Feeling that you are unable to cope with daily life. 1) Never, 2) Some days, 3) Nearly every day, 4) All the time.
What the hell, I’m in the hospital; I put 4’s down the line—there are about twenty prompts—except for the lines about self-mutilation, drinking, and drug use (I am not putting anything about pot, that’s just the rule, told to me by Aaron—you don’t ever, ever admit to smoking pot, not to doctors, not to teachers, not to anyone in authority no matter how much you trust them; they can always report you to the FBI Pot-Smoking List). As I’m getting done, a squat black nurse with a kind wide smile and tightly braided hair steps in. She introduces herself with a thick West Indian accent.
“Craig, I am Monica, a nurse on the floor here. I am going to ask you a couple of questions about what you’re feeling and find out how to help you.”
“Yeah, uh . . .” It’s time to state my case. “I came in because I was really freaked out, you know, and I checked in downstairs, but I wasn’t totally sure where I was going, and now that I’m here, I don’t know if I really—”
“Hold on, honey, let me show you something.” Nurse Monica stands over me, although she’s so short that we’re almost the same height, and pulls out a photocopy of the form my mom signed downstairs only an hour before.
“You see that there? That signature says that you have been voluntarily admitted to psychiatric care at Argenon Hospital, yes?”
“Yeah . . .”
“And see? It says that you will be discharged at the discretion of the doctor once he has come up with your discharge plan.”
“I’m not getting out of here until a doctor lets me out?!”
“Now, wait.” She sits. “If you feel that this is not the place for you, after five days you can write a letter—we call it the Five-Day Letter—explaining why you feel that you do not belong here, and we will review that and allow you to leave if you qualify.” She smiles.
“So I’m here for at least five days?”
“Sometimes people are just here for two. Definitely not more than thirty.”
Ho-boy. Well, not much to say about it. That is my mom’s signature. I sit back in my chair. This morning I was a pretty functional teenager. Now I’m a mental patient. But you know, I wasn’t that functional. Is this better? No, this is worse. This is a lot—
“Let’s talk about how you came to be here,” Monica prompts.
I give her the rap.
“When was the last time you were hospitalized?”
“Like, four years ago. I was in a sledding accident.”
“So you’ve never been hospitalized for mental difficulties before.”
“Uh, nope.”
“Good. Now I want you to look at this chart. Do you see here?”
There’s a little scale of 0-10 on a sheet in front of her.
“This is the chart of physical pain. I want you to tell me, right now, from a scale of zero to ten, are you experiencing any physical pain?”
I look closer at the sheet. Below the zero it says no pain and below the ten it says unbearable excruciating pain. I have to bite my tongue.
“Zero,” I manage.
“All right, now, here’s a very important question”—she leans in—“did you actually try to do anything to hurt yourself before you came here?”
I sense that this is an important question. It might be the kind of question that determines whether I get a normal room with a TV or a special room with straps.
“No,” I enunciate.
“You didn’t take anything? You didn’t try for the good sleep?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The good sleep, you know? That’s what they call it. When you take many pills and drink alcohol and . . .”
“Ah, no,” I say.
“Well, that’s good,” she says. “We don’t want to lose you. Think of your talents. Think of all the tools you have. From your hands to your feet.”
I do think about them. I think about my hands signing forms and my feet running, flexing up and down, as I sprint to some class I’m late for. I am good at certain things.
“So right now we are getting ready for lunch,” Monica says. “Are you a Christian?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Are you vegetarian?”
“No.”
“So no specific diet restrictions, good. I need you to read these rules.” She drops four sheets of paper in front of me. “They’re about conduct on the floor.” My eye falls on 6) Patients are expected to remain clean-shaven. Shaving will be supervised by an attendant every day after breakfast.
“I am not sure if you notice, but do you see what that first item is on the list?”
“Uh . . . ‘No cell phones on the floor’?”
“That’s right. Do you have one?”
I feel it in my pocket. I don’t want to lose it. It’s one of the only things that’s making me me right now. Without my cell phone, who will I be? I won’t have any friends because I don’t have their numbers memorized. I’ll barely have a family since I don’t know their cell phone numbers, just their home line. I’ll be like an animal.
“Please give it here,” Monica says. “We will keep it in your locker until your discharge, or you can have visitors take care of it.”
I put it on the table.
“Please turn it off.”
I flip it open—two new voice mails, who are they?—and hold END. Bye-bye, little phone.
“Now, this is very important; do you have anything sharp on your person?”
“My keys?”
“Same as the phone. We keep those.”
I plop them in a heap on the table; Monica sweeps them into a tray like an airport security worker.
“Wonderful—do you have anything else you can think of?”
Monica, I’m down to my wallet and the clothes on my back. I shake my head.
“Great, now hold on.” She gets up. “We’re going to have Bobby give you a tour.” Monica nods at me, keeps my charts, leaves me to review the papers, and goes into the hall. She returns a minute later with a gaunt, hollow man with big circles under his eyes and a nose that looks like it’s been broken in about three places. In contrast to floor policy, scruff lines his chin. He’s older but still has all his hair, a stately gray mop, combed half-heartedly. And he carries himself a little weird, leaning back as if he were on a headrest.
“Jesus, you’re a kid!” he says, curling his mouth. He reaches out a hand for me and his hand comes out sort of sideways, thumb crooked up.
“I’m Bobby,” he says.
His sweatshirt has Marvin the Martian on it and says WORLD DOMINATOR.
“Craig.” I stand up.
He nods, and his Adam’s apple, which has some extra gray whiskers on it, bobs. “You ready for the grand tour?”
twenty
Bobby leads me into the bright hall with his odd gait.
“Everybody’s in the dining room right now.” He gestures as we go down the sideways hall, the one that branches off of the one I entered. I look left—there’s the dining room, painted blue, overlooked by a television, full of circular tables, separated from the hall by that glass with the square wire mesh in it. Inside, the tables have been pushed aside, and a panoply of people sit in a loose circle.