Giving Up the Ghost (22 page)

Besides the fact that it was geared toward containment, there were two terms that described everything in 5B: flameproof and stain-resistant. Since it was a psych ward, patients would do just about every imaginable thing (and then some unimaginable) with just about every imaginable bodily fluid and discharge. Therefore, there was a lot of mopping and wiping going on. This required furniture, drapes, floor coverings, and upholstery that were up to the task. Everything that wasn’t was contained in a Plexiglas box, and that included the television.

For many of the same reasons, the staff of 5B were understandably concerned with fire. Every surface was coated in some kind of flame-retardant goo that left it feeling like slick plastic. Even the curtains in the dayroom felt like they were made out of shredded garbage bags. Considering this, it was odd that they let us smoke. In fact, it was almost like they
encouraged
us to smoke. I think several patients who had never smoked before entering the hospital became chain-smokers
while there. Smoking seemed such a core component of patient care that if residents of 5B wanted to smoke six cigarettes at a time from breakfast until lights-out, the staff seemed happy to let them do it.

Smoking also highlighted the most unusual feature of ward 5B: the wall lighter. If you had a bunch of disjointed folks with questionable compulsions, you certainly weren’t going to let them carry around matches or lighters. But the staff had plenty of other things to do than light cigarettes all day. So they came up with what was, frankly, a genius solution: Install an electric coil, like a car lighter, in the wall. You’d walk up to this thing, about an inch around, and press a small button underneath. In five seconds or so, it would start to glow red. There was a small wire mesh cage surrounding it, so it would be impossible to wedge anything other than a cigarette in there. Well, one time I did see a dude stick a pencil in and try to light it on fire, but pencils were contraband to begin with, so, oddly, the staff seemed much more concerned with how he had gotten a pencil than with the fact that he had intended to light it (and perhaps the entire ward) on fire.

Many everyday items were strictly forbidden: For example, we couldn’t keep plastic or Styrofoam in our room (the staff feared we’d try to burn it in order to inhale the toxic fumes). Food came precut, and patients were only allowed to eat with spoons. If you wished to shower or shave (and, frankly, few 5B residents seemed particularly concerned about either), you had to have an orderly in the bathroom with you. The staff viewed just about anything not permanently attached to our bodies as potentially dangerous and a candidate for contraband status. This seemed so odd to me. Here was a collection of people who couldn’t cope with anything or function in the everyday world. Yet at any moment, the staff believed, we could turn
into MacGyver-like evil geniuses able to do immeasurable harm to ourselves and others when left alone with some dental floss, a can of Coke, or a transistor radio.

Thankfully we were allowed to use the toilet unsupervised. If they were so concerned with what I might do with a fork, it was astonishing that they would leave me and my creative 5B brethren alone to drown ourselves in a toilet tank or do God knows what with some fresh feces.

My 5B brothers and sisters were an assortment of life’s walking wounded: failed suicides, alcoholics and chronic substance abusers, crying depressives, head-trauma cases, people caught in the tail end of a massive meltdown, burnouts, and a few who seemed on the verge of being completely and forever checked out. This was before rehab, stigma-free therapy, and Prozac. At that time, they’d simply sedate you into submission and cross their fingers in the hope that you’d work your shit out with endless therapy sessions.

I was one of the youngest patients. There was another kid my age, a really thin boy named Harold. He seemed to be very upset and didn’t leave his room much for the first few days. The only time I’d seen him out of his room, he was yelling that he was the son of God and begging for everyone to look at his stigmata.

Besides Harold/Jesus (actually, he was one of two Jesuses on 5B), there were about two dozen other patients. I befriended a few, like Stan, who had purple skin when he first arrived (which turned yellow within a day or so). Also Richie, who seemed normal until he got nervous, and then he’d start to tic with increasing frequency until he stood rubbing his hands together and singing Bob Seger songs. I’d heard that before he came here, Richie was found living in a home with six dogs and no heat or electricity. For the first few days I was
there, whenever I tried to talk to him, he’d suddenly pretend to be asleep. I had better luck with my roommate, Silas. Silas was a large middle-aged black man who always seemed happy and was always complimenting the patients and staff, always had a kind word for someone who seemed upset. Silas seemed so normal that you could easily mistake him for one of the staff. In fact, for the entire time we were there together, I never garnered a single clue as to what Silas was doing in a mental ward.

The one thing all us folks had in common: This was where we had crash-landed. This was where our friends and relatives brought us when they couldn’t deal with us anymore. This was a place for the broken, those who had completely worn out their welcome, tested patience, and seen wit’s end. This is where we ended up when there were no other options. All the residents of 5B wore their pasts on their sleeves, as if they were caught up or frozen in some part of their own history. But once we were here, our pasts, which we held on to so closely, were done with us. As we stewed in 5B, our lives were moving on. We were put here, left behind, as part of cleaning up the mess we’d created.

I remember being escorted into Dr. Blumfield’s office. I was told he was my psychotherapist, not to be confused with Dr. Chang, my admitting psychiatrist; Kay, my social worker and substance abuse counselor; or Jo, who coordinated my “multidisciplinary treatment plan,” whatever the hell that meant.

“Hi, Eric,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Have we met?” I replied.

“Ah, yes,” Blumfield said, flipping through my chart. “We talked for an hour the day after you were admitted.”

I plopped down in the chair across from his desk.

“I may have been talking, but I wasn’t there.”

Blumfield smiled and nodded.

He had a rumpled, pasty, aristocratic look to him—a little weak, a little professorial, and a little like you’d expect him to be wearing an ascot and announce he was late for the opera. He had a thin beard and frameless glasses, kind of hip for a therapist, but not that hip. While we spoke he often ran his fingers over the seams of a beautiful silver cigarette case, which, I’d later learn, contained generic menthol cigarettes.

“Are you telling me that you don’t recall our conversation?”

“I’m telling you that you may have very well had a conversation, but I have no idea who you were talking to or what was said.”

“Hmmm,” Blumfield said, starting to take notes. “We seemed to have a pretty lucid conversation, Eric,” he said. “You revealed quite a bit in the assessment.”

“Assessment?” I replied. “If you were making judgments based off what you heard the other day, then you definitely need to throw those out.”

“How about we start fresh, then?” Blumfield pulled out a copy of my Progress Plan and placed it on the table.

“Jo says that you are refusing to sign this,” he said.

In truth, I’d wadded up the Progress Plan and told Jo to go fuck herself.

My problem with the Progress Plan was that it didn’t feel like progress at all. Reading it felt like admitting defeat. It wasn’t about getting any better; it was about doing what I was told. Not causing problems. Being manageable.

“What are stressors?” I asked.

“Well, your Little Girl is one,” Blumfield replied.

“I told you about Her?”

Not only had I discussed Little Girl, I’d also told him that I had just moved back from New York City, where I’d tried unsuccessfully to start a band. (Not true.) I’d said that I had a vial of little blue sleeping pills that I had been carrying around in my pocket for two months. (True.) I’d told him that I planned to slip some of the pills into a stranger’s drink before I killed myself. (Not true.)

After hearing all this, I reminded him that I was so fucked up when I arrived that I would have consented to blow a donkey.

Blumfield was unmoved by this. He told me that I had discussed and consented to the goals when I’d first arrived.

“Eric, I’m afraid you’ve constructed a world where there are no rules you want to play by, where there is no accountability,” he said. “Part of moving beyond that is to stick to your word. You agreed to these goals; now I need you to sign the form and let’s get started.”

“If I was so agreeable before,” I said, “why didn’t you just have me sign it then?”

“Well,” Blumfield stumbled. “You were … um … you nodded off before you could sign it.” He smiled softly. “Do you remember me discussing the basic deal here with you?”

“Just to remind you, I don’t even remember meeting you,” I replied.

“Basically, we have fourteen days,” he said. “We can keep you here that long based on the consent form you signed when you were admitted. We can usually eke out a few more days without much of a problem. You can’t walk off this ward without our permission. In fact, you can’t even leave your bed without our permission if that becomes necessary. If you have not seen improvement by the end of the fourteen days, we can
petition a judge to commit you to a longer-term care facility. Is that what you want?”

“Is that what you all think should happen?” I asked.

“Eric, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “What I want—what we all want here—is for you to get the help you need. I feel very confident that with your help, we can have you home in less than your fourteen days. But if you can’t manage that, then perhaps something more ongoing and stable is the best thing. I don’t think you need that, but in all candor, that’s up to you.”

“Like I said, your plan is shit. And if you think it’s a good plan, then I can’t do anything except assume the same of you.”

Blumfield pursed his lips and looked straight at me. “That language won’t get the reaction you’re seeking,” he said.

The next thing I knew, I was on top of Blumfield’s desk, kicking books and stacks of paper to the floor, screaming at him about seeking reactions. Blumfield said nothing to me, just picked up the phone to call the orderlies.

I was confined to my room that night, pacing, crying, and screaming.

“This is Jesus H. Christ,” I said, motioning toward the couch in front of us.

“You call him Jesus Christ?” Laura asked.

“No,” I replied. “That lady over there, we call
her
Jesus Christ.
This
is Jesus
H
. Christ. Before he became Jesus, his name was Harold, so we call him Jesus H. Christ. Having more than one Jesus makes it confusing.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jesus H. Christ, rolling his eyes toward me in a jovial mocking huff as he extended his hand to Laura. “I don’t call myself that, but you can call me whatever you like.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking his hand.

“But I am God incarnate,” he added. “And I will pray to my father for you, if you like.”

“That would be nice, thank you,” she said.

I guided her elbow away from the couch.

“Jesus H. Christ knocked up his girlfriend,” I whispered. “Then he kinda …,” I added, opening my hands next to my head.
“Poof.”

I motioned to the chair in the corner. “This is my roommate, Silas.”

Silas jumped up to greet Laura, shaking her hand firmly. “My, my,” he said, looking her up and down before turning to me. “You didn’t tell me she was so pretty.

“That’s a lovely blouse you have on today, sweetie,” he said to her, remarking on the black-and-white striped top that looked like an old-fashioned prisoner’s shirt.

“Why, thank you,” Laura said, smiling. “I figured it was appropriate for the occasion.”

On the few occasions that Laura and I had spent time around people she didn’t know, she was often quite shy. But that day she was gracious and warm to everyone she met.

Even though I had been on the ward for five days, she was my first visitor besides my mother. For the first forty-eight hours I wasn’t allowed to see anyone. Once that was over, I kept scanning the dayroom during visitor hours. My mother started visiting almost every day; my brother and father would not come. And friends? Besides Laura, I didn’t seem to have any left.

Eventually I had gotten it together enough to call her. I did so partly to let her know where I was and partly to almost brag about where I was. Whenever I’d get morose, sulky, or stuck
somewhere between crabby and suicidal, she was quick to say something disarming or indirectly tell me things weren’t that bad. Laura wasn’t exactly dismissive of my feelings, but I often left our conversations feeling like she didn’t quite get how harsh things felt for me—or at least that she wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. This frustrated and upset me. I spent so much time trying to hide the depths of my feelings and the cluster-fuckedness of my life from everyone, except her. The one person I was honest with was often telling me that I was being too dramatic, or overthinking things, or would I just please change the subject. It wasn’t like she didn’t believe me—it was more like she questioned why I let things bother me so much. In a small way, ending up in the mental ward was a strange kind of validation for me. Being in Timken Mercy proved that when I was insisting that things were terrible, and she kept insisting that they weren’t, they were, in fact, kind of terrible.

When I first called her from 5B, she thought I was joking. It wasn’t until she hung up and called me back via the hospital’s switchboard that she fully believed me. She was full of questions. How did this happen? Whose decision was it to keep me here? Was I in danger from the other crazy people? What were they making me do? Was I getting shock treatments?

Laura went from never wanting to discuss my feelings to wanting to discuss nothing but my feelings.