Mark smiled softly as his wife headed out to work. "Have a good day dear and be safe ok." He said. A few days ago his wife started her new job at a local mental institution as one of it's new doctors. Mark was happy she got the job but also very worried. He knew she was studying to one day do this but the idea of something going wrong did worry him quite allot. However she soon explained to him that the facility she would be working at was low security so no one there was high risk, which calmed him down a bit. 

Mark is 29 years old and works from home as an academic. He has a doctorate in Sociology and has already published two books. He was working on his third and also did occasional articles on line for a bit of extra cash. All in all they were pretty well off. They had a nice sized house in a lovely suburban area surrounded by forest. The house had two good sized bedrooms, an office for mark, an nice attic, a basement, a huge living room and a kitchen and dinning room as well as two bathrooms one which was on suite to the master bed room. 

Two years ago Mark and his wife suffered a loss as his wife's parents passed away in a tragic car accident. This left their youngest daughter all alone. Mark and hi wife had been married for a couple of years at that point and just moved into their big house so decided to take her in. The girl was only 14 at the time now she was 16. 

Mark got on pretty well with her and had found a nice mix of being fatherly and like an older brother with her always joking around with her but still always making sure she was safe.His wife worried about her allot but as the girl got older and more independent she didn't let her big sis baby her as much.

For the last year or so Mark and his wife have been feeling a slight longing for something more. Something to care for and no not just a pet they already had a lovely big husky, called Blue because of it's lovely blue eyes, and a cute little ginger cat, called Crookshanks because they are huge Harry Potter fans. 

Today at the institution his wife was meeting another of her new patients.The girl was 15 years old, soon to turn 16 in November. Her name was Emma and she had been at the institution since she was 7 years old. When Emma was 7 she went though a very traumatic experience. Her and her parents had been coming home from a party at a friends house and a gang of thugs had jumped them. Emma witnessed her parents being killed in front of her eyes and would have died herself if it wasn't for some other people from the party walking by and seeing what happened and helped her. Emma was in hospital for three days after that as she had a broken arm and a scare on her forehead which luckily heeled and was barley noticeable now. 

However the day her grandparents from her mothers side came to take her home she had a complete break down refusing to go home with anyone but her parents. She was only small but managed to completely wreck the hospital room she was in. Her grandparents had little choice but to institutionalise her. 

Once at the institution the rest of Emma's issues became clear. She had serious anxiety issues and was very jumpy, she suffered from night terrors which sometimes resulted in her wetting the bed, she closed off from everyone else and when she did talk it was like she started the conversation in her head and finished it out loud, she could be hyperactive when over stressed or excited, when she was stressed or nervous she would scratch herself sometimes causing herself to bleed and she was clearly quite emotional. 

The institution help Emma in some ways at first. They gave her medication to help with the anxiety and as the institution was very secure and she couldn't leave it she didn't worry about being attacked so much. For the first few years her grandparents visited once a week however they were rather old. When she was 9 her grandmother past away and when she was 10 her grandfather followed. She had no other family.

Having no visitors was hard for Emma she was a very sweet and bright girl and although academically she was at the level she should be at that age, as the institution did educate her, it seems she was emotionally stunted at a younger age.She needed people around her to talk to and play with. She knew she was too old for silly old toys but she couldn't help but love them they were a nice distraction.

Over the years Emma tried to make friends with the other patients but they were all quite a bit older than her and annoyed by her young and somewhat cheerful ways. Then there was the nurses who tried to do what they could for Emma but they had other patients to deal with. Her old doctor Dr Dickson or Dr Dick as Emma referred to her was a bit miserable and always dealt with Emma like she was a thing to be fixed. All in all for the last few years Emma has been very lonely. 

However today the young girl was meeting her new doctor and she was hopping they would be a little bit nicer than Dr Dick. Dr Dick never got her sense of humour or the way she looked at the world, which was quite philosophical, all he wanted to do was find a label for her apart from post dramatic stress disorder, which he knew she suffered from.

Emma headed to the new doctors office. The young girl was tiny at only about five feet tall. As a child she was quite tall and her old doctor suspected the stress in her life stunted her growth. She had very pale skin, brown hair which she had cut in a short pixie cut as she pulled at it too much when it was long and it was easier to handle this was, also she thought it was cute. She was dressed in a pair of black skinny jeans and a pair of slippers that were shaped like big hairy monster feet, they were a gift from one of the nicer nurses knowing she loved that kinda stuff. On top she had on a big burgundy jumper with grey and white zig zags at the top. The big Christmas jumper was huge on her and game to just above her knees and completely covered her arms. The most noticeable thing about Emma however was her big blue eyes that were filled with many colours of blue, sliver and some green and yellow. 

She bit her lip shyly and nervously knocked on the new doctors door. She was nervous about this. She hadn't slept all night wondering what her new doctor would be like. [i] I heard she is a woman, that might be nice[/i] she thought tending to be more relaxed around other woman. [i]I hope she isn't mean and doesn't try and give me to many numb pills, I hate feeling like a zombie[/i] she thought as she shyly poked her head in the door.

"You...you asked to see me?" She asked. Emma's speech had got allot better recently and she could now have conversations with people though she did have a bad habit of jumping from topic to topic.