Yolanda Grieg didn't know how it had come to this. She couldn't pinpoint the exact moment in time that had lead to her holding a small letter opener to the throat of an Eldrich Asylum orderly as her parents both attempted to calm her down, to coax the formerly harmless blade from her hand. Her mother was yelling through tears, alternating between pleas in her native tongue and in English. Her father, hands held up in a gesture of peace, looked at her with a expression of barely contained stoicism; his eyes gave him away. He was a broken man within, confused and frightened, though whether it was fear of or for his daughter, that was unclear.
Yolanda thought perhaps, perhaps it has been when she had fallen off of the slide in front of her classmates and had landed with an audible cracking sound coming from her right arm. Perhaps that had been the start of it all. Maybe, when she had simply stood with her arm at an impossible angle, bruise already forming with a nonchalant expression, that had been the beginning.
Whatever it had been, this was where she stood now. A letter opener in hand while her other hand laid flat against the sweating brow of the nervous orderly. This is where her life was right now. She looked down at the man for a brief moment, before returning her gaze to her parents. Crying mother and broken father.
Her hand fell from the man's forehead and the blade left her hand, clattering on the hardwood floor. Too loud a sound than it had any right to be. Yolanda's arms were immediately yanked behind her back by the second orderly who had been standing by, while the first gripped her around the waist. The angle of her arms would have been painful, had she been anyone else.
And just as she had stood silently before frightened classmates with a broken arm, Yolanda Grieg silently walked backwards as she was guided to by the clearly angered orderlies. Her parents followed as she was removed from her home and guided to the back of a van, soon finding herself in a muffled kind of silence with cold walls surrounding.
An engine started - it felt distant - and she sat down on a small bench that had been attached to one of the walls. She clasped her hands in front of her and looked down, appearing very similar to someone in prayer.
She wasn't praying.