It was like our little thing. Bette Davis and that French guy had smoking together; Bogie and Bacall had their dinner parties; my parents had...well I don't know what they had, I shudder to think; and Lily and I had Jell-O. Today she had purple and I had green and it wiggled in the barred sunlight that crossed our brown Formica table. We hadn't said much today because Lily seemed to need some quiet-time.

"You know Lily, if you need to talk to anybody, please feel free. I'm a pretty good listener."

"Listening is a bunch of crap. That's all anybody here thinks I need--- somebody just to listen to me. But I don't call it listening when the listener does nothing about what they're hearing. I mean, I feel like I'm going crazy just from people saying, 'just talk about it Lily, I'm here to listen.' If I hear that one more time, I think I'll scream but then they'll tie me down."

"No one's going to tie you down."

"You really haven't been here very long have you?"

"No."

"If I could just get out for a walk or a lunch and feel free for just an hour, I know I would feel much better. Then I'd feel like people were actually trying to really help."

************

"She's reaching out, Dr. Hawthorne." This was the doctor I was working directly for now. He was extraordinarily tall and smoked in his office.

"She's a nice looking woman, isn't she?" He asked.

"I don't think of her that way. What harm could a couple of sandwiches in the park do?"

"Well, if she took off, it would cost the institution about two thousand dollars, and that's if we found her the same day. And I would have to listen to a bunch of screaming phone calls, including one from her husband."

"Talk to her for a minute and you'll see she wants to trust people. The problem is she doesn't think anyone is really listening to her. If you let her out for just an hour, I'm sure it could do wonders for her."

"You know Mike, I suspect there's more there than just clinical manic depression with Lily."

"Just talk to her. You'll see."

He stared me down in the silence until finally he responded. "Send her in."

**************

"So you want to go for a walk?" Lily and I sat across from each other while Dr. Hawthorne read her file. "Well, it does look like you've been a pretty good girl." God, I thought, if someone spoke to me that way and I wasn't crazy, it would make me crazy.

"Yes doctor, I have because I want my life back. And I think I'm ready to begin associating with the outside world again. You have to understand how I must feel after all of these months of treatment."

He simply stared her down, seemingly unconvinced, continuing to go over her file.

"All right, this is what I'm going to do. You all can go to the park, but I'm going to have you braced to Mike here, just for the first time."

I remembered what she said about being tied down. She was right, there was still a lot I didn't know about this place.

"Braced?" she asked.

"Cuffed. They're lined handcuffs." I paused, stunned, realizing he was completely serious. " I know that may sound like you've been arrested but I'm just not sure yet on your best course of treatment. I'll let you do this once a week. Let's say every Friday, you can leave with Mike for two hours and if after the first week you seem able to handle it, the cuffs are gone, but Mike is responsible for you. Got it?"

"Yes sir."

***********

We walked down the hallway and Lily was beaming. Then, as if she just thought of it, she asked, "Can Marcus come too?"

"Who's Marcus?"

"He's my lover."

Lover? Here!? Uh oh, I thought, as a sudden feeling of dread overwhelmed me. Perhaps she is indeed crazy. Marcus? I would have to dig deeper.