Sweet Life

by Linda Biasotto

  I played cards with a new patient named Sherry, and she’s only twenty years old. I’ve never seen anyone so angry. Any little thing and she starts yelling. When they brought her in yesterday, I could hear her from my room, screaming about wanting to kill someone. But she was nice to me.

  A nurse came in and asked for Sherry’s nail clippers. I asked the nurse if she thought it was possible for a person to clip herself to death, but she didn’t find that funny. After the nurse left, Sherry told me she had a nail file hidden inside one of her shoes.

  “Don’t you know that your shoes are locked up with the rest of your clothes?” I said. It takes awhile for the new people to catch on.

  Curtis came to my room today. He looked cute sitting in my chair, with his feet in the blue hospital slippers tucked under him. He filled me in on the woes of his love life. He’s crazy about a married woman. She’s all he thinks about.

  I listened, and then suggested that he cool it for a while. Play hard to get. My advice for the lovelorn. I love Curtis and he wants someone else. Of course.

  Tuesday, January 11th

  Up at five this morning. Happy. Walked in hall for exercise. Kept asking myself; Is my step too bouncy? Did I pivot at the end of the hall with too much vigour?! Self-analysis constant. Today I have a feeling I will beat this. Feel like I want to.

  I am wondering what to do with myself until group at 9:30. Will try doodle art. My thoughts ricochet like Ping-Pong balls. I am waiting to ask Mrs. Shrink to allow me downstairs privileges. I keep reminding myself to take deep breaths.

  On the way to group today, I saw the twelve-month-pregnant guy, but he didn’t remember me. He said I had on too much makeup and I told him to mind his own business. He stopped on the stairs and yelled, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah?”

  What a jerk. Good thing he wasn’t on his way to group, which was bad enough. A woman kept going on and on about her stupid dreams. No one else had time to share. When the half-hour was up, I felt like kicking her all the way down the hall.

  I don’t know what to do with myself. Maybe what I need is just to get out of here and go home.

  God. Help. Me.

  Wednesday, January 12th

  I made up my mind. From now on I will:

  1. Cut the crap about going downstairs on my own.

  2. Concentrate on letting my feelings for these people go. They are not my family and soon I will never see them again.

  At the 11:00 group, things became emotional. We were asked to speak about positives in our lives or about how we turned a negative experience into a positive. I talked about my suicide attempt, about how my friends and some of the patients rallied around me. I plan to use this experience to help others.

  Because I’m depressed again, Mrs. Shrink decided to try something new. I can’t remember what this antidepressant’s called. She still won’t let me go downstairs and reminded me that the restrictions are for my own good. After crying awhile in my room, I calmed down and now feel exhausted. The days are long. When I’m tired all I can do is colour.

  I am a forty-five-year-old doodle artist.

  Thursday, January 13th

  The one positive about not being able to go downstairs is that I don’t have to see the guy who masturbates in the doorway every time he goes for a smoke. I’m a prisoner up here, but the pervert gets to go downstairs because he smokes. How fair is that?

  Today was the first time I fell asleep during Relaxation Group. Vivid dreams with bright colours. I couldn’t remember any of my dreams until I started on the Stelazine.

  The nurses let me watch a movie downstairs. The twelve-month-pregnant guy went at me again. Asked me why I lost weight and a bunch of other crap. He insisted everyone had to watch a boring, black-and-white detective movie, but Curtis took it out and put in one about a rock group. I felt so much love for Curtis that I wanted to hurt myself. I didn’t tell the nurse.

  Friday, January 14th

  For the first time in a long while I went to sleep last night without sleeping pills. I had a terrible nightmare. Something without a head was holding me down and when I woke up, I realized I’d been asleep for only twenty minutes. After I dozed off again, I dreamt about Mark. He was lying on his side, dressed in the suit we buried him in. I yelled at him for dying and doing this to me. He didn’t say anything. But he looked sorry.

  This morning, though, I feel normal. Calm. I feel I want to live.

  Saturday, January 15th

  Sherry told me a guy raped her. She doesn’t know who. All she thinks about is tracking him down and killing him. This is her second time in the hospital after swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

  Today Curtis told me he figured out the system. Just tell the doctor what she wants to hear and she’ll let you out. I don’t understand what he means. I’m here to get well. So now he’s gone. He said he’d come back and visit me, but I don’t believe him. I feel terrible. All I want to do is sleep, yet every time I lie down I jump up again and walk around in circles.

  While I disinfected the tub before my bath, I wondered how my boy felt while the water choked the life out of him. I climbed into the tub and slid under; pretending I was sinking in the middle of a lake, water pouring into my nostrils. I tried holding my breath to see if I could black out. But I couldn’t. I sat up and felt a complete emptiness. Like it was me who was poured out. Nothing left but skin.

  If I told the nurses I tried to drown myself in the tub, would they remove my bathing privileges?

  Tonight is Bingo night. Sarah said I won a prize last time, but I don’t remember.

  I can’t find my doodle art. It’s bizarre because I’ve looked everywhere, asked the nurses.

  Life is a non-event. A non-participation sport.

  Sunday, January 16th

  I phoned Jeffrey and asked him if he planned on visiting me today. He said no, because the psych ward makes him depressed. I told him he’s selfish. He said, “You only think of yourself and you’re not the only one suffering.”

  I yelled, “What do you want from me?”

  He hung up and I cried for an hour. I can’t understand why Jeffrey’s been angry with me ever since I died.

  Monday, January 17th

  Good news! They cut back on the Stelazine, and Nurse Sarah says if I keep improving, they’ll give me a room downstairs next week.

  Sherry ran away yesterday and the police brought her back a few hours later.

  When I asked her where she went, she said she tried hiding out at her brother’s. “Good idea,” I said. “Who’d think of looking for you there?” She almost laughed.

  Today she and I were playing cards in her room when she had a visitor, a lady whose son had an accident and now he’s a quadriplegic. Because she can’t stand to see him suffer, she wishes he were dead. I couldn’t believe it. I told her death was worse. I’d be totally ecstatic if someone told me Mark was paralyzed. He’d be alive and I could see him.

  My thoughts don’t bounce around any more. Although I still get mad whenever I think about Jeffrey yelling at me. Curtis hasn’t come. I would call him, but he’s not in the phone book.

  I’m sick of this place. And I miss Mark. It doesn’t matter what kind of pills I take, he’ll still be dead. So now I’m wondering what the point is. Of anything.

  Wednesday, January 18th

  Yesterday when I tried to nap, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mark. I saw him in the park at night, saw him wade into Wascana Lake. Heard his drunken friends egg him on, tell him he could make it to the island.

  Sometimes I’m with them on the shore. I can smell the dirty water. I stand and watch Mark’s head get smaller and smaller. Until he disappears. Other times I grab his arm and haul him away from the shore. Mark, I say, you’re drunk and I’m taking you home.

  Or I swim next to him. When he gets tired, he puts his arms about my neck and I swim with him to shore as if he doesn’t outweigh me, as if he isn’t six inches taller.

  Because that’s what a mother does. Keeps
her son alive.

  I decided to jump down from my window last night, walk to the cemetery and dig up Mark with the spoon I kept from supper. When the nurse looked in on me I pretended to be asleep. I was going to undo the screws on the window with the spoon, but I forgot about the metal screen.

  Why hasn’t anyone invented a pill for disappointment? I can’t see my life. It’s gone.

  Thursday, January 19th

  I have to get out of here, so I took Curtis’s advice. I told Mrs. Shrink what she wants to hear, that the new antidepressant works. Tomorrow I’ll tell a nurse that I can see how wrong I was in trying to kill myself.

  Waiting is like walking across a frozen lake. Slide one foot, slide the other. Avoid sudden moves.

  Sunday, January 22nd

  Mrs. Shrink says I’ll be released tomorrow and wrote me a prescription. I have to come back to the hospital for a day program until I feel ready to go back to work. I don’t see the point. But I’m not saying anything about it.

  Monday, January 23rd

  I’m all packed. Said goodbye to Sherry and Nurse Sarah. Jeffrey will be here soon to drive me home. I’m glad he’s working tonight. He won’t be around to ask questions when I go out.

  Why did I think I could dig a hole with a spoon? I’ll take a shovel. I can’t wait to hold Mark again, to feel his hair against my cheek. And then everything will be all right.

  Acknowledgements

  “Mrs. Kravitz’s Mood” and “Doves” each won prizes in the SWG Short Manuscript Awards. Previous versions of “Sweet Life” and “The Virgin In the Grotto” were published in Grain Magazine and Room, respectively. “The Madwoman Upstairs” was published in Transition Magazine. The unpublished, full-length manuscript of Sweet Life was the 2013 first place winner of the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award. My writers group, The Bees, provided critiques on earlier drafts. Ted Dyck provided editing suggestions. A tremendous thank you to my editor, Sandra Birdsell, for her amazing insight and her suggestions. Lastly, my gratitude to my husband, Mario, for his continuing support and for sharing his Manna stories with me.

  About the Author

  Linda Biasotto has published many short stories in Grain, Room of One’s Own and Transitions magazines. She’s also had poetry appear in a variety of publications. Sweet Life is her first book publication. Born in Winnipeg, Linda Biasotto grew up there and in Regina, where she lives to this day.