I wrote maybe 500 words yesterday - bad me! So today I have to charge ahead. I had therapy and voting yesterday and then Nymph was out for a long time. And then I went to bed. It's really kind of sad how the day just evaporated. We were having a lot of panic all day though. But we WILL finish on time. We must!

I like where the story is going, I think. I'm worried about the lack of characters, and because of all the going-crazy that's supposed to happen gradually, I need to make some serious time pass. I think I will have a long section in the hospital. Or something. I don't even know.

I'm worried that my story is trying to be too much, and I'll never write something pretty in a month. I read Dani's story so far and it's just so cute and cool, but mine is trying to be so ambitious. And it will fail, I am afraid.

Anyway, I don't want to waste too many words on the process entry, because I need to get some serious writing in! I'm going to set goals for myself today, and do nothing but write for a long time.

First I have to go make a photo entry though. Ah, how I love my new PDA.

I don't want to open my eyes, but there's a person standing in the room who only knocked once before barging in. She says I need to get up so they can draw blood from me. I wonder why they need my blood; I'm not sick! I'm not here for some fever or disease or something. I mean, I don't have a big problem with needles, but I don't like the way these people assume they can just do whatever they want with me, like I'm some kind of a rag doll. She's standing there waiting for me, repeating my name, because I haven't given her any sign that I've heard her.

"Valerie? Valerie, hello, time to get up!" Her voice is much too bright, saccharine, not hiding its impatience but layering the cheer on as a complement to it. Irritated and cheery, what a terrible combination.

I roll over, squint at her. I'm glad that I never took my clothes off last night. I brought a bag of things to wear with me, because the doctor told me I should, but they took it back into the nursing station and haven't mentioned it since. They said they needed to search it.

"Well, look who's finally up. Hello, Valerie, my name is Linda, and I'm one of the nurses on the floor today."

"Yeah, ok," I mumble, shielding my face from the light she's flipped on.

"We need you to come get your blood taken, and we're a bit behind schedule this morning, so you'll need to come right away," she smiled. She was waiting for me to follow her out of the room; this is cruel and unusual! How can they possibly be behind at... I squint at my watch... 7:23 in the morning? I sigh and heave myself upright, following her out into the hallway in my sockfeet.

The hall is wide and sterile, bright with fluorescent lighting. There are some windows, but they show only a little strip of concrete with some pathetic dying bushes, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and another panel of windows with another hallway on the other side. Completely closed in. Or maybe it's a mirror, but I don't see myself in it, so I figure it's not.

The nurse notices me looking. "That's right, you got here pretty late last night, didn't you? That's the atrium, which is where you can smoke if you need to, or get some fresh air." I wondered how any air could make it down into the tiny gap surrounded by building, especially when it was choked to death with cigarette smoke, but I wasn't going to argue with her.

"And this," said the nurse triumphantly, as though it were some kind of crowning glory, "is the dayroom." A shriek sounds; a short, middle-aged woman is sitting at a table with her sleeve pulled up, looking like she'd rather be slowly tortured to death than be pierced by a needle. A nurse is holding her hand, and the man with the needle rolls his eyes.

"Looks like someone's ahead of you; just have a seat and wait, Valerie. He'll be with you soon." I choose a chair and sit, rather glumly. Not only did I have to be dragged out of elusive sleep at the crack of dawn to lose another few CC's of blood, but I have to wait in line for the privilege. I feel like running, but there was nowhere to run to. There is nothing to do but sit down, as I was told, and wait.

The dayroom is roughly the size of a one-bedroom apartment. On one side of the room is a big square of low, couch-like, squishy vinyl chairs. They are a horrendous shade of mauve. In front of them is a counter that looks like it could have been a bar, but there are no stools. The counter is sealed off with low swinging doors, and opens into a room where people with badges scurry about – the nurses' station. The other side of the dayroom is filled with tables and chairs, and there is a sad-looking, half-finished puzzle spread out on one of the tables. A regular counter, with locked cabinets, spans the far wall. It has a mini-fridge, a sink, and a stove with all the burners removed.

Two hallways extend from either side of the section with low chairs, away from the nurses' station. My room is down one of them; the other one looks like a mirror image. There are all kinds of doors in the walls, but I don't know where most of them lead. There the one I came in through from the outside, and there's the room with the plant where they had me wait. There's not much to look at. I think I'll go crazy here if I wasn't already. There is a pile of ripped-up magazines on the chair next to me, things like Cosmopolitan and Vogue, People and Glamour, all of them advertising sex sex sex on the cover, my only reading material here in a place where sex is not one of the options. The women on the covers look thin, airbrushed, and ugly. My best bet is a Family Day with a giant dessert on the cover. Blah. No thank you.

My eyes start to glaze just as they call me over. "All right Valerie, your turn," another nurse says. I walk over to the table and sit down, silently submitting to the procedure. They don't talk to me, just hurry about their business as though relieved that I'm not making a fuss. Now they're done and I'm sitting in an unfriendly room with unfriendly people and nothing to do. I know I said waiting was my talent, but I'm frightened because I see my time here stretching out endlessly, with no changes, each day a thousand years long. I have these moments of anticipation, at least that's what I call it. Just a sense about what is to come, and it knocks me down sometimes, like now. I'll be really lucky if I leave here today, but something in me doubts the likelihood of that possibility. I'm caged up and I can't really believe that they would be so quick to let me go. Intuition whispers to me that being a prisoner is permanent and irrevocable. It feels familiar, somehow, this lack of control, lack of choice. I feel like I wouldn't be surprised at anything they did to me, and I think that making me wait here, without my stuff, with nothing today, I think that's going to be the worst.

I've already tried to drift into my daydreams this morning, but it isn't happening. Sometimes it's like that. I don't know why it only works some of the time, most of the time. But right now I'm too paralyzed with fear to relax into my world; this one looms so intimidatingly that I can't look away. I can't explain where this panic, this fear is coming from. My ground is unsteady like that lately; I guess it's just part of the drowning. The waves throw me off course, off my feet, out of my way. I get afraid, and I can't say why, and I don't know how to fix it. I get depressed and can't snap myself out of it. I know these waves are a metaphor, but they seem so real to me that I'm afraid I really am going crazy.

I haven't been remembering to update the count, so here it is in the middle of my session. I'm righ on track, I guess, if I want to have been doing 2000 words per day.