A woman next door whimpers. I can’t see her, but I’ve imagined she’s a young brunette who’s also not sure how she got here. She cries out to the guard, “Please, please remove the wrist guards. I’m in pain.” I hear her panic. I’m not the only one who’s been placed at the back of the emergency room, in these isolated rooms for the mentally ill. Earlier I could have been convinced I was in the glassed-in room to protect my newborn baby from airborne illnesses, but upon hearing this other woman in distress, it becomes clear to me this is not the ER of Thursday-night television. There are no heart attacks or flus or broken arms back here. Only the misfits who’ve been locked up because there’s nowhere else for them to go.
“Please! Please my arms hurt me so much, I promise I won’t do anything. Untie me?” That could be my future. This is a warning, Amanda, I tell myself. Don’t move too suddenly. They’re watching through their cameras. This is a test of will. I surrender to stillness, hoping it will earn me the right to pump later when the engorgement becomes unbearable. Do not yell or they’ll tie you down, too.
I want to sleep. It’s difficult with the watchdog and the crying woman and the bright lights. I close my eyes and pray that time passes quickly. Then I remember I can’t allow myself to let time pass too quickly without emptying my breasts of this milk. If I don’t pump in an hour, I’ll risk my milk supply. I can’t sleep in more than twenty-minute spurts, rolling over occasionally to the sounds of the security guard making idle chatter with the nursing staff and the hum of the overhead florescent lights. I haven’t been away from my daughter since she was born and I am suffocating with grief. How can she be that far away from me? I need to know she’s okay.
Sent: June 27, 2014, 1:38 a.m.
To: Gordon
From: Amanda
Subject: Are you home?
I have no signal here.
Sent: June 27, 2014, 1:59 a.m.
To: Amanda
From: Gordon
Subject: We are home safe
Alice said you might not have cell signal but Wi-Fi is okay, so I’m resending this as email.
I love you so much and everything is going to be okay.
Gordon.
Sent: June 27, 2014, 8:05 a.m.
To: Gordon
From: Amanda
Subject: It’s not fun here but I’m fine
Don’t come over until you have to. I’m pumping and okay but ER is not a nice place for Fiona. I love you.
There is no memento to keep from the day I’m admitted to a Toronto psychiatric ward. What do you add to the baby book about the time her mother was locked up?
After hours of tossing and turning in my room and no visits from a doctor or nurse, I sit up and attempt to use the breast pump for the first time. I place a funnel over my breast, and the hard plastic pinches my skin. I can’t decide if squeezing my hand quickly or slowly makes it less uncomfortable. A few drops of milk fall into the attached bottle while most of it runs down my chest. I must not have the suction secured properly. I can’t even latch a manual breast pump; how pathetic. I give up, place the pump on a small side table, and sit in silence. I hear a nurse walk by and tell the guard the new shift is arriving soon and he can be on his way.
“A porter will be coming to get her soon,” she says in a hushed voice. I hope she’s not talking about me, but I know she’s talking about me.
Without introduction, a man knocks on my glass door and tells me we are going upstairs. “Okay. Now? What about my family? Will they know where I’m headed?” I’m teary as I ask the question. “Not sure,” he replies ambivalently. I’m taken upstairs to the ninth floor in a wheelchair, because once your right to freedom is taken away, your right to walk evidently goes with it. Maybe they put me in a wheelchair so I can’t run. Be still.
The ninth floor is where I assume the other mothers who have been locked up are waiting for me. I try to get my bearings: Where do the babies sleep at night? What kind of mothers will I meet, and will they understand me? This place is for mothers who have what I have, so someone will know how to explain what comes next.
As I wheel down the ninth floor hallway, it’s clear no survivor benefits have been donated to this wing in memory of loved ones lost. The walls are yellowed, sore, and aged. The cameras that surround the entrance rival those at a maximum security prison. One might argue that a hospital shouldn’t be a prison because others bring their people here to heal. I wonder if the cameras are for all the babies? To observe and record everyone who’s coming and going? We go through a set of thick steel doors with only a sliver of a security window six or seven feet up, and it strikes me that this is an intense place for mothers. And where are the other mothers?
As a porter wheels me toward the main door to the ward, Gordon arrives hurriedly with my sister and baby in tow.
They have many questions. “What happened to staying downstairs? Do you know where you’re going now? Which doctor have you been assigned to?” I can’t give them any answers. I don’t know. The porter rings a bell and nods his trained nod at the camera, and we’re told to wait at the front desk while the staff team clears a room for me. It will be a while. We’re told that another patient has to be moved out of my room, because if the baby is going to stay with me here, I can’t be in the room with the woman currently occupying it. Maybe she lost her child. Did she experience death, and my daughter’s presence is too painful? I understand her pain and I want to tell her that I’m sorry.
There’s a commotion down the hall as they shuffle her from room to room. “Well, she shouldn’t have had a fucking baby if she was crazy!” the woman screams. Aren’t we all mothers? The uprooted woman screams, making sure to let everyone know I’ve disturbed her.
We’re ushered into the room. A nurse follows and closes the door tightly behind her. Registration details but no explanation about where the other babies are. My room is having a bit of an identity crisis between a high school lobby and a government office building from the ’80s. There are two faded turquoise metal lockers for personal belongings, a small bathroom with an even smaller shower, two beds, and a white board on wheels intended as a separation between the beds. The walls are painted a mauve colour. Or is it lavender? Lavender is supposed to be calming. It feels inauthentic. I notice that the door locks from the outside only.
I select the bed beside the window and curl up with my knees to my chest, hugging my arms around my calves. A twinge of pain shoots through my abdomen. I’m still recovering from childbirth. A clock hangs too high on the wall, just grazing the ceiling. It reminds me of the ones in my elementary school classrooms. Those clocks with large black numbers and fire-truck-red hands that always felt like they were turning too quickly, reminding everyone of how slowly time moves. I remember how the ticking of the second hand always got louder as you sat through silent reading or a French test. I can hear the loud ticking in this room now.
“Where are all the other mothers? Where’s the group for postpartum depression?” I ask the nurse responsible for getting me settled on the floor.
“We don’t have a special area just for mothers here. It’s a regular psychiatric ward.” the nurse explains. Then she lowers her voice to say, “Do you understand that this is a psychiatric ward like any other? And if you’re wise, you won’t walk the halls with the baby, where other patients might see her. I don’t think this is a safe place for her.” Did I hear that correctly? Did the nurse say my girl isn’t safe here? Doesn’t she realize how obsessed I am about safety risks to the baby? I look to Gordon to confirm whether I made it up.
He holds Fiona closer and says, “You’re telling me this isn’t a floor for postpartum women only? Every other fucking crazy person is staying here?” He’s furious, and I’m embarrassed by his outburst. I start to panic once again as the nurse tells us about the ward.
“Group therapy, art, and TV room, and a fridge is in the common area.” I squirm in my hospital bed listening to the heavy details of my sentence. I’m not interested in the s
ervices available to me in my new home. “If you want to store breastmilk, you’re going to have to bring it up to the nurses’ station and ask them to label the bottles. You need to stay on top of this, because it is not our responsibility.” The nurse is giving instructions to Gordon and my sister, signalling that my responsibility is only to lie here.
I hear an agitated man yelling in the hall.
“Give me my damn phone back now!” Gordon slowly slips my phone into his hoodie pocket. Everyone we’ve encountered here is pissed off. I am not safe. The men and women are together. Will they come into my room at night? I search the room for protection, but there is none. If the evil men come for me, I’ll have to surrender.
A few hours later, a team of doctors with clipboards appears at my door. Gordon says “come on in” though they were already on their way, making it very clear they weren’t asking for permission. My husband’s face is twisted and worn and I know he’s running on fumes. He has so little energy left for any coping mechanisms. Look what I’ve done to him. The doctors want to talk with us in a different room. My tank top was soaked from the overnight leaking breastmilk and I threw it aside when we first got into this room; when the team suggests we relocate, I’m topless, wearing only shorts and a one-sided nursing cover. An older male doctor stumbles through an offer to wait while I finish feeding the baby. But Gordon is anxious for an escape from the isolation and he wants to talk to the doctors now. We rush down the hall to the conference room — without walking back through the locked steel doors. I remain a prisoner.
This meeting is an orientation, not an assessment. These experts are here to tell me that it’s the Friday of the Canada Day long weekend, and that it’s probably better for everyone if I stay until Tuesday. Maybe longer. Maybe weeks. Gordon and the baby can stay with me in the daytime, but they should go home at night. The point of my stay is to sleep and detach.
A voice that has been repeating quietly in my head for hours: I am already detached. I don’t deserve this baby. I made a mistake thinking I did.
I cry, with the baby under the nursing cover drinking from my chest, while they deliver the news.
“We believe you have severe postpartum depression and that you need to sleep.” They explain that my lack of sleep is causing me harm.
I’ve had enough.
“I reject that sleep is the treatment plan. I could be sleeping anywhere — how do I sleep in this jail-like place? Under the lights and sounds of a psychiatric ward in the middle of the city?”
No one answers me.
I’m staring out at the piano in the hallway. A piano seems like a cruel thing to have in a psych ward where people are given sleep as a treatment plan. Maybe this is all a test of will? A social worker tries as delicately as she can to share the bad news: “By law, I need to make a phone call to the Children’s Aid Society. We can decide when we make that phone call, but it has to be done soon.”
The tears can’t come hard or loud enough.
“Will I ever get better?” I look past the doctors to the kind-looking social worker for some kind of sign this stay is temporary.
She’s much more confident than anyone else who’s spoken to me. “Yes, Amanda, yes. You will get better. I have worked with families who have experienced this before and they are fine now. In fact, if you want to connect with them in a couple of weeks, I’d be happy to facilitate that.”
My shoulders turn inward as I sob. I do not feel safe. A couple of weeks? I could be dead in a couple weeks. What’s the point of telling me about someone out of prison when I’m here in prison where there’s no one like me and I’m not safe to walk the halls with the baby because of what someone else might do? At least I have a window to look out of, even if it does look out on the world I’m not allowed to be a part of anymore.
Later a dinner tray of lacklustre warm “meat” with bland rice and a fruit cup arrives at my door, and it’s time for me to atone for my parenting sins. If I hadn’t said I didn’t think the baby was safe we never would have ended up here. I need to apologize to my husband for what I’ve done.
“I’m so sorry. I am so sorry I did this to our family. I am so, so, so sorry.” He grabs me and we both cry into each other’s arms, while new aunt Alice rocks the baby and watches the sun set on our new life on the ninth floor.
“I can’t believe I’m locked in a psych ward.” I say through tears. “I am scared.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Alice offers with trepidation. Gordon and I respond almost simultaneously, “No, you should go home. You need to sleep, too.” I want to protect my girls. My sister nods her head and stares down at the baby in her arms. I wonder if I’m traumatizing both of them.
Later on, before Gordon and my sister set out to head home with the baby for the night, leaving me alone in my prison with no way to protect myself, the nursing staff ask to come by and “sweep the room.” They need to take all phone cables and strings out before I’m left alone. They spot a hoodie Gordon brought for me, and pull the white cord out of it. Don’t they know how impossible it is to get a cord back into a hoodie once it’s pulled out? Fixing cords in a hoodie is also a luxury for the sane.
I feel a strong unease as I watch Gordon and Alice pack up. There is only one four-ounce bottle of breastmilk going home with Fiona tonight, and no one is sure it will be enough. Alice tries to reassure me that if they run out of breastmilk they will switch to formula, but I hear Gordon insist they’ll make it work with what they have. I’ll be alone here overnight, responsible for sleeping and extracting as much milk from my body as possible. I remember that Rose told me breastmilk is safe at room temperature for at least four hours, so if I can consistently pump I should be able to transfer some milk bottles to the nursing station overnight. I don’t want to forget to pump, plus I’m terrified that another patient will come into my room at night, so I ask that Gordon ensures my bed checks are every fifteen minutes instead of hourly. It feels safer not to be left alone for too long. Once they’re gone, the brain fog returns. My treatment plan is sleep but I cannot sleep here. Offers from the night nurses of sleeping pills are deeply suspicious. If I take the meds, they’ll control what little dignity I have left. I have no agency. An overnight nurse arrives with a new set of orientation questions. Evening room checks in the psych ward don’t appear to prioritize sleep.
When she leaves, I curl over onto my side and listen to the dull sounds of nighttime conversation between two people in the next room. Room buddies. The nurse returns fifteen minutes later and shines a flashlight over my shoulder and into my eyes. She needs to “make sure I’m still breathing.” Her hasty entrance startles me and kicks adrenalin through my veins. It takes two more room checks for my heart rate to settle. I look outside at the bright downtown lights and wonder if I’ll breathe the summer air again soon, or if, when I finally get out, winter will be here.
Part II
Sleep, Please
June 28, 2014
A NURSE WAKES ME UP in the morning. I must have fallen asleep. It’s 6:30 a.m. Now that I’ve had a few hours of disrupted sleep, the last thing I want to do is wake up. How does being awake serve me? I’m locked in a hospital room waiting for my husband and baby to arrive and keep me company.
I’m overcome with sadness when I imagine how Gordon and my sister are navigating the morning. By this time, they have likely already been awake for hours. He now has to pack the little one up in her car seat again and come over, this time racing around our home looking for items of comfort and a change of clothes for me. I’ve asked for too much.
After the morning bed check, a frazzled Gordon arrives with coffee. My sister comes in behind him, looking like she’s been through war.
A nurse drops off a schedule of the day’s activities, and I look to Gordon and yell, loud enough for everyone outside of my room to hear, “I’m not interested any of these programs! I’ll do what I’m forced to and opt out of anything more. I am not leaving this room!” If I go, I’ll be admitting I’m a perm
anent resident here. I do not want to be an active participant in this hellish place. I’m tired. I look up to Gordon with a quivering lip and say, “I didn’t ask to be here. This wasn’t what I thought would happen when we came to the hospital.” He nods in agreement, encouraging my resistance.
I do kind of want to talk with others, especially other parents, but maybe the programs here aren’t intended for mothers who think about hurting their children. Art therapy sounds like a reward not a treatment. I don’t deserve gifts. What will others think of me if they find out why I’m here? Given how adamant everyone in my family is that I don’t belong here, it seems wrong to do anything but shuffle around in my hospital room. After being told I can’t opt out of the one-on-one sessions with medical staff, I head off to a session with a friendly hospital psychologist wearing a sleeveless rainbow dress. Her outfit reminds me that it’s Pride weekend in Toronto. My weekend schedule doesn’t include barbeques and street parties, but it does include a lot of new people, from all over the city, coming together in one common space.
This new psychologist explains to me that at this hospital, they do a mix of cognitive behavioural therapy (returning to the work of “what is the likelihood of that bad thing happening to you?”), exposure therapy (“what do you fear and can you confront it?”), and group programs, though she cautions me about how I might speak about my intrusive thoughts, as they would most certainly be triggering to others. She invites me to imagine myself back at home, alone with my baby. She hears me when I say that planning helps me feel safe. Together we work through every one of my nightmare scenarios, the darkest thoughts I have, and then my concrete response plan should any of those nightmares become reality. Talking helps. I feel some momentary relief, but then I tell her I worry I’ve taken too much time away from other patients, and my breasts feel sore from their long absence from the baby. She surprises me with her response.
Day Nine Page 12