Once again sleep evaded me for the most part. But I woke up for breakfast. I was groggy as all hell, but I forced myself to get my tray. On the way, one of the other patients was flipping out at the nurse station. “I need you to let me out of here!” he screamed. “My baby momma has to go to work, and no one’s gonna watch my kids! I have to be there!” He went on in the same vein for a while, and then he started punching the wall over and over.
Clifton Collins, Jr., came by to talk the guy down. For a moment it looked like he’d have to use force this time. The patient must have known what would come next, so he walked away, muttering under his breath.
For the first time I made it to the first group session of the morning. It turned out to be more of a briefing than therapy. Clifton Collins, Jr., led the session and named those who were going home that day. Then there would be a couple more coming in. He said that we still had enough beds so that we wouldn’t have to share rooms at this time. And then he had us fill out a worksheet. I learned that this was part of every morning session. It was a lot like the one I’d filled out with the social worker the day before. A lot of people struggled with theirs, but I knew what they wanted to hear. Even better, the stuff they wanted to hear? I actually believed in it. I told the truth. I handed my paper in and went back to my room.
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| I've always dug this image from Natural Born Killers. |
Not too long after that a social worker came to my room and told me to go down to the nurses’ station. I asked her why. She said we were under a tornado warning, and that was the sturdiest part of the building. Now that she mentioned it, I’d heard a storm outside. Lots of wind and rain. Not much thunder, but every once in a while I caught a flash of lightning.
I followed her down, and everyone else was already there. Most were standing, but a few were sitting on the floor. As I have a bad left foot, I followed their example and sat, leaning my back to the wall. The others constantly questioned the nurses. Here are the common ones. “Will I still get to make my call?” Because this was during phone hours. “Are we still getting lunch?” I couldn’t help but notice that no one asked about afternoon group. “When is this going to be over?” As if the nurses were gods.
All the while the storm got louder and louder. Even though we were very deep into the building, the sound penetrated to us. We could hear rain striking the building above us even though there were two floors above us. There were no windows here, so we didn’t get to see lightning, but the thunder was nearly deafening. But it let up, and when the nurses got the OK they let us go about our business.
Later, at lunch, we ate we watched the news. It turned out that we actually did have a tornado touch down close to us. It touched down in Elmhurst, where I live. They’d changed phone time due to the storm, and it was a bit late for me to make my request, but when I told them that the tornado touched down in my town and that I wanted to see if my family was OK, they let me use the phone. When they put the phones on the wall, we all stood in line and waited for our names to be called. When I got my turn, I called home. Busy signal. Fuck.
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| The song in question. |
I thought about it the rest of the day. I barely paid attention to anything, not even the books I was reading, and it’s hard to distract me from reading. When it came time for evening group, I barely paid attention. But the major points stayed with me. The woman who ran it started out by admitting her own alcoholism and described things like waking up in ditches with her panties around her ankles. Waking up on various floors. The usual alcoholic stories. A lot of heads nodded in the room with understanding. She knew most were here because they were addicts and not because they were crazy. But she had her mental illness lesson ready. We listened to a Matchbox 20 song about Rob Thomas and his mental illnesses. We talked about what each lyric meant. I had other things on my mind, and I didn’t really identify with anything in the song. A lot of it depended on someone being paranoid and thinking that everyone is looking at him and judging him or were laughing at him. I never suffered from that. For the most part I don’t care what others think about me because they’re strangers. So what? But I do care what my friends think of me because they do matter.
Anyway, we got through this, and I went back to my room. A nurse then asked for me to follow her to the nurse station. I apparently had a phone call. There was one on the wall, and I waited for them to transfer the call over. It was Grandma. Everything was OK. The neighborhood was trashed, but there was no serious damage and no loss of life. That eased my anxiety a bit. We talked for a little while longer, and then she let me go. After that I was able to read my books again.
And then I tried to sleep again with the usual result.
The next morning started with one of the patients getting too riled up. Clifton Collins, Jr., had the day off, so someone else had to deal with this guy. Someone with considerably less patience.
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| Thankfully not this guy. |
I don’t know what the fuck this patient was going on about, but he was jumping around and kicking and punching walls and screaming and cursing in a constant stream. He was a bundle of energy, but in all of that I heard him talking about how this place sucked and he had to get out. I get you, man. But this isn’t the way. Low profile, Ritchie. Keep quiet, don’t be violent, smile your way through the shit sandwich and did I say low profile?
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| Sorry, but I warned you. |
This guy made so much sound I figured they were going to use a cattle prod on him. The security guy made a cursory attempt to talk him down, but I could tell he did it just because the rules required it. Finally, after listening to them yell at each other for a while, two more guards came and grabbed the dude. They subdued him and strapped him to a vertical gurney. They all but put the Hannibal Lecter mask on him. I don’t know if they also sedated him, but he was quiet as they rolled him away. I later learned that they don’t sedate anyone invasively, and I didn’t think he would voluntarily swallow a pill.
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| Hello, Clarice. |
Anyway, good morning.
After breakfast and group, a social worker took me aside into a room that is usually locked. It’s a smaller version of the common room, but it had another TV and I thought I saw some boardgames under it. We sat down and went through the usual. I think she was looking for any tendencies I might share with the other patients that might make me a problem. I think she also wanted to gauge where I currently stood on killing myself. She seemed satisfied with my attitude.
Since it was Monday, I decided to request my five day so I could get away from this rotten place. I think what really pushed me toward this was when I overheard another dick waving contest about who had the cooler bullet scars. I requested the paperwork, and the nurses presented me with a clipboard and a golf pencil. It was quick. I more or less had to check off boxes and then sign at the bottom.
One nurse said to the other, the one who gave me the clipboard, “I’ll take it.”
I picked up the clipboard to politely hand it to the requesting nurse. She said, “Put down that clipboard now!”
It startled me and confused me. But I put the clipboard down, and the other nurse took it. It turned out that two weeks before I arrived a patient took a clipboard and beat someone’s head in with the hard corners. Yikes.
And then they said that my five-day begins tomorrow. Shit, if I’d known that I would have requested it on Sunday, if they would have allowed that. Now that I think on it, maybe they wouldn’t have. Their weird rules make no sense, really. But I’ll play by them if it meant that I got my ass out of there.
So I read and wrote until lunch, and then we had group. Thinking back, I only remember the morning and evening groups. This one after lunch, though, I remember pretty well. We were given these worksheets which were supposed to help us with coming up with goals and methods to reach them. I have never had a problem with that. I know exactly what I want in the world, and I know how I’m likely to get there. Sometimes I’m wrong about that second half, but I usually have something else in place to help.
We were all done, and we were doing the part where, if so desired, the patients could share what they’d written. I volunteered, and a lot of my goals involved writing, and it came up again that I was a published author.
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| Spotted Horse cann . . . ah, you know the rest. |
A few others shared, and while one was talking, another patient burst into the room and shouted, “FUCK!” This was the guy who got shot six times and did twenty-seven years in prison. He went directly to Joker and said, “These motherfucking lawyers. I fuckin’ swear. I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do with this guy.”
The woman leading the session told him that we were in the middle of group. He apologized and sat with Joker. The session continued for maybe a minute before this guy said, “You won’t believe what my fucking lawyer told me. He said that I can’t get out of here because no other place will take me!”
He was chided again, and he remained quiet through the rest of the session. The very second the session was over, he turned to Joker and continued on his rant about being stuck here. I felt for him, I really did. You do almost three decades in prison for a crime where you didn’t even kill someone, that you actually got shot six times over, and you’re still not done paying your debt to society? That’s crazy to me. Personally, I think getting shot six times and surviving is enough punishment, but to put on a good show, give him ten behind bars with possibility of parole after five. If he behaves, get him out sooner. Not to a fucking psych ward, but out on the streets where he can have a chance of a life. But I’m not in charge, so fuck it. Imagine that, after all he went through, he can’t be released from this psych ward because no other psych ward would take him. Sure, he had anger problems, but who the fuck doesn’t?
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| Yeah, these fucking pieces of shit. |
As I’m writing this, white supremacists are charging the US Capitol with guns, and they’re tearing the place apart. Two have been shot so far, one of them dead. Those are angry motherfuckers. And everyone opposing them, including me, are angry as all fuck. This is an angry world.
Rant over. For now.
The rest of the day was business as usual. Some crazy shit that I’d just be repeating again. Dinner and group (this one not so interesting). Reading, writing, lack of sleep.
Remember the guy who had to be subdued? I’m fairly certain he’s bipolar. It turns out that he had the room across the hall from mine. The next morning he was in the depressive side of his illness. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. I can’t tell you how many social workers came by to talk to him. Once, on the way to the water fountain, I glanced into his room. All I could see was his afro above the blankets. They sent a shrink to talk to him, and he got nothing.
After that the shrink came into my room and wanted to talk. He received my request for a five day, and he wanted to talk about it. I told him what I told everyone so far. I didn’t think I belonged there. My suicide attempt had been stupid, and I’d never try it again. So on and so forth. He took notes and said he’d get back to me.
Between breakfast and lunch one of the patients took me aside. He’d been in both group sessions in which me being a published author came up. He told me that he had a great idea for a book, but he didn’t know how to write it. He assured me that he knew how to write and write well, maybe even better than me because he was able to write his own defense in court and get placed here instead of in prison. So he wanted me to write his book and get it published under very specific needs for the physical book itself. He assured me that I’d get a ton of money out of this, that he would share it all down the middle. A lot of the things he wanted the book to be like, physically, I’m pretty sure only the Big Two could do. There were no options for them at Amazon or Lulu. As for the book itself, I’m not going to say much about it. It’s actually a very good idea. I had never heard anyone else come up with this. I’m writing this for myself and not for publication, but on the off chance someone else reads this, I’m going to not mention what the idea is.
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| No shit. He really said that. |
This guy told me before he was here he was in charge of the biggest carwash/detailing company in Chicago, that his customers were A-list celebrities. He said that if he had his phone, he could show me their contact info. He named Michael Jordan among them. I don’t know if any of that is true. I’ve heard similar claims before, but if it was, indeed, true, I hope things worked out for him.
As lunch came closer, we went on lockdown. No alarm or anything went off. Our half of the corridor was suddenly locked, and there was a guard there to make sure no one entered or left. I didn’t care all that much, but as the clock inched closer to noon, lunch became a major concern for the others. They got no answers to their questions. So they bullshitted for a while about what might be going on. To this day, I have no idea what that was about. I figured another patient on the psych ward became a problem that had to be dealt with. If so, it was probably a big deal considering they didn’t lock us down when they dealt with the other guy they had to strap to the Lecter gurney.
Eventually they unlocked the doors, and lunch was late. Naturally, everyone complained. I guess you had to find your camaraderie where you could on the psych ward. The day was spent, more or less, reading and writing between meals and group and several social workers that continued to interview me regarding my five day. These guys did nothing half-assed. They went full to double ass.
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| . . . on Monday. |
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