We all look at him.
“All right, Mrs. Gilner, since you’re here, your son has checked himself in due to suicidal ideation and acute depression, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“He was on his Zoloft but he stopped taking it.”
“You did?” Mom turns to me.
“I thought I was better.” I shrug.
“Stubborn like your father. Yes, Doctor?”
“Well, the next question is for Craig. Craig, would you like to be admitted?”
Admitted. That probably means to the special room where I get to talk with Dr. Mahmoud. A quick visit and then I’m gone. It’ll give me the feeling that I’ve accomplished something, that I haven’t just languished in the ER.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good decision,” Mom says.
“Mrs. Gilner, you have to sign off for Craig on that decision,” the doctor says. He swivels his clip-board, which he had been holding in front of me, toward her. There’s a terrible amount of very small writing on the top half of the page and even more on the bottom half; in the middle, an equator of sorts marks where you’re supposed to sign.
“There is one thing,” the doctor says. “Right now the hospital is undergoing renovations and we’re very tight for space, so your son will be admitted with the adults.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“He will be admitted along with our adult patients, not with the teenagers alone.”
Oh, so I’ll be waiting with old people to see Dr. Mahmoud? “That isn’t a problem,” I say.
“Good.” The doctor smiles.
“Will he be safe?” Mom asks.
“Absolutely. We have the best care in Brooklyn here, Mrs. Gilner. The renovations are only a temporary situation.”
“All right. Craig, you’re okay with that?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Mom puts her loopy indecipherable signature on the sheet.
“Great. We’ll get everything ready for you, Craig,” Dr. Mahmoud says. “You’re going to feel a lot better.”
“Okay,” I shake his hand. He turns and heads out, a large suit greeting patients left and right in the ER.
The nurse touches Mom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, you really have to go with the dog, ma’am.”
“Can I give my son a bag of clothes?”
“What am I going to need clothes for?” I ask. I look in the bag: not only are there clothes, and not only are they the clothes I hate, but Jordan is sitting on them.
“If you want to bring him items, you can bring them to the hospital later in the day,” the nurse answers.
“Where is he going to be?” Mom asks, like I’m not there.
“In Six North,” the nurse answers. “Just ask for him. Come on.”
“I love you, Craig.”
“Bye, Mom.”
A quick hug, and she’s on her way—Chris watches, with his hands on his hips. I’m really curious about his efficacy as a hospital security guard.
“What’s Six North?” I ask him.
“Ah, uh, we’re not supposed to be talking,” he says, and sits back down with his paper. I look out the door for some news, but it’s all the same. You know, this is a crappy place to be. I wish I wasn’t depressed so I didn’t have to be here.
“Mr. Gilner?” someone finally asks. A new guy walks up to the door, a thin, short-bearded, older hippie-looking guy—except without the long hair—with glasses. He’s not wearing a white robe or a blue robe or a cop uniform. He’s wearing jeans, a blue-collared shirt, and what appears to be a leather vest.
“I’m Smitty. We’re ready to take you up now.”
“There’re two!” a doctor says as she passes by. “Twenty-one and twenty-two.”
“Well, I don’t have papers for Mr. Twenty-One.” Smitty shakes his head. “So I’m going to be taking up Mr. Gilner, and I’ll be back down, all right? Hey, is that Jimmy!”
“He’s back,” the doctor moans.
“Hey, it’s Saturday, baby. Everything is going to be all right. Mr. Gilner?” He turns to me.
“Uh, yeah.”
“You ready to get out of this crazy place?”
“Am I going to see Dr. Mahmoud?”
“Sure. Later in the day.”
“You got this one, Smitty?” Chris asks.
“I don’t think you’re going to give me any trouble, are you, Mr. Gilner?”
“Um, no.”
“Okay, do you have your stuff?”
I check my bracelets, my keys, my phone, my wallet. “Yep!”
“Let’s walk.”
I hop off the stretcher, nod at Chris, and follow Smitty at his slow pace through the ER. We open a door near the bathroom and pierce a seal into an entirely different biome of the hospital—red brick, indoor trees, posters of notable doctors who practiced there. Smitty leads me through an atrium to a bank of elevators.
He hits the up button, stands by me, and nods. I notice a plaque between the two elevators, showing us what’s on each floor.
4 - Pediatrics.
5 - Delivery.
6 - Adult Psychiatric.
Oh, he’ll be up in Six North.
“Going to adult psychiatric, huh?” I ask Smitty.
“Well”—he looks at me—“you’re not quite old enough for geriatric psychiatric.” And he smiles.
The elevator dings; we get in and turn around, each taking a corner. Smitty leads me left when we get to six. I pass a poster with a chubby Hispanic man in blue robes holding his hand over his mouth: SHHHHHHHH! HEALING IN PROGRESS. Then Smitty passes some kind of card in front of two double doors, and the doors open and we walk through them.
It’s an empty hallway, wide enough for a grown man to lie across with his arms stretched up. At the end are two big windows and a collection of couches. To the right is a small office with a glass window that has inch-wide squares of thin wire embedded in it; inside, nurses sit at computers. Just beyond the office, another hall branches off to the right. I follow Smitty forward, and when we come to the crossroads of the two halls, I glance down the one to my right.
A man stands there, leaning on the banisters that line the hall even though there are no steps. The man is short and stocky; he has bugged-out eyes and a squashed face and an almost-but-not-quite harelip. There’s fuzz coming out of his neck and a big swath of black hair on his little head. He looks at me with homeless-person eyes, like I just popped out of a manhole and offered him valuable paper clips from the moon.
Oh my God, it hits. I’m in the mental ward.
nineteen
“Come this way, we’re going to take your vitals,” Smitty says, seating me in the small office. He takes my blood pressure off a rolling cart and my pulse with delicate fingers. He writes down on a sheet in front of him: 120/80.
“One-twenty-over-eighty, that’s dead normal, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Smitty smiles. “But we prefer live normals.” He wraps up the blood pressure gauge. “Stay right here, we’ll send a nurse in to talk to you.”
“A nurse? What are you?”
“I’m one of the daytime directors on the floor.”
“And what is this floor, exactly . . . ?”
“It’s a short-term facility for adult psychiatric.”
“So like, a mental ward?”
“Not a ward, a hospital. Nurse’ll answer any questions.” He steps out of the office, leaving me with a form: name, address, Social Security number. Then—wait—I’ve seen this before! It’s the questions from Dr. Barney’s office: