HERMIONE19  WHITE

Everyone has a story to tell - even one of the dreaded Men In White Coats. Let's listen in...a spooky but interesting addition to the HP Author Fic collection. Send mail to celamb@home.com.

White.

I hate that color.

Every day, everything that surrounds me is white. White walls. White halls. White clouds outside the white windows. White padded cells. And, of course, my white coat.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't hate my work so much.

Well, that's not quite right. I like the ideal of my work, the idea of saving people and slowly restoring them to sanity. I like my work when it works - when someone can sincerely thank me for what I've done and leave this dratted white place to start a new life. Then I can feel proud.

What I don't like is the rest of it.

Every day, I have to walk down a disgustingly white corridor - "Child and Adolescent Wing, Psychosis Division," says the sign.

The sign gives you no idea of what is going to hit you when you come in.

These people are so young - thirteen or fourteen would be my guess. And the way they act - lost, alone, helpless - and angry. Angry at me, angry at my colleagues, angry at the world in general for letting them end up in this place.

I can't say I blame them. It's so white...

Every child here claims to be part of a secret organization known as the DSE. Whether this is a symptom of their psychosis, or the cause, I have yet to be certain, but it seems to be very important to all of them. Some of them talk about it having been defeated, about every person of it being caught by the men in white coats, about what they might have done to prevent it and didn't. Others talk about growing stronger, about revenge. Others - the closest to recovery, I think - only mention it in offhand remarks, or in their sleep.

The other day I talked to one of them. The people don't have names here - all I had to identify her with was the number 19318. She was rocking back and forth in her white padded cell and I asked her what she was thinking about.

"I'm not going to have to stay here much longer," she said. "I'm not. The rest of the DSE is going to come and rescue me."

"The rest of the DSE," I told her, "is locked up in here, too."

"Sirius isn't."

"Who's he?"

"Sirius. Sirius Black."

"You mean the person from Harry Potter?"

"Yeah. He's going to come and rescue me. He's going to come and rescue us all."

I had talked to 19318 before, and it was no good trying to convince her that the people she talked so confidently about didn't exist. A simple "Uh huh" was the safest response. I went on to the next cell, hoping to talk to somebody a little saner.

That's when she started to sing.

I had heard 19318 sing enough times to be able not to pay attention to it. She had a nice voice, actually. She talked about taking voice lessons sometimes, but I could never quite tell if it was something she had done, was planning to do, or had simply dreamed up in the middle of her dementia. But I didn't like to hear her sing. What the song was didn't matter. It could be anything from a simple lullaby to the Phantom of the Opera being there inside her mind again. There was simply a disturbing... something about the way she sang everything. Something that screamed subconciously about being locked up in that cell, the saneness and insaneness clashed together, the unfairness, the whiteness of it all.

I didn't like it.

Concentrating on not listening, I ran down the hall and to the safety of my office.

My disgustingly white office.

Why couldn't I have decided to work in some other hallway? A saner one? The place for depressed people, maybe. At least they're only incurably sad and not actually out of touch with reality. Why, why, why did I have to choose the Child and Adolescent Wing, Psychosis Division?

Because I wanted to make a difference in these peoples' lives, that's why.

But is it really worth it? Is it really worth it to trap these people in padded cells until they accept our view of reality? Is it really worth it to squash their hopes and dreams, no matter how strange those hopes and dreams seem to be, so they will fit into our concept of "normal"? Is it worth it to live all day surrounded by so much sane whiteness you want to scream just so you can accomplish all that?

I don't know. But hey, I have to do my job. I was trained in psychiatry and there isn't really another place I can work besides here and still get paid. So I'll keep on walking down that hallway, not listening to 19318 or anyone else, administering medicine and asking teenage girls whether they still believe in Harry Potter characters and sugar-highness or not.

And maybe, someday, I'll get my boss to paint this whole damn place some other color. It doesn't matter which one, really.

Just anything but white.

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