Forgotten.

Across from where I play Monopoly every week, two boys wait patiently. They have promised to teach me the card game "Magic," their current obsession. I have never had any real inclination to play, but they are delighted to have the role of teacher for once, instead of dismissed as lessers. Sitting across from each other, they look very, very different; one is tall, well-muscled with the face and casual confidence of an athlete; the other, slender, soft-spoken, with the tired gentleness about him of an artist. But they are the same age, and they share a very similar story. They are here for a reason, and by now they have moved past denial and have settled into the task of improving. They're doing well, but I worry sometimes. I see their flashes of anger, at themselves and others, and wonder if that anger will ever spark anything more dangerous.

These two are unlikely friends, boys that would never have crossed paths under any other circumstances. But here, they are friends. They take turns being the dominant personality, swapping it back and fourth in some unspoken, agreed-upon order. They are good kids.

One says that in five years after he's been discharged, he'll find me. He says it, laughing, and I laugh too.

"In five years, you won't even remember me," I say, and he disagrees.

But I hope it's true. I hope that, in five years, he'll be off in college, thriving, happy. I hope that if any memory of me remains, it's a faint one, a possible 'What was her name?' that drifts across his mind whenever he watches one of the movies I brought in that he loved, a faint spark of memory, nothing more. I want to be forgotten by these wonderful, broken children.

I want to be forgotten because I want them to live such full, wonderful, amazing lives that the time that they spent in a psych ward is nothing more than a faded memory, something, perhaps, to remember only if they stumble across their Goodbye Book, full of letters and well-wishes from those who were their families for the few months to a few years they spent there. I want them to skim those letters, smile faintly, put it down, and go off into a wonderful life where they live happily ever after.

Will it happen for all of the children that I have worked with? Sadly, no. Some of them will likely struggle with their inner demons for the rest of their lives. Some of them may disappear too soon, others may flash bright just briefly, then stumble and fall. For those children, I hope that they do remember us, we staff who loved them and cared for them and, sometimes, cried for them in our cars before we drove home.

But for those who, years from now, will be happy and laughing, I really, truly hope that they will forget me.

And I? I will never forget them.