(Okay, folks, you know the drill. I tried, but let me know if I screwed up.)

You eyed Campbell as he came into your room, chattering at a mile a minute as per usual. He yapped and yapped away, and you couldn't get a word in edgewise. Not that you could if he was talking slower or taking pauses for breaths. Catatonia was the pits. Catatonia with catalepsy and mutism was worse.

Day in and day out, the nurses would arrange you into different positions. Lay you down to sleep. Sit you up to listen to the radio, or watch the telly, or... well, actually, that was about it. Not much else to do at St. Jude's.

You sat on the couch, staring off at Campbell and dying to talk back. You'd happily trade your catalepsy and mutism for other symptoms. Stereotypy would be more tolerable, just repetitive movements with no real purpose. Echolalia or echopraxia would do, too. But no. Catalepsy and mutism resulting from it.

However... you'd heard the nurses talk about changing your medication. Supposedly the new one would be more effective. You just had to wait for it to kick in...

As you waited, Campbell just kept talking, sharing anything he could think of, looping in on himself and going off on tangents and side stories and somehow only seeming to breathe every five minutes.

Eventually, you felt something loosen. A tingle in your lips as Campbell mentioned something about a song he was trying to learn on the guitar. It was almost there, and suddenly, the words were there, in your throat, passing through your mouth and past your lips and into the air for the first time in years.