by Trisha Cull
“It’s not,” I say.
“Are you still using cough medicine?”
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” I say.
He leaves the room to call Fiona and returns a moment later with a solidified opinion that my life is in peril and I must immediately, “as in, right now,” he says, “go to the Emergency Room.”
We have moved from Beechwood Avenue to a big beautiful house on Foul Bay Road with hardwood floors and a fireplace.
We are renters, but there is a big backyard for the bunnies. After many arguments, I have convinced Leigh to let the rabbits stay in the new house. We keep them in the basement. We hope this will help with his allergies.
My rabbits’ claws are in desperate need of trimming, and Caravaggio’s congenital tooth disease requires that his teeth be trimmed by a veterinarian every couple of months, or they will curve inward and eventually pierce the roof of his mouth.
His appetite is ravenous; he has a hard time chewing. He cannot enjoy his rabbit treats or chew his chunks of carrots. He gnaws instead at lettuce leaves and parsley. It’s horrific to watch, especially because I am the proprietor of his demise and pain.
I simply haven’t got around to taking him to the vet.
I hide myself away in the basement with my rabbits, watch sitcoms on the laptop monitor, pass out, wake up in the middle of the night with a great pounce, Marcello bounding onto my chest, because he has not yet had his nightly bedtime treat, little sugary yogurt drops, berry-or carrot-flavoured.
Some nights I make it upright enough to find the package and administer to each of my bunnies three yogurt drops. Marcello eats his treats with great delight, makes little sniffling and grunt sounds, small squeaks from somewhere inside his round furry body. Caravaggio likewise takes his treats with great delight, but drops each one to the floor, nudges them with his nose, gnaws each one then gives up. Marcello eats what he cannot.
Leigh collects the laptop early in the morning, finds it still open and almost overheated on my chest. Sometimes it has slipped to the concrete floor. The laptop keys are loose, the tray bent because I pound it when the screen freezes, and the screen badly and permanently smudged.
My sister describes my living situation in the basement with my rabbits as a hovel—makeshift walls composed of big panels of cardboard, framed Van Gogh and Chagall prints of which the glass has been broken, rabbit cages, boxes and old shelving units, all of which have been arranged to form the inescapable inner circle.
Inside the inner circle is a blue love seat, piss-stained carpet and linoleum, rabbit beds and blankets, their litter boxes, food and water bowls, hay strewn loosely about the floor, and above it all, LED Christmas lights looped around the rafters.
It’s Christmas all year round.
When I turn off the ceiling lights, a warm glow envelops my rabbits and me, safe within the confines of our hovel and well out of sight of the upstairs world my husband and now my two stepsons inhabit, that suburbia into which I never fit and into which I no longer feel welcome.
Leigh has grown to hate me.
Inside the Archie Courtnall Centre: psychological screening.
“I notice you have scrapes across your wrists,” the doctor says.
“Yes,” I say, stricken by my own candour, though I am embarrassed, lower my hands to my lap. “It helps,” I say, “with the anxiety.”
“When did you do that?” she says.
The blood bubbles along the surface. I wipe it away, streak my palms pink. These are not dangerous wounds in the physical sense.
“This morning,” I say. But the truth is I snuck away to the washrooms in the ER shortly after arriving, wanting to meet the doctor with physical evidence of my despair, wanting attention.
“Can you tell me about your drug use?” she says.
“I get high on cough medicine,” I say. I say it unapologetically, directly.
I tell the doctor that I have occasionally lost the ability to hear sound (as a whole sensory category), and to understand English (as a whole linguistic discipline). DXM seems to work like PCP, acid for the neurons. “The other night I took twenty packages of NeoCitran and one extra-strength Robaxacet,” I say, “and a glass of Pinot Noir.”
“What would you say if I said that I would like to admit you today?” the doctor says.
This I do not expect, but rather thought I was here to jump through hoops as I have the past two years, since first being diagnosed with dysthymia, then unipolar depression, since Dr. L said I have bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder and for kicks, obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“I would be… really… really… against that idea,” I say.
She puts down the pen. “Well, I am going to admit you today.”
I am stunned. How can this be? How can she make such a statement of authority over my life, my free will? I’m waiting for the next sentence, the phrase that will undo the former—a window, a door, a portal I can move through. I’m waiting for the punchline.
But it’s not funny.
I stammer, “But… can you… legally do this?”
She cites me a bureaucratic clause that details all the reasons she can admit me “involuntarily.” This is how it will read on my file for the next twenty days or so: Involuntarily Admitted.
“Okay,” she says, “I want you to stay in here while we get you a sedative.”
Do I have a choice?
I’m trembling, heart racing, cannot fathom the gravity of what’s just happened. I have been involuntarily admitted to the place in town my stepchildren joke about, the place next to the Catholic School where little kids look over at us, the crazy people, and laugh: the Pavilion, across the street from Starbucks and Safeway; the Pavilion, formerly called the Institute, thus I have been pavilion-ized and not institutionalized.
I’m waiting for the security guards to come and escort me over to the Pavilion, wandering around the Archie Courtnall Centre looking lost and weepy.
My blue scrubs are too big.
They have taken my shoes and socks.
I am stigmatized, forever branded.
A patient in a psychiatric ward, I cease to exist. I am defined instead by the details of the place: its locks and keys, walls and doors, windows through which I cannot leap, windows with glass too thick to be broken, security guards and live video feed at the main entryway in the foyer four floors below.
I have become one of the lost ones, openly weeping, sobbing, looking for an edge to hold onto, a pillow into which I can scream.
I need a bit in my mouth.
They don’t tell you where to go, where to sit or lie or walk or breathe after they give you your sedative and hit you with this kind of news.
I walk to the window at the far end of the room, gaze out at the parking lot and at the Pavilion ward across the way, soon to be my new home for a while, and past the emergency room from which I just departed with a goat-like male nurse guiding me.
The other weepy people look at me then look away, unfazed. They have either misinterpreted me completely (they think I’m one of them, but I’m not), or have me entirely figured (I haven’t yet come to realize I belong with them).
I crumple, weak-kneed. I slide my hand along a hard edge, can smell disinfectant. Oh, the sedative has kicked in. This I like. This numbness.
Two security guards arrive to escort me over, but my memory of this becomes vapour.
This vaporization of memory, hours, whole days even, is not uncommon, something to do with stress and shock.
There is an old beige phone on a table, and a chair next to it.
I make a call before leaving, my sister—the only person I can think of. I do not call Leigh, no way.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” she says, because she knows me better than anyone.
>
“I’m in the psych ward,” I say.
“What can I do?” she says. “Who should I call?”
I have long since feared that if ever I ended up in a place like this, my life would be a revolving door in and out of it.
“Call Leigh,” I say, “and can you please feed my rabbits?”
“Yes,” she says.
The last I remember are the doors to the security van, and making some apologetic joke about my blue paper booties, but the rest is gone.
The first days slip by. I have no memory.
The ward is a big rectangular room divided into the A-wing and the B-wing, each at opposite ends. A-wing is not allowed to cross the line to B-wing.
I am A, which is fortunate because A has a homier feel than B, softer lighting above the couch and recliners in the TV area.
Some nights a pretty female nurse and a few patients sing along as a male nurse plays his guitar, Beatles and John Lennon songs: “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be” and “Imagine.”
I want to sing along too, because I love to sing in the shower and in the car, but I can’t find my voice in public, especially here.
A week inside feels like a month.
Time becomes strange; something to do with the uniformity, the beige of the walls, the way A side mirrors B side as if each is a projection of the other, two universes oblivious to each other but each transpiring in the same timeline.
I look over there expecting to see myself turn a corner.
Each day is the same as the day before. Each day begins with a morning breakfast announcement on the PA, followed by the lunch and dinner announcements, snack-time announcement at 9 pm, then lights out at 10.
They won’t yet give me back my clothes.
Do they think I’m going to make a run for it?
Are they right?
At some point (though I cannot say when it happens) the details sharpen, materialize from blankness.
I come into myself.
I become closer to here.
I become a flesh and blood person again. It’s me. I’m here. But I am a stranger to myself. It’s terrifying and liberating at the same time.
And the nurse sings:
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
I flop on a couch and listen.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
I wander these hallways, my sobbing having lost its heartiness; piqued to weeping.
The blue scrubs swallow me.
I am humiliated.
It’s these paper booties that are killing me.
I like Dr. P right away; he’s direct and likes to say fuck. I trust him.
Our interactions are brief, if not rushed, during his morning rounds. These meetings I suspect are not meant to include intensive therapy, but rather they are meant to gauge and loosely monitor my mental progress and state of mind, and to monitor vitals and adjust medication as required.
He begins our meetings with, “How are you doing today?”
“Fine,” I say.
“You’re looking well.”
On our first meeting he finds me sitting in a recliner in the lounge, hair in a ponytail, dishevelled and washed out. There are no nutrients in my skin, no colour in my complexion. My potassium levels are off. They have been monitoring me. I am bleached, churned in a washing machine, wrung out by hand and hung like a sheet between two buildings in a ghetto. I’m not wearing makeup. My lips are dry and my eyelashes feel crumbly.
Take my blood. Give me pills. Feed me at intervals.
Dr. P says, “Trisha?”
How does he know me?
“Yeah,” I say.
I am struck by his stature, his formidable height. I like his looks, brown hair and blue eyes.
“How are you today?” he says.
“Fine,” I say.
I want Dr. P to like me right away, to think I’m interesting, a dynamic individual, to see the heart of me with some omniscient understanding of who I am, because I want this man to know absolutely everything about me, immediately, upon first contact.
To think I am beautiful.
We go to the quiet room. He’s tall and walks fast. It’s hard to keep up. I’m 5′ 6″ and wearing paper booties, can’t get traction on the slippery linoleum hallways.
He is oblivious to this lack of traction, doesn’t notice me scrambling to keep up. I’m nothing to him. The shift is illogical and happens swiftly.
The quiet room has taken on a blue tone. No windows. One door. A piano.
“So?” he says, rather cheerfully. He opens my file.
I already have a file, and there is already a lot of paper in it.
I find a quiet table in the dining room. This is the sacred time between the feeding hours. The room is empty. I don’t know where everybody goes during this time. It’s a mystery. They just disappear, perhaps lie fetal on their bedroom floors, or cry into pillows, or stare.
My table is sunlit, a perfect space at which to sit down and write.
A boy from the B-Wing crosses the line, chooses this moment to twirl from one side of the ward to the other, humming to himself as he goes, pausing at my table, my rare and private sanctuary, then proceeds to sit down, grab hold of one of my books, Don Domanski’s All Our Wonder Unavenged, then gets up to leave with it clutched to his chest.
“No,” I say. “You cannot have that. I’m sorry.”
The boy, Sebastian, returns the book to the table and leaves me to my writing, only to return a few minutes later with two fat books clutched to his chest. “This one is okay, but I think it will be too much for you right now,” he says. “I think… this one.”
I feel like such an asshole.
“Oh, thanks,” I say.
Sebastian twirls away, gets on the stationary bike in front of the TV, laughs and speaks French with a kid I will soon learn is his brother—and one of the few people he speaks to.
I sit, brooding, but get up and march over with my prized Domanski poetry book, tap Sebastian on the shoulder. He continues riding, seems unaware of me. I pass over the book: “I think you should have this.”
He nods, takes the book, flips through the pages and puts it down.
My room is EMP 408A.
I think EMP, which makes me think AMP, which makes me think of electroshock therapy, which makes me think of Sylvia Plath lighting up the western European grid on a dark stormy night.
My current place of residence is the Eric Martin Pavilion, Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria, BC. I am sitting on my cot, one of four cots in four areas separated by thin beige curtains.
I have befriended my roommates now: Julie, Renee and Cindy, though Cindy seldom speaks, never eats or rises from her bed, and when she does arise from the dead she slips past you without a word as if you don’t exist.
A nice girl who lives in the room next door, Lisa, reads my palms one night, finds two big W’s, one on each palm, and says this means great prosperity awaits me. While she is surveying my palms another night, I remember the red scrapes and shy away, lower my hands to my lap.
Lisa is heartbroken, apologizes ten times, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I have that too.”
I feel bad for making her feel bad, braid her hair as a kind of compensation. Everyone here is so fragile.
From my cot, I have a view of the back-ass of the hospital where the not-so-crazy people reside. I imagine an airplane wing trembling, a fibreglass plank from my room extended out and above the parking lot, its trembling as the engines rev. I look for loose bolts, nuts and screws, superglue, the stuff that keeps airplanes intact. I toss a Hail Mary to the other unimaginable wi
ng on the other side of the building, all of its nuts and bolts and superglue and stuff that keeps that side of the airplane intact.
My time here in EMP 408A is all about establishing intactness.
How can we place so much faith in such flimsy things as wings?
They still will not give me my clothes.
I am surprised one afternoon when the mean front-desk clerk gets off her ass and hands me shaving cream and a razor.
Leigh has been up to see me a few times. He is listless and appears deeply disheartened, for reasons I fear have little to do with my well-being and much more to do with the general direction of his life, the force of my tide into which he is trapped, pulled out to sea, dragged into oblivion.
Today he has brought me a few toiletries, a nightgown—though not the one I asked for—and a pack of smokes, though not the brand I wanted.
I sense this is his last visit to see me.
To help with the healing process, my mother brings me a book and a bag of chocolates, which I consume ravenously. Enclosed inside the pages of the book called The Mastery of Love, which I will not read, is a paper clip I have uncoiled and transformed into a needle-like object of minor self-mutilation.
I press down harder now that I’m here.
I add a dozen hatch marks and am shocked at how bad it looks, how brazen and tactless.
There is also a copy of Descant Issue 144: Dogs.
My sister brings me this journal, quite by chance, because I love dogs and poetry and good writing with equal measure—well, perhaps erring slightly on the side of dogs.
I have become good at finding meaning, code, in everything. The page upon which the inscription is written is red; red is relevant. The inscription begins: Speculate on the tints of a butterfly’s wing… Alexander Rodger (1784–1846) Stray Leaves.
I have never heard of this Alexander, but I have decided to love him. “Stray Leaves” also eludes me, though there is beneath my window an oak whose leaves have in recent days taken on a whimsy—flirtatiousness, rustling illuminated by the industrial lamp bulbs in the parking lot. From where I sit looking out my window at night, the darkness is transformed: leaves and negative space changed into magic and orbs.
