“What’s wrong?”
“I just told you. My head. I feel crazy.”
“You do sound a little crazy. You aren’t joking? You’re not calling from town?”
“I’m on 168th Street. Please come. I’m not kidding.”
“I will.”
I give her the address. I’m sitting on the cover of a garbage can when she comes. My valise I must have left on the train. I don’t care. Work clothes, good clothes, as long as I got some clothes on. I get in the car and she drives. She says “What’s wrong?” “Rochelle,” I say, hugging her at a stoplight, wanting to be held. She takes me to her home, puts me to bed. I stay there for two days. Lee’s away with her dad and his new wife. Rochelle feeds me broth, tea and toast, says it’s probably only a very bad Asian-type flu I have which sometimes does weird things to the mind. “That’s what I think too,” but by Sunday she says “Maybe we’re both wrong.” She takes me to her G.P. He examines and talks to me and recommends a special public health hospital in the county. He calls and they say for me to come by later that afternoon. Just before we leave for the hospital, Lee and her dad drive up to the house.
“You going so soon?”
“Afraid I have to.”
“But you never go till Monday morning. And Dad got me two new card decks so you and I can play Spit.”
“I’ll explain later,” Rochelle says to them both.
The two admitting doctors ask me what I think is wrong. I tell them I don’t know, it’s tough to explain, I’m sure it started on the subway, but I don’t feel as if I can go on with my life the way it is, at one point I thought it was just the world in general, the whole world, I don’t know how other people are able to face it, but right now I can’t. I feel terrible, not suicidal, just scared, confused, closed in, claustrophobic, strange feelings about everything in my head that make me sweat something awful and my body shake right down to my legs which I’ve never had anything quite like before. They say they understand. I say “You do?” Would I put myself in here for two to four weeks, maybe more, but a minimum of ten days? I look at Rochelle. She says “I think it’s the best thing you can do.” We kiss and she leaves. They give me drugs, a complete physical exam, a room to share with a very quiet man, want me to see a therapist twice a day just to speak. I tell her it suddenly came on me on the subway. She says it suddenly didn’t and has probably been coming on for years, maybe since early childhood. “My childhood was great, so don’t give me that.” “You must have thought and still think your childhood was great and no doubt many parts of it were, but let’s talk about it some more tomorrow, okay?”
We talk about my dead parents and older brother, who died in a bathtub. I say I loved all three very much. She says I may have loved them and very much but also could have feared them very much too. “Not true,” I say, “as they never did anything like even raise a pinky finger to me to make me feel afraid.” “Maybe you’re right,” she says, “or maybe you’ve forgotten or don’t want to think about it and haven’t wanted to for twenty or so years, but let’s talk about it some more this evening, okay?”
About my ex-wife, child in Georgia, Rochelle, Lee, friends, schools, religion, work and sex habits. Past compulsions to get lots of attention, later desires for almost complete goody-goodiness and anonymity. “When did you change?” “When my brother passed out and drowned?” “That doesn’t jell with what I’ve got down you already said and the chronology.” “Then I don’t know. Or I’m still not sure. But I don’t care how much I’m not sweating anymore, I’m even more confused now than when I first came in here and don’t see how all this talk’s going to make me improve.”
They put me on a special diet. Try another drug as the one I’ve been taking turns out to be bad for my kidneys. Ask if I’ll consent to staying a minimum of ten more days. I have to phone my boss and tell him I won’t be coming in for two more weeks and he says then in that case he’s going to have to let me go.
“All right then, you want to be unfair, be unfair. I’ll be in this Monday nine on the nose.”
“Tell you the truth, I got a new guy who does twice the job as you for a lot less starting money. And you took off too many sick days when I knew you didn’t have to and weren’t such a hot worker, so maybe you better not come back at all.”
“Now you’re making me mad. Everybody there knows I never took off when I wasn’t absolutely dying, and for my extra overtime for the company I never once thought to be paid. Look, I’ve been told here to express my feelings more so I’m expressing them, for you know yourself you always said I was a hundred percent straight and honest and one of your hardest workers and for that praise I never had to ask. ‘Damn good worker’ were your damn words.”
“You must’ve been hearing things then too. By the way, what’s your room number so some of your former fellow employees can send you a bouquet?”
“What’s that crack supposed to mean?”
“You don’t like flowers? Then a joint card with all their signatures or maybe a basket of fruit. They told me to ask in case you had to stay.”
“Nobody there wants to send me any card or fruit and you know it.”
“They don’t? I’ll tell them that and you can be certain they won’t. Take care of yourself, Bo.”
“Sure, you give a damn. Just don’t forget to put down that you fired me, you cheap bastard, for when I get out of here I want to walk into some unemployment checks.”
“No skin off my pecker, tough guy, but for reasons of your kind of sickness or just any, I don’t know if they give,” and he hangs up.
Rochelle comes every other day around six. Sits with me. Says “You look better and seem to act better, you feel better too?” No. “Then you don’t want to stay here longer?” Yes. I stay three more months. They give me plenty of pills, see that I swallow them and hope I’ll continue to take my prescribed medicine once I leave here, “though remember, don’t mix them with alcohol or you can die.” After the three months I don’t feel that much better but think it’s time to go. My hospital coverage is up. My ex-wife writes she’s ready to get the court to take away all fatherly rights from me for either unsoundness of mind or non-support. Rochelle has already told me she met another man and I shouldn’t try and contact her anymore, and nobody I know takes her visitor place. Lee sends me a handmade get-well card once a week right up until the time I leave.
“You know, you really aren’t sufficiently cured yet,” the therapist says and I say “What can I tell you — I haven’t the money to stay.”
“You can be readmitted involuntarily and become a ward of the state, which in residency terms means you’d have to stay here until we say you can go.”
“No, I think from now on, with a more responsible and positive attitude and meaningful job and more openness to people and no expectations about what I deserve out of life or preconceptions of what normalcy is…”
I’m given a month’s supply of medicine and names of a few free group sessions in the city and return to my old neighborhood. My furnished room’s been rented and what belongings I have are with the super downstairs. “Keep them,” I say. “For I think if I’m really going to change my way of living and looking at things, I’m going to need a new apartment in another setting with better furnishings and wardrobe.”