"I kept neatly folded paper wrappings from presents over there on that table. Sometimes I would take them out and unfold them and look at the pretty designs and colors, just for the hell of it. I think the foil ones were my favorite." he spoke this matter of factly as he took a sip of water and looked around the stark room.
"I am really not sure where they all came from. No one that I can remember has been by to see me since childhood. So I am pretty sure that they were not from presents given to me. I used to go behind the others here, after their birthday parties and Christmas parties and gather up the prettiest of the discarded wrappings from their presents and steal them away before the cleaning people came in to take them away. They expected it of me. It became my "thing" you know."
"That's pretty much it for what I did during my stay here that they all knew of anyway. Once in a while some new nurse would come in and try to clean away my pretty papers, but I would do that hysterical act and the orderlies would come in calm me down and explain about the papers to the new one." he said without emotion.
"I've been here 35 years come August 1st. Now they are tearing this place down and I am leaving the only home I can ever remember."
"When the doctors came in a few months ago to evaluate me for a new placement, I knew my time was up here. I knew I didn't want to go to some place new. I especially didn't want to go to some group home. I knew I had to fess up and it might as well be now.
See, I know this place like the back of my hand, every nook and cranny. I started out in the peds ward back in 69, I was 3 years old then. Just moved from ward to ward as I grew older. Ended up here at 18 and have been here ever since. This place was safe, why should I leave?" he kind of trailed off and fell into a silence momentarily.
He spoke again after smiling a wry little smile and shaking his head, "I almost got busted once by this old black orderly. He was the first one to ever suspect me. He watched me like a hawk. In his heart he knew I wasn't autistic. So he watched me hoping to catch me being normal. But you know, if I wasn't good at this act, I wouldn't have managed to stay in here for 35 years now would I?" he chuckled to himself at that thought.
"Being here has sort of been like being a monk with a lifetime vow of silence. I study great things, become a brilliant mind, yet never speak a word to anyone. How much easier can it get? I haven't swallowed a med given to me in over 30 years. They truth is, it was all those drugs they gave me in the beginning that made me nearly comatose in the first place. You know, before they brought me here when I was 3, I could have talked if I wanted to, I just didn't want to. So giving me all those drugs to keep me calm just made it easier to not talk. And then somehow it just became a way of being for me. Never talking, never making real contact with people. They didn't expect it so I never had to produce it for them." he shook his head and sighed.
"I am not really afraid of the outside world as people might expect. They actually have a decent library here. I have read nearly every book at least twice, sometimes more. This was a teaching hospital attached to a university. How hard do you think it was for me to sneak out to the university library and read all I wanted? Do you think anyone here missed me when I was gone? How hard do you think it was to attend lectures? Even now I still go out to a lecture or two when the subject sounds interesting. When I was younger it was easy to pass for a student. As I've grown older, I think I pass well for a professor. I've also watched more TV in my 35 years here than most people will in a lifetime. So I think I am pretty well educated about the world outside." he paused and looked up quizzically.
"You're wondering how I learned to read aren't you? It was simple. They still had school of sorts in the peds ward. They sat me in the classroom just because, I guess. It really wasn't hard to learn. Once you knew the alphabet and the sounds the letters made, everything else just kind of fell into place. Same with math. I had to teach myself the sciences though. But that wasn't so hard either. Universities are amazing things." he grinned at that point.
"When they brought me in to the doctors to be evaluated, I had to laugh to myself because I knew they had me labeled just like everyone else always had me labeled in their minds. They had read my charts, they knew the diagnosis, they were expecting a severely autistic 38 year old man who was totally non-communicative. I knew that when I opened my mouth and spoke that they were going to be blown away. Trust me they were." he chuckled again to himself.
"Then they decided to test my IQ. When the results came back they were slack jawed. Most of them had never seen an IQ that high. To say the least, I probably surpassed most of them by a huge margin. They wanted to know why I was here. I told them the truth as I will tell you the truth now." he took another sip of water and set the glass back down softly.
"Why the hell would I want to be anywhere else? Look at the world outside. What a horrible place to live. I am used to living in a world where no one expects anything of you. Here I do as I please and absolutely no one expects me to do things I do not want to do. There are coeds galore around here. I have never wanted nor lacked for female companionship. Women have always been charmed by my gentle brilliance." he winked at me and then grinned widely at this thought.
"I have never had to prove myself to anyone. I know who I am, what I like and don't like and I have had the time to explore life in ways very few will ever have the time to explore. So why should I have left? In their ignorance they placed me in this place as a small child. I have made the best of them all in their ignorance." he smirked knowingly to himself.
He stood up and picked up his small suit case containing the entire contents of his worldly possessions and headed toward the door. "I let some nurse take the wrapping paper away yesterday. I don't need that prop anymore." he grinned.
He opened the door and stood there for a moment looking at the card on the door, it simply said "Kevin". He reached up and tenderly took it down from the door, took one last long look at it and tossed it in to the trash can. "If we're through here, I'd like to go now if you don't mind." I shook my head, yes.
"Thank you." he said smiling politely. He turned and walked away down the hall, making the right toward the day room and to the exit from the only home he could remember.
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