It’s so frightening I can’t afford to be scared. I can see why they might shut down. You can’t think about being in here too much. It would drive you crazy. So maybe that’s why they invent other worlds. Escape the real one. Run from the one they can’t handle to make one that they can.
It’s the people on the staff that don’t make sense. The “only thems” have it the right way round. One of them left their world today and entered mine. Made a big entrance. She walked over and put her face in my face. Looked into my windows to see if I was home. I stayed hidden, but she wouldn’t go away. So I stared back at her. Startled her. That’s when she drove her pencil about an inch into my shoulder. Wiped my skin off her dagger and onto her shirt. Then sat down to finish her crossword. It’s not fair. The pencil got to be a pencil again. I’ll never even get to be the person I didn’t like before.
That’s why I need to write this down. So I’ll know exactly when I left for a vacation. ’Cause if I stay here much longer, I’m going to have to leave.
Signed, M.
Journal Entry # 5
The blackness is back. Returned early from its vacation. I guess it was jealous of the white enjoying itself so much. The white floor, white sheets, the white of the nurses’ skin. Don’t these people ever see the sun? I swear they hide in this cave during the day, drinking blood out of mugs, punch out in the basement, change into their little bat suits, then fly up the furnace chimney. I don’t know how else they would get out. All the doors are locked. Including mine.
I get stabbed and they lock me in my room. I can see Crossword Kruger through my window, which takes up half of my door. The white window frame makes a border around the picture of the world outside. Like a Polaroid.
I make a shadow puppet of a snake. My albino python eats the Polaroid of the person who sits at her table and doesn’t stab anyone else but me. All these crazy people to choose from. And I’m the one they put in isolation.
Signed, M.
Journal Entry # 6
There’s too much time to think in here. My brain is bored with inventing the secret lives of the nursing staff. My fists have unclenched. Given up the fight. Tired of being constantly pissed off. I don’t want to let go of the anger. ’Cause I know what happens. The sadness moves in and takes up more room than I can spare. It makes the water leave my eyes, it needs so much. The anger is a far more gracious guest. It takes up only a little bit of space. Doesn’t need a lot to keep it happy.
The sadness took over my whole body when Lily died. I asked it to move nicely. It wouldn’t. So I tried to kill it. And I thought I had. But I can hear it knocking. Standing on my porch with too many bags. Bags with names on them. Lily. Mom. Dad. My childhood. My future. My now. This is no overnight stay.
Signed, M.
Journal Entry # 7
I opened the door to the sadness last night. I had no choice. I cried all night. Shed water for the dead. Like in Frank Herbert’s Dune. It is the most honorable act you can do for the dead. I am not honorable. I had no choice. They drank their coffee and stared while I shed water for Lily. For myself. It must have told the watchers something. Their smiles were gentle. Almost caressing. Why couldn’t they have put Lily’s heart on suicide watch? It killed itself and took Lily with it. Took me too. Or should have.
I can hear Lily’s parents. I bet they were dryeyed in their belief that God took her. God didn’t take her. They sacrificed her to him. If there is a God, he wouldn’t take her. He would accept her. She was good. Innocent. But maybe he did take her. Out of mercy.
And if there is a God and if he is merciful, why didn’t he take me? God even had a long time to think about. It took them a long time to realize I wasn’t just sleeping. God had eight hours before they figured it out. I think he put some serious thought into it while I was “clinically” dead. Seventeen minutes. Probably the time it took for Lily to talk him out of handing me a pair of size-small wings. Medical miracle. That’s what the doctor said. I think it was just a long conversation. Then a five-day coma. Perhaps more debate. Maybe Lily didn’t want me. And God has left me here to punish me for letting her down. For letting everyone down. Including me. God is not merciful. He is right.
Signed, M.
Journal Entry # 8
Woke up for dinner. Actually, they woke me up. Tried to strangle my upper arm with the blood pressure cuff thing. They tried using the adult cuff, but they had to wrap it around so many times that it wouldn’t work right. I told them to get a child’s cuff. That’s what they used on the other ward.
The other ward. That’s what I used to call this ward. Used to call the patients in here the others.
Guess everything just depends on what side of the locked door you’re on. The theys will always be the theys. Some things have to stay the same.
Signed, M.
Journal Entry # 9
I think the drugs have worn off. All the drugs. All the drugs I took and all the drugs they pumped into me to make them “untook.” I’m feeling better. I think. At least I don’t feel my face scrunching up like a piece of used paper. Maybe my face is recycling. Into what? Not a happy face–like ones you see on stickers and T-shirts. Those things force other people to smile when they look at them. My new face must be blank. ’Cause when anybody looks at me, all I get back is a blank. But blank is better than scrunch. I’m really roaring out of the starting gate, Dr. Katz–thanks for sticking me in here.
I do have Dr. Katz to thank for this journal though. There is nothing to do here without it. At least I’m moving. Or part of me is moving. My hand. Better than nothing. Because it would be so easy to not move. At all. Most of the time I feel like I could not move forever. Just stay still and safe. Blend into this place. Like a flake of dandruff in a snowbank.
But then I look at the cats (catatonics) out my door window. They remind me of those bronze statues you see in parks. The ones that sit on benches, or lean against lampposts. Out of the corner of your eye they look real, and then you realize they’re fake.
This place is not a park. When I look out, I see the statue people sitting in chairs or leaning against the wall. I look straight at them and think they’re fake. And then remember they are real. And that people are probably looking for them like they’d look for lost dandruff. I’m not sure I want to be found. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be looked for.
So I guess I have to keep moving.
I’ve been staring at the “keep moving” sentence for five minutes. Or maybe an hour. Hard to tell. Funny though. As soon as I figure out that moving is what I have to do, I stop. I don’t need a head-shrinker to point that out. Although I’m sure they would be excited to read that observation. And I’m not even afraid for them to read this stuff. I don’t think they are trying to trick me. So I’m not a paranoid. And I don’t want to be a catatonic. I’m fed up with being an anorexic. Ha-ha-ha. So what am I supposed to be?
Signed, M.
DAY 216
JANUARY 15
I wake up. I think that the crazy lady who stabbed her pencil into my shoulder has gotten into my room and jammed her pencil in my ear. I draw my hand slowly from under the sheets and run it up the side of my face and feel my ear. There is nothing in it. Not even a sound. I pull on it and it fills with pain.
Ear infection.
I’ve had them before. Lots of them. So many that a doctor decided to take my tonsils out to make the ear infections go away. It didn’t work. The infections stayed. He should have cut out my ear instead of my tonsils. They didn’t give me ice cream. I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. But right now, if they offered me a scoop, I’d take it and stick it in my ear. My ear is so hot, it wouldn’t just melt the ice cream. It would vaporize it.
I sit up. Carefully. PAIN.
Open my eyes, just a little. Enough to see the dim lights outside my door and the bright desk light at the nurses’ station. Middle of the night. I feel a yawn entering my nose, which is a weird place to start. But I can’t open my mouth. At all. There must be a
hundred rubber bands circling under my chin round the top of my head. My bottom jaw feels like it’s going to swallow my face and bite my brain. The yawn, having come into my body, now wants to leave. But the doors are locked. My throat blows up like a bullfrog’s. The yawn, now desperate, finds a side window to escape through and explodes out my ear. Shards of white glass fly behind my eyelids.
I want to black out, but searing aftershocks keep ripping through my ear and tearing down my neck. Tears squeeze out my eyes. I remember the surgeon saying that everything is connected. I remember the anesthesiologist saying to count backwards from one hundred. I need both of those guys right now. But I’d settle for a vet. If he couldn’t fix my ear, he could at least put me to sleep.
I stand and walk like I’ve got books on my head. My door is locked. Of course. I knock on my own window to get someone’s attention. The sound waves become nails hitting the hammer in my ear. Dizzy. Nauseous. The floor comes up to meet my tailbone. Crack.
I crawl away, in case a nurse heard me, rushes in, and slams me with the door. Back to bed. Like a sick old dog with my tail between my legs. Only I think my “tail” is now off to the left. My heart has moved into my ear and is pounding like a kettledrum. Everything is in the wrong place. Including me.
I finally make it to the bed. I try to pull myself up, but it’s like I’m on a glacier. My fingers can’t get a grip on the smooth white surface. I need an ice pick. Or at least fingernails. I shouldn’t have eaten them. I grab at the covers near the end of the bed, but they just keep coming at me like a rope with no one at the other end. I slide back to the floor. Someone moans. I move my eyes to find them. I’m alone. The moaner is me. Where the hell is somebody?
I lie down on the floor. Unborn-baby style. But it’s not a womb, warm and soft and human-smelling. It’s cold and hard and bleachy. For once I’m glad they wash the floors so much. And empty the garbage.
’Cause I’m going to throw up. I grab the metal bucket.
Olympic events begin in my body. My tongue starts to swim in saliva. My stomach gets in the ready position. Crouches down like a sprinter in the starting blocks. Puke pole-vaults up my throat, but hits the bar of my teeth. Vomit squeezes through like toothpaste. The force of my choking pushes the rest through a lot faster.
I’m done. Just kill me now.
Black.
—
Blinding white.
Must be on the bullet train to heaven. I squint to see who my welcoming angel is. I hope it’s Lily.
No luck.
“Marty!…Marty, can you hear me? Did you take something? What did you take?” the nurse yells at me.
I try to shake my head no, but I don’t think it moves.
“You better tell me right now!” she says, as she snaps on rubber gloves. From my chin she swipes a fingerful of vomit and brings it to her nose. She inhales deeply.
I gag and point to my ear and moan.
“Your ear hurts?” she asks.
I moan again.
She grabs my face and cranks my head to the side. “It’s all red.” She puts her unrubberized wrist against my forehead. “And you’re hotter than Hades. Bloody hell, I thought you OD’d!” she says, all pissed off like she’s upset I haven’t. She leaves.
My head is still spinning from her steering it so hard to the left.
She’s back already, coming at me with her flashlight and a wooden shish kebab stick with a ball of cotton skewered on the end.
“On’t sick at in eye ear,” I plead.
“I can’t understand you if you mumble,” she replies.
I can’t talk right with my jaw all screwed up, so I try telepathy. Don’t stick that in my ear! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t…JESUS CHRIST!
She turns the stick. Crust grinds and crackles, releasing hot lava.
“You sure are cooking something up in there,” she says, as she looks at the stick with melted yellow goo on the end.
I must be roasting frigin’ marshmallows.
“I better take your temperature.”
Not up my ass you don’t.
She searches her big nurse pockets. “I’ll be right back,” she says, and spins away, making her rubber Birkenstock clogs shriek, which makes me want to scream too. That and the air pressure she displaces upon her speedy return, weapon in hand. “I’m going to stick this in your other ear, okay?” she says, and holds out the thermometer thing that looks like a telephone receiver with a Pinocchio nose growing out of the earpiece.
I blink twice. Once for yes. And once as a thank-you to the God I don’t believe in, but am grateful that he doesn’t hate me as much as I hate him.
She gently slides the nose of the thermometer into my good ear. Apparently only bad ears are good for mashing things into. I exhale. Three seconds later, beeps are being fired into my ear, through my brain, and hit the bull’s-eye of my bad ear. My eyes do backward somersaults in my head.
“102 degrees. No doctors around this time of night, and they’ll just yell at me if I page them for an ear infection. You’ll have to go to emergency. Let’s get you off the floor and then I’ll figure this out,” she says, and lowers herself into a deep knee-squat, shoots her arms straight under my armpits like a forklift, and hoists me up onto the bed. She steps back and examines her lab coat. A puce-colored design in the shape of an inkblot test is what she sees. “Well, look at that mess.”
I see a butterfly. I never see a butterfly in Katz’s office. I wonder how many points I’d get now.
“Pull those clothes off while I get us both clean ones, and if you’re going to throw up again, for God’s sake, do it in the bucket.” She daintily pinches her coat and holds it out from her chest as if she’s pretending she has bigger boobs. She looks down and gains three chins. She leaves. Again.
I know she wants me to undress, but I can’t seem to move. I’m so cold, the thought of being uncovered hurts worse than my ear. And she is going to be back in a nanosecond.
She returns, all white again. “Come on, Marty, you should have got that stuff off. You’ve got to help me. I’m short staffed tonight.” She tears the sweatshirt over my head, yanks my sweatpants off, and leaves me sitting in my white socks, white underwear, and white spots in front of my eyes. I’m freezing. I want my down comforter from home. She throws a hospital gown at me. “Put that on.”
I reach for my thin covers and start to lie down.
“Go back to sleep half naked if you want to, but no covers,” she says, as she rips them from my hands. “You’ve got a fever and need to cool down. I need to find someone who can deal with this. I don’t have the time.”
—
Nurse Brown and I stand in the air lock–the space between the front doors of the building and the doors that open into the foyer. The security camera stares at me from its perch in the corner of the ceiling. The intercom on the wall says nothing.
She tries to open her umbrella. “Come on!” she says, and bangs it on the floor. She buzzes the reception desk. No answer. Security must be on a break. “Forget it.” She throws the umbrella against the wall. She takes off her raincoat and holds it over my head. “You okay to walk fast to that yellow car in the second row?” She points to an old VW Bug that looks like it’s being dented by the pelting rain.
I nod.
“Okay, here we go. You get the door.”
We run-walk towards the car. I can’t remember the last time I saw rain. I like rain. But not today. It comes down on my coat-roof like bombs. The sound explodes in my ear.
At the car, Nurse Brown nods at the passenger door and says, “Give it a yank.” She holds the coat over my head until I’m all the way in, and then throws it into the backseat. She closes my door gently and runs around to the driver’s side. She gets in.
She’s soaked. Like she’s just stepped out of the shower. She reaches into the pile of take-out coffee cups and fast-food wrappers at my feet and finds a paper napkin to dry her face.
All those times you ragged on me about my room…and y
ou drive a pigsty.
“Sorry about the mess.”
I forgot that she could read minds.
She opens her purse and roots around till she finds a pill bottle. Uncorks it and pours out a selection.
Great. I’m sick and she’s taking meds.
She decides which one she wants, holds it in front of my face, and says, “It’s Vicodin. If you can hold this down, it will make you feel better. Between you and me, I gave this to you at the institute. I’ll put it in your chart when I get back. I could get in a lot of trouble, but you look like you’re on the rack and you could be there awhile. Emerg might be backed up.”
I stare at her. She isn’t handing me a painkiller. She’s giving me ammunition that I could use to shoot her down for good.
She pushes the pill between my teeth and bends over and fishes around my feet in the passenger’s side till she pulls up a bottle of already-been-opened water. She holds it up and swishes it around and takes a good look for backwash asteroids. No sightings, I guess, because she unscrews the cap, hooks her baby finger into my cheek, pulls it out and pours a little water into it and a lot of water down my neck.
Very unnursey. Very unhygienic. Very appreciated. I hope she can read my mind on the last very.
“You’re welcome.”
Of course.
Nurse Brown drops me off at the hospital entrance and goes to find a parking spot. I go inside and tuck myself into a corner of the waiting room. People start sneaking looks at me. I look at myself. Tennis shoes–no laces, no socks. Hospital gown hanging out from underneath a dripping wet raincoat. I look like a mental patient who broke out of the asylum. Not a mental patient with an ear infection, busted out by Nurse Brown.
More Than You Can Chew Page 14