by Ned Vizzini
“Craig, I am Monica, a nurse on the floor here. I am going to ask you a couple of questions about what you’re feeling and find out how to help you.”
“Yeah, uh . . .” It’s time to state my case. “I came in because I was really freaked out, you know, and I checked in downstairs, but I wasn’t totally sure where I was going, and now that I’m here, I don’t know if I really—”
“Hold on, honey, let me show you something.” Nurse Monica stands over me, although she’s so short that we’re almost the same height, and pulls out a photocopy of the form my mom signed downstairs only an hour before.
“You see that there? That signature says that you have been voluntarily admitted to psychiatric care at Argenon Hospital, yes?”
“Yeah . . .”
“And see? It says that you will be discharged at the discretion of the doctor once he has come up with your discharge plan.”
“I’m not getting out of here until a doctor lets me out?!”
“Now, wait.” She sits. “If you feel that this is not the place for you, after five days you can write a letter—we call it the Five-Day Letter—explaining why you feel that you do not belong here, and we will review that and allow you to leave if you qualify.” She smiles.
“So I’m here for at least five days?”
“Sometimes people are just here for two. Definitely not more than thirty.”
Ho-boy. Well, not much to say about it. That is my mom’s signature. I sit back in my chair. This morning I was a pretty functional teenager. Now I’m a mental patient. But you know, I wasn’t that functional. Is this better? No, this is worse. This is a lot—
“Let’s talk about how you came to be here,” Monica prompts.
I give her the rap.
“When was the last time you were hospitalized?”
“Like, four years ago. I was in a sledding accident.”
“So you’ve never been hospitalized for mental difficulties before.”
“Uh, nope.”
“Good. Now I want you to look at this chart. Do you see here?”
There’s a little scale of 0-10 on a sheet in front of her.
“This is the chart of physical pain. I want you to tell me, right now, from a scale of zero to ten, are you experiencing any physical pain?”
I look closer at the sheet. Below the zero it says no pain and below the ten it says unbearable excruciating pain. I have to bite my tongue.
“Zero,” I manage.
“All right, now, here’s a very important question"—she leans in—"did you actually try to do anything to hurt yourself before you came here?”
I sense that this is an important question. It might be the kind of question that determines whether I get a normal room with a TV or a special room with straps.
“No,” I enunciate.
“You didn’t take anything? You didn’t try for the good sleep?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The good sleep, you know? That’s what they call it. When you take many pills and drink alcohol and . ..”
“Ah, no,” I say.
“Well, that’s good,” she says. “We don’t want to lose you. Think of your talents. Think of all the tools you have. From your hands to your feet.”
I do think about them. I think about my hands signing forms and my feet running, flexing up and down, as I sprint to some class I’m late for. I am good at certain things.
“So right now we are getting ready for lunch,” Monica says. “Are you a Christian?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Are you vegetarian?”
“No.”
“So no specific diet restrictions, good. I need you to read these rules.” She drops four sheets of paper in front of me. “They’re about conduct on the floor.” My eye falls on 6) Patients are expected to remain clean-shaven. Shaving will be supervised by an attendant every day after breakfast.
“I am not sure if you notice, but do you see what that first item is on the list?”
“Uh … ‘No cell phones on the floor’?”
“That’s right. Do you have one?”
I feel it in my pocket. I don’t want to lose it. It’s one of the only things that’s making me me right now. Without my cell phone, who will I be? I won’t have any friends because I don’t have their numbers memorized. I’ll barely have a family since I don’t know their cell phone numbers, just their home line. I’ll be like an animal.
“Please give it here,” Monica says. “We will keep it in your locker until your discharge, or you can have visitors take care of it.”
I put it on the table.
“Please turn it off.”
I flip it open—two new voice mails, who are they?—and hold END. Bye-bye, little phone.
“Now, this is very important; do you have anything sharp on your person?”
“My keys?”
“Same as the phone. We keep those.”
I plop them in a heap on the table; Monica sweeps them into a tray like an airport security worker.
“Wonderful—do you have anything else you can think of?”
Monica, I’m down to my wallet and the clothes on my back. I shake my head.
“Great, now hold on.” She gets up. “We’re going to have Bobby give you a tour.” Monica nods at me, keeps my charts, leaves me to review the papers, and goes into the hall. She returns a minute later with a gaunt, hollow man with big circles under his eyes and a nose that looks like it’s been broken in about three places. In contrast to floor policy, scruff lines his chin. He’s older but still has all his hair, a stately gray mop, combed half-heartedly. And he carries himself a little weird, leaning back as if he were on a headrest.
“Jesus, you’re a kid!” he says, curling his mouth. He reaches out a hand for me and his hand comes out sort of sideways, thumb crooked up.
“I’m Bobby,” he says.
His sweatshirt has Marvin the Martian on it and says WORLD DOMINATOR.
“Craig.” I stand up.
He nods, and his Adam’s apple, which has some extra gray whiskers on it, bobs. “You ready for the grand tour?”
twenty
Bobby leads me into the bright hall with his odd gait.
“Everybody’s in the dining room right now.” He gestures as we go down the sideways hall, the one that branches off of the one I entered. I look left— there’s the dining room, painted blue, overlooked by a television, full of circular tables, separated from the hall by that glass with the square wire mesh in it. Inside, the tables have been pushed aside, and a panoply of people sit in a loose circle.
I can’t even process them: they’re the motliest collection of people I’ve ever seen. An old man with a crazy beard (what happened to the shaving?) rocks back and forth; a gigantic black woman rests her chin on a cane; a burned-out-looking guy with long blond hair puts his hand through it; a stocky bald man with slitted eyes scratches his armpit and frowns; an older woman with glasses mimes what appears to be an eagle, talking, before turning and inspecting the back of her chair. The small man I saw in the hall twitches his leg. A girl with a streak of blue in her dark hair slumps over her chair like she’s obviously more messed up than the others; a big girl with a wan frown leans back and twiddles her thumbs; a black kid with wire-rim glasses sits perfectly still, and hey—there’s Jimmy from downstairs. He’s still got his stained shirt on, and he’s looking up at the lights. They must have processed him quick because he’s a return visitor.
You can tell who the meeting leader is: a thin woman with short dark hair. Out of a dozen or so people, she’s the only one in a suit. Some people aren’t even in their clothes, but in dark blue robes, loose and V-necked at the top.
“Hey, man,” Bobby says, pulling me down the hall. “If you’re really interested you can just sit in on the meeting.”
“No, I—”
“I’m doing the tour so I can get out.”
“Heh.”
“Now, smokes are at—wait, you don’t smoke, do you?”<
br />
“Uh … I smoke some things—”
“Cigarettes, I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Did they ask if you did?”
“No.”
“That’s probably because you’re underage. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Jesus! Okay, well, smokes are after breakfast, after lunch, at three in the afternoon, after dinner, and before lights out. Five times a day.”
“All right.”
“Most people smoke. And if you had told them you smoked, they might have given you cigarettes.”
“Darn.” I chuckle.
“It’s one of the only hospitals left that lets you smoke.” Bobby points behind us. “The smoking lounge is in the other hall.”
We come across a third hall, perpendicular to the one we’re in. I see that Six North is shaped like an H: where you enter is at the bottom of the left leg; the nurses’office is at the junction of the left leg and the center line; the dining room is at the junction of the center line and the right leg; and the rooms line the left and right legs. We’re passing them now, going toward the top right of the H: they’re simple doors with slots outside filled with slips of paper that say who’s living in them and who their doctor is. The patients are listed by their first names; the doctors by their last. I see Betty/Dr. Mahmoud, Peter/Dr. Mullens, Muqtada/Dr. Mahmoud.
“Where’s my room?”
“They probably don’t have it set up yet; they’ll have it after lunch for sure. Okay, so here’s the shower—” He points to the right, to a door with a pink sliding plastic block on it between the words VACANT and OCCUPIED.
“When you’re inside, you’re supposed to put it to OCCUPIED, but people still don’t pay any attention, and there’s no lock on the door, so I like to keep real close to the door. It’s tough, ‘cause the water doesn’t reach.”
“How do I make it say ‘Occupied’? From inside?”
“No, here.” Bobby slides the block. It covers up VACANT and only OCCUPIED appears.
“That’s pretty cool.” I push it back. It’s a simple system, but I wouldn’t know if Bobby hadn’t showed me.
“Is there a guys’bathroom and a girls’bathroom?”
“It’s not a bathroom, it’s a shower. You have your own bathroom in your room. But it’s unisex, yeah. There’s a shower in the other hall too"—we keep walking—"but I wouldn’t use it. It bothers Solomon.”
“Who’s Solomon?”
We come to the end of the hall. The windows have two panes of glass with blinds, somehow, between them. Outside it’s a cloud-spattered May Brooklyn day. Chairs line the dead end. As we approach, a wilted little girl with blond hair and cuts on her face looks up from a pad of something and scurries into a nearby room.
“They show movies here sometimes.” Bobby shrugs. “Sometimes at the other end by the smoking lounge.”
“Uh-huh. Who was that?”
“Noelle. They moved her in from teen.” We turn around. “Medications are given out after breakfast, after lunch, and before bed. We take them over there.” Bobby points to a desk across from the dining room, where Smitty sits, pouring soda. “That’s the nurses’station; the other place is the nurses’office. All your lockers and stuff are behind the nurses’station.”
“They took my cell phone.”
“Yeah, they do that.”
“What about e-mail?”
“What?” We’re back by the dining room. I slow my pace. Inside, the stocky bald man with squinty eyes who was frowning is speaking slowly and plaintively:
“. . . Some people here who treat you like they have no respect for you as a human being, which I take personal offense to, and just because I went to my doctor and told him, ‘I’m not afraid of dying; I’m only afraid of living, and I want to put a bayonet through my stomach,’that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of any of you.”
“Let’s concentrate on our discussion of things that make us happy, Humble,” says the psychologist.
“And I know about psychologists, when they’re writing down what you’re saying they’re really writing down how much money they’re going to get when they sell their latest yacht, because they’re all yuppies with no respect. …”
“C’mon,” Bobby taps me.
“Is his name Humble?”
“Yeah. He’s from Bensonhurst.” Bensonhurst is a particularly retro section of Brooklyn, an Italian and Jewish neighborhood where a girl can walk down the street and have a car full of guys cruise up to her: Hey baby, you wanna ride?
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Sheepshead Bay.” That’s another old-time Brooklyn ‘hood. Russian. All these parts are far out.
“I’m from here,” I say.
“What, this neighborhood? This neighborhood is nice.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Man, I’d give my one remaining ball to live here, I tell you that. I’m trying to get into a home around here, at the Y. Anyway—there’s the phone.” He points to our left. There’s a pay phone with a yellow receiver. “It’s on until ten at night,” he says. “The number to call back is written right on it, and it’s on your sheet too, if you need people to call back. If someone calls for you, don’t worry, some-one’ll find you.”
Bobby stops a second.
“That’s it.”
It’s really very simple.
“What do we do in here?” I ask.
“They have activities; a guy comes and plays guitar. Joanie comes in with arts and crafts. Other than that, you know, just take phone calls; try and get out, really.”
“How long do people stay?”
“Kid like you, got money, got a family, you’ll be out in a few days.”
I look at Bobby’s deep-sunk eyes. I get the feeling—I don’t know how I know the rules of mental-ward etiquette; maybe I was born with them; maybe I knew I’d end up here—but I get the feeling that one big no-no in this place is asking people how they got here. It’d be a little like walking up to somebody in prison and going “So? So? What’s up, huh? Didja kill somebody? Didja?”
But I also get the impression that you can volunteer the reasons you got here at any time and no one will judge; no one will think you’re too crazy or not crazy enough, and that’s how you make friends. After all, what else is there to talk about? So I tell Bobby: “I’m here because I suffer from serious depression.”
“Me too.” He nods. “Since I was fifteen.” And his eyes shine with blackness and horror. We shake hands.
“Hey, Craig!” Smitty says from his desk. “We got your room ready; you want to meet your roommate?”
twenty-one
My roommate is Muqtada.
He looks about like what you’d expect for a guy named Muqtada: big; straight gray beard; wide, wrinkled dark face; glasses with white plastic rims. He doesn’t have any clothes, apparently, because he’s in a dark blue robe, which smells intensely of body odor. Not that it’s easy to notice any of this stuff at first, because when I go into the room, he’s burrowed into bed.
Smitty flicks on the light. “Muqtada! It’s almost lunch! Wake up. You have a new roommate!”
“Mm?” He peers out from his sheets. “Who is?”
“I’m Craig,” I say, hands in my pockets.
“Mm. Is very cold here, Craig. You not like it.”
“Muqtada, weren’t the men in here to fix the heat?”
“Yes, they fix yesterday, very cold. Fix today, tonight very cold.”
“It’s spring, buddy; it doesn’t get cold.”
“Mm.”
“Craig, that’s you over there.”
The bed in the far corner is made up for me, if you can call it that. It’s the sparsest bed I’ve ever seen: small and pale yellow with a sheet, a topsheet, and one pillow. No blanket, no stuffed animals, no drawers below, no patterns, no candles, no headboard. This reflects the style of the room, which basically has a window (encased blinds again), a radiator under
paneling, two beds, a table between the two beds with two funny-shaped hospital pitchers of water on top, lights, closet, and a bathroom. There aren’t any patterns on the wall; only the ceiling has porous tiles that could be fun to look at. I check the closet. Muqtada has a tired pair of pants on the bottom shelf. The rest of the space is mine. I take off my hoodie and stuff it in there.
“Okay?” Smitty asks. “Lunch in five minutes.” He leaves the door open.
I sit down on my bed.
“Please close door, please,” Muqtada says. I close it, come back. He looks right through me. “Thank you.”
“What do we have for lunch?” I ask.
“Hm.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that. I asked him a what question. “Ah … Is the food good?”
“Mm.”
“Ah . .. Where are you from?”
“Egypt,” he says in a clipped voice, and it’s the first word I’ve heard him say that he sounds happy with. “Where are you from? Your family?”
“White. German and Irish and Czech. A little Jewish, we think. But I’m Christian, I guess.”
That reminds me: in this sparse room, is it possible that the Gideons have placed a Bible? They put one in every motel in the world; they should have gotten to this place. I check the drawers, under the pitchers of water: nope. Out of range of the Gideons. This is serious.
“Mm,” Muqtada says. “What you look for? There is nothing.” He keeps staring.
I want to lie down, to get the sleep I couldn’t get last night, but something about the way my roommate is lying there makes me want to leave, to walk around. Maybe it’ll be good to be with someone like him, someone who seems worse off than me. I never really considered it, but there are people worse off than me, right? I mean, there really are people who are homeless and can’t get out of bed and are never going to be able to hold a job and, in Muqtada’s case, have serious problems with temperature, all because their brains are broken. Compared to them I’m . . . well, I’m a spoiled rich kid. Which is another something to feel bad about. So, who’s worse off?
