“How are your toileting habits?”
“Um, fine,” I say. Years of social interaction have really not prepared me well for this day. And, for once, I don’t launch into my usual spiel about using nouns as verbs and how adjectival phrases are abuses of the English language and must be stopped.
We move along to the written portion of the questioning, some of which I complete in green crayon until a pencil with a sharp point is located.
The forms seem pretty standard: name, date, previous mental illness, next of kin. Eventually, we come to the more creative part of this exercise. I have to complete sentences along the lines of “I would be happier if…” and “My main trouble is…” Later, one of the prompts tells me to “Write a complete sentence.” I write “This is a complete sentence.” My monotonatic minder smirks at my cheekiness. Finally, a breakthrough.
After completing this batch of paperwork—I continue to be amazed by how many trees must die for each patient—I am handed off to another woman, a prim, gray-haired matron who wears reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She walks me to the other end of the hall, past a white board on which is written all of the patients’ names, their room assignments, and, in big letters at the top, TODAY IS FRIDAY, JULY 12, 2002. It worries me that this needs to be announced, both to the staff and to the inmates.
We are sequestered in a bright little room that looks like it could be the office part of a well-worn hotel suite. This is also where I will meet with my shrink and my spouse, but I don’t know that yet. It does, however, have a door that locks, which the gray-haired lady closes. She explains that she’s a floater and that the psych floor isn’t her usual rotation. Still, she admits, she does feel that she can do the most good in Tower 4, where the needs of the patients are obvious.
“What brought you here?” She sounds genuinely concerned with my plight, the first person in a while to do so. I go through the whole thing again.
“What was your life like before?”
I tell her. Good, mostly. I enjoyed my work and felt like I was doing something worthwhile. I explain that the whole baby thing took me by surprise, that I just expected it to be different, more fulfilling somehow. I stop crying. This is the first time I’ve admitted out loud that I am a defective mother and I’ve surprised myself. Plus, this woman seems to care a great deal, like she knows exactly how I feel and doesn’t judge me for my imperfections.
“What church do you go to?”
I blink a few times. I don’t remember this being part of the standard raft of questions. “Um, what?”
“What church do you go to?” She’s smiling at me and nodding her head.
“I don’t. I don’t know that I believe in God.”
“You’re just too smart for your own good, you know,” she diagnoses, with a grin. “Maybe that’s why you’re here. You should thank Him for what you have. And you should run a comb through your hair,” she adds. I don’t have the energy to explain that my hair always looks like this, regardless of my mental state. Besides, by this time, the reality of the situation has set in. I am on a Psych Ward. I am officially crazy. I deserve to be lectured on my failings. It’s a lot to absorb on little sleep.
She goes on, but I’ve stopped listening. My mouth hangs open. These sorts of conversations are a matter of course in Knoxville, where you can’t perform a Satanist ritual without hitting a Baptist church. In any other circumstance, I could have just walked it off. But, now, I burst into tears, like a balloon pricked by a needle. A certain level of hell is reserved for those who proselytize to those over whom they have power.
If I could have left, I would have. And that is the rub of Tower 4: You are no longer in control of your hospital stay. Other people, some of whom also seem to be of questionable sanity, control your comings and goings. The doors are locked and only those in the little glass booth have the keys. Even someone who is generally not very paranoid, like, say, me, finds herself second-guessing everything she says. After a few days, your speech becomes littered with hesitations; moments where you rethink every last word and scan it for any possible misinterpretations. If you weren’t already slightly mad, this would pack you up and drive you to its borders.
We finish the forms, I think. I’ve stopped paying attention to what she’s saying and answer in monotones. I’m sure somewhere on that form is a note that I’m “unresponsive” and “hostile” and “too smart for my own good.” Fuck it.
I’m handed back over to the first woman for a tour of my new home away from home. Tower 4 is shaped like a racing oval, with the aforementioned glassed-in nurses’ station in the center and patient rooms, activities rooms, a day room, phones, and a few offices around the perimeter. The “Recreational Therapist” would later inform us that eighteen laps around the floor measures out to be a mile.
There are twenty-four patient beds, two to a room. Women outnumber men by about two to one. Anonymity is prized on the floor. Patients are given a code number and no incoming calls or visitors will be allowed unless the other person has this code. The staff will neither confirm nor deny the presence of anyone asked for by name. On some levels, this is comforting. No one need know of my time here unless I disclose it. But it’s double-edged: Keeping this a secret makes it more shameful, and there is already enough shame attached to depression. However, without this promise of facelessness, some who desperately need help wouldn’t take this first step to get it for fear of having it made public. And so the sword cuts again.
In each room are two dressers, a mirror, at least one comfy chair, and a corkboard on which flyers about how not to fall down are tacked. In most ways, these look like traditional hospital rooms. What’s striking is what’s missing, like IV stands, TVs, and all the other clutter that crowds the room of a physically sick person. The mentally ill person’s room looks like a cheap European motel room, stripped of all mod cons, save that the bed is higher tech and it has a private bathroom. Everyone walks around in street clothes, rather than hospital garb, which makes it even harder to tell staff from patient.
My bags have been thoroughly searched. I have to sign off on the contraband that has been found so that it can be locked away for the good of us all. Simple things like keys and cash are verboten, as is aspirin and an elderly Paxil wedged in the crevasses of my work bag. Also confiscated is my hair conditioner, which contained trace amounts of alcohol and could be abused by some desperate drunk. The staff would ration out appropriate amounts before each shower. At least I get to hang on to my clothes, the red leather journal, and some books, all of which are delivered to my room while we continue the tour.
The last stop is the TV room, a cavernous space with couches, a pool table, assorted puzzles, a big box of crayons, and some coloring books. There is also an attached kitchenette, where the refrigerator is always stocked with juice boxes, milk, fresh fruit, and ice cream. All of this we are encouraged to eat at will, which one of the patients does unceasingly, plowing through cup after cup of ice cream whenever her eyes are open. The TV is almost always tuned to Great American Country, because one of the patients gets all worked up if you change the channel.
I meet my roommate, Sandra, who is maybe in her late-thirties and has the same sort of uncontrollable frizzy hair that I have been cursed with. There are dark circles under her eyes and her wrists are covered in stitches. She also carries around a plush baby doll that giggles and coos whenever you press its hands. Sandra and the nurse seem keen on my seeing this. I want to run because it’s just so creepy, especially when it starts to make those almost lifelike noises and writhes. I’m introduced to other patients, but the information fails to stick. Terror sinks in.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where this terror springs from; perhaps it is simply because they are overtly friendly and I’m trying to remain aloof. For someone whose limbic system is already maxed out, it’s impossible to come to grips with this place and its denizens. I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home, to my own bed, where eve
rything failed to make sense in a more predictable way. I want to go back to my life before all of this happened.
We finish the tour. I wander back to my room, where I hide, balled up on the bed, crying, until it is time for group.
Before we go further, let me make note of one important thing. While I did not believe it at the time, Tower 4 was exactly where I needed to be. It is one of the safest places, physically and emotionally, I have ever experienced. My stay is both something I’m glad to have had and something I never want to do again. Everyone, mentally healthy or no, could benefit from spending some time up there.
Each Tower 4 guest is given a schedule of daily activities, not unlike guests at a very nice spa, but without hot stone massage or fruity health tonics. Since I came in at the end of the day, the only thing I am expected to do is attend the nightly group wrap-up, where every patient must tell the group how the day went. All new people, I’d discover, always do the same thing, which is sit in the back of the room and try to remain invisible. I am no exception. I also cry the whole time. You’d think I’d be horribly dehydrated.
Group therapy on Tower 4 is a remarkably nonlinear affair. Of the two dozen people on the floor, most of them are suffering from a disorder of mood rather than one of thought. The mood people, while alternately glum or manic, can carry on a basic conversation, even if they are twitchy or sobbing. However, the other folk—those with disorders of thought—make this nightly exercise full of sudden diversions, roundabout progress, and the occasional low-hanging branch. During evening group, each patient must declare whether or not the goals set at morning group had been achieved. Not being there for the morning group, I only had to introduce myself and explain briefly why I was there, but only if I felt comfortable doing so.
Perhaps one of the most refreshing things about Tower 4 is that very little is mandatory. Share if you feel comfortable. Get out of bed each day. Eat when you can. Have your vitals taken twice daily. And attend the day’s groups, which can range from recreational therapy (better mental health through leisure activities) to mindfulness (better mental health through meditation) to drug information (better mental health through chemistry).
Behavior that would attract scorn in the outside world isn’t even remarked upon during groups on the psych floor. Polite fictions abound. A woman wrapped in a hospital blanket dips in and out of consciousness. Another moans for forty-five minutes, then wanders off. Whenever the conversation really gets rolling, someone never fails to veer back into nonsense-land.
That night’s social worker, who looks like a male high school science teacher complete with a cardigan sweater, starts us off by talking about goal setting. He gets in about two sentences before being interrupted by a black-haired squatty woman in a wheelchair. “I ain’t brain broke,” she says. “My son says I’m brain broke, but I ain’t.”
“I hear you, Vivian. We’re talking about goals right now,” the social worker says in a voice that radiates calm.
“Okay. But I ain’t brain broke.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the more obviously functional of the assembled lunatics rolled their eyes. That could have just been my imagination.
A fair number of patients lounge on the three couches near the TV; others pull up chairs on the perimeter. The sunburned woman paces around the perimeter, still mumbling to herself. Every now and again, she’ll go over to the pool table and roll around some of the balls. No one pays her much attention.
There is one patient, however, who seems to set everyone off. Angola is one of those hardworking Appalachian women who have been ill used by life. She’s raw boned and tall. About sixty, if I had to guess. Half the time it’s hard to tell if she’s actually completely crazy or just acting completely crazy. She sings old hymns throughout group, sometimes so loudly that the social worker has to shout over the choruses to be heard. If life were more poetic, her voice would be gorgeous and serene. Instead, it is nails-on-a-chalkboard screechy, the kind of noise that convinces you that Norman Bates is sneaking up from behind.
The social worker goes around the room and asks each patient if he or she had accomplished the goals set during the morning group.
“Jeff, you said that you wanted to write a letter to your ex-girlfriend. Did you?”
“Nope,” Jeff declares. “I did finish a puzzle.”
“Myra, you were going to call your mother.”
“I’ve decided to just live one day at a time,” Myra says. “See, thinking about the future is what got me here. I just want to live in the ‘now.’”
“Rose, your goal was to make a plan for the day you are discharged.”
“I just read these articles about drinking more red wine. I think more red wine would be good for my heart. What do you know about red wine?”
And on it goes.
Eventually, we get to me.
I sputter out my name and “postpartum.” It’s all I get out before I’m crying so hard I can’t really breathe. I used to give talks to college kids and writers’ groups. Now, I can’t even say my name and condition. Humility is never a pretty lesson to learn.
One mousy, heavyset girl catches my eye. “I went through the same thing when my first was born,” she says, sincerity ringing in her quiet voice. “You’ll get through it.”
It is a small comfort.
After group, I call Scott and beg him to get me out of here. “I don’t belong here,” I plead, desperate to get away from all of these crazy people. They are all so strange and emotionally unpredictable. I’m not like them. I’m just so sad and tired. I don’t get the irony of this thought until much later.
Scott agrees with me, but there is little he can do, given that it is now almost 8 p.m. and those who can make decisions left the office hours ago. I assure him that my shrink will see the errors of his ways and turn me loose the next morning.
Over the phone, we agree to not tell my mom. First, I don’t think I’ll be locked up long enough to have it be a real issue, given that I’m convinced that I’ll be leaving in the morning. Second, I just don’t want to deal with her right now. I know that the first words out of her mouth will be “I told you this would happen if you didn’t let me help you.”
We assure each other of our undying love, despite the fact that one of us is crazy. The baby is well. Since Scott’s mother is back in town, he has help. I can do nothing else right now except sleep. And with the help of an Ambien, doled out by a nurse upon my request, the rest of the first night passes painlessly. A few years ago, the option of pharmaceuticals on demand could have been a fun little experiment. Now, I’m just ashamed that I’m a failure at something so simple as sleeping.
From my journal, July 13:
“One of the best views of Knoxville is from the window of room 412 of St. Mary’s Hospital Psych Ward. From here, I can see how the city is sunk into the valley. The Eastern European-esque tower block of student housing rises on the far left, blotting the bowl of mountains with its concrete ugliness. On the far right are the Fulton High School football fields. If I crane my neck a bit, I can see my favorite tennis courts.
“From my seat, one-eighth of the view is mountains and city. The rest is sky. Gray clouds hang. It’s rained on and off all day, leading to yet another power outage. There was a ruckus of the staff rounding up all of the patients in the half-light.
“Some oddities about the Psych Ward:
“No trash can liners.
“The window blinds are sandwiched between the panes of reinforced glass.
“Being a non-smoker really cuts down on your chances to socialize. Every hour, the smokers cluster in front of the nurse’s station where they are given one cigarette and herded to the smoking room.
“Generally, the night staff is a heck of a lot more fun than the day staff.
“It is a lot like what you’d see in the movies.”
I’m being a bad, bad girl and hiding in my room. Technically, I’m accomplishing one of my goals—journal writing—which I’d set in
group that morning. Every fifteen minutes, an orderly sticks his head in and marks my location on a chart. Twenty-four hours a day, a staff member wanders around making sure that we can all be located. It has been noted by him that I am not out bonding with the group. To be honest, I’ve never really been much of a joiner, sane or no.
It started with breakfast. My roommate, who is actually very nice, gives me a nudge so that I don’t miss it. We pad down to the day room in our jammies and slippers. I’m still wearing the green florals, which draw compliments from both patients and staff. They tell me I look very cheerful.
At breakfast, I take the only empty seat, which is right next to Angola. A nurse sits on her other side, reminding her to take small bites. It does no good. She shoves all of the oatmeal in her mouth at once, chokes, then runs to the trash can and pukes. It’s a great way to start the day. On top of that, I’d swear my coffee has no caffeine in it.
We have to stay in the room until we have our vital signs taken, our lunch orders filled out, and our trays examined. I am told that I’ve eaten only about 10 percent of my eggs and bacon. It is marked on my chart.
“Don’t get the chicken,” Myra whispers to me, just as I’m about to mark it on my lunch order.
Sandra and Jeff concur. “It fucking sucks,” Jeff says. He’s a man of few words, that Jeff, a sage for our times. The four of us chat like old friends, talking about group last night (I was right about the eye-rolling) and about the other patients. I am warned that Vivian, the one in the wheelchair, steals stuff from people’s rooms. I discover that while I was doing my sleeping beauty the previous night, the big guy who didn’t talk much had a total meltdown and it took four orderlies to get him sedated. Apparently, furniture was thrown.
When we’re finally released from the day room, Angola is running up the hallway, naked. A nurse is chasing after her and the hospital gown in her hand flags out behind her. She is pretty spry, that Angola, even if time has not been kind to her backside. Conversation halts. We each walk by the nurses’ station, collect our Dixie cups full of pills, and go about our morning business.
Hillbilly Gothic Page 15
