When he showed up at the ranch, his first thought was that I was a full-out madman. Dudley had never seen me get this bad—and he’d seen me in San Diego, where I was a beaten man. The pain was going to do me in, and he knew it.
I was embarrassed that I needed him to come out. I tried to play it down when he arrived. I said that it was just Joanie getting me all worked up. Duds didn’t buy it. At dinner, I made sure we all sat down together and tried to have a nice, regular time—but Dudley could read the act in my eyes.
Joanie had called psychiatrists over and over again, trying to find one that had time to see us. It was a frustrating, infuriating process. No one was willing to take me on, and every time we went to the hospital, we’d wait for hours to see some emergency-room doc who knew nothing about mental illness.
She had managed to book an appointment when Rick arrived. We drove to Carson City to meet with the doctor, but right when we got there, the nurse told us he had been called out of town. She handed us a brochure and said good luck. Just then, Joanie’s phone rang. It was another doctor’s office. They had an appointment open up, if we could make it there in the next thirty minutes. We rushed across town.
After we checked in and sat down in the waiting room, I started to get paranoid. There was no way out of this appointment. I believed I’d see this doctor and he’d try to have me committed to some sort of asylum. My chest started pounding. No fucking way. I told Joanie and Duds I was going to the bathroom and I’d be right back. Then I walked into the hall and bolted. No one saw me leave. I took off, walked to a main street and hitched a ride back to Gardnerville.
It took Joanie and Rick a few minutes to realize what happened. Having checked all the bars in Carson City, they figured their best bet was that I’d hitched back to Gardnerville. They searched all the bars in town looking for me. They went into one bar, and Duds asked this guy if he had seen a guy with a black eye and a cowboy hat. The guy thought he said “black guy in a cowboy hat” and told Rick no, but he’d seen a white guy in a cowboy hat. Rick was confused for a minute. I’d been looking for a bar that was showing the Blue Jackets game. It was about 4 P.M. in Nevada, which made it 7 P.M. back in Columbus—game time. My job was to coach the Blue Jackets’ goalies, and dammit, that’s what I was going to do. This bar didn’t have the game on TV—but now Rick and Joanie knew they were right on my tail.
They were right. I wound up at this place called Center Field’s, sat at the bar and had them turn on the hockey game. The place was basically empty. There were a couple of guys sitting at the bar, the bartender, and me. The others started messing around with me. One of the guys had the remote control and kept flicking the channel to a baseball or basketball game. Then he’d flip it back and, after another little while, change it to another station. It pissed me off, but I tried to play nice. At first, I was bullshitting with the guys, so I guess they thought it was all in fun. When I’d had enough, though, I turned to the tool with the remote.
“Joke’s over, buddy,” I said. “One more time and I’ll come over there and pull your little panties over your ass and spank you in front of your girlfriend there.”
I was half-joking.
I guess things got a little more heated than I thought, because unbeknownst to me, the bartender called the cops. The Blue Jackets game was still going on. I was having a few beers, feeling like I’d resolved our little dispute, when in walked a police officer.
“Excuse me,” one said. “You have to leave.”
“What for?”
“Well, we have a complaint here.”
“What? That wasn’t a real threat!” I objected. “I told him I was going to pull his panties down and spank him in front his girlfriend.”
“Now you’re trespassing,” he said. “You need to leave.”
“Fuck that. These guys are joking around. Everything’s cool—no problem.”
That’s when Duds came running in. He was too late.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “It was fun for a while, and then you pulled up. Now it’s not fun anymore. I’m just going to watch this game.”
“Sir, you have—”
I didn’t resist. Everything was cool. I was leaving. But by the time we got outside, a few more cop cars had shown up. And a cop on a motorcycle. He came up and got in my face. Joanie had gotten out of the car and was trying to tell the officer that I just needed my medication. One of them shouted at her to back up, or she’d be arrested. Duds did his best to calm the situation down. He could see where this was heading. They had me up against the wall, searching me, when the cop who was on the motorcycle got up in my face, talking shit.
“Fuck you,” I said. “Take your gun out, you little piece of shit. I’ll do you up right here.”
With that, the cops were on me. A couple of them took me down and gave me a mouthful of concrete. “You’re going to jail!” one shouted as he struggled to keep me pinned. They tried to pull my arms together behind my back, but I wouldn’t let them. They weren’t strong enough; I was proud of that. They knelt on my head and torso, trying to get my arms behind my back. “Fuck you,” I said. “Try it!” I was on Pluto.
Then one of them laid his boot into my rib—just drilled me like a soccer ball. Duds took a step forward and one of the cops pulled out his gun and said he’d shoot Rick if he took another step. Joanie screamed at them to let me go. They told her to stand back or she’d also end up in jail. She pleaded with them to just let me take my medication, but no one would listen.
I was a full-out madman now. Once that adrenaline starts flowing and I feel justified, I fight to the death. If I pass that point, there isn’t much room for reasoning with me. They kicked me a few times, but I couldn’t feel anything; I blocked the pain out with rage. One of the cops on top of me had his gun drawn. There was this little laser attachment on the top. I chomped down and bit it off. Eventually, they got the cuffs together and shoved me into the back of a squad car.
“You fucking goddamn motherfuckers,” I shouted, kicking at the door.
They had me. I saw Joanie’s terrified face through the window as Duds tried to console her. Shit. I tried to play nice and told the cops driving me away that I was messed up on bad medication and needed to get some new meds. The cops just ignored me and hauled my ass away from Joanie and Duds.
My knee was busted. I was black and blue from the waist down, along both legs and my entire right side. And trust me, I don’t bruise easily. There was a huge gash on my head, so they had to take me to the hospital in Gardnerville that night.
They booked me for resisting arrest. I spent the night in jail, pacing in my cell, ready to kill someone. Brian Peck got a call late that night from his friend, the district attorney. “Looks like we finally got your guy,” he said. “Apparently, he’s going back and forth like a caged panther.”
The cops on duty taunted me. I probably deserved a lot of it. Here’s this cop, just trying to do his job, and I kept shouting out, “Hey buddy! Hey buddy!” When he ignored me, I said, “Well, fuck you then, you piece of shit.” Of course they’re going to get on my ass for that. Of course they’re going to ride me the rest of the night. They didn’t know my story; I was just some angry guy in jail.
The next morning, the sergeant brought in a doctor to evaluate me. He asked about my medication and gave me two options: I could spend three days in jail or be put in a seventy-two-hour hold at a nearby psychiatric hospital, where I’d have access to doctors and medication. It seemed like an easy decision.
“I’ll go to the hospital,” I said.
Big mistake.
The next day, they drove me to Reno, at least an hour away. In the back seat of a cop car, there is no room—basically, I had to lie sideways. My knee and ribs were throbbing. My hands were cuffed and my legs were shackled. I felt like I was Hannibal Lecter. The cop in the front seat just blasted this heavy metal music the whole ride. It drove me crazy and I asked him to change it. The asshole just turned it up.
On the way, t
hey stopped at an In-N-Out Burger and had a bite to eat while I lay there on my side with a gash across my head and a couple of banged up ribs. The driver was bald and into heavy metal. The other guy was okay. After his burger, he turned down the music, opened the partition and talked to me.
“What do you do?” he asked me.
“I’m a hockey coach with the Columbus Blue Jackets,” I said. “I used to play in the NHL.”
He was a cop in Nevada, so he wasn’t a huge hockey fan. But when I told him about my jugular injury, he remembered it.
“Oh man, I know you!” he said.
From then on, I was suddenly this great guy. They both asked me a million questions.
We arrived at the mental hospital and they escorted me in, shuffling in the shackles. While Heavy Metal Cop checked me in, the other guy pulled me aside and gave me his card. “This will be a misdemeanor,” he said. “It will all go away. Call me and we’ll figure it out.”
I took the card, but I saw right through him. Before he knew who I was, he’d assumed I was some cop hater—then, after finding out I was this old hockey pro, famous for a terrible injury, he turned into some goddamn jock sniffer. After everything I’d been through, I was grateful he was being nice, but it wasn’t right.
On October 18, 2007, I was admitted to a full-out loony bin. The state mental hospital was full of batshit-crazy people. I knew I’d been drinking too much. I knew my obsessions were taking over my mind and that I was erratic and violent and a danger to myself and everyone around me. But holy shit—there were people running around naked in this place. There were people singing to themselves. One guy started throwing his food around. It was straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There’s no better way to describe it. The head nurse was just like Nurse Ratched.
They made us line up single file for meals, like in prison. We had to line up at these locked doors, and they’d march us through several security doors. Most of these people suffered from some sort of schizophrenia. It was a state facility, so it was also filled with poor, homeless people who were just picked up off the street for being a nuisance. They were mentally ill, and they were just stuffed into this hospital without any real help. I sat down to eat, and one guy was trying to shove a hot dog into his forehead. He had mustard all over himself.
I knew I needed help, but I wasn’t crazy crazy. I had to convince the doctors who interviewed me that I didn’t belong in a loony bin. “I know I need help. I need proper medication or whatever. But you’re not keeping me here—there’s no goddamn way!” It was the worst three days of my life. It was just unbelievable hell in there.
Joanie came to visit me after my first night. When she saw me, she broke down and cried.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not right. I know I need help. But I don’t belong in here.”
That place broke my heart. Nobody had anything. I asked Joanie to bring me a bunch of my clothes in a bag. The next day I asked for more, because I’d given them all away. Today, I swear there are homeless people walking around Reno in Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets sweats.
There was this old guy, Frank, just crying out from his bed. He was a giant of a man, probably six foot seven. “Help me! I need a nurse!” he kept yelling. “Help me! Please help me!” He was losing his mind. I ran over to the nurse’s station and told miserable Ratched that this old guy needed to see someone.
“Oh, that’s just Frank,” she said. “He’s just making a scene.”
That isn’t right, I thought. This place is so screwed up. It’s wrong. I went in there and held his hand, and he was asleep in ten minutes. That was all the poor guy needed.
On my last day, I had to get a signature from a social worker to get clearance to leave. They had to be certain I wasn’t going to hurt anybody on the outside. I sat there in the common area with my bag packed all afternoon, waiting to get the hell out. I kept asking the nurses when this social worker would be ready to see me, and they kept saying she was in a meeting. I didn’t even know who this person was. Finally, a woman came out of an office and went into the nurses’ station. I ran over—”Is that the social worker? I’m supposed to see her.”
The nurse said they’d page her. I sat there for another twenty minutes, but she didn’t get back to me. I went back up to the desk.
“Oh,” the nurse said, “she might have left for the day.”
You goddamn idiots!
“I’m here with my bags packed, waiting to talk to her!” I said. “I can’t leave until she signs my clearance form.”
“She must have slipped out,” the nurse. “I’m sorry.”
Joanie came to pick me up, but I still couldn’t leave. I was close to freaking out again—starting to get paranoid that I’d never be able to get out of that wretched hellhole. I tried to stay calm, because I knew that if I snapped, they’d just think I was some kook, put me in a straitjacket and cart me away.
The nurse finally tracked down the social worker—she was on her way to her car—and called her back in. Then they couldn’t find my paperwork. That took another half an hour. It felt like they were trying to trap me there. If I hadn’t been competent, I’d have been lost in that mental hospital forever. I swear most of those patients didn’t even know where they were.
After I escaped from the cuckoo’s nest, I had to get a lawyer. I could have been up for assaulting a police officer. I didn’t want to get nailed with anything worse than a misdemeanor. My job was in jeopardy because I wouldn’t be able to travel out of the States to games in Canada. And the Blue Jackets certainly would have thought twice about employing a guy who fights with cops. I was already on the edge with them because of the bar brawl I’d been in in Nashville. Even though Pascal Leclaire and I had a great relationship, I knew the organization was worried about me.
My lawyer took care of everything. We went to court and I got off with a fine. They said I’d have to pay $250 to replace a flashlight on a cop’s gun that I bit off during the struggle. The cop put a gun in my face and I had to pay for breaking it? Total horseshit. I mean, everything was under control at the bar until the cop on the motorcycle pulled up and got in my face. Then I got beat up in a parking lot, was taunted in jail and then got thrown in a mental hospital for three days, but still, the court said I was almost right.
Dudley went back to the Blackhawks after I was sent to the institution. He told Joanie to call him if I got out of control and to leave the house immediately. “You get on a plane if he gets angry,” he told her. He was afraid I might hurt her. Duds always called things as he saw them. Joanie told him that, as violently as I was acting, she knew I’d never hurt her. I’d scream and yell, but nothing more. Still, Duds had never seen me so out of control. I looked like a madman, he said, like I was possessed with rage. It was unpredictable; one minute I’d be apologizing and trying to make everything seem okay, and the next I was spouting out motherfuckers and challenging every living thing to a fight.
When I got out of the state hospital, I agreed to meet with the doctor I had run away from at the start of the whole mess. He told me I had a chemical imbalance—which I’d heard many times before—and gave me prescriptions for a bunch of different pills. There were pills for anxiety, pills for sleeping, pills to calm me down. He prescribed me a cocktail of meds, at least six different kinds. It made me feel like I was being pulled in all these different directions. It seemed to make things worse.
I’m convinced a lot of my problems came from doctors. You watch these commercials for depression medication, and they warn you about side effects—”If you have signs of this and that and this and that …” One of them is always suicidal thoughts. If I’m depressed, why would I be taking medication that makes me suicidal? I think these doctors prescribe so much that the opposite effect happens. That’s what happened to me.
The drinking just got worse through the spring and summer of 2008 as I kept trying to drown the suicidal thoughts, obsessions and rage. Nothing worked. It was like a high-pitch
ed symphony of whistles, squealing louder and louder every day. My Jekyll-and-Hyde act was getting so wild and unpredictable that even my mother told Joanie that if she was worried for her safety, she needed to leave.
Joanie stayed with friends several times that summer. She couldn’t sleep at night if she didn’t. I’d be out in the barn, getting drunk all night, and then come in and start a fight. A few weekends, she flew back to her parents’ place in San Antonio. They were always supportive of both of us—they could have told her to just leave me, but they knew I was sick and needed help. This wasn’t me; it was a disease. “That’s not the Clint you know,” they said. I had friends tell her to leave me—”Jesus Christ, you can’t stay there!” But Joanie’s parents told her to do everything she could to get me into rehab. They knew it was the only way I’d survive.
One time, in early August, I threw all of her things on the lawn. Pictures, clothes, jewellery—the whole deal. I threw it all off the back porch. I dragged our bed outside. I broke a few of her porcelain dolls and piled them in pieces with the rest of it.
My God, the shit Joanie put up with. And she stuck by me. I had a complete nervous breakdown in the end. For lack of a better word, I was crazy. I’d wake up in the morning and be fine. I’d be good for about five or six hours a day. But as the day went on, I would become unbalanced and lose control of my ability to comprehend and rationalize. I had fits of madness.
That September, Joanie was back by my side, helping me work on some horses in Carson City. The NHL season hadn’t opened yet. I wasn’t full time with the Blue Jackets, so I was home for the week, doing some dentistry gigs and planning to head east to Columbus for the tail end of training camp.
The Crazy Game Page 19