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backless gowns that patients in hospitals wore. Who ever came up with these “fashionable” outfits? I know they were used so patients couldn’t pretend to be a visitor and try to escape. Not in this attire.
    Sister rubbed my arm. “Your doctor is due here any minute, child. Why don’t you relax until then? Have your breakfast with the other patients.”
    As I followed her to the communal dining room, I got a load of the unit. Not too drab-looking out here in the patient lounge, with colorful red, blue, and yellow printed wallpaper. Some nice landscape paintings like the ones sold at starving artists’ shows hung on the walls above vinyl couches and seats sans pillows (obviously so patients wouldn’t smother each other).
    I figured since this was a private institution, it was kept up pretty nicely. The patients had to have damn good insurance or their own money to come here. I knew private places like this were not cheap.
    When we got to the doorway, Sister Wacky stepped to the side—and I got a load of the patient population here.
    Yikes!
    And I thought the bunch in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were weirdos. Jack Nicholson would seem normal compared to this group. I looked at the staff standing around the room, half expecting to see Nurse Ratched.
    No Nurse Ratched here. Only a hippie-type girl, with stringy, long brown hair and tight jeans, waiting by thedoor. A very young-looking nun who had on a different type of habit stood nearby. Wait. I recognized her as a novice, in her black skirt and white blouse. Most likely a nursing-student nun, here for training. Hmm, maybe she could be my ticket out of here.
    Sister Wacky gave me a little nudge. “Hurry in, child, or there won’t be any food left.”
    â€œNo shit, Madonna,” a rough-looking teenager said from her seat near us. “Get the whacko some runny freaking eggs and burnt bacon.” She pushed her dish so hard, it slid off the other end of the table.
    The hippie hurried over while the room burst out in an uproar. “Nice one, Ruby! Now it’s off to solitary for you.” She grabbed Ruby with such force, it sure as hell shocked me. Ruby, however, cursed and yanked her shoulder free.
    â€œGet your freaking hands off of me, Jennifer, before my old man sues you for molesting me.”
    A beautiful blonde girl, who’d been on the other side of Ruby’s dish, brushed her lap off with a napkin. “You’d need witnesses for that, Ruby, and none of us here saw a thing. Did we?” She eyed the crowd.
    Several who’d been screeching about the mess calmed down and nodded, as if the girl had some kind of control over them. Hmm. Interesting.
    Ruby spit at her. “I’m really scared, Jackie Dee. Ohhhhhh. You’ve got all these crazies on your side. Big shit.”
    â€œLet’s go, Ruby. And stop causing trouble amongst the patients,” said Jennifer—who must have been a psychiatric assistant—as she pushed her toward the door.
    Sister Wacky made the sign of the cross and looked at me. “The courts cause so much trouble for us with these wealthy drug-addicted children.” Another sign of the cross. “It’s either here or jail, and since their parents can afford the high cost, they always come here.”
    I nodded and decided Sister Wacky must have gotten some good chemistry from me to slipand discuss another patient. Patient? Now I was thinking of myself as a patient.
    Jagger was a dead man.
    The scrambled eggs weren’t nearly as runny as Ruby had said they were. Nope. They stuck to the inside of my mouth as if my saliva had dried up. Of course, maybe I’d lost my appetite after finding myself held captive here. That’d sure do it.
    I took a drink of the milk they’d given me to wash down what I could while scanning the room for a means of escape. When I looked at Jackie Dee, I gasped.
    An older lady sitting near me leaned over,