World of Glass

by Jocelyne Dubois

  “Here.” She holds a green pill in one hand and a paper cup in the other.

  “What is it?”

  “A little something to make you feel better.” I swallow the pill with the water from the cup. Betty watches very closely to make sure I have taken it.

  “Good,” she says then leaves the empty room, locking the door behind her. I am in darkness. It is quiet. My eyes remain open under the blanket. It is cold. I tremble but I do not move. I want a sleeping pill. Something to really knock me out. For a moment, I wish for someone to take me in their arms. Hold me close. Tears roll down my cheeks and wet the pillow. I pinch my arm to see if I am alive. I feel the sharp pain on my skin. I am thirsty. In my mind’s eye, I picture a tall glass of water. My mouth is dry and pasty. The nurse will surely be by again soon, I tell myself. For a long time, all I can do is stare.

  I stay this way for days. Food is brought to me on a plastic tray. Cold spaghetti. Burnt hamburger patties. Canned vegetables. I do not eat, but drink water from the Styrofoam cup. An orderly opens the door. I don’t know what time of day it is.

  “Time for a shower!” My hair is stringy and my skin is in need of water and soap. I get up slowly. Try to move my lips to speak, but I can’t. Mute. My knees are stiff. I follow him down the hall to the shower stall. He hands me a white towel and a small bar of soap and goes away. I take my gown off and turn on the water. It takes a long time to heat up. I step in. It stays lukewarm. I wash my hair and skin. The water trickles over me, but I am not refreshed. I turn off the water and rub myself with the towel. It is rough on my skin. I put on a clean gown that the orderly has left on the counter. Betty walks in and says, “You’re ready for the dayroom.” I follow her down a hall and into a large room with an old blue sofa, a pool table, plastic chairs and a large orange rocking chair. A few patients shuffle around. I see a room with large glass windows. The nurses’ quarters. They sit and watch our every move. I want a cigarette. I walk up to an orderly and ask him for one. He takes a Players out from his shirt pocket. He lights it with a Bic lighter then hands it to me. I take a puff and pace the floor. I look around me. I see a young man rocking in a chair. His eyes are shut. He is banging the back of his head against the wall. He hums and hums. His face is round and his cheeks sunken. He seems tense, so tense. I imagine his blood, hot and rushing inside his head. A middle-aged man, his hair long and knotted, sleeps on the dirty blue sofa. He wears a thick brown sweater. His jeans are ripped at the knees. He wears no shoes. Snoring sounds come from deep within. His lips tremble lightly. His arms rest on a faded blue packsack crushed against his chest. A frail woman weeps uncontrollably. Her hands cover her face. She is facing the off-white wall. What is she crying about? I wonder. I want to go up to her, but instead I turn my head the other way. I am nervous. Always nervous. I want to get out! I want out! Betty walks up to me and hands me another pill.

  “You’re talking to yourself again.”

  “What is it?” I point to the pill.

  “Risperdal. To calm you down. Your bed is at the end of the corridor to your left,” she says.

  I go to the washroom and sit on the toilet. I pee and wipe myself with toilet paper. I am bleeding. I roll the tissue around my fingers then place it between my legs, flush, pull my pants up, wash my hands and go out to the corridor and walk over to the first nurse I see.

  “Could I have a sanitary napkin?”

  “Hold on.” She disappears down the hall for a few minutes, then comes back holding a dirty, dry cloth that smells of Ajax.

  “Here,” she says. I take the cloth into the washroom and throw it into the garbage. I lower my buttocks onto the cold toilet seat and break down in tears. I will have to make do with bathroom tissue.

  I put my cigarette out in an ash stand brimming with butts. An orderly escorts me along the long hall. The men’s rooms are to the right. The orderly stops in front of a door, opens it, grins. There are two men sitting on beds, facing each other with their pants down, masturbating. I look away. I take a deep breath. The orderly closes the door. I follow him but do not feel safe. He opens the last door along the hall with a key. “This one’s yours,” he says as he points to a single bed by the wall. He leaves, his face expressionless. There are six beds in the room, but there is only one woman sleeping. She snores. The Risperdal makes me sleepy. I slip under the covers, close my eyes. I cannot sleep. I shake. The woman’s snores are loud. I put the pillow over my head and count to one hundred. Then I feel my body slowly fading.

  It is morning. An orderly opens the door and shouts, “Breakfast is served!” I put my feet onto the floor. I stand. I shuffle down the hall and into the cafeteria. The room is silent. We stand in line to pour ourselves bowls of Rice Krispies. I sit at a small table alone. I eat two spoonfuls of cereal, get up, pour myself a mug of black coffee. I leave the cafeteria to sit in the dayroom in the large orange rocking chair. I light a cigarette.

  I hear a human screech. It is the nurse. A young woman’s hand is covered in blood. She sobs and sobs. In her other hand, she holds a piece of sharp glass. “Where did you get this?” the nurse shouts. She wraps the bleeding wrist with gauze, gives her a pill and sends her to her room. I want to die, I say to myself. I want to die.

  “Here’s your medication,” another nurse says to me, holding pills and a paper cup. Her eyelids are powdered blue. She wears red lipstick and nylon stockings. There are deep creases on her forehead and she is frowning. “The doctor would like to see you. Follow me.” The nurse unlocks a large metal door, then another. We walk down a narrow hall. She knocks, then opens the door. A man, wearing a white smock, clean-shaven, with short silver hair, sits behind a wooden desk and opens a file. I sit in a chair facing him. My head is tilted to the ground. I imagine a brown mouse. Small and agitated.

  “How are you feeling?” he says.

  “I have no energy,” I whisper.

  “Speak louder.”

  I take a deep breath and pause.

  “These drugs numb my head. All I can do is sleep. Could you reduce the dose?”

  “They take away the psychosis. Do you still have fears?”

  “This place frightens me. I want to get out.”

  “We decide when you get released. It won’t be for a while.”

  “I have no one to talk to.”

  “Talk to the nurses.”

  “If you want to kill me, make it so it doesn’t hurt,” I say. The doctor scribbles in a file, gets up and motions to the nurse to escort me back to the dayroom.

  My mother arrives through the metal door. We sit in the TV room. A golf tournament is on, but there is no sound. A woman paces the floor. Another smokes butts from the ash stand.

  “I will truly die if I stay here,” I say to my mother. She kisses me on the cheek and opens a Loblaws bag and takes out a carton of Rothmans.

  “Thought you’d need this,” she says. We sit. She holds my hands. Her palms are moist.

  “Are they treating you nicely?” she asks.

  “I can’t stay here long. I’ll get worse.”

  “The doctors know what they’re doing.”

  “I will truly die if I stay here.”

  “You’re killing me!” she says, stands and adds, “You’re thin. You should eat.”

  “Could you bring me something to read next time?”

  “I’ll bake you some brownies,” she says.

  “When will you come back?” I ask.

  “Next week.”

  “I can’t stay here long. I’ll get worse.” We hear someone howling in the day room. She squeezes my hand, then releases it.

  The orderly unlocks the large door and my mother disappears. I hear a clack and my head turns to the pool table. A short man with shoulder-length brown hair fires the balls with a cue. He is shaking. “Fucking shit!” he shouts. Betty approaches me and orders me to take a shower. The washroom has three toilets and one shower. No bath. A heavy-set woman brushes her teeth at the sink. She moves the brush up and down and toothpaste dr
ibbles from the corners of her mouth. Betty hands me a white towel and a small bar of soap. The shower stall is stained and caked with dirt. The water is lukewarm. I stand and let it fall onto my skin.

  For dinner, I eat shepherd’s pie. My hands tremble and my food keeps falling off my fork. I take a soup spoon, fill it with potato, put it inside my mouth and swallow. I do this because I have to. If I don’t eat, the nurses will force the food down my throat. I saw this happen to another patient the other day. No one talks. We are sedated. I hear the clattering sounds of forks on dishes. I take my last forkful, get up slowly and sit in the dayroom on the orange vinyl rocking chair. I light a Rothmans. Sway back and forth.

  “How many packs a day do you smoke?” a large woman says to me. She wears tight jeans. Her stomach hangs over her waist.

  “About ten cigarettes a day,” I say.

  “I roll mine. Must smoke about forty a day. Roll and smoke, that’s what I do.” I crush my cigarette into the ash stand, then drag myself down the hall to my bed and lie down. My heart does not feel a thing.

  The metal doors open. Joan walks in. I see her and jump up from the rocking chair. We embrace. I take her to the barred balcony. It is summer and hot. Joan glances around and says, “This is just like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” A young man rocks hard and mumbles on a chair in the corner of the concrete balcony. I tell Joan I have to get out. A nurse comes by and hands me another pill. I hesitate.

  “Take it,” Joan says. I swallow the pill.

  “I brought you something,” Joan says.

  “You did?” She opens her large leather shoulder bag and takes out a long purple silk scarf.

  “Here.” I wrap it around my neck and stroke the shiny material with my hands.

  “I’m visiting a friend in Montréal. Your mother told me you were here.”

  A tall, tanned and muscular young man with a pointy nose and bushy eyebrows walks onto the balcony. He stands next to Joan.

  “I like blondes,” he says to her. He stares at her large breasts, larger because she is pregnant. Joan blushes and grins. She pulls her shoulders back, then brushes her hair forward with her fingers. She looks up at this young man and gives him a tight smile. He can’t keep his eyes off her breasts and wide hips. She smiles at him, or pretends to, and I puff on a Rothmans. He leaves the balcony and heads for the dayroom. Joan stops grinning, relaxes her shoulders and sits down.

  “How long are you in town for?” I ask.

  “A few days.”

  “Will you come by again?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, but I’ll call. I’m producing a TV series on women’s health issues. It’s about time I made good money,” she says. For a moment, I am dizzy at the thought of what this work involves.

  “Are they treating you well?” she asks.

  “Sometimes,” I say.

  “Anyhow, got to go. I promise to call you before I head back to T.O.” She kisses me on the cheek and I walk her to the metal doors where an orderly unlocks them. She waves. I shuffle back to my room. Joan has a lot on her mind. I couldn’t handle the hustle and bustle, I say to myself.

  A new patient is admitted to the ward. She asks, “Can I have a cookie?” over and over again to anyone passing by. She is neatly groomed and wears fake pearls. A young man – her son, I presume – kisses her on the forehead then leaves through those metal doors. I sit next to a woman who holds two knitting needles but no wool. I watch her knit invisible wool. “I’m making a scarf,” she says. I get up and walk into the TV room. The Bugs Bunny Show is on. There is one man stretched out on the dull sofa watching the TV. He laughs when the coyote gets crushed by a huge rock. I do not find this funny. I hear a loud scream. I rush into the dayroom. Three orderlies struggle to put a straitjacket on a thin man.

  “What happened?” I ask the nurse who is standing by.

  “He was trying to tear his eyes out.”

  It is early evening. A well-groomed woman in her thirties, carrying a brown nylon briefcase, walks through the metal doors. She and Betty exchange a few words, then Betty points straight at me. The woman walks toward me. She carefully looks around the dayroom. I can tell that she is uneasy. A little frightened.

  “I’ve come here to visit you,” She says to me. “I’m Louise. Joan told me you were here. I heard all about you.”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I’m writing a play about madness. I wanted to see what it’s like to be on the inside.” She takes a green felt pen and notebook from her briefcase. “What brings you here?”

  “I suffered a psychosis.” Louise looks away. Her body stiffens, she puts her hand on her forehead then brings it down again and starts scribbling on paper.

  “Have you made any friends here?” she asks.

  “I talk a little to a few people.”

  “What drugs do they give you?”

  “Risperdal. Now Lithium too.”

  “What’s your diagnosis?”

  “Hmm, well, manic-depressive. They call it bipolar disorder now. It makes the illness sound less severe, but the pain is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.” I feel like a talking textbook. Louise scribbles down everything I say.

  “How powerful are the drugs?”

  “Strong. Very strong. They leave me listless, but they take away my fears.” I am uneasy talking to this stranger. But Louise knows Joan, so I can trust her, at least a little. Louise glances at the woman knitting with invisible wool. “What’s she doing?” she asks.

  “She’s making a scarf.”

  “Oh…” Her voice trails off. Louise asks to see where I sleep. I take her down the narrow corridor to my room. Three women lie there, their backs to us.

  “We shouldn’t stay, they’re sleeping,” I whisper. We walk out of the room and I close the door behind us softly. We walk slowly down the hall in silence, then Louise says, “Thanks for the tour.” She puts her notebook back in her briefcase, gives me a polite hug, then quickly struts to the metal doors where an orderly lets her out. I go back to the rocking chair and sit. It occurs to me that Louise forgot to ask how I am.

  Pierre, a skinny young man with yellow teeth and bedroom eyes, tells me he got into trouble on the outside. He’s gone to jail several times, beat up a few people in bars and done a lot of crack. He sits on my knees. I let him. He tells me that the doctors are not sure whether he is bipolar or schizophrenic. He drinks Coke from a can. Buys it at the cafeteria downstairs, where the doctors and nurses eat. He slurs his words.

  “Je suis très malade,” he says. He cups my hand in his and adds, “Je t’aime.” He says that yesterday he was in a flying saucer with “des vedettes de la télé.” They flew around the world and almost didn’t make it back to Montréal. I squeeze his hand. His weight on my thighs begins to feel heavy. I take a deep breath. “T’es une belle femme,” he says. I do not feel beautiful. Ordinary, very ordinary. Pierre throws his Coca-Cola in the trash and says, “Demain, je voyage en soucoupe volante. Je vais à Toronto.” He kisses me on the lips. His are wet and cold. He gets up and walks over to the water fountain, drinks big gulps, turns to a woman who brushes her short thin hair a thousand strokes a day, puts his arm around her shoulders, and says, “T’es belle.”

  Time passes. I eat alone at the table in the corner every day. Everyone knows that this is my place.

  “Why don’t you eat with the others?” Betty says. I eat two and sometimes three servings at lunch and dinner. When I first came to the hospital, I could see my bones. My black jeans are now tight around my waist. I look into the long mirror in the dayroom. My face, waist and legs are rounded. The drugs have made me bloated. I do not enjoy the plain omelettes, rubbery hamburger patties or spaghetti I eat.

  There is no quiet place for me. I sit on a plastic chair, bend my body and put my hands over my ears. A voice repeats in my head: Peace, Peace.

  A woman, once beautiful, I can tell. Her lips are dull and her eyes are large and blue. She puffs up her thick auburn hair in front
of the full-length mirror by the pool table. She paints her lips pink and straightens her hair every few minutes. “My boyfriend is coming,” she says. But he never does.

  An orderly sits with me. He tells me that he is married and has a young boy. “You’re lucky,” I say. He hands me a cigarette. I put it in my mouth. He lights it with a match.

  “You seem to be doing better,” he says.

  “I want to go home,” I say softly.

  “It shouldn’t be much longer. Be patient.” I smoke and smoke until my stomach turns. I butt it out. The air is one big fog. Stale and stinky.

  There is a phone in the dayroom for patients. It rings four times. It doesn’t ring very often. A short nervous woman, no more than five feet tall, with swollen eyes and toilet paper in her hand, blows her nose, answers, then yells out, “Is there a Chloé here?” I look up and slowly walk over to the phone.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Chloé?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Justin.”

  “Hi.”

  “Joan told me what happened.” A quiver in his voice. “How are you?”

  “Surviving.”

  “I wish I wasn’t so far away.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do they feed you well?”

  “Stuff like spaghetti, shepherd’s pie. You know.”

  “Well, take your time and get better.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Anyhow, I’m thinking of you and I promise to call again soon.”

  “Justin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for calling,” I say and hang up. I go back to the orange rocking chair, and think about how outsiders are frightened of people who are in mental hospitals. Justin was in a hurry to get off the phone. I could tell. I wonder how his new relationship is doing. What books is he reading? What films has he seen recently? Does he really care about me? I could have listened to him on the phone for hours.

  I am lying in bed. The window is open and the wind blows on my cheeks and forehead. A young woman sits on a bed next to me.