by Tom Lally
“How’re you doing today?” she asked.
I shrugged and held my hands up.
“Like, I, uh, like I just did this,” I said.
“Fair,” she said, “I have something for you.”
She stood and reached down behind her desk and picked up a gym bag. It was my St. Thomas basketball gym bag from freshman year.
“Your father dropped it off,” she said placing the bag on her desk.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Clothes, I think. Your sister dropped these off last night before she left,” she said and held up two cartons of cigarettes.
“She’s the best,” I said.
“Your father also left this,” she said.
She opened her drawer and pulled out a piece of loose leaf that had been crumpled into a ball.
“He gave it to you like that?” I asked.
“He threw it at me like that,” she said and handed it to me.
“Have you read it already?” I asked.
“I can’t. I wouldn’t regardless, but the only way I can is if you give me permission to do so,” she said.
I took a deep breath and opened the ball into a full sheet of wrinkled paper. Some of the ink had stained and it looked like scotch had spilled on the header. The handwriting was messy, but I could hear every word in my father’s voice.
Drew,
I am at the end of the line with you. You will live with your sister when you get out of the hospital. I WILL NOT GIVE you any money. I WILL NOT PAY for college anymore. You can use your savings for that. If you want spending money, get a job and KEEP IT. DO NOT CALL. DO NOT WRITE. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME IN THIS HOUSE ANYMORE.
Weston F. Thomas
A tear dropped onto the paper and ink slowly drained from my father’s first name.
“Are you alright, Drew?” Dr. Phillips asked.
I didn’t say anything. I held back the rest of my tears and leaned forward. I glided the note onto her desk. My head bobbed with an assurance that she was allowed to handle the piece of paper. She read it while I sniffled in my wheelchair.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with this,” she said, putting the paper on her desk once she finished reading it.
I cupped my hands over my face.
“Drew? Drew?” she came over and leaned right next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said through my palms.
“Don’t be,” she said and handed me a Kleenex. “None of this is your fault, Drew. None of it.”
It didn’t calm me though. I wept for ten minutes before I started to tire myself out. My lips trembled uncontrollably until I was able to breathe normally again. I lifted my hands from my face and took another Kleenex from the box Dr. Phillips was holding at my side.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“He hates me,” I said.
“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t understand you,” she said.
“I don’t understand me. He loathes me,” I said.
“Has it always been like this?” she asked.
“Yeah, but it got worse after my mom died,” I said.
“Drew, look at me,” she said.
I carefully looked up and tried to relax my face, but I felt the contortions on my skin.
“You are not the reason for this. This is your father,” she said.
“I am the reason for this,” I said, “my dad just wants a good meal and a good shit. Anything in between, he doesn’t want to hear about.”
“Exactly, Drew. That is his baggage, not yours. He takes things out on you, but you are not the reason for his issues. So don’t ever blame yourself,” she said.
I nodded at her.
“Drew, trust me. You can’t think about his problems because we can’t fix them. We can only fix yours,” she said. “Do you want to get better?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then let me help you find out,” she said.
Her voice held a sense of assurance combined with a degree of begging. She wanted me to become the person she thought I could be, but I didn’t know whether or not we were thinking of the same person.
“The past is the past, Drew. We can’t change that,” she said. “But the future is unknown. You can control where it leads.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
“So let’s work to see where you can go,” she said.
“Okay,” I said after a few seconds.
“Okay,” she said. “We start today. I’m putting you on a twenty-one-day treatment program. We’ll have a room for you at some point today.”
“Okay,” I said.
Dr. Phillips stayed by my side a few minutes longer and helped me settle down. I rubbed the tears away from my face, feeling the dried streams that ran down my cheeks. Afterwards, Dr. Phillips pushed my wheelchair to the door where we met Natalie, who was patiently waiting outside. She smiled and wheeled me back to my room.
I slumped in my bed for hours, awaiting the moment when I would be transferred to the psychiatric wing of the hospital. I’d seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted. I was expecting the worst. It was a tendency of mine to think negatively about every step, miles down the road. Experience hadn’t changed my way of thinking. It’d only reinforced my fears. I feared Natalie walking back into the room. I knew her appearance would be the beginning of the unknown and I hated the unknown.
When Natalie finally entered my room, I was asleep. She woke me with a gentle nudge.
“Drew, they’re ready for you,” she said.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“It’s almost 6:45 in the evening,” she said.
I nodded and crawled out of the bed. Natalie went to grab the wheelchair.
“Do you mind if we walk? I need to wake myself up,” I said.
“No, not at all,” she said putting the wheelchair back in the corner.
I stood up and fixed my gown. I smelt like ocean water and sand.
“Can I shower today?” I asked.
“Yes. After we get you all set up in your room,” Natalie said.
I was still weak, but I felt better than I had before, physically, that is to say. Natalie grabbed my bag from the chair next to the bed.
“Anybody call for me?” I asked.
“Uh, I don’t think so. Sorry,” Natalie said.
Her head looked down to the floor creating a wave with the excess skin under her chin. The bag dangled against her oval hips. The kindness in her voice faded away. She’d wanted to say yes.
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I said.
Natalie smiled and turned to hold the door for me. I slowly walked into the hallway where nurses and doctors walked back and forth checking on patients.
The walk was terrifying, to say the least. It smelled like decaying flesh and a strange combination of cough medicine and cold coffee. I felt like I was walking to purgatory, a prison for those who didn’t want to live in the normal world, not because we wouldn’t abide by its rules, but because we weren’t capable of grasping what everyone else could. I followed Natalie’s blue scrubs and the sound of her sneakers hitting the tiled floor. We walked through the hospital following the different colored lines on the floor that led the way to various concentrations. We passed doorways that read, ‘Cardiology’, ‘Oncology’, and ‘Neurology’. Each was either stenciled onto the windows of the doors or printed in large red letters on the wall. Monitors chimed and patients yelled while nurses attempted to calm them down, first with pleas and then with a sedative. Doctors wheeled a crash cart passed us while an old man stretched in his doorway, slightly revealing his ass to any passerby.
Natalie led me across a skyway and I could see the street below. A paramedic team stood in a circle, laughing with each other as another team scrambled to bring a stretcher down from the backdoors of their ambulance. I thought I could see blood running down the person’s face as the body shook with each twist and turn of the g
urney. I could only imagine what a mess I probably looked like when they rushed me to the emergency room.
“Drew,” Natalie said.
I didn’t realize I’d stopped moving.
“Uh, sorry,” I said still glancing through the window as I walked away from it.
We walked to the end of the hallway. Natalie opened the set of double doors by typing in a code on a dial attached to the wall. The sign above me said ‘Psychiatrics’.
We went down a flight of stairs and entered an empty waiting room where the common hospital atmosphere disappeared. Rows of seats lined the walls. They were all plastic without cushions. A few pictures hung from the wall, displaying images of the building during its construction. The controlled chaos and aggressive patients yelling over the sounds of respirators and ringing telephones evaporated. I looked over at the help desk enclosed in Plexiglas.
A woman sat inside, twirling her hair and nibbling on a pen. We walked over to her. A small rectangular, opening had been carved in the window.
“I’ve got Drew Thomas. You guys all set with his room?” Natalie asked.
“Ah, yes, yes, we are,” the woman said. She turned around to the back office door that was slightly cracked.
“Dougie,” the woman said and turned back to me, “sign this please.”
She handed me a clipboard with a few pieces of paper wedged tightly together. I looked at Natalie who simply nodded, urging me to complete the forms before vocally reassuring me.
“This is a standard admittance agreement,” she said.
I scribbled my name on the lines where it permitted me to do so and gently slid the clipboard back through the window opening.
“Dougie,” the woman behind the desk said again.
“Yes,” a deep voice said.
“Can you search a new patient? Get him set up and all that?” she asked.
The office door fully opened and a man appeared. He stroked his large beard while a loop of keys jangled from his belt. I could hear them dancing against his hip with every step. He walked past the woman to a door that led into the waiting room.
“Here we are, Drew,” Natalie said.
I walked in front of her and met the man at the door. He was tall and well built. His smile was calming. It lessened his largeness. He lacked the swagger men his size often overwhelmed others with, but his chiseled body was noticeable through the tight shirt roped around him.
“Drew,” he said, “right?”
“Yes,” I said nervously.
“Name’s Dougie. Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Wish I could say the same,” I said before quickly fixing my words. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
Dougie chuckled to himself.
“No, it’s fine. I get that a lot. Follow me please,” he said.
Natalie handed me my bag.
“I’ll meet you guys up there,” she said and walked into the office.
Dougie led me through the hallway to a private room marked ‘Storage’. There was a table with nothing on it. The bare cement room didn’t even have a window. Plastic black cubbies holding transparent bins with different last names written on tape attached to the side of each surrounded us.
“I need to see your bag,” he said.
I put it on the table. He opened the zippers and started digging through my clothing. He grabbed my belt and laid it on the table.
“I can’t have that in here?” I asked.
“Nah, sorry, anything that can be used to hurt yourself or others. Shoelaces, strings from shorts, sweatshirts, or sweatpants, pens, hell even a nail clipper,” he said.
I stood in front of him as he removed all of the strings from my clothes. He even took the shoulder strap off of my bag. He pulled out my cellphone and wallet.
“Sorry,” he said, “you can’t have these either.”
Lastly, he pulled out a notebook. It was my spiral bound college notebook I’d used for writing, but hadn’t touched in months.
“Is that a journal?” he asked.
I looked at it until my eyes were nearly on top of the book.
“Yes,” I said.
I was surprised my dad had packed it. I guessed it was so he wouldn’t have to see it ever again. Dougie flipped through the pages to make sure there wasn’t anything stashed within it before placing it back in my gym bag.
“Okay, well, you can use a dull pencil, so I’m gonna leave it,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, “I can have cigarettes, right?” I asked.
“Yes, just no matches or lighters. We’ll give those to you when you need ’em,” he said.
He pulled out the cartons and opened both of them. He trod his fingers across the tops of the cigarette packs. He then pulled them out one by one to make sure there was nothing hidden underneath. Afterwards, he neatly placed all of them back in their respective cartons. Dougie then turned his attention to the clothes scattered across the table. Two pairs of jeans, a few pairs of basketball shorts, five pairs of boxers, seven T-shirts, one sweatshirt, and some socks. It was everything I owned. My single pair of sneakers had left dirt stains on the surface of the table. Dougie didn’t seem to mind as he started re-folding each article of clothing. His technique was great. The shirts looked better than they ever had in my drawers at home. The wrinkles in each piece of fabric from my lack of caring, however, didn’t do his work justice.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said after he finished folding the second shirt.
“Oh, please, Drew, it’s no big deal,” he said.
“It’s fine. Not like they are gonna get any nicer,” I said.
Dougie laughed colorfully and threw his messy brown hair back with one hand. He placed the shirts in the bag and then gently laid my other clothes on top of them, still trying to be as tidy as possible. Once the gym bag was fully packed, he reached under the table and pulled out a plastic cabinet and a role of white tape. He laid the shoelaces and short strings into the cabinet, separating them so they wouldn’t get tangled, along with my belt, my wallet, and my phone. He then ripped a piece of tape from its roll and wrote ‘THOMAS’ on it. He then stuck it on the side of the cabinet and stowed it in an empty cubby.
“Okay, now I need to make sure you don’t have anything on your person,” he said to me.
He pulled a small flashlight out of his back pocket.
“Okay,” I said.
“Open your mouth,” he said which I did, “okay, now move your tongue up… left… right… and you’re good.”
A few seconds passed as Dougie toyed with the flashlight, trying to fix it from periodically sputtering.
“Now, I need to ask you to do something strange. I need you to remove your gown,” he said once the light remained constant.
I looked down and pointed at the lone fabric covering my body.
“I’m sorry, but I have to check,” he said.
I took a deep breath and pulled my gown over my head. My wrists were the only thing covered. I put my hands over my penis.
“Drew, I need you to move your hands from your front and lift your genitals,” he said.
I closed my eyes and obeyed his command.
“Okay, now turn around,” he said.
I did.
“Spread your cheeks,” he said.
I did. The feeling of embarrassment and shame crept over quickly. The cheeks on my face blushed. I got angry at myself.
Why couldn’t I have just killed myself? I thought, You would’ve never had to go through this.
Afterwards, I followed Dougie back down the hallway and through another pair of doors that led to a single elevator shaft. Dougie pressed the up arrow button. A chime followed that signaled the elevator doors to open. Both of us silently walked in and he pressed the only other floor button which read ‘2’. The elevator dropped us off and Dougie led me out into another elevator waiting area. Two double doors stood a few feet from us to our left side. Dougie opened them with one of his keys.
The haunting image w
ill never leave my head. Doors stood every eight feet or so down the long hallway. The large window at the end of hall allowed sunlight to hit the tile floor and reflect into my eyes. I was waiting for an empty wheelchair to stroll eerily out from one of the doors. Some of the patient room doors were left open. Each occupant stared if they were sitting on their bed or standing up. The others only allowed me the horror of seeing the back of their heads. I followed Dougie to the end of the hallway. It made a sharp right turn near the common room which was square shaped with a full bay window peering down to the barbed wire fence that prohibited us from sneaking out. Several patients played cards, watched television, or just sat motionless. Dougie narrated our walk, explaining what each room was. He pointed to the bathroom at the end of the hall and I could only think of what a shower might’ve felt like.
Putting back on the hospital gown made me feel worse. I could feel the sand and smell the aroma of seaweed pooling around my skin. Dougie started to tail off the normal beaten path. He was heading towards a door. I saw the room number, ‘26’.
“Here we are,” Dougie said.
He pushed open the door and let me enter first. It looked like my dorm room from college. A wooden dresser had been lodged underneath the bed. An armoire, tall and made of the same wood the dresser was, sat in the far right corner of the square room. Both were that miserable off-beige color. Opposite the bed against the wall nearest the door, there was a desk. It was nothing more than an elementary school table with a surface that could hold a few books. A lonesome, dull pencil sat on the desk, perfectly placed where a right-handed person would leave their writing utensil. A tall rectangular window sat next to my bed, hovering over as it showed the pale clouds in the midst of a darkening sky. The view was obstructed by prison bars that extended across the window.
“Okay, you’re all set, I think. Natalie should be on her way,” Dougie said.
“Wait, she’s gonna watch me still?” I asked.
“Yes. Until Dr. Phillips says not to do so,” he said.
“Is she gonna watch everything?” I asked.
Dougie nodded.
“Everything?” I asked once more.
Dougie nodded again. His face echoed condolences. I turned back to my room and laid my bag on the bed. As I looked up from the plain white sheets, I noticed holes in the wall.