"She's not responding to the Thorazine...let's switch to Haldol, and start her out at...oh, say...point five milligrams and see how she does with that."

In here, everything is 70's Government Issue, all browns and orange-beige, except for the gown you're wearing which is gray, covered in smiling cartoon cats, and missing one of its ties; the copper tint of madness and melancholy's lavender assaults are camouflaged in here, like something shameful and difficult to hide is sometimes called a sacrilege instead. Pain has been reduced to the contents of a petri dish in here, suffering only visible when magnified at high power on a slide, and there's nothing institutional green at Bolivar anymore.

The nurse gently dabs your arm with a cold, wet cotton ball and tries to sweetly say, "We're...starting...you...on...a...new...medicine," but the words pop out like smoke rings from her mouth.

This is how it happens: back when it was your job to mow the lawn in summer, you finished then stood guzzling Kool-aid until you felt that ache in the middle of your head. She knew you drank it straight out of the pitcher, too, and never said a word—but if you were one of the one per cent who wound up frozen on the inside of that ache, back then they blamed your mother for it. This is how it happens when you're mute and static at the surface, and at the core, humming fast enough you're still.

"Miss ? We're gonna get you fixed up and get you out of here."

These words are meant to tempt you as piped tones charm the snake, with possibilities you've long forsaken and which have long forsaken you, of a home where taupe-colored carpet stretches wall-to-wall, where you learn easily how to cook an egg without the yolk breaking, and whether that boy likes you or whether you like him, where only Kool-aid makes a frozen ache inside your head.

Built in the days of Prohibition, in large part with the sweat and bones of people the infamous Jim Crow laws prohibited from its services, this edifice of Southern gothic lore sits in the heart of Bolivar, Tennessee, and signifies a fate that even children understand it's better not to tempt. In every family there were stories only safe to tell in whispers, of aunts and uncles never seen or never seen again, and they'd say, "your cousin so-and-so did such-and-such and he wound up in Bolivar, ya know," when children's games began to grate on parents' nerves. Now in these lobotomy-free and stigma-reduced days, "Western State Institute of Mental Health" or simply "Western State", is what it's called, but to those of a certain generation and to the locals, the singular appellation of "Bolivar" alone is quite enough to say.

"Give her another point five milligrams of Haldol around nine, let's get this one fixed up and get her out of here."
 
On one side torn and frayed from boredom, faded out by apathy and sunlight on the other, the artificial ferns and ficus trees dot a landscape called "the dayroom", a boorish punchline to a cruel insipid joke. More than care is managed here, hope is dosed out like a pill; the treatment goal is ending both your nightmares and your dreams. There's nothing institutional green today and no one stays here long--but everyone who comes here now comes back, and everything is late November leaves and winter cream, at Bolivar these days.