Modern+Shakespeare+Retelling+HE

= Somewhere I Have Never Travelled =

Love, it is beautiful yet heart wrenching. It is perfectly clear yet the most confusing feeling that could possibly be felt by anyone. There are standards that you try to uphold or that others try to uphold for you. What they don’t understand is that love isn't something that can’t be changed by a thought or to try to conform into what others expect it to be.

“Ophelia!” I was blasted back to reality and away from my thoughts by my father’s harsh voice. My father had always had this controlling way of speaking. He never had to ask me to do anything more than once. He was very high up in the stock market and if going off the size of our penthouse in New York City, you could consider us wealthy.

“Yes father?” I replied as I tugged my Beats headphones off my ears.

“I have to go back into the office to finish up some of the paper work concerning Hamlet’s death. I will be home late but come home right after work.” He replied in a monotone fashion as he flipped through various letters and bills.

He isn’t home much ever since Hamlet, his boss, died. “Yes sir.” As soon as he exited my room, I hurried to grab my bag and keys. Work usually isn’t fun for people, but to me it is the best part of the day.

Something is different about today. As the days passed during my summer internship in the psychiatric ward of St. Joe's hospital, I have become more and more excited to go to work. Most people, especially my father, don't understand why a teenage girl like myself would want to dedicate her summer to interning in a mental hospital, but it's what I know I want to do. Something about the way people move and their mannerisms when they're categorically "mental" intrigues me. I study and watch them as I work each day and as the days turn into nights and then back into days again, I know that this is going to be the one thing I'm good at.

There is one boy in the ward that intrigues me most. He seems to be a close age to myself. His hair is the color of ash; his eyes are a piercing blue. He never seems to just look at a person but instead look into them. I've seen him around a few times now, every time making me more and more compelled to him. I don't know his full story but to me, he seems anything but mad. He is thoughtful and knowledgeable. Whenever I see him at lunch or sitting under the trees in the quad, he is always buried in a book.

I check in for my shift and pin my name tag to my polo shirt while the secretary hands me my agenda for today. Attached to my agenda is a folder and inside, a letter and several papers.

// Dear Ms. Anderson: //

// You have done such an amazing job this summer in the St. Joe's Intern Program. I would like to express my great gratitude and would like to offer you the position of head intern. Inside of this folder, you will also find paper work for one of our patients. I would like for you to work closely and personally with him for the rest of your internship and interact with him in various activities. Thank you again for all of your hard work and dedication to this internship and good luck! //

// Sincerely, //

// Alex Robinson //

This is what I have been waiting for all summer! I had heard that someone is promoted to head intern in which they are able to work with a patient first hand and I had hoped it would be me. I was so excited to see who I would be working with that I nearly dropped the entire folder as I flipped through the pages. On the first page directly behind my directions as head intern is the patient's records and history. My eyes are automatically locked to the page. Hamlet Waters Jr. Besides his name I see a picture of those watery blue eyes and dark hair. It's the boy who had me so compelled.

Of course it would be Hamlet. I keep saying his name over and over again in my head, the name sounding so familiar to me. Then it clicks. The name has to sound familiar to me because I had heard it so many times at the dinner table now. My father's boss who had died was named Hamlet Waters. This couldn't possibly be anyone other than his son.

I decide to close the folder for now and go to take a seat in the coffee shop located on the first floor of the hospital. After ordering my usual drink, I take a seat at the far table in the corner away from everyone else and open Hamlet's folder.

According to Hamlet's records, he is under the category of "unsafe to himself and others." Apparently he had been taken into the hospital after several papers had been found in his room that were plotting the death of his uncle Claudius. Claudius had been his father's brother, but quickly after Daddy Hamlet had died, he began seeing Baby Hamlet's mom in a more than platonic way. With all these things going on in the blue eyed mystery boy's life, I too would've gone insane.

I reported back to work and entered Hamlet's room. I found Hamlet curled up in a lounge chair next to the window, reading a book whose title I could not make out//. "//Hello Hamlet, my name is Ophelia and I am head intern here at St. Joe's." His head bobbed in place as he gently folded over the page he was on as a marker and his eyes locked on mine. "Um, right, okay. I will be working with you closely and we can um-- do whatever you want to do, activity wise."

"Hello Ophelia." His voice was deep. Not just deep as any boys might be, but it was deep in a way that made each syllable of each word he spoke, poet like. "I must say you are a lot better looking than the thirty year old man, Horatio, whom was tending to me before."

I could immediately feel my cheeks reddening. He spoke with a kind of confidence that one would not expect to hear from someone locked away for mental illness. This can't be good.

As the days passed I fell more and more for Hamlet. I was surprised to find that he wasn't the crazy one, but instead I was crazy about him. I spent day after day with him. Each making me more excited than the next. Just the simplest task of sitting down and reading a book or discussing current events were made into the highlight of my days. The way Hamlet made me feel was an emotion that was indescribable by any. He never failed to make me blush with his confident compliments. I learned more about him and he began to know me. I saw him for who he was. He expressed to me why he did what he did to get him locked up here anyways. He isn't crazy; he was framed. His uncle is a horrid person who wanted all of Hamlet's inheritance and maybe even his life, to himself.

On the Thursday afternoon, one week before my internship ended, Hamlet asked me to read him a poem. "I have none written down, Hamlet."

"Do you have any memorized?" He asked with a hope to his eyes.

I breathed deep and began to recite one of my favorites, "//S// //omewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond / any experience, your eyes have their silence: /in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, / or which I cannot touch because they are too near."//

"I love you." He breathed the words out as if it was just as easy as taking actual breaths of air.

I couldn't think of a response. I knew I loved Hamlet but our worlds have no possibility of intertwining together. "Hamlet--"

"Don't." He abruptly cut me off. "I know. E.E. Cummings wasn't it?"

That was the day I knew. I knew I had to do something about my love for this boy and get him out of the place in which he has no chance of belonging. I knew I had to tell my father. I took my time walking home that evening. I would keep acting out the situation in my head and hope everything goes as planned. I didn't expect to see my father sitting at his desk at home when I arrived, but there he was. "Father?" I managed to croak out.

"Yes Ophelia. I'm very busy." I thought about saying 'it's okay never mind' and turning to leave but I stood my ground and knew I needed to do this.

"Well-- um." I never was too good at the whole "talking" thing. I somehow managed to rush everything out in a series of fluid sentences, obviously talking way to fast and overlapping my words.

"Ophelia, if I am understanding you correctly, you mean to tell me you somehow fell in love with a boy in a mental hospital?" He chortled and a rush of red automatically fled to my cheeks.

"Father he isn't crazy! He was framed!"

"Ophelia you are not to see this boy again. Do you understand me!?" He has never been this assertive with me before. He almost sounded as if I didn't listen then the consequence would be fatal. The tears flowed from my eyes. I knew this would happen but somehow I hoped differently. I nodded and shook my head like I couldn't remember which one meant yes or no. Then turning to run up the stairs for my room, I looked over my shoulder and instead ran for the door. I didn't yet know where I was going or what I were to do when I got there; I kept going.

The poem by E.E. Cummings had always been my favorite because of the way it flowed but there was a part of me that never understood it. I do now. I had never ventured to the place in which one lets themselves be loved by another. It was Somewhere I Have Never Travelled. Until now.