“Good morning, sunshine! Time to wake up!”

I open my eyes and see Nurse Judy, ready to give me my morning injection. I sit on the bed and roll up my pajamas sleeve. I feel the needle under my skin and the medication flowing inside my veins.

The nurse gives me a wide smile. “Good girl! You can go to the canteen now and have breakfast with your friends.”

Friends… I don’t have friends here. My friends are almost 60 miles away from me. Enjoying life, learning new stuff, making out at parties. Certainly not spending their youth in a psychiatric ward.

My parents put me there. It was after another anxiety attack at school. I lost control and tried to do something stupid.

Now everything seems stupid to me...

I pass by Nutsy Nora’s room. Her yelling is impossible to ignore. She keeps screaming “Kelly and Jenna” over and over again, whatever these names mean. I see two doctors rushing to her room with a set of tranquilizers.

This place is full of people like her. I don’t think I belong here.

I enter the canteen and hear a loud “Surprise!”. I look around and see other patients gathered around a cake with number candles - 1 and 7 - and an inscription: “Happy birthday, Robin!”. Right, it’s my 17th birthday. Yay. I totally forgot. I force myself to smile and blow the candles.

The cake tastes like soap. Or a cough syrup.

I hide both candles in my pocket when nobody's watching. I guess it’s the only gift I can count on today.

I stop one of the nurses on the way back to my room. I ask if my parents are going to see me. She shrugs and walks away without saying a word.

Bitch.

As I lay in bed, I stretch my arms and look at my hands. They look… so weird. So damn weird... Maybe it’s a side effect of one of those medications?

Nurse Judy interrupts my contemplation. She storms in with an afternoon dosage of pills.

“How are you feeling, my dear? Did you like the birthday surprise?” she asks, with that annoyingly sweet smile.

“Yeah, I forgot today’s the day.”

She takes my hand and says, “Oh, don’t worry, darling, it happens to everybody.”

As she holds my hand, I ask her why my skin looks so strange.

Nurse Judy gives me a sympathetic gaze. “I think it’s normal at your age, don’t you think so, sweetie?”

Is she trying to make a fool of me? Oh, I've had enough.

“But I’m only 17!” I say imploringly.

“I don’t know any other teenager with hands like these! Just look!”

I take the candles out of my pocket and almost rub them in her face.

“You see?! One and seven! Seventeen!” I bellow.

Judy gently takes the candles from my shaking hands.

“Robin, it’s not seventeen. Let me show you the right order. It’s seven and one.”

…Seventy one.