Mixtape for the Apocalypse

by Jemiah Jefferson

“‘Cos I’m sick of talking,” I said impatiently. My throat hurt and I coughed.

  She blinked at me. “How can you be sick of talking? You haven’t spoken ten words in a week.”

  My head spun with questions. A week? Have I been here a week? What is this? Who are you? Why does Lewis bawl and scream? Who is he? I couldn’t speak; my throat hurt too much, my tongue too thick, a heavy sense of shame settling over me like a lead vest.

  Her hair caught the light from the window outside. Outside it was all white and grey and blue, but lit up, luminous, almost magical. Her hair was flaming, intense red and put up sloppily with some rubber bands, chopsticks, combs. Her eyes were greyish green and she was wearing makeup over freckles, which is why her mouth looked dry around her lips. On the floor there was a small divot in the carpet, where her desk had been moved to the right, and somehow, I said, “Nobody fucking listens, anyway.”

  “Well, I’m listening.” She paused, waiting for me to speak again. I said nothing. “Do you know where you are?” she asked again, her voice showing no sign of impatience.

  “I’m obviously in a hospital,” I said.

  “Do you know what hospital?”

  “No.”

  “You’re at Providence in the inpatient psych wing. You’re a psychiatric inpatient. You’ve been here for a week. Do you remember that?”

  “No. I don’t remember any of it.”

  “That’s pretty serious, Michael. You’re not doing so well. We are trying some medications that should help you start feeling better, but you’ve got to talk to me, and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I added.

  She took a deep breath. “Do you remember how you got here?”

  My toes were still clean and my feet were getting cold. My entire body began to shake. “I want to go lie down,” I said.

  “In a little while. You’re all right.”

  “I’m falling asleep,” I said honestly. “I can’t focus my eyes.”

  “Try, Michael. You can go lie down later. Right now, let me know. What’s on your mind?”

  “I don’t know what happened,” I said. My eyes hurt. “You took my music away.”

  “I didn’t do that, Michael,” said Shandy. “I wasn’t there.”

  “But you’re one of them,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Who are they?” she said.

  “I gotta go to sleep,” I said, shaking mine right back. “I’m really sorry. I really haven’t been sleeping.”

  “You’ve been sleeping most of the time for the last few days,” she explained. But her voice was gentle. “We can cut today’s visit short, but I will see you tomorrow. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  “Uh . . . some cigarettes.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring cigarettes. Any particular brand?”

  “I don’t care,” I said, and I didn’t.

  I went out into the hall, and a stocky black man in pink scrubs took my arm gently with his thick, blunt hand. His fingernails were glossy and well-trimmed. He led me by the arm around a couple of corners and into a dark hall faintly colored by the sound of electric lights in the ceiling. The man gave me a paper cup of colored pills and a paper cup of water. “Hope ya feel better tomorrow,” he said, his voice so kind that it made me start crying.

  “You look better today. I brought you your cigarettes,” Shandy said the next day, “but you can’t smoke in here. I think we should go outside and smoke. Put these on, it’s pretty cold out there.”

  She handed me a jacket, a scarf, and a hat—all of them familiar. The jacket was mine, and the scarf and hat were Lise’s. We went into a courtyard with benches set up, trees in the middle, cylinders of cement to put your butts in. It was wet and grey and cold and the short grass in the courtyard glistened with condensation. Shandy lit me a cigarette and watched me as I stood, smoking desperately. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said, shivering already, but feeling good. “You go right ahead.”

  “How do you feel today?” she asked.

  “Awake,” I said.

  “You look,” she continued, raising her eyebrows, “so much more present than you did yesterday. You were barely there yesterday. And the day before that you didn’t even notice that I was in the room.”

  “And before that?” I asked.

  “Before that, you were pretty drugged up. It takes your body a while to get used to these meds sometimes. You were given haloperidol initially. It’s a very potent narcoleptic, and you just conked out for days. I’ve seen it happen before, otherwise I’d have been worried.” She lit a cigarette of her own and exhaled slowly and luxuriously.

  “So I’m on antipsychotics?”

  “Amongst other things.”

  “Am I psychotic?” I asked quietly.

  She smiled gently. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “We’re medicating right now to see how you respond so that we can get closer to a diagnosis. I think you definitely were psychotic. For a little while there.” She gave a factual little nod. “Brief psychotic episodes are not incredibly uncommon, and they may or may not be indicative of a different underlying disorder. I’m not sure yet, though. It’s good to see you up and alert today, though. I decreased the dosage of Zyprexa to see if that’d wake you up a bit.”

  “I could use a nice cup of tea,” I said.

  “Not yet,” she said. “You’ve still got some calming down to get used to. Anyway, you really need to eat. You’re a little skinny, and we weren’t sure it was your natural state. You haven’t gotten much to eat besides protein shakes for the last few days. Still, it looks like you’re putting on a little weight, anyway.”

  “Not too much, I hope,” I said. I glanced down at my cold, white, skeletal hands. The ink stains were gone for the first time in years.

  “Well, now you aren’t going to blow away in a stiff breeze.”

  I lit another cigarette. They tasted awful, but I enjoyed the high. “I’m having some memory issues,” I mentioned. “How’d my clothes get here?”

  “Your friend Lise brought them, day before yesterday,” the doctor replied. “When she found out that you weren’t going anywhere for a while. She brought you some clothes and a couple of things—some comics, mostly. They’re all safe; they’re in a locked box in the ward office.”

  “So . . .” I said as casually as I could, “I guess she took my journal away, huh?”

  “She didn’t take it away,” she replied simply. “She just didn’t bring it. And that was a good piece of mental-health judgment on her part. I don’t think it’s something you should go back to for a while. She told us all about that. She’s been very helpful.”

  It occurred to me that I had forgotten to say something—”Must hang onto my girlish figure.” But now it was too late to say it—if I said it now, it wouldn’t make any sense. My thoughts trickled through my brain very slowly. “So . . . writing down my thoughts was pretty much the wrong thing to do?”

  “Of course it wasn’t.”

  “It was the only thing keeping me sane.”

  “But it wasn’t you keeping you sane. Nothing was keeping you sane.” She gave a charming little laugh that relaxed me despite everything. “And I don’t think you should be worrying about what’s ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ right now. It’s not something that’s permanent. Don’t label yourself. It’s just a different state of mind. And there’s nothing wrong with being a little dotty. I’m a little dotty myself. The only difference between being charmingly eccentric and being in the inpatient psych ward is how much danger you can be to yourself. And to others.”

  I grunted, and flicked my cigarette out into a mound of dark brown snow. “Did I hurt anyone?” I asked. “Did I hurt Lise?”

  “No, you didn’t. You just gave her a good scare. But it was a real scare. And she did the right thing. And so did you; you fought, but you begged for help, and you signed yourself in voluntarily.”

  “I
don’t remember doing that,” I murmured. “That doesn’t . . . sound like something I would do . . .”

  Shandy sighed. “Michael, I’d like you to come back inside now with me, and take a look into a mirror. I’m going to see if I can knock some of the last couple of days loose.”

  I was scared, but I didn’t say anything to keep it from happening. I didn’t know why I’d be scared.

  When I saw myself, though, the nagging, formless fear evaporated. In the small oval glass of a hand mirror, the face I should have recognized looked back at me like a photograph of a war veteran—a black-and-white photograph, at that. My pupils were huge in freakish Keene-painting eyes; both my temples were covered with little cuts, some of them stitched up with blue plastic thread. I had two florid black eyes; there was a purple, clotted, scabby half-moon under my lower lip. “What the fuck?” I whispered, pushing the long hair back out of my face further and taking my glasses off. “Oh. My. Sweet hopping Jesus.”

  “Those are self-inflicted injuries, Michael. That’s where you started trying to keep from being pulled out of the closet by clinging to the door frame with your face.” I traced the stitches with my fingertip, and she hissed in sympathetic pain. “Pretty nasty, huh? Gave yourself a nice little concussion there. And when Lise tried to get you out of the apartment, you gracefully flung yourself down the stairs and bit through your lip. That’s when she called the ambulance.”

  I shook my head. “I do not remember that at all,” I said, smiling.

  “Do you remember that she had to chase you into the custodial closet in the hallway, and then they had to sedate you to get you out?”

  I laughed. “No. Wow. Punk rock.”

  Shandy O’Grady had been somber and straight-faced until this point, when she just gave up and laughed a rich, natural laugh. “Yeah, I guess so. Suicidal tendencies; not just a band anymore. But . . .” She grew serious again. “Lise wasn’t very impressed. Mostly she was just terrified.”

  “I would apologize to her if I could.”

  “One of these days, you can. What’s the earliest thing you remember before you came to the hospital?”

  “Being tired,” I said, pacing around her office with my hands in my pockets. “I just wanted to keep on sleeping.”

  “Do your medications make you sleepy?”

  “Of course they do,” I said. “They make me feel like I’m wrapped in . . . in that kind of fake snow that goes around the base of Christmas trees. That fake snow fluffy cotton shit.”

  The shrink raised her eyebrows. “That’s a great image.”

  I shrugged. “I answered your question.”

  “It’s called ‘flocking,’ by the way. I have the feeling that you’re going to be just fine, and out of here, oh, in a day or so. Your mother has called every day. She’d like to come get you, if that’s all right with you,” Shandy said gently.

  “I’m not going home with Lise?”

  She paused just long enough. “No,” she said.

  “Can I call her?”

  Shandy looked pained. “No. She specifically asked that you didn’t. I’m sure she must need some time on her own to examine her feelings. And to give you some time for you to think, too.”

  I swallowed. “Did I hurt her?”

  “Some bruises, that’s all. You struggled; that’s all. But you were also begging for her to help you. She knows you didn’t mean to hurt her. Mostly I think she just wants to know you’re all right.”

  My hands ached. “Can I have a pen and some paper?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you’re really ready for that yet, Michael.”

  “Please. Call me Squire,” I said.

  I got up after a good twelve hours’ sleep, put on the clean flannel shirt and blue jeans that I pulled out of the duffel bag next to my bed, and went to breakfast with the other lunatics. The other inpatients really didn’t seem all that bad, actually—some of them were going through drug withdrawal, and a couple of them, like Lewis, were actually a little bit cracked, but mostly they just seemed a little tired out and jumpy. There was one very fat woman who yelled triumphantly every time the commercials stopped and the game show came back on, and pretended she knew all the answers to all the questions. I saw people crazier than her on the bus every day.

  The orderly who was always guiding me around led me to Shandy O’Grady’s office after breakfast, and opened the door for me. “You like Shandy?” he asked me.

  “She’s cool,” I shrugged

  “She’s pretty cute, ain’t she?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Not really my type. Her butt’s not big enough.”

  “I like the way you think, Mike.” He gave me a solid, manly trick handshake.

  Shandy was working at her desk when I went in. She looked a little frazzled; her hair was up in one big messy ponytail with big straggles going down into her face. I sat down in the overstuffed chair opposite her, feeling somewhat superior; I looked like a sane, normal kid, and she looked like an addled hysteric. “I’ll be with you in just a minute,” she said, going back to her scribbling and shuffling of paper. “Tons of paperwork all of a sudden.”

  “Take your time,” I said, smiling.

  She looked up. She smiled and folded her hands on her desk. “Okay, you win,” she said.

  “No, I was serious.”

  “How are you today?”

  “Full of butter,” I said. “And protein shake.”

  “How’s your head feel?”

  “Mostly in one piece,” I said, touching the stitches. “Still kind of hurts. At least it hurts now—I couldn’t really feel it before.”

  “You ready to go home and stay with your mother for a while? Take it easy?” she asked.

  “Uh . . . I guess so?” I said.

  “You’re going to be discharged tomorrow,” said Shandy. “I’d suggest that you go with her. Your apartment on Belmont isn’t going to be where you live from now on.”

  “No?”

  “Your girlfriend—Lise Ballard was your girlfriend, right?”

  “Was? What, is she dead?”

  “No, no; she’s fine. She moved out of that place. She’s gone to meet her father in Indonesia, and then they’re going to Australia. She’s going to help him out with his documentaries.”

  “Oh . . . that’s cool, I guess,” I murmured.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno, how am I supposed to feel? I think it’s cool. She always did want to be closer to her dad. Shooting nature documentaries is on the cool side. And she’s away from that blasted, satanic copy shop. Never thought she’d leave that fucking place.”

  Shandy paused in boring a hole through her desk calendar with a pen. “Were you jealous of her job?”

  “No. I don’t know.” I shrugged again. “It’s moot now. Moot.”

  “That’s your call,” said Shandy. “Back to the matter at hand; do you want to see your mother?”

  “I said yeah, didn’t I? Do I have a choice?”

  “Do you want a choice?”

  “Choice is good,” I said. “I like to think I’m not a prisoner being transferred between cell blocks. ‘Shut down all the garbage compactors on Level AA23’—you know what that’s from?”

  She didn’t blink. “Star Wars. I’m a doctor, not an idiot. You’ll have to try a little harder than that if you’re trying to challenge me.”

  “Point,” I said, chuckling.

  Shandy slid the telephone on her desk towards me. “Call your mother,” she said calmly. “Tell her to come get you. Tomorrow, at two.”

  I stared at Shandy. “Uh . . .” I hadn’t spoken on the phone in months, and truth be told, I’d forgotten Mom’s number.

  “Go on,” said Shandy. “You can handle this. I’ve talked to Marion. She’s an all-right lady. And she promised me she wouldn’t hassle you. Here’s the number—she’s staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Northwest.”

  “But—I—”

  “It’s just a telep
hone call. There’s nobody on the other end except your mom. This extension goes right to her room. And if she’s not there, leave her a message. You can do it.”

  I picked up the receiver, and before I could hear a dial tone, punched in the number, scribbled on a pink Post-It in blue highlighter.

  She answered in a tired, distracted voice. “This is Marion Fortensky,” she said.

  My heart shattered as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. “Mom?”

  “Hi, sweetheart,” she said again, her voice suddenly warm and personable. It bubbled slightly with restrained laughter, and she sighed happily. “How ya doin’?”

  “Okay. Better,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “Mind a visitor?”

  “Not as long as you get me out of here,” I said.

  “No problem. I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. We’ll go grab a bite to eat, and then we’ll drive back home. Should be pretty—it’s pretty snowy, you know.”

  “It is?” I asked.

  “It is. It snowed last night. Still coming down a little bit. It’s nice.”

  I sat there and listened to the not-silence on the line. It sounded like distilled nothing, as though none of us was connected to anything. My face felt very hot, then wet. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “What for, baby? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Who’s paying for this hospital stay? It can’t be cheap.”

  “None of your business who’s paying. It’ll be paid for. I just want you to relax for a while—for as long as you need to. It’s all okay. Everything’s fine now.” Her voice drifted off into a lazy, quiet lilt, the soft tone of voice she used to use on me when I was hurt or sick and having problems getting to sleep. My mother never sang to me, only spoke in her half-whisper, usually reading something like Tim Leary’s Psychedelic Prayer. “Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care. I love you, honey.”

  “Okay, bye,” I said, and hung up.

  Shandy was smiling at me. “See, that was easy,” she said.

  “For you, maybe,” I said. I wiped my face. The salt stung the cut beneath my lip.

  “You’re just having feelings. You’re doing fine.”

  “I am heavily medicated,” I added.

  We laughed.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Kind of,” I admitted. “I wish I could talk to Lise, though. I want to apologize to her.”

  “There’ll be time for that. But right now, she has to do what she needs to do for herself. You have to go live your life every day, and not spend too much time thinking about the reasons why. I’m no psychoanalyst. If you’re interested in psychoanalysis, go for it, but I’m not your gal. I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I don’t think that knowing the reasons why we feel the way we do gives us any kind of upper hand on dealing with those emotions, those moods, when they come. We just have feelings. Every one of us does.” She sipped out of a chipped mug that had obviously been handmade by a child, glazed sloppily in bright green with a big shamrock painted on the side in darker green. “You can, however, take past experiences and put them to good use. You’re a creative person. That might work to your advantage. You can’t forget these experiences, but you don’t have to let them control you. You can control them.”