Dyer Situation

"I can't legally inform your mother of your drug use, but it would be beneficial to your recovery if you were to tell her."I was sitting in a chair in a small, nondescript office on the fourth floor of St. Margaret Mercy Hospital in Dyer, Indiana. A-wing. I'd had a rough 24 hours, and I could only think about the fact that I really wanted a cigarette. My head was screaming, and I wanted to go back to sleep. I stared, slack-jawed, at the woman before me. I found it hard to believe that she was put in charge of my mental health. She had a thick Middle Eastern accent, which made it hard for me to understand the questions she asked me. It didn't help that I couldn't focus at all. She smiled pleasantly at me, and I was compelled to tell her to shove her fake smile up her ass. She had asked many a condescending question, and I couldn't help but laugh at how trite the entire situation was.I had landed myself in the hospital by chance. I had spent the weekend with at my cousin's house, watching her kids. She was not too much older than me, and generally allowed me to do whatever I wanted. She usually bought me alcohol and cigarettes, and let me take her car wherever I wanted. On Sunday night, she drove me home. While we were in the car, I fumbled through my famousgreenarmybag, looking for my cigarettes. As I clumsily shifted the contents of my bag around, a couple of pottery tools fell from the bag onto the floor. I picked them up, and she gasped. "What are those, Teri?"I explained that they were just art tools, and she seemed to accept that answer.I got home, went in my room, and locked the door. I picked up the phone and called my then sort-of-boyfriend, Elliot. He had moved to Atlanta. We talked for awhile, and I told him that I was feeling pretty depressed. We used to read books to eachother over the phone. He read me a passage from Camus' The Plague. I told him that I wasn't feeling very optimistic, and nonchalantly started swallowing pills from a little bottle sitting on my bookcase. I put on a Mazzy Star CD, and listened to "Into Dust" on repeat. Elliot told me that it would be okay, that it would only be a couple more years until we were out of high school. That we could go to the same college and finally live in the same city again. I told him that a lot could change in a couple of years, (and I turned out to be right.)I turned all the lights off in the room, and instantly I was surrounded by a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars. I told Elliot that I loved him, and asked him if he could just talk to me until I fell asleep. He agreed. I reached into my pillowcase and pulled out a knife that I kept there and started to run it against my left wrist. I pushed a little harder with each pass, until finally I pushed as hard as I could. Elliot heard me gasp and asked what happened. "Nothing," I said.I was already tired from taking the painkillers. I tossed the knife to the floor and started singing along to the song. Five minutes couldn't have passed before there was a knock, and then a bang on the door. "Teri, open the fucking door right now. Get the fuck out here." It was my mother's gruff voice, pulling me out of the trance that I had fallen into and briefly back into reality. I wasn't about the open the door. A few minutes later there was a loud crash, and then a cracking sound, as my mother hurled herself full-force into the door. The door flew open, and my mom said "Hang up the fucking phone. Get your shit together. You're going to Dyer."The next few minutes were a blur. I remember telling Elliot I would call him back, and him asking "Are you okay? Is she drunk?" I hung up the phone. Moments later the phone was ringing again, and I was being carried kicking and crying from my bedroom. I kept saying, over and over again. "I'm okay, ma. I'm fine. Just leave me alone."My mom was screaming at me. "Where the fuck is all that blood coming from?""It's alright Ma, I'm only bleeding."Somehow I ended up in the back of my cousin's minivan, sans seats. I laid still for awhile as my mom searched my body to find the bleeding tear on my wrist. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you little brat?" She hissed and swore at me as she wrapped my wrist with a t-shirt and jumped into the passenger seat of the van. My cousin got into the drivers seat and looked in the rearview mirror at me. "I'm sorry, Teri, I just don't want you to hurt yourself. Those knives that were in your bag really scared me."I tried to argue that they were only sculpting tools, but the wound on my wrist told my mother a different story.I don't remember the drive to the hospital. I think I fell asleep. When we got there, I tried to run down a path towards a retention pond that was made to look very lovely. I don't know what I was thinking. Soon a couple of male RNs had me in their arms, and then tied down to a gurney. They marked me down as "Resisting Admittance." That turned out to be a curse.
Rule#1In the mental health industry, there's nothing worse than a person who doesn't think they need help.
Soon I had been wheeled into a triage area, where they used a small pen-shaped tool to cauterize the veins in my left wrist, which produced the most awful smell I could imagine. I couldn't feel any pain, until they started to pump my stomach.I kept coming in and out of consciousness. I felt annoyed. All I wanted to do was just curl up and sleep.After this whole ordeal they ushered me into a room, where both of my parents were sitting. I was annoyed that my mother had called my father and worried him needlessly. Soon, a nice woman came in and asked me a battery of questions. I told her that I didn't know if I would answer them honestly if my parents were sitting there listening to my responses. My mother said, abrasively, "What the hell would you have to hide anything from me for?" The interviewer looked at me, almost sympathetically, and moved on with the line of questioning.
I was embarassed to answer a lot of the questions honestly in front of my father. I had always tried to hide my depression from him, and any other signs that I was at all fucked up. I knew that he would take it personally, as if it were his fault for my state. Of all the questions asked in that initial interview, I only answered two of them slightly truthfully. The first one was, "Have you ever used any recreational drugs?"
I thought about all of the tests they were probably running on me at that very moment, and in my weary state, panicked about the fact that I had done acid very recently. I remembered hearing a story, though, that LSD could stay in your system for a very long time, so I answered obscurely."I did acid once. Years ago."My mother stood up from her seat at once, and shouted at me. "Fucking acid? Of all the drugs you could choose? You picked acid? What the fuck is wrong with you? That shit could kill you instantly!" I was thankful that I hadn't admitted to the truth. The nice lady asking the questions politely asked my mom to take her seat. I couldn't even look at my father.
The only other question that I answered somewhat honestly to out of the 150+ questions I was asked was "Are you sad?"
"What the hell do you think, lady?" I said, monotonely. "Everyone is sad."
After the questions they allowed me to go out into the waiting room and talk to my family while they were preparing to take me upstairs. My cousin was there, and kept apologizing. My dad told me that he didn't think I'd have to stay for very long, and hugged me. My favorite aunt was there and told me that she'd bring me cookies. It was almost midnight. Soon a nurse came to get me and walked me into an elevator. My family had to stay behind. In the elevator ride up, I tried to break the silence with a bit of levity. "Nice night we're having, eh?" The nurse gave me a sideways glance and then continued to look forward. "Tough crowd," I said, derisively.
When we arrived on the fourth floor, she led me to a door that she had to be buzzed into. As we walked down a hallway, we passed a room where a boy was being administered a shot. I briefly made eye contact with the boy, and he started screaming. "That girl just looked at me and gave me AIDS!" The nurse that was tending to him tried to quiet him down. "Eric," she said, "that girl does not have AIDS and you already know that you can't get AIDs from someone just looking at you." I was somewhat amused by this crazy kid, and I shouted down the hallways, "I do too have AIDS!"
I heard a bunch of yelling again. My guide was not amused.
I was led to a room where I was instructed to take all of my clothes off. I'm a tad gymnophobic, and was very uncomfortable with this suggestion. I also knew that taking off even one layer of clothing would reveal several marks that I would have to explain. But, I did what I was told. I took all of my clothes off, and stood, exposed. The nurse entered the room with another woman, and I was told to bend over and cough before they approached me. I laughed as I was supposed to be coughing. No weapons or drugs in my anus, I thought, not tonight.
The new woman was carrying a clipboard that had a chart that featured black outlines of the shape of a person, standing arms out. I soon realized that it was their intention to mark down any cuts, scrapes, or abrasions that were on my body onto the diagram. I was a bit embarassed, but watched with a bit of amusement as they began to walk around me and draw on the chart. I was particularly amused when Rebecca, the first nurse, had to draw the scratchy words that I had carved into my flesh. Over my heart, "Empathy." Down my arm, "Apathy." On the front of my hip, "Sex." I could tell she was trying to pay a bit of attention to detail in her documentation, as she specifically made the words sloppy. She then questioned where I got all of the bruises from. "My girlfriend is a vampire," I said, matter-of-factly.
It took her a long time to finish her work of art. I didn't realize that I had some of the marks that she was making. As she marked nail marks down the back of the picture, I said "No way, really?!" It had been a crazy weekend.
This was the last process before showing me to my room. When I walked out of the examination room, my parents were there waiting. My mother said, "Are you happy with all of this attention?" My father just hugged me again, and said "Don't worry, T, you'll be home soon." The nurse told them that they would have to bring in some suitable clothes for me to wear. For now, I could wear scrubs as pajamas, but the long black skirt with the slit to the thigh wouldn't cut it in the hospital. They handed off my boots and fishnets to my parents. I got to keep my Nine Inch Nails t-shirt, and they provided me with blue terry-cloth footwear.
As I was walking towards my room, I realized that it would not be good for my parents to go home and go through my things, which they undoubtedly would. I turned to head back towards them, and told the nurse that I couldn't stay. I then proceeded to freak out. I tried to run down the hallway, but Rebecca caught me and dragged me to my room. She told me to be quiet because my new roommate was sleeping. I told her that there was no way that I was going to sleep. She directed me to the bed, where I laid for a few minutes and then got up. She brought me back to the bed, where I again laid for a few minutes and then got up. Finally she came into the room with another nurse, who had some straps in her hand. She attached them securely to the sides of the bed, and said "Lay down." I laid. "Please don't use those on me, " I said. She told me that she wouldn't as long as I stayed where I was.She left the room and came back with a little white cup that had a few pills in it. "Take these," she said. I had spent years taking any pill that was placed in front of me with absolutely no questions asked. It was that night, though, that I decided to be selective. "I'm not taking those pills until you tell me what they are." She tried to sate me with the simple answer, "It'll help you sleep.""No way," I said, " I want to see some drug fact sheets.""Just do me this favor," she said, "take the pills." I was surprised at the exasperation in her voice, and felt bad for her. I told her that I would take them, but only because she asked nicely. I'd had a hell of a night, and truthfully, as much as I wanted to be a smartass, I really just wanted to go to sleep.Soon, I drifted off.
I awoke to a strange noise. A creaking noise. I rolled over and looked at the bed nearest the door, and saw that it was moving up and down. I looked lower, to the floor, and saw that my new roommate was laying on the floor, bed atop her feet, pushing the entire set-up up and down.
"You're awake," she said. "My name is Cynthia. I'm toning up my legs, because I'm busting out of here." I rolled my eyes and rolled over in bed. I wanted to get some more sleep. "You can't go back to sleep. We have to take showers and then go get breakfast. And then we have group." It took a few moments for me to realize that I was indeed in a mental hospital. It took me several more to realize what that entailed. Group? I was certainly not going to sit and talk to a group about my feelings. I got up, and walked towards the bathroom. I felt groggy. I looked at myself in the mirror, and recoiled. I looked down at my bandaged wrist and shook my head. I thought about how I would get out later that day and tell Elliot exactly how crazy my evening had been.I started to close the door to the bathroom, and a nurse walked in and stopped me. "No, no, honey. You can't be in there alone. You're on SP3. That means that you can't have the door shut." She explained to me that I was to be watched while I was showering and using the bathroom. I was appalled. She stood and watched as I undressed, stepped into the shower, and scrubbed myself down. I was mortified.
Afterwards I followed her to the dining room. Everyone was beginning to show up to eat breakfast. All of the residents eyed me, and slowly began to approach me to ask questions. I noticed the boy from the night before sitting in the corner. "Stay away from her!" he warned them. "She's got AIDS." A girl with red hair rolled her eyes and said, "Eric, you think everyone has AIDS." She walked over to me and said, "My name's Amber and I'm really sad. I want to have a baby."I was annoyed at the barrage of personal details she was firing at me freely. I was soon to learn that this was less because of her personality and more a byproduct of being institutionalized. Everyone in the place had been conditioned to talk about themselves, constantly. During breakfast, I learned about Eric, who was bipolar and had Tourette's. Amber, the 16-year-old who was clinically depressed and sad because she'd had several miscarriages. Danny, who along with a couple of the other boys, had anger management problems. June, who liked to be called Junebug, who had run away from home. They all wanted to tell me their stories, and they all wanted to hear mine. A chipper blonde girl updated me on who-liked-who and who hung out with who. I didn't touch the food that they brought me, and Cynthia asked if she could eat my eggs. I said that she could.When we were done eating, a nurse came around and talked to each person individually.
She asked each person, "Do you feel like hurting yourself? Do you feel like hurting someone else?" Everyone answered "No" to both questions. When she got to me, I looked at her for awhile after she was done speaking, as if lost in thought. "I'm not going to hurt myself," I started, "but I'm going to knock THAT kid out," I said, pointing at Eric. The nurse looked alarmed. She took my hand and said, "Come with me."I was led to a room where I was left by myself for a few minutes. Soon, a man came in to talk to me. "Are you still feeling like hurting someone?""I was kidding around," I said. "I didn't really want to hurt anyone." He shook his head.
Rule#2People in the mental health industry have absolutely no sense of humour.
When I was finally let out of separations, I got to go back to group. Everyone was sitting around in a circle, murmuring between themselves. I heard someone say that Nate was still in bed. I asked the girl with the mousy blonde hair, "Who the hell is Nate?"
"Oh.. Nate's very mean," she said, "he's in here because he popped some kid's eye out with his thumb."
"Why does Nate get to sleep in?"
"Nate gets to do whatever he wants."
I was pissed. I'd been wanting to go back to bed since I'd gotten out of the shower. I stood up and started to march towards my room. A nurse stopped me. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm going to go back to bed."
"You can't do that."
"If Nate gets to do it, I'm going to do it too. Fuck this." I stomped past her, again heading towards my room. I stopped short when I saw a very tall, scary looking boy coming towards me. Enter, Nate.
I could see why Nate got away with as much as he did. He was physically scary. He towered over even the tallest male nurse, and was twice as bulky. Nate walked calmly past me and into the room where the group meeting was being held. The nurse followed me and said "You know, Nate doesn't care if he gets a star on his chart. If you're good, you get a star on your chart, and at the end of the week, you might get to go the cafeteria for lunch."
"I'm glad to see you've got such an advanced method for keeping people in line. What are we, kindergardeners?" She informed me that I didn't get a star for my breakfast that morning because I had threatened Eric. "You've got to be kidding me," I said. At that point I didn't give a shit about earning stars.
I spent the rest of the day in group sessions, doing various activities, until they called me into a room to talk with my assigned psychiatrist for the first time. And then there I sat. This lady that I couldn't understand asking me the same questions that I had been asked before. She wanted to know about the cutting. She explained to me that from some of the marks on my arm, she knew that I had used IV drugs. When I told her that she absolutely couldn't tell my mother about the drugs, she questioned me about my sexuality. "Does your mother know that you are a lesbian?" I laughed to myself at this question, while Dr. Jayachandran tells me that she thinks we should call my mother and talk to her about it. I unwittingly agreed to this, mostly because I couldn't understand what she had asked. She seemed intent on my confronting my mother in some way. Soon enough, my mother was on speakerphone. "I'm here with your daughter Terese," the good doctor said, "Are you aware that she is a lesbian?""A what?" my mom questioned. I know that she could understand the foreign accent even less than I could. "What is my daughter?""Your daughter, Terese, is a lesbian."Silence.And then my mother spoke. "Oh, no. No. She's not a lesbian. She's not allowed to be a lesbian."The doctor looked at me. "I've got your daughter here, ma'am, and she is telling me of being a lesbian.""She's mistaken. I told her that she's not allowed to be a lesbian, she's got to be bisexual. She needs to keep her options open."The doctor's mouth dropped. "Okay, Mrs. Trost. Thank you."She hung up the phone."It seems that your mother might be at the heart of some of your problems," she said."Tell me something I didn't already know."
That night at dinner, Cynthia asked for my dessert. I obliged.
For the next few days, I earned very few stars. I suppose it was my "zany antics" that were the problem. I had read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" one too many times, but also had a sincere disregard for rules. I was upset that I hadn't been released on my first day, and by day two I had realized that the whole thing was going to be more of an ordeal than I had expected.
On day three, I awoke to Cynthia's excercising. She looked at me and whispered, "Today's the day, Teri."I smiled at her and shrugged my shoulders. I got up and took my supervised shower and headed towards the lunchroom. Cynthia followed close behind, and when she finished her breakfast, she ate mine also. I had realized in the last day and a half that we had to be secretive about sharing our food, as they marked down what we did and didn't eat. Having been prone to not eating very much to begin with, it was the supervised bathroom visits that had pushed me over the edge towards a strictly liquid diet. I was going to be goddamned if I was going to let a nurse watch me shit.
An orderly came to take away the cart of breakfast dishes, and as he was being buzzed out, I saw a glint in Cynthia's eye. In an instant she had stood up and started to dart towards the door. She pushed her way past the orderly and was at once beyond the door and my field of vision. It took a few moments for the nurses to realize what had happened, but by then the floor was abuzz. It was chaos. Amber ran up to me excitedly, asking me "Did she do it? Did she get out?"
"I suppose," I said. I really wanted a cigarette and was jealous of Cynthia's escape. It didn't last long, though. About an hour later, we were in group, and we watched through the windows as Cynthia was escorted to the room, gathered her belongings, and was taken away. I never saw her again. They told us that she was getting taken to a more permanent placing. Becky, the only nurse that was relatively nice, told me later that they had tackled Cynthia to the ground in the kitchen, where she had been chasing the kitchen staff around with a butcher knife.
About mid-day an admissions nurse came upstairs with a girl who was about my age. She had shoulder length hair blonde hair with a black streak in the front. When she walked through the door, we were in the common room. They showed her to a room across the hallway from mine. "Junebug," Amber said, "It looks like you've got a new roommate." I was jealous. The girl was pretty cute and seemed relatively subdued. She had not yet been programmed by the system. I wanted her to be my roommate. I decided to take her under my wing.
That same day, my father arrived with a care package. He brought me clothes to wear and slippers. I could tell that he tried to bring things that I wouldn't despise. He also brought a Walkman with a Depeche Mode tape in it. He told me he knew that the music would help me sleep. He told me that they had not torn apart my room, and that my mother was telling all of her friends that she had a crazy daughter. We both rolled our eyes at this. He parted by saying, "Try and hang in there, T, you'll be out of here soon enough." As I was walking back to my room with my possessions, a nurse stopped me and went through them. She took most of the stuff away, including the Walkman and the hoodie. She told me that I couldn't have anything that I might hang myself with. I stomped back to my room, ranting incoherently.
At lunch that day, the new girl sat next to me. "Hi," she said, "my name is Kathryn, or Kat. I think you are cute."I was amused. "You're cute too," I said, "I like your hair." Aside from my comment, I acted incredibly disinterested. This seemed to pique her curiosity. She asked me a few questions, and I mumbled bland answers. After lunch, we played foosball. In the lunchroom, there was a foosball table. Whenever we were not occupied eating, or playing self-esteem bingo, or making crafts, we played foosball. And all of the kids were very aggressive about it, and very good at it. That's about all there was to do for fun in that joint. They put a radio up for us to listen to, which was constantly on B-96, the pop station. I informed the nurse that the music that was playing was making me feel suicidal. They played the same Janet Jackson song over and over. At the time I detested it, but now it's very nostalgic. I asked the nurse if we could listen to my Depeche Mode tape, and she agreed. The rest of the kids weren't happy with the choice of music, but Kat and I danced around the lunchroom to Enjoy the Silence. I suppose it was right there that our romance began.
Later that day, we got to do crafts. I thought it would be funny to make a bird house, but they told me that the bird house kits were all gone. I could either make a jewelry box or a note holder. I didn't want to make either, so I threw a fit, screaming something about how I didn't think that my mental hospital stay would be complete without getting to make either a birdhouse or a wicker basket. Soon enough, feeling the futility of it all, I was sitting at a table putting together a note holder. Kat chose to make the jewelry box. As we were painting our wooden pieces, she said that she was going to call her jewely box "The Time Warper." We started to talk about Rocky Horror Picture Show and realized that we had seen eachother before, on a Saturday night, at the live performance. We had a laugh about some people that we both knew. I started to assemble the pieces of the noteholder. One piece wouldn't fit. I started to cry, dramatically. "It won't fit! I can't even put this thing together." Kat leaned in very close to me and grabbed my shoulders. "Shhh,"she said, "It's okay." She put her face next to mine and soon we were kissing. A nurse popped up out of nowhere and said "NO! You are breaking eachother's bubbles!" She put a hand on each of our shoulders and pushed us apart. I sniffled, still frustrated by the fact that my noteholder wouldn't go together. I looked at her and giggled. "I kind of liked breaking your bubble.""Me too," she smiled.Nate walked over a minute later and picked up the mostly-assembled note holder. With a grunt he forced the piece that wouldn't fit into place. "There you go," he said.That note holder would hang on the wall of my mother's kitchen with a note that said, "My daughter was committed and all I got was this lousy note-holder," for many years to come.
The next morning, I woke up and had breakfast as normal. I drank my orange juice and pawned the meal off on Kat. It was the day before my 17th birthday. Kat and I were sitting around after group, filling out questionaires. Every once in awhile we would giggle loudly and pretend to pop invisible bubbles around us, and she would lean over and kiss my cheek. I signed one of my papers and handed it in. A few minutes later a nurse pulled Kat aside and talked to her. She came back giggling.
"She asked why you wrote Teri Harms on your paper. I had to tell her that it was really your last name." I suppose it didn't bode well for me that my signature had always included a crosshair and an anarchy symbol.
After lunch the nurses were all talking about something that had happened on the outside. They told us that we could all gather around in the group room and watch the television news broadcast. It seems a few crazy kids got together and shot up their school. They were goth kids. I could feel everyone in the room looking at me. "What? Assholes, I'm not goth. I'm punk rock." I had a sense that when I did finally get out of the place, Columbine would change my school experience, and I was right.
Every day there was a battery of tests that we'd have to go through. That day, they gave me an IQ test. The test was formatted so that there was a flip book in front of me, and on each page of the book, there was a question. I would have to answer each question, as fast as possible, until the time was up. I rapidly answered the questions, one by one, accurately. The proctor of the test looked amazed.
At group that afternoon, Eric said that he didn't want to sit next to Nate because he thought that Nate would give him AIDS. He sat, blinking and flinching, as he spoke. Nate got very angry and picked up a chair. He hurled the chair through the air at Eric, who just narrowly dodged catching the leg of it in the forehead. They pulled Nate from the room and put him in separations. After group, we ate dinner and Kat and I took a place next to Eric.
"I want to be your friend, Eric," I said. "Let's have a staring contest." He seemed genuinely excited. I stared into his eyes and said, "Go!" He looked at me for a second and then flinched. "I win!" I said, "Let's do it again!" I kept this up for about a half-an-hour, until it was time for visitors. Kat wanted to introduce me to her parents. They seemed to genuinely like me. Her mother told me that she had found Kat passed out in the bathroom with some sort of aerosol can. "Is that what all the kids are doing these days?" I assured her that aerosol cans were relatively passe, and went to find my parents.
"Are you having fun here? Is this what you wanted?" my mom asked. "You know, they told us just know that you are a fucking genius. I'd believe it, too. But you're so goddamn lazy. You don't apply yourself. You should be getting much better grades in school." I laughed it off. "Kid's got a fucking 180 IQ and she's failing Theology." My mom moaned and groaned about it for awhile. I had just looked at Eric, speaking with his parents, when I saw that he was pointing at me. He was smiling widely. "She's my friend," he explained. "We have staring contests." My eyes widened and I excused myself from the room.
The next day one of my therapists told me that they had diagnosed me, and that my medication regimen would change slightly. I would take an antidepressant and an antipsychotic in the morning, and an antidepressant at night to help me sleep. I would also be treated for several allergy problems. She told me that she had confronted my mother about some of the problems that she felt my mother was responsible for, and that my mother had reacted adversely. "Great," I told her, "Now I'm not going to have any peace at home unless I pull a Lizzie Borden." Refer to Rule #2, people in the mental health industry have no sense of humour. "Do you feel like harming your mother, Teri?" I rolled my eyes.She explained to me that my moods would start to stabilize soon.
It couldn't have come soon enough. I was starting to get really angry. The pinnacle of my anger came later that day. They gathered us all together and took us down to the gymnasium. They announced to us that we were going to play a game. We would be divided into two teams. Each team would have to get a ball from one end of the gym to the other. This would be done by each member of the team standing in a circle, holding a string that was attached to a ring that would hang in the center. The ball would balance on the ring. As a group, the team would hold the strings just taught enough that the ball wouldn't fall. The team that got from one end of the gym to the other first would be declared the winners.They separated Kat and I. My team included Nate, Amber, and Eric. I gave my team a pep talk. "Okay, guys. We can beat them. We will be victorious." I was very competitive.We started to move slowly across the gym, ball balancing between us. All of a sudden, Eric flinched and the ball went flying. Nate started cussing. He threw his string. Amber fell on the ground and started crying. I had a kid with Tourette's, a girl that was about to off herself, and a guy that had anger control problems, all demonstrating their psychoses as the other team continued to slowly but surely move across the gym, until they had won the game. I turned and looked at the nurse. "You put me with these assholes? The odds were stacked against me!"
"Part of the excercise is dealing with defeat." That was the only explanation I was offered. I was incredibly disillusioned with the system. I wanted out of there as soon as possible.
I asked my therapist later how I could go about going home. She told me that I would have to be more agreeable. I would have to start earning stars.
That night Kat decided to move into my room. She packed up all of her things and moved them into my dresser. They didn't realize what she was doing until she had moved everything. The nurses told her that she couldn't move in with me, and took everything out of my drawers and moved her back into her old room. In the process, she managed to procure a pen. She wrote me a note on the back of one of the pages of the handbook giving me her phone number and personal information. This was strictly forbidden. She signed it, "I love you. <3 <3 Kat."
Before I went to sleep that night, I laid on the ground and started doing the same push-up excercises that Cynthia had done. I was either going to get out of there soon, or I was going to bust out.
From the moment I woke up the next morning I did everything by the book. I gave everyone the answers that they wanted to hear. For the first time ever, I got a star for breakfast. I got stars for each activity we did. I didn't complain. I sat about at least five feet away from Kat at all times. I didn't have any staring contests with Eric. I told everyone that I was feeling much better, and that I was over the whole "madman business."
It was boring after that. I stopped having a good time. No one thought I was amusing anymore, but I had to keep the ruse up so that I could get out. I missed my friends from the outside world. I assumed that most of them had heard about what happened, but I was worried that a few of them hadn't. I swallowed my medication when I was told. Soon it was easier and easier to follow the rules. I just didn't care anymore. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, but I stopped making up elaborate stories at group and just talked about how I occasionally got upset with my mother when she grounded me. I still wasn't telling the truth, but they bought those stories.
I continued that way for a week. I earned stars left and right. At the end of the week they told me that I could go to the cafeteria. I marched down politely. I sat and ate an orange. I looked into the kitchen where Cynthia had terrorized the employees. I threw my orange peel away and followed the nurse back upstairs. I thanked her for letting me get out of 4-A for a little while.
I had several meetings with my shrink and talked about paths to health. I pretended to understand her. We met with my mother and I apologized for my awful behaviour. I wrote out a plan to succeed. My mother told me that I could no longer wear black, and I agreed to her demand. I decided to submit to anything that I had to so that I could get out of the hospital.
Finally, the day came that I was told I could leave. I would have to continue outpatient care, and to continue to take my medication. I was told that if I took the medication I wouldn't be compelled to act out as much. I walked out, waving a tearful goodbye to Kat, whispering that I would call her. I had a pocket full of prescriptions. I got my Walkman back.
When I got home my mom gave me a bit of space. "You can call Elliot if you'd like. He's been calling to check up on you."
I called him. I pushed play on the CD player. "Hi," he said, "How are you feeling?"
"I could possibly be fading," I sang along. "Turning into dust."