I heard her cry for help, but I was too scared to answer it.
“Help me.” She whispered in a voice so quiet and tortured that I could barely discern the words as they escaped her cracked and swollen lips.
“What did you say?” I was scared. I didn’t want to be here and she looked scary. Her hair was matted and she shuffled her way down the hall, staring off in the distance with a vacant look, as if no one were home. And we were in an insane asylum after all. You never know what’s going on in people’s heads there. If I got too close, she could lash out at me and do some serious damage! I’d heard stories about places like this and I wasn’t about to become one!
“Help me!” She whispered it again. “I don’t want to go to hell.”The staff was walking up to us now and I was relieved. As they approached, I looked at her and said quickly “Me neither!” and walked away. I mean, honestly, I’m no shrink. She obviously had some serious problems and I wasn’t about to touch those with a ten foot pole! The staff walked her back to her room and I went into the dining room to do some more coloring.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The staff checked on us every fifteen minutes, making sure we were safe in our beds where we were supposed to be, and every time I would start to dose, I would hear her hoarse whisper: “I don’t want to go to hell! Help me! Help me! Help me!”
I went home the next day. A half-hearted suicide attempt doesn’t earn you much time in an overcrowded psychward. Apparently, whatever was ailing my tortured floormate earned her much longer, because the rumor around the place was that she had been there two weeks already and that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I had no intention of ever returning to that life-sucking place, and was fairly certain I would never run into her again and would forget about her soon enough.
That was not to be the case. I did not forget about her. She haunted my memories, burdening my heart every few weeks. Her tortured voice would play in my mind like it was yesterday. “I don’t want to go to hell!” and I would wonder what would cause someone to get to the point of desperation that poor woman encountered that dreadful October. What did someone do to her that she was filled with such fear? And I wished that I had told her about Jesus. I was fairly certain that if she had such a fear of hell, she had been painted a horrible picture of Jesus, and the thought filled me with anger. I knew what it was like to have been taught about the “wrong” Jesus, and how hard it was then to separate Truth from the lies we had been told. My heart ached for her and I wished that I could reach back into the past and save her for the wretchedness she must have experienced. I found myself praying repeatedly that God would send her someone to show her the love and forgiveness she so desperately needed.
