Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way

By Mark Lind-Hanson

Jeana Montague is “in treatment.” She’s been caught “acting out” and being “a problem to her neighbors.” At Shadow Acres, rehabilitation is measured by one’s willingness to “get with the program.”
But Shadow Acres is staffed by an incongruous group of men (and women) out to prove to others that they have nothing but society’s best interest at heart. Who was it, someone- once said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions?” But they have obviously never heard this, or if they have, they’ve surrendered to the least common denominator- the ability to show power by making others miserable.
Jeana makes some friends while at Shadow Acres, and tries to have a life of her own outside the supervised community as well (if she can). Ursula Bowers comes from a similar background, and both are about the same age, and they become fast friends. Harris, however, is an older man, who’s seen better times and has nearly given up on their ever returning to him. Between the two of them, they attempt to help Jeana recover her own sense of self and identity in a surrounding which is inimical in every way to its gratification.
The ultimate price Jeana must pay for her resistance to “the program” eventually comes to pass. Jeana Montague is definitely not alone in her plight- but getting to the end of things just isn’t, really, the end of things.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Lind-Hanson
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310211294

Mark Lind-Hanson

Mark Lind-Hanson is a guitarist, songwriter, and composer, born in San Francisco, and lives somewhere in Silicon Valley.

Book preview

Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way

by

Mark Lind-Hanson

copyright 2014 Mark Lind-Hanson

THIS IS THE SMASHWORDS EDITION

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The characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

No trees were killed in the production of this book, only electrons.

Cover art by Michael Donohue

Cover design by Kevin Donohue

Acknowledgment of Lyrics for MacArthur Park --by Jimmy Webb; copyright Canopy Music, Inc.

For Virginia, Alana, and my friend Sally

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

AFTERWORD

CHAPTER 1

Hi diary! So nice to meet you! I guess you'd better get to know me, cuz we are going to be BEST FRIENDS! I'm Jeana. Jeana Montague. I should explain a couple things about my family first.

My great Grandfather, Montegard Cap Montague, was a Marine. He was killed at the Battle of Truk Island when his landing craft was blown to pieces by a direct hit from a Japanese cannon. Only three Marines survived, all the rest drowned, or like Cap, were blasted to bits. My Grandfather, Oren Montague, he became a Marine, too. And my father, Harry the Fairy Montague- he did not join the Marines. I think they called him Fairy because of that, or, maybe because he wanted a son so badly, but he didn’t get a son, he got me, and I'm a girl. Anyway, my Daddy, I do not remember, because he got killed in a car crash just three weeks after I got born. My Mama raised me all by herself, mostly, with a little help from Grandpa Oren.

So I am really happy to be here, anyway! I am now living at Shadow Acres. It's what they call a halfway house but I am not sure what they mean by that. Halfway from where to where? One of the doctors, Dr. Knickerson, says it is halfway between here and now, then and there, or heaven and hell. I am not sure what he means, but it sure sounds scary. I only have one friend here, and that is the cook, and her name is Betty. She likes me because I stand around and talk with her while she makes the big pans of scrambled eggs in the morning, and I help her chop the vegetables.

Betty is not like the guards, the nurses, and the other staff who walk around with keys on their belts and pass out the meds. Some days I try to hide the meds or spit them out, but they always catch me. That's their job.

Most of the time if I can I hide in my room and read. I have a lot of my things here- I guess I do not really have a lot of things, but, since Mama kicked me out when I turned 20, I have to keep things as few as I can. Part of the time, I live out of my backpack. Some days I try to drink a lot of coffee, because it counteracts the meds. The meds make me sleepy, they make me talk funny, and some days, they even make me see blurry. It is not a lot of fun.

Well that is all for today, diary! I hope I get to know you really good, too!

Shadow Acres is a semi-locked facility nestled into a small grove of oak trees on an unassuming street in Simtek, California. From the outside it looks like any one of a number of apartment complexes on the street. However, the rear portion of the complex has one way in, and one way out, and is accessed via an electronic card-lock system. The other two floors of the block are not locked, but inside them reside the vast majority of Shadow Acres’ inmates - er, um, clients. At the front of the complex is a small two-bedroom bungalow which has been converted into private offices for the staff and directorship of the ShadAcresInc corporation- a nonprofit functioning primarily through state health program funds, county social service funds, private donations, and pharmaceutical lobbying kickbacks.

The bottom floor of the locked ward is composed of two large rooms, one of which is the group therapy or family discussion room, and the other is a room used by staff for their own conferences. The walls of both rooms are edged with benched cushions, and only a lonely beanbag chair in the corner of the larger, group meeting room breaks the monotony. Of course, the cushions are all tastefully chosen and super-fluffy, their twill and canvas upholstery reflecting mod a-gogo patterning and the whim of one or another of the directors.

Of course, while meetings are going on in the bottom rooms, it is often possible to hear the screams, or the pounding, of those whose fortune it has been to be assigned inside the locked section. These protests, however noted they might be by the busy staff members, fall upon deaf ears. These people are in the ward to protect themselves from themselves, and arguing with fate and destiny will change absolutely nothing.

The neighbors of Shadow Acres don’t seem to notice the place much, except for the times when an ambulance will take the long driveway in to the rear section, or a black and white police car might visit with a new candidate for treatment sulking in the back seat. If there is any shame or stigma attached to the facility, it is generally in the mind of the incarcerated, and otherwise amounts to nothing but paranoia- a word the staff themselves are fond of using, and often.

Dr. Nick Vogelsong twirled his moustache. Across from him sat Bill Prabscki, one of the toughest client cases yet he’d had all year. Normally, a guy like Prabscki would be in and out of Shadow Acres in a matter of hours- but this time, without a court order, Vogelsong was stuck with him at least overnight. That would mean at least $50.oo and a Medi-Kal sticker. Still, it beat just shipping him out without a bit of remuneration. Generally a guy like Prabscki would have Vogelsong write up a presentation file, issue an off-the-top diagnosis based on the color of his retinas, and send him downriver in an ambulance, no siren, no lights.

But Prabscki was difficult because his mother was also sometimes in treatment with Shadow Acres. She was not a resident, nonetheless, she came to Vogelsong’s group therapy sessions, and these lasted from one to two hours in the early morning, generally 9:30 to 11, or 11:30, if somebody was being difficult. And dealing with her could be difficult, because she wore a tattoo on her arm which identified her as a former inmate at the concentration camp in Oscwiczeim, Poland, in the 1940s. Somehow she had ended up in the lucky number of survivors and made her way across the Atlantic. Bill was her younger of two sons, the first of which was Tom, and Tom was known to drop in to keep his Mom company on those days she did dare to spend in group.

Vogelsong had a hard time of it convincing the Prabsckis that he was a Dane, not a German, for his accent could barely be discerned by them as any different than their mother’s former captors.

Vogelsong would, in fact, often hand off problems like Prabscki to his #2 aide-de-camp, Sol Markoff (who was actually Jewish himself, but had spent World War Two as a student at the University of Illinois, and never saw the bad end of a rifle until he was dishonorably discharged in the Korean War for being too nonstandard.) He wore his intellectualism on his sleeve like he proudly displayed his degree on the wall in his office. Shadow Acres was the sort of place where only tenured staff even had a private office, but Sol was one of their longest therapists on staff, and Sol was deferred to by nearly everybody else, including Vogelsong, nominally the Director.

Vogelsong would himself boast about how he was almost married as though gaining a wife would somehow place him automatically among the elect on Earth. What he was going through to win her was definitely hard, but he rarely shared that with his colleagues. His incessant stutter, a leftover vestige of the inferiority complex he still harbored, from years of being defeated at fencing as a teenager, by more talented, upper-class Danes, tended to break the concentration of anyone trying to hold conversation with him. Instead, he tended to take his bad evenings out on the people like the Prabsckis who really had little choice but attend his group therapy sessions, like it or not, if they wanted that valuable contact with their mother at all.

Now Bill was in the mix. Tom was a man of his own, had a job, dropped in to say hi to Mom, doted on Bill. He would grant Bill money for cartons of cigarettes which Bill would pass around to all the smokeless clients. It made him quite popular. Despite the fact that smoking was banned during group, those who indulged themselves formed up into factions against Vogelsong and his other physician (rank #3) Lance Knickerson.

Knickerson wore his hair long in a curly-white-boy natural, but not too long. He kept a well trimmed beard, that showed he was cool and a little bit beatnik, but definitely not a wildass hippie.

The token wildass hippie on the staff was Total. Total ranked far far below the doctors, being nothing more than a Psych Tech. But he was enrolled in the Psychology and Psychiatry program at San Francisco State University, and had seen his share of psychedelic interior fireworks. He liked to think it gave him some insight into the clients who passed through Shadow Acres who were well caught up in the drug scene.

Knickerson used Total and the other resident Psych Tech, Lena, as foils for his often cruel regimes of thorazine, prolixin, and haldol, force fed to clients who refused to cooperate with Vogelsong or any of the others who ran The Program. He particularly enjoyed group sessions, as they allowed him to see his handiwork reflected in the tremors and stationary shuffles of the clients. He had Prabscki going now on 50 mg Haldol and 400 mg Stelazine a week. The Haldol was causing Prabscki difficulty in ejaculation.

Then it’s doing what it’s supposed to. You’re supposed to use your sexual energy wisely, not waste it masturbating, Bill, he would chide. But how Bill felt about this was one of the things he meant to