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she was still coming to group for a while? At least, I think so. So, I was wondering if you still had some of her stuff? Or maybe if you knew anyone that she used to hang out with? Maybe they have some information about her.”
    She smiled at me affectionately, but there was sadness in her eyes. I knew she pitied me, and I was kind of thankful for it. At least that might mean that she had some information. “Let me look in my computer. A few years is a long time, though, you haven’t heard from her at all?”
    I shook my head. “When she came here, we weren’t on the best of terms.”
    She nodded and turned towards her computer, typing away. I waited for a moment before she turned back toward me, “Leia Kellen, yes, I have her here. We don’t have any personal information for her, and she didn’t leave a forwarding address when she checked out, but I’m sure you already knew that. However, it looks like some of her personal belongings are still here. And she hasn’t come to group in over eighteen months, so we can give those to family. It doesn’t violate any policies after a year has passed. Everything is down in the basement storage. I’ll go get it for you. Just wait here.”
    I nodded appreciatively and walked back over near the front entrance, sitting down on a plastic chair. I watched her move toward a set of locked doors, scanning her keys, and going down a flight of stairs. I hoped there would be something in her personal artifacts that could help me, anything that could lead me in the right direction. Right now, this is the last piece of information I had to go on. I waited in silence for a minute or two, contemplating taking out my phone and playing some Candy Crush while I waited, until I heard the screaming. It was bloodcurdling, and it made my brain hurt and my skin crawl. I watched a woman fly down the stairs in front of me, and run directly into the glass door that the nurse had just walked through. She had a deranged look on her face, and her hair was all frizzy, framing her very thin appearance. She banged on the window, and looked directly at me. Suddenly, she stopped staring at me like she had seen a ghost. I wondered if she knew Leia. I stood up from my spot, considering approaching her, even though I couldn’t get to her, when two orderlies grabbed her hands from off the window, and put them behind her back. She screamed some more, and attempted to bite one of them, but the woman had a needle with her, and put an injection into her arm. She was motionless within a second. The other attendant, a man, lifted her up into his arms, and walked her back up the stairs. At the same moment, the nurse that I’d been speaking to at the front desk scanned her way through the door again with a small cardboard box.
    “Sorry about that. Sometimes, we have rough days around here.”
    She handed me the box. “Thank you.” I wondered how many rough days they had, and how many of them were attributed to Leia. Had she looked like that woman when she was in here? So lost and confused that she ran screaming into a glass door without even reacting to feeling the pain? Suddenly, I was glad that she had refused to see me. I don’t think I could’ve taken seeing her like that.
    “Would you like to sit here and look through the items? Or would you like me to open the door for you?”
    I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. “You can just open the door. I’ll look through them at home.”
    But, the truth was, I didn’t look through them at home. As soon as I got in my car, I climbed into the back seat, and dumped the box. There wasn’t much in there: a book, some letters for my parents, and a single diary. I inspected the weathered leather exterior of the book. It was hers; I knew it. Inside, lied her deepest secrets. Things she even hid from me. Stories that should never be told.
I pried open the dried pages, praying I wouldn't find something in here that would break me. I've been broken before.
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