by Ned Vizzini
“No.”
“That’s good. Terrible habit. And it happens so much to people your age.”
“A lot of my friends smoke. I just, you know . . . never liked it.”
“I see you are adjusting quite well to the floor.”
“Yeah.”
“Good, good, that is so important. Tomorrow we’re going to talk more about your adjustment and your situation and how you’re feeling.”
“Okay.”
“You gotta watch out for this one,” Humble said. “He’s crafty.”
“Oh yeah?” Monica asked.
I was looking for the blond girl, Noelle—I had to remember to meet her—but she wasn’t around. Neither was Solomon. Next to Humble was the woman he identified as the Professor, watching us with her bugged-out eyes. Unprompted, Humble started talking with me and Monica about this old girlfriend of his, who had, in his words, “pig-tail nipples, like curly fries, I kid you not.” Monica laughed and laughed. The Professor said Humble was disgusting. Monica said it was okay to laugh once in a while, and did she have a story to share?
“Yeah, we all know you had some indiscretions in your youth, Professor,” Humble prodded.
The Professor got a dreamy look in her eyes. I almost thought she was going to have a seizure. And she said, in a light little voice, with a nasal twinge: “I had a lot of guys, but I only had one man.”
I was wondering where I’d heard that before, when Armelio interrupted.
“C’mon buddy! Phone is for you!”
“Right.” I get up.
“You’re lucky, buddy. It’s after ten. They usually shut the phone off at ten.”
Shut the phone off. I picture a big lever in my mind, a man heaving it down.
“What happens if someone calls and the phone’s off?”
“It just rings and rings,” Humble yells out, “and people know they’re not in Kansas anymore.”
I walk down the hall. The pay-phone receiver is hanging and swaying. I pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, is this the loony bin?” It’s Aaron. It’s Aaron, high.
“How’d you get this number?” I ask. The man with the beard, who I saw rocking in the dining room when I first came in, is pacing the central hall, staring at me.
“My girl gave it to me, what do you think? What’s it like in there, dude?” Aaron asks.
“How do you know where I am?”
“I looked it up, man! You think I’m an idiot? I go to the same school as you! I did a reverse number search and found exactly where you are: Argenon Hospital, Adult Psychiatric! Dude, how’d you get in adult? Do they serve beer up there?”
“Aaron, c’mon.”
“I’m serious. How about girls? Are there any hot girls around—ow!”
I hear laughing in the background, above rap. “Gimme the phone!” Ronny’s high-pitched bleat comes through the line. “Lemme talk!”
Ronny comes into focus: “Dude, can you get me any Vicodin?”
Howls. Howls of laughter. And in the background, Nia protesting: “Guys, don’t bother him.”
“Gimme—Craig, no, seriously.” Aaron is back on. “I’m really sorry dude. I . . . just, how are you, man?”
“I’m . . . okay.” I’m starting to sweat.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t have a good night, and I checked myself into the hospital.”
“What’s that mean, ‘didn’t have a good night’?”
The man in my stomach is back, tugging at me. I want to vomit through the phone.
“I’m depressed, okay, Aaron?”
“Yeah, I know, about what?”
“No, man, I’m depressed in general. I have like, clinical depression.”
“No way! You’re like the happiest guy I know!”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s a joke, Craig. You’re like the craziest person I know. Remember on the bridge? But, you know, the problem is you don’t chill enough. Like even when you’re here, you’re always worried about school or something; you never just kick back and let things slide, you know what I mean? We’re having a party tonight—where are you gonna be?”
“Aaron, who’s in the room?”
“Nia, Ronny, Scruggs, uh .. . my friend Delilah.” I don’t even know Delilah.
“So all these people know where I am now.”
“Dude, we think it’s awesome where you are! We want to visit!”
“I can’t believe you.”
“What?”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Don’t be a girl. You know if I was in the mental ward, you’d call me up and rag on me a little. It’s because we’re friends, man!”
“It’s not a mental ward.”
“What?”
“It’s a psychiatric hospital. It’s for short-stay patients. A mental ward is longer.”
“Well, clearly you’ve been there long enough to be an expert. How long are you staying?”
“Until I have a baseline established.”
“What does that mean? Wait, I still don’t get it: what was wrong with you in the first place?”
“I told you, I’m depressed. I take pills for it like your girlfriend.”
“Like my girlfriend?”
“Craig, shut up!” Nia yells in the background.
“My girlfriend doesn’t take any pills,” Aaron says.
Ronny yells, “The only thing she takes is—” The rest is cut off by laughter and I hear him getting hit with something.
“Maybe you should talk to her a little more and figure out what she’s actually like,” I say. “You might learn something.”
“You’re telling me how to treat Nia now?” Aaron asks. I hear him lick his lips. “What, like I don’t know what this is really about?”
“What, Aaron. What is it really about?”
“You want my girl, dude. You’ve wanted her for like two years. You’re mad that you didn’t get her, and now you’ve decided to turn being mad into being depressed, and now you’re off somewhere, probably getting turned into somebody’s bitch, trying to play the pity card to get her to end up with you … And I call you as a friend to try and lighten your mood and you hit me with all of this crap? Who do you think you are?”
“Yo, Aaron.”
“What.”
I’m going to do a trick Ronny showed me. He used to do it a long time ago, and I think Aaron’s forgotten it.
“Yo.”
“What?”
“Yo.”
“What?!”
“Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo—”
I pause. Hold it, hold it. . .
“Fuck you.“
And I slam the phone down.
It hits my finger and I go howling into my room, next to Muqtada.
“What happened?” he asks.
“I don’t have any friends,” I say, jumping and holding my finger.
“This is tough thing to learn.”
I look out the window, through the blinds, into the night. Now I’m really screwed. I run my finger under cold water in our bathroom. I didn’t think I could get more screwed than last night, but here I am. I’m in a hospital. I’ve sunk to the lowest place I can be. I’m in a place where I’m not allowed to shave by myself—even if I needed to shave biologically—because they’re worried that I’ll use the razors on myself. And everyone knows. I’m in a place where people have no teeth and eat liquid food. And everyone knows. I’m in a place where the guy I eat with lives in his car. And everyone knows.
I can’t function here anymore. I mean in life: I can’t function in this life. I’m no better off than when I was in bed last night, with one difference: when I was in my own bed—or my mom’s—I could do something about it; now that I’m here I can’t do anything. I can’t ride my bike to the Brooklyn Bridge; I can’t take a whole bunch of pills and go for the good sleep; the only thing I can do is crush my head in the toilet seat, and I still don’t even know if
that would work. They take away your options and all you can do is live, and it’s just like Humble said: I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of living. I was afraid before, but I’m afraid even more now that I’m a public joke. The teachers are going to hear from the students. They’ll think I’m trying to make an excuse for bad work.
I get in bed and put the single topsheet over me. “This sucks.”
“You are depressed?” Muqtada says.
“Yeah.”
“I, too, suffer from depression.”
I feel the Cycling starting again—I’m going to get out of here at some point and have to go back into my real life. This place isn’t real. This is a facsimile of life, for broken people. I can handle the facsimile, but I can’t handle the real thing. I’m going to have to go back to Executive Pre-Professional and deal with teachers and Aaron and Nia because what the hell else do I know? I staked everything on that stupid test. What else am I good at?
Nothing. I’m good at nothing.
I get up and go to the nurses’station.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep.”
“You’re not able to sleep?” The nurse is a white-haired little old lady with glasses.
“No, I know I’m not going to be able to sleep,” I respond. “I’m taking preemptive action.”
“We have a sedative, called Atavan. It’s injectable. It’ll relax you and make you sleep.”
“Let’s do it,” I say, and with Smitty’s supervision, over by the phones, I sit down and have a small needle attached to what looks like a butterfly clip stuck in my arm. I stare forward as something yellow is pumped into me and then I stumble off into my room—stumble because I can feel it hitting me even as I get up from the chair. It’s some kind of powerful muscle relaxant, and loving hands pull me down as I crash into bed past Muqtada, but the last thought I have before I go to sleep is:
Great, soldier, now you’re depressed and in the hospital and a drug addict. And everyone knows.
twenty-nine
I’m awakened by a guy in light blue scrubs taking my blood. That’s an interesting way to wake up. The guy comes into the room with a cart—carts are very popular here—as light creeps through the blinds.
“I need your bloods. For downstairs.”
“Uh, okay.”
I present my arm. I’m too beat to ask any questions. He takes a little bit of blood expertly through the back of my hand under my middle-finger knuckle—doesn’t leave any kind of mark—and rolls along, leaving Muqtada asleep, or awake and paralyzed by life; it’s tough to tell. I want to get more sleep, but once you’ve been stuck you’re inclined to get up, so I move out of bed and take a shower with the hospital-provided towels and my parent-provided shampoo and the generic soap that I pump out of the wall. The shower is searing and wonderful, but 1 don’t want to stay too long—I have to break my habit of languishing in the bathroom—so I dry off and drop my stuff back at the nurses’station. Smitty isn’t there; instead there’s a big guy who introduces himself as Harold and tells me to dump the towels in a hamper that looks just like a garbage can by the dining room, something that I know I’ve seen Humble and Bobby dump apple cores and banana peels into.
“Hey, buddy, you’re up!” Armelio calls out, bounding down the hall at me. “How’d you sleep?”
“Not good. I needed a shot.”
“That’s okay, buddy, we all need shots once in a while.”
“Heh.” I crack the day’s first smile. Armelio uncorks one of his own.
“It’s time to wake everyone up for vitals,” he says, treading down the hall. “All right, everybody! Vitals! Time to take your vitals!”
A caravan of my fellow bleary mental patients— or wait, I think we’re called in-patient psychiatric treatment recipients, technically—emerge from their compartments, rubbing their eyes and staggering as if they have a job to get to and they just need that first cup of coffee. Surprised by my good fortune, I put myself at the front of the line and become the first to get my blood pressure and pulse taken. 120/80. I continue to be the picture of health.
“Craig?” Harold, the big guy, asks when everyone is done.
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t been filling out your menus.”
“What are those?”
“Every day, you’re supposed to put down what sort of meals you want. On one of these.”
He holds up what looks like a placemat, with columns of food: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.
“You should have gotten this in your welcome packet the nurse gave you.”
Ah, the one I completely ignored. I nod.
“I just. . . didn’t. ..”
“It’s okay, but if you don’t mark up your menus, you’re going to get a meal we pick for you every time. So fill one out for lunch and dinner today. For breakfast you’re going to have to have one of the omelets.”
I put my elbows down on the desk and eye the menu choices: hamburger, fish nuggets, French-cut beans, turkey with stuffing, fresh fruit, pudding, oatmeal, orange juice, milk 4oz, milk 8oz, 2% milk, skim milk, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, split pea soup, minestrone soup, fruit salad, cottage cheese, bagel, cream cheese, butter, jelly… highly processed food. I’m not going to have a problem eating this. My eyes swim over the choices.
“Circle what you want,” Harold explains. I start circling.
“If you want two of anything, put two-x by it.” I start putting 2xs.
I wish the world were like this, if I just woke up and marked the food I’d be eating and it came to me later in the day. I suppose it is like that, except you have to pay for whatever you want to eat, so maybe what I’m asking for is communism, but I think it’s actually deeper than communism—I’m asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure. I’m asking for something that no politics is going to provide, something that probably you only get in preschool. I’m asking for preschool.
“After breakfast, fill one out for tomorrow,” Harold says as I hand in my menu.
Breakfast comes to the dining room and the omelet is like a science experiment: is the lack of cheese explained by the mysterious holes that dot the alleged egg?
“Your first omelet,” Bobby says. Today, for a change, I sit with him instead of Humble. Johnny rounds out the table.
“It’s really gross.” I pick at it.
“It’s like a rite of passage,” Johnny says. He speaks slowly and without any accents in his words. ‘"Everyone must eat the omelet.’”
“Yeah, you’re in now,” Bobby says.
“Huh.” Johnny exhales.
“How did everybody sleep?” I try.
“I’m anxious, real anxious,” Bobby says.
“Why?”
“I’ve got that interview tomorrow, with the adult home.”
“What’s that?”
“Huh.” Johnny exhales. “It’s where people like us live.”
“It’s a place like this, basically, except you have to hold a job,” Bobby explains. “You don’t need a pass to leave; you can leave whenever you want, but you have to prove you’re employed and be back by seven o’clock.”
“Wait, you can leave here with a pass?”
“Yeah, once you have five days inside, they have to give you a pass if you ask for it.”
“I’m gonna try and be out in five days.”
“Huh,” Johnny exhales. “Good luck.”
I start in on my orange, which is about two hundred times more edible than the omelet. “Why are you nervous about the interview?” I ask Bobby.
“Anxious, not nervous. It’s different. It’s medical.”
“Why are you anxious, then? I’m sure you’ll get in.”
“You can’t be sure of a thing like that. And if I mess it up, I’ve got problems: I’ve been here too long; my coverage isn’t going to last. Once you’re giving the tours, it’s really time to leave.” He takes a slow bite of oatmeal. “The last place wouldn’t let me in because I’m too much of a picky eater. It�
�s not like this place. You can’t pick your food.”
“So now you know what not to say!” I point out.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“See, when you mess something up,” I muse, “you learn for the next time. It’s when people compliment you that you’re in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”
Bobby nods. “Very, very true.”
“Huh, yeah,” Johnny says. “My mom was always complimenting me, and look how I turned out.”
“This kid has some promise.” Bobby laughs. “He’s on the level.”
“Huh, yeah, on the level. You play guitar, kid?”
“No.”
“Johnny here’s a great guitarist,” Bobby says. “Really great. He had a deal in the eighties.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Shhh,” Johnny says. “It ain’t nothin’.”
Bobby continues: “He can play better than the guy they bring in here to play for us. But he’s a cool guy, that guy.”
“Yeah, he’s on the level.”
“He’s on the level. Is he coming in today for group?”
“That’s tomorrow. Today is art.”
“With Joanie.”
“Right.”
Bobby sips his coffee. “If there wasn’t coffee on this earth, I’d be dead.”
I scan the room: everyone’s here but Solomon, the Anorexics (who I’ve now seen peeking out of their rooms like, literally, skeletons in closets), and Noelle. I wonder where she is. She didn’t show up for vitals. Maybe she’s out on a pass. I hope she’ll be around tonight for our date. Technically, it’ll be my first date.
“You know, I’ll tell you why I’m really anxious,” Bobby pipes up, leaning in over his coffee. “It’s this stupid shirt.” He pushes forward his Marvin the Martian WORLD DOMINATOR sweatshirt. “How’m I gonna do an interview in this?”
“Huh.” Johnny exhales. “Never underestimate the power of Marvin.”
“Shhh, man. I’m serious.”
“I have shirts,” I say.
“What?” Bobby looks up.
“I have shirts. I’ll lend you a shirt.”
“What? You would do that?”
“Sure. What size are you?”
“Medium. What are you?”
“Uh, child’s large.”
