that separated hallways in most schools, except these doors were always locked from both sides, and weren’t magnetically held open at all times. From the inside you could look through the 10” by 10” windows, separated by five and a half feet, and glimpse the open-air. A few trees, a parking lot, and beyond that houses most definitely better furnished than the K.U.

The thin metal wire between the two panes of half inch thick glass formed a classic, metal fence diamond pattern. If you closed one eye and looked through the windows just right, you could align the patterns. Some patients never look passed those windows, never waited for their loved ones to appear on the other side. While others spent all day pacing- just to glimpse the freedom beyond the metal doors.

Twice a day there were fifteen minute periods in which the “murses”(male nurses) would take the patients down the corridor and out of the windowless, alarmed steel door to a small fenced in area for some fresh air. But Hayden never went outside. She only heard about the ten foot high diamond fence, lined with barbed wire and monitored by a wall mounted security camera. “When do they break out the taser guns?“ she thought. Hayden would spend the fifteen minutes on her bed writing in the journal Dr. DarkEyes gave her. It was the only time she knew that no one would come knocking. Not that knocking was necessary in the K.U., the doors were never allowed to be closed during daylight hours. At night, when everyone lie restless (or in ativan induced sleep) in their beds, the “murses” would come to lock them from the outside and then open the center rectangular cutout so that they could check on everyone periodically. Even the bathrooms had no locks. Hayden reminded her roommate four times that she was about to use the bathroom before trusting it was safe to pee. After all Song Draft was a pathological liar as far as she could tell. Who knew what else was wrong with her?

Hayden’s first day was filled with questions and staring contests, doctor’s offices and day room appointments with the interns. By lunch time she had grown tired of the psychological games she knew they were playing with her, she was after all a third year psychology student. But the hours seem to trickle by much slower when you’re locked up.
"Only nine more to go, eight if I get visitors."