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| Not this many stairs, but still. |
I stood at the top of the stairs, barely aware of what brought me to this particular moment in my life. All I knew was rage. Not sorrow. Not depression. Pure fucking rage. The impetus is something I can’t really talk about. That involves someone else’s mental problems, and that’s not something I can discuss like this. I have no plans on publishing this, but you never know. Besides, I might have died, and you might be reading this, and you shouldn’t be privy to that information. Suffice it to say that another person’s lunacy infuriated me so much that I threatened to drink myself to death. I didn’t realize at the time that I only had an inch at the bottom of a bottle, and that would not be enough to do the job. I went out in search of booze, but it was late, and no one was open. So I decided I’d have to kill myself in some other way. Any way, really. This person’s mental issues were so invasive that I needed to leave this existence to get away from them.
That’s something not a lot of people like to talk about. Crazy is contagious. It doesn’t necessarily breed its own brand of crazy, but I very much understand the concept of mass hysteria. Put one crazy person in a room with several relatively sane people, and most of them will be fucking nuts by the end of the day.
I thought about cutting my wrists in the bathtub, but that would be a very scary way to be found by a family member. Besides, I didn’t know if my life insurance would pay off on suicide. So I had to make it look like an accident. Hence the stairs. I fully intended to throw myself down the stairs so hard that my skull would break, and I’d finally be free. No one can really bother you when you’re dead, right? So I pushed myself from the top of the stairs.
You know how people who survive throwing themselves from the Golden Gate Bridge say that the second they let go, they regretted it? As I pitched forward, I regretted it. My survival instinct kicked in, and I grabbed the railing. I still went down the stairs, but it didn’t hurt all that much. My palm burned a little from holding onto the railing. But as I sat at the bottom of the stairs, I realized just how crazy I was. To top it all off, I have a bad left foot. The doctors wanted to amputate just under my knee, but my foot healed just well enough for me to keep it. If I hadn’t caught myself, I could have hurt my foot even worse. Imagine how stupid I would feel if I wrecked the foot even worse.
I knew there was something wrong with me. I had to do something about it. I discussed the matter with a friend on Skype, and I finally decided to take myself to the ER as a suicide risk. Holy fuck, I wish I’d never done that. All things considered, it was a mistake. Because when I sat at the foot of the stairs, I realized how wrong I’d been to even consider ending my life. I was no longer a risk. But I thought it would be best to report to the ER anyway.
Whoops.
I went to the ER. I’ve been there so many times in my recent life, mostly for kidney failure, bacterial infections (one of which came from a bug bite on my stomach from sleeping in a trailer for the night), pancreatitis, gastroenteritis and other horrible maladies including a bunch of mystery illnesses. I answered all their questions before they could ask them. They triaged me, and it must have been a slow night because they got me a room immediately.
The last time I’d been here was because of a massive pain in my stomach and a pukey disposition. There are only two things that can help me when I’m like that: Zofran and morphine. The ER doctor didn’t want to give it to me. I told her I was working on quitting drinking, and I wasn’t even lying at the time. I was tired of being ill all the time. My bathroom smells like vomit almost permanently. So she made me promise, and then she got me Zofran and morphine.
As I settled into my ER room, that same doctor saw me. “Mr. Bruni! I thought we had an agreement.”
“We do,” I said. “I’m here for something else this time.”
“And that is?” She said this with an air that suggested that I was about to lie to her.
“I tried to commit suicide,” I said.
She immediately became much more understanding after that. The nurse took my blood and urine, just out of habit, I suppose. In the meantime they left me on my own for a while. I started getting bored. I’d brought three books with me, and I asked them if I could have them. “We can’t at this time, Mr. Bruni,” a nurse said. “We have you on suicide watch.”
“I’m not going to do it,” I said. “I changed my mind when I was at the bottom of the stairs. I’m in this life for the long haul.”
“Regardless, we can’t get your books.”
Another nurse said, “We have some books kicking around here. I’ll see if I can find one for you.”
He brought me a softcover book (because hardcover books, as I would soon learn, could be considered weapons). If memory serves, it was a Barbara Kingsolver book. I don’t remember the title. Not my cup of tea, but it was better than nothing. I started slogging my way through it. It was OK. Nothing special.
It was about six in the morning, so they brought me something to eat and some coffee. I don’t like coffee, but it was the only caffeine I was likely to get for a while, so I drank it. It was bad enough being here because of the suicide attempt. I didn’t want to deal with caffeine withdrawals, too. Those headaches, I knew from experience, could cut through morphine.
They moved me to another part of the ER, and they put me in a room where a nurse could watch me at all times. Suicide watch sucks, man. I don’t recommend being on the receiving end, ever. I got a bit sleepy and dozed on and off for a bit. And then the hospital shrink visited me. I’d seen him before. Several times. He usually preached to me a lot about quitting booze. Whenever I see him, I’m usually half out of it, anyway, but this time I was able to pay attention to the whole thing.
“What if you’d had a gun?” he asked. “That would have been tragic.”
“I don’t like guns,” I said. “That would have never happened.”
Side note: never argue with a hospital shrink. They will take what-ifs and could-have-beens just as seriously as absolutes. I wonder what he would have thought if confronted with my college philosophy professor who hated the word “potential.” He would hold his empty hand out, palm up. “Right now I am potentially holding a sandwich,” he said.
Yeah, the hospital shrink wouldn’t have dug that.
He then gave the floor to the ER shrink. “We have to keep you under observation for a while,” she said. That sounded reasonable. I’d had extended stays in the hospital before. “So we’re going to give you a choice, Mr. Bruni. We have an ambulance standing by to take you to a psychiatric hospital, where they can look after you for a few days.”
That did not sound good at all.
“You have two choices,” she continued. “The first is, you voluntarily commit yourself to that hospital. There are perks that come with this choice. You are a lot more free than most others will be. You will also get to request a five-day, which is when you request for the administration to discharge you. They then have five days to decide if there is a reason to hold onto you. If no reason can be found, then you will be released. Now, the five days don’t count weekends or holidays, just so you know.”
Well, isn’t that fucking swell?
“The other choice is involuntary. I really don’t recommend this path. That’s when judges get involved, and you have very little say in the matter.”
“I’m going with voluntary,” I said. No thought went into that one. Picking involuntary would have felt too much like drawing to an inside straight, which my old Pappy said I should never do.
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| "As my old pappy used to say, never cry over spilled milk. It could have been whiskey." |
“That’s good news,” the ER shrink said. “I’ll notify the paramedics, and they’ll be with you shortly. Just sign these papers first.”
I wound up signing about twenty sheets of paper, all spelling out in great detail this very simple decision. About an hour later, the paramedics arrived and wheeled me to their ambulance. One of them saw that I’d been at the hospital for twelve hours. “Holy shit. What did you do that they needed you for twelve hours?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. But I assure you I’ll never do it again. Whatever it is.”
He laughed. They drove me down Roosevelt Rd. and pulled into the [NAME REDACTED] Hospital parking lot. They wheeled me in and passed the security checkpoints. Only then did I realize that this was going to be more of a prison than a psych ward. Holy fuck, how fast can I put in my five-day?
And then there is the portrait. Every psych ward and rehab has one of these. It’s a painting of whoever started this business venture. Usually, it’s a man wearing a priest’s collar. In this case it was a woman in a nun’s wimple. Ah fuck. I should have known.
The paramedics took me to an office and helped me off the gurney. I thanked them for their help, and they wished me good luck. There a middle aged woman walked me into the office. She introduced herself as the admissions person. She wanted to ask a few questions, which I answered. She then handed me a folded piece of . . . something. I didn’t know what it was at first.
“I’ll leave you alone so you can change into this.”
I unfolded it, and it turned out to be a pair of paper pants. Yes, paper pants. Now I’m a big boy. Tall and wide. I hoped these were one-size-fits-all. They were just close enough. They rode up high on my ankles a bit, and they were tight at the waist and crotch, but they did the job. I would wear many pairs of these things over the course of my stay. Each of them split down the crotch, and they were only available in the morning. So if I was in group, I’d have to be very careful about how I sat down. Because there was this one time I saw another patient staring at the split. She laughed at my lightning fast reflexes in almost falling out of the chair while trying to cross my legs.
Oh yeah. They don’t separate the genders. I thought that was weird, but what the hell?
The admissions lady didn’t come back right away, so I wandered around, looking at the paintings on the wall. They didn’t impress me much except for one. It was a depiction of a forest in autumn. About twenty bare trees reached to the top of the frame backlit by a pale moon. You could see where the trees met the verdant ground, but they didn’t stop there. They dug deep toward the bottom of the frame like roots. I thought that I could very easily turn the painting upside down, and no one would notice. But it drew me in.
She came back while I was looking at the painting, but she didn’t mention it. “Follow me.”
She brought me to a rickety elevator. It was so bad that I actually felt nervous getting into it. I’m not one to fear elevators, but I felt a sense of danger getting into this one. You know how the worst elevators in the world are attached to parking garages? This one was ten times worse.
She must have sensed my unease. “It’s under construction.”
Okaaaaaaaaay.
The elevator trembled and creaked and snapped its way up to the second floor, and I got my first glimpse of the nurse station and some of the people I’d be spending my time with. But I didn’t have time to observe much because she pushed me toward this room.
“Wait here. Someone will be with you shortly.”
She indicated a chair at a table, so I sat down. The paper pants stretched across my wide flat ass, and it bunched up in the crotch so badly I had to adjust myself. I then looked about the room. I think it was supposed to be meant for one-on-one doctor-patient meetings. Shrink central. One odd thing I noticed was that there was a map of the United States on the wall . . . but it wasn’t made out of borders or colors or anything. Each state was defined by the letters of its own name. Except Rhode Island. They had to settle for the tiniest RI I’ve ever seen.
And then a young man walked into the room with . . . I’m not sure what it’s called. But we’ve all seen it. Well, those of us who go to doctors have, anyway. Every nurse wheels it in when they have you take a seat in the doctor’s office. This guy introduced himself as he took my temperature, my heart rate and my blood pressure with his wheelie thing. To pass the time, he asked questions. One was: “Where are you from?”
“Elmhurst,” I said.
“Really? I went to school there. Elmhurst College.”
“Oh yeah? Me, too. Class of 2000.”
He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I just graduated. I don’t know if you heard it, but they’re calling themselves Elmhurst University now.”
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| Whoo-boy. |
“I’d heard that.” In fact, the university had sent me countless emails letting me know. And I’ve seen street signs around town showing very clearly where the word “college” had been replaced with “university.” It was almost laughable.
After he took my vitals, he asked me to take my clothes off. I thought it was a reasonable request, so I just started getting naked. He felt weird about it, though. Maybe it was his first day. I don’t know. But he needed to explain himself.
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| "Do you like gladiator movies?" |
“I just need to check you over for injuries.”
“Understood.” I was almost completely naked before he finished the sentence.
“Please spread your legs and hold your arms out to the side.”
I did so. It made me feel like the time I took my car in to a body shop due to an accident. (It was me versus a high curb. No one got hurt except the car. I, uh, well, you know when you get a sneeze that turns into a double sneeze by surprise? That’s what happened to me, and I twisted the wheel into the curb by mistake.) When you do this, a guy goes around your car and marks off even the slightest scratch that clearly wasn’t part of the accident. This is so they can say with certainty, upon return of your vehicle, that it came in with that scratch. So I figure it was the same philosophy.
His glance was a lot more cursory than these guys. “Cool. No scars.”
He wrote this quickly, and before I could retort, as I have a lot of scars, he left the room. I understand missing some, like the ones on my knuckles from the time I punched a dude who hit his girlfriend, made by his freshly broken teeth. They’re small, though. And I have a huge scar under the hair on my head, but my hair is thick, and he couldn’t have seen it. There is a huge scar on my left forearm, though. It’s clear as day. There are a bunch of little scars on my left hand, but there is one big one on the wrist. Not from a suicide attempt, if that’s what you’re thinking (and considering this account so far, I wouldn’t blame you). I put my hand through a glass door once. My first stepmother was on the other side, pretending to be the Incredible Hulk and she was going to get me, so I pushed my hand against the glass door to keep her back. Whoops.
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| "My body is a roadmap of pain." |
And those are not my only scars. I have a lot more. We’d be here all day if I continued. And then there is the fact that I am missing a fucking toe on my right foot. This guy had to be in a hurry or very embarrassed to find himself looking at a naked middle-aged man to miss that one.
I got dressed and sat back down, waiting. And then the next guy came in. The doctor. And wow. This fuckin’ guy . . .
TO BE CONTINUED!
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| Yeah, this is the actual Spader quote. In my defense I was high last night, all right? |
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