GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #850: A MYSTERY SOLVED

 No, it's not the Mystery of John Bruni's Missing Blood. That would be a nice answer to have. This other mystery I solved a few months back, but I'm getting caught up now. No, I'm talking about a mystery that plagued me at the psych ward.

Do you remember when I was writing about my experiences there, and I was being admitted by an asshole who looked like Jerry from Parks and Rec?

He looked like Jerry so much I went on IMDB to get Jerry's real name.
Wasn't him.

At one point he's going over my list of medications, and I apparently missed one. He got pissed off at me and yelled for a while about me not disclosing my benzo use to him. Benzos? I never really got into those, so him insisting that I was on them baffled me. Him yelling at me made me angry, but you never EVER want to get angry at someone when you're a patient in the psych ward. Since I had plans to leave there as soon as humanly possible, I kept quiet.

He told me he'd looked at my blood, and I had benzos in my blood stream. Which should have been impossible. Unless someone slipped me something, I had no idea how the benzo got in my system.

Now I know how it happened. I was given a benzo at the regular hospital before they sent me to the psych ward. I didn't know at the time that Ativan was a benzo, and they gave it to me to prevent me from going into alcohol withdrawal.

It reminds me of the time I was in the ER at a shift change, and the new doctor came into my room to demand why I had morphine in my system. "Uh . . . because the last doctor gave it to me?"

That solves that mystery. And we're at 850, which means I'm caught up on GF! Back to my regularly scheduled madness on Monday!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #394: TALES FROM THE PSYCH WARD 7

After a while, when everyone was supposed to be asleep or trying, I went to the nurses station and requested Zofran, which I had a prescription for. They told me the pharmacy was closed, and when it was closed it was closed. End of discussion. But they would call the doctor and see what they could do. 

About an hour later a nurse came by and said the doctor said it was OK for her to give me Tums. She gave me four of them. I took the first and hoped to fuck that would be good enough to keep my insides where they belonged. 

In no time I went through the rest, and while it offered a slight respite my wretched guts turned on me. My mouth went dry no matter how much water I drank. I felt it at the back of my throat. It would happen very soon. I asked for permission to use the bathroom, which I was granted. 

An exaggeration, but not by much.

I held it back as long as I could to give the nurse time to walk back to the station. And then I puked as quietly as I could into the toilet. Which is very hard, by the way. When I puke, there is no mistaking it. I am a loud motherfucker. But I tried and succeeded. 

That night I got no sleep because I spent it puking my guts out over and over again. I tried to make the intervals between puke sessions as long as possible so they might think I had diarrhea instead of what was really going on. But it kept going, and I skipped breakfast the next day. No one bothered me about it. 

The puking continued through the morning until I finally became exhausted. My guts hurt like hell, but the sickness passed. The pain remained, like a goblin constantly jabbing me with a dagger. So I still might puke again, but probably not. 

It was then that it dawned on me why I constantly went through this shit. It was because the fucking ER doctors lied to me. Or they were stupid and lazy and didn’t know what they were saying. Probably the latter now that I think on it. It was that moment that I realized that ER doctors rely on Occam’s Razor waaaaaaaaaaay too much. The sickness and pain I experience puzzles them at first. As soon as I say I drink more than the average bear, they have this AHA! moment. Of course it’s the alcohol. Alcohol’s bad for you, right? Obviously that’s why you’re sick. 

As it turns out, they were fucking wrong. It wasn’t the alcohol. By this point I’d gone without alcohol for quite a while, and the Librium and Ativan helped get through the withdrawals. I probably could have gotten alcohol if I really needed it. Not everyone who works in these places is scrupulous. I used to bring a friend to her methadone clinic, where she would buy Xanax from the lady who cleans the bathrooms. I could probably have found that equivalent here. But I didn’t. So what caused me to experience this sickness that doctors always blame on my alcoholism? 

Honestly, I fuckin' hate this movie, but I didn't want to post an actual erection here. For now.

Let’s take a look at what happens whenever I get really fucking sick like this. Three things were universal up until this moment. The other two happened, though. The first sign is an overwhelming sense of horniness. When I’m at home I’ll crank it several times a day, and the porn hole I go down gets deeper and deeper. On the psych ward, I got horny, but I didn’t spank it. At least the gowns were big enough to cover any unseemly bulges. But how could getting a boner make me sick? 

Yes, I'm a card-carrying member.

The second sign, the one that was no longer universal, is drunkenness. I will be so fucking lit that I’d wake up drunk off my ass, and all day will be a fog, even if I take some hair of the dog, which would ordinarily clear things right the fuck up. But I was on the psych ward and not drunk. Otherwise, in the ER it seemed very reasonable that it was the booze. But now I knew different. 

Yeah, Thinner hasn't aged well, but it's still decent.

The fault lies with the third sign: lack of hunger. Usually, the last thing I ate tastes better than it ever has any right to be. And then I’m not hungry. It lasts a while, and I feel off. I feel queasy. And then some well-intentioned person says to me, “You gotta eat.” And because I hadn’t figured it out yet, whenever someone said that to me, I did. And I got sick because of it. It was the motherfucking food that did this to me. Every time I ate something when I wasn’t hungry. Every time someone told me, “You gotta eat.” It all leads up to a puking frenzy and lots of abdominal pain. 

The morning passed, and no one had an update on my release. I was deathly afraid that someone had heard me puking over and over again and decided to report it. They probably wanted to hold onto me due to this illness. I still felt rough and pukey, but I was also tired. My sides ached from puking so much. 

Only in my finest dreams . . .

Then, out of the blue, Jerry stopped by my room. “Your ride’s here.” 

Apparently it had been there for a half an hour, and no one thought it was important to tell anyone on my floor. There was a shit-ton I had to do in order to get discharged, and no one explained anything to me. 

Well. Jerry explained it to me. Too late and with his usual angry tone. I had paperwork to rush through. Then they gave me my clothes back. Not the rest of my stuff. Not yet. I wasn’t free yet and thus could not be trusted with my stuff. 

Jerry, as he gave me my clothes, said, “You’ve already stripped your bed down, right?” 

Uh, what? No one told me to do that. 

“You have to hurry! Your ride isn’t gonna wait for you forever!” 

Frantically I went back to my room and before I removed a stitch of clothing I yanked everything I could off that bed. Only then did I close the door to save anyone from accidentally seeing me naked and therefore disgusting them. I had just enough time to get out of the psych ward outfit—the paper pants were split at the crotch, just like all the other pairs I’d worn there, because I’m too tall and these are made for short people—before the door opened, and a nurse stood there. I paused in my naked glory, and then I turned face forward, covering nothing. It had the desired effect. 

Like that, but with more cock.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” He closed the door again. 

I got dressed and rolled all that shit up and went to the end of the corridor, where laundry was supposed to go, and I dropped it in the bin. I went back to my room and took the only things I wanted to take with me: the ER blanket (because I didn’t have a blanket at home), the composition notebook (which had Becoming Human folded into it) and Empire by Gore Vidal. Well, and the books I came in with, obviously. 

By the time I presented myself at the nurses’ station, my ride had been waiting for nearly fifty minutes. “He’s probably gone by now,” Jerry said. The way he said it implied that I was somehow to blame. I thought briefly about punching that fat fuck in the face. Wouldn’t that be fucked up? I hit him at the 11th hour and wind up getting stuck here for longer? Low profile. To the very end. 

This is the last time. Probably.

Jerry escorted me down. The elevator was finished and looking much better. He took me through the lobby and to the front door. We saw my cab was starting to turn around in the parking lot. 

“Hey!” Jerry yelled. He waved his hands. “Hey! You!” 

The cabbie looked at us but decided Jerry was talking to someone else and started to pull away. 

“STOP! YOU! YEAH YOU! I’M TALKING TO YOU! PULL OVER!” 

I couldn’t wait to get Jerry out of my life. I didn’t know it, but my teeth were clenched hard enough to grind. I made myself stop. 

The cabbie got the idea and pulled over to pick me up. Jerry practically shoved me into the back seat and then gave me my bag of stuff. He then shoved a bunch of paperwork into my hand and slammed the door. He turned around and went back inside. What, no goodbye? 

Could have been his twin.

The cabbie looked like an older Omar Sharif. See? I’m not even on the psych ward, and someone is reminding me of someone else. I told him to take me to Elmhurst’s ER. 

He said, “First you must sign this.” He handed me a clipboard with a paper on it. It was to confirm that he did, indeed, pick me up and take me where I needed to go, and that I was not to be charged anything. 

I signed it and handed it back. Only then did we begin our journey down Roosevelt Road. He cursed a lot under his breath. “You know, I could have gotten a couple of other customers in the time it took for you to get down here.” 

“I’m sorry, man,” I said. “They didn’t tell me you were here, and by the time they did, they had a bunch of stuff for me to do before they could let me go.” 

He reasonably accepted my explanation, but he wasn’t happy about it. He cursed out the people who didn’t tell me for most of the rest of the trip. Finally we crossed into Elmhurst and we pulled into the ER parking lot. I directed him to where my car was parked, and I apologized for the hassle of the whole thing. He waved a dismissive hand. I got my shit and got out of the cab. He drove away as I approached my own car, taking the first real free steps I’d taken in what felt like forever. 

I unlocked my car and sat down. It was hot as fuck in there, and I immediately cranked the AC, but goddammit it felt great to be free. Even the sickness and pain in my guts had receded. I felt hungry, which is the first and only sign that I’m going to be OK. 

I would soon sleep in my own bed. I no longer needed to ask for permission to use the bathroom. Oh, I forgot to mention. The showers in those bathrooms blew. There are two immovable nozzles, one above my head, and one at dick level. There is no way to adjust the temperature. It’s cold at first, but then it becomes hotter than the fucking sun. I learned to take very, very short showers. I would finally get to shower in my own bathroom soon. 

And I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted to. Which I planned to do post-bloody-haste. 

A few months later a friend told me that I needed to go to a 90-day rehab or I was going to die. I looked back at my time on the psych ward, and I promised that I would never allow myself to be put in such a situation ever again. The loss of freedom isn’t worth it, especially if most of the people looking after me have no real training. I still think about what would have happened if I hadn’t played by the rules. Would I still be there? 

I fucking well hope not.

Sorry. Force of habit. This is the end. Really.

Keeping a low profile is actually a pretty good way of getting through life. Try it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #393: TALES FROM THE PSYCH WARD 6

Group that night. It was kinda cool. There was a giant whiteboard on the wall, and it was decided that we were all going to work together to create a painting. It would be created in a slightly weird way. First we had to decide what kind of painting it would be. We decided on a scene in nature, presumably because none of us were allowed outside at any time. We then thought of things you might see in nature, and the woman who led this session would write them down on this giant sheet of paper she spread out on the floor. She wrote them as randomly as possible. Each of us would take turns walking around on that sheet of paper while someone else played music. When the music stops, whatever we’re standing on is what we would have to draw. 

Honestly, I never watched this one. It belongs to the generation that came up just after me.

We went counterclockwise, so I was second to last. I desperately wanted “campfire,” and I clenched my teeth any time anyone stepped on it. By the time it was my turn the picture was becoming clearer. Kind of. I forgot who it was that drew a picture of a house from Spongebob, but I remember it was Frank Gallagher who wound up with leaves. So he took a brown marker and scribbled across the bottom of the picture. Why brown? “The leaves are dead.” Fair enough. 

Then I got on the sheet and started walking around. I wanted it to seem reasonable when I got the campfire, so I ranged wide but never far. When the music stopped, I had just stepped forward onto the campfire, but my other foot was still on something else. I forgot what. There was a bit of back and forth about which one should count. It wasn’t an argument. Those are forbidden on the psych ward. It was kind of like when gamers (D&D, CoC, White Wolf gamers, not game controller, grown man screaming obscenities and racial slurs into a mic at a ten year old kind of gamers) trying to figure out what rule applies to a situation or if there even is a rule. They decided that since I’d just stepped on “campfire,” then I would draw a campfire. 

I grabbed first the black marker to draw a bunch of circles for the stones placed around the fire. This puzzled a lot of my fellow patients. I don’t think many of them had actually gone camping before. Or their idea might have been closer to being homeless, which is kinda-sorta camping. Then I took the brown marker and drew the logs and kindling. Red, orange and yellow went into the fire. I stepped back, proud of myself. I got an ovation. 

The next guy finished our picture, and we all discussed what had been illustrated and why and how it made us feel, etc. The usual group thing. Then back to reading, writing and not getting much sleep. 

The next day I spoke with a lot of social workers asking me the same questions. But after breakfast I started feeling off. I don’t know what it was at the time, but by the next day, I would know full well what it was. 

My neighbor across the hallway felt pretty manic that morning. He screamed about how he needed a wheelchair because his feet were all fucked up. He needed it so he could go get his meds. He couldn’t get around without one. And the whole time he was jumping up and down on his supposedly fucked up feet. I suspect he might have been looking for attention. I suspect that further, he wanted to see how far he could push the nurses and social workers. 

Not very far, it turned out. Clifton Collins, Jr., was back on duty, and as soon as my neighbor saw him, he shut his mouth and went back into his room. The depressive part of his illness instantly took over, and we didn’t see much of him that day. 

Oh no! It's the return of this fuckin' guy!

I went to get my meds before breakfast for a change. Only the silent woman stood in front of me in the line. The one who I don’t think knew where she was or maybe not even who she was. And fuck me, Jerry was in the pharmacy today, and he was his usual charming self. The woman held the cup of pills in one hand and a cup of water in the other. She did nothing with either one. 

“You have to take your pills,” Jerry said. 

No response. 

“Take. Your. Pills.” His voice rose with each word. 

Nothing. 

“Goddammit,” he muttered. He pointed at one cup. “Put these in your mouth.” His tone rising still. 

Nothing. 

“PUT THE PILLS IN YOUR MOUTH!” he yelled. 

She looked down, and she did. 

“NOW SWALLOW THEM WITH THE WATER!” 

She looked down again, and once more she followed instructions. 

Jerry stared at her. “Open your mouth.” 

She didn’t. 

“I SAID OPEN YOUR MOUTH!” 

Low profile, Bruni!

Oh man. I had to keep reminding myself about the low profile I intended to keep. When I was a kid, my dad had a phrase. He only ever enforced it twice, and both times I deserved it. He used to say, “You’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.” Jerry was doing just that. Low profile, Bruni. Low profile. 

She opened her mouth, and Jerry shined a mini flashlight in her mouth. “You’re supposed to swallow your pills!” He angrily turned and filled another cup with water. He shoved it into her hands. “Swallow the pills!” 

She drank from the cup. 

“Open your mouth.” 

She did. 

The mini flashlight came out again. Jerry peered into her mouth. He still seemed skeptical. “Lift your tongue.” I wasn’t close enough to see if she did, but I had a pretty good idea she didn’t, due to Jerry saying this: “LIFT YOUR TONGUE!” He peered further. Only then was he satisfied. The flashlight went back in his pocket. “All right, you can go.” 

She left. I wanted to have a few words with Jerry, but I kept quiet. When I got my pills, he looked at me like he was daring me to say something. I just took my meds and got out. 

Later, and by now I’d finished the book about the Bondurants and moved on to Jesse James and Robert Ford, a social worker came into my room and told me I had a call. Weird. I thought maybe it would be Grandma. Even weirder, I didn’t have to go all the way down to the nurses station. They hooked a phone to the wall just outside the half-station that I never saw anyone in until that moment. They transferred the call, and I picked it up. It was my insurance company. 

Now, I’d been out of work since the beginning of the year, and I couldn’t afford insurance. Considering how many times I’d been in the hospital, the administrators, realizing they wouldn’t see a dime from me, signed me up for Medicaid and didn’t tell me. I found out when I got the card in the mail. Yet somehow, for some reason, the psych ward couldn’t figure out what insurance I had. They knew it was BCBS, but they didn’t know which plan. They figured me for PPO, which would not get me a free ride to pick up my car at the ER. But Medicaid is what I had, and it did allow for the free ride. The rep from BCBS called to advise me that they were working with the psych ward on this mix up and assured me that upon my release, which might be sooner than I thought, I would get that free ride. 

Sooner than I thought? This was Wednesday. According to the rules, I was due for release on Monday. Now, the five day doesn’t mean you have to stay the five days. If you’re cleared sooner, you could get out sooner. Suddenly I thought I might get out the next day, and I felt a bit of hope. 

At lunch I didn’t feel hungry, but I ate anyway. And that feeling of being off got bigger. I suddenly feared I knew what was wrong with me. I hoped not, but I knew deep down that it was the return of my stomach problems. I tried to put it out of my head, but I felt bad. I skipped group and rested in bed instead. I tried to close my eyes and nap, but I had no such luck. And worse, more social workers had questions for me. I didn’t feel up to it, but I did my best to muscle through it without betraying how awful I felt. 

Dinner came along, and I really didn’t want to eat. I decided to hide out in my room. And then Clifton Collins, Jr., came along. “Hey John. It’s dinner time. Come on.” 

“No thank you,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” 

“You gotta eat.” 

That’s a phrase that angers me. No, I don’t. First of all, if you eat when you’re not hungry, you’ll feel sick. Also, that’s how you become a fat dude. I only eat when I’m hungry (and sometimes when I’m drunk). But there is more to my anger on this phrase. I’ll get to that later. 

I followed him to the common room and got my tray. I ate, but I didn’t feel very good about it. I skipped group again. I tried to read, but I couldn’t. I tried to write, if only for journal entries, but I had nothing. I just went back to bed and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the storm building up in my guts. 

The doctor came in this time. The shrink, that is. Later I learned he was one of three people qualified to actually work in this place. The other was the nurse who took my blood way back when. The third was Clifton Collins, Jr. 

For the first time, he didn’t have questions for me. This time he had good news and good news only. “I’ve decided to discharge you tomorrow.” 

FREEDOM!

YES! 

He didn’t know when, but he thought it would be in the afternoon. I looked forward to it. But I also knew my guts were churning. I had to keep this information to myself if at all possible. Because I knew soon I would be puking my guts out over and over again, and they might not let me go if they found out.

To be concluded, actually.