“Craig! Where are you?! I just—you just woke me up and you aren’t in bed! Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you at Aaron’s?”
“Uh …” I suck air through my teeth. “No, Mom. I’m not at Aaron’s.”
“Where are you?”
“I, uh … I really freaked out last night, and I was feeling really bad, and I, um, I checked myself into Argenon Hospital.”
“Oh, my goodness.” She stops, hitches her breath. I hear her sit down, exhale. “You … are you okay?”
“Well, I mean—I wanted to kill myself.”
“Oh, Craig.” There’s no crying, but I hear her put her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No! I’m sorry. I was sleeping! I didn’t know!”
“Please, Mom, how could you know?”
“I knew you were bad, but I didn’t realize. What did you do? How did you get there?”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t do anything. I used your book.”
“What, the Bible?”
“No, your How to Deal with the Loss of a Love book.”
“Survive. How to Survive the Loss of a Love. Wonderful book.”
“It recommended calling the suicide hotline number in there, and I did.”
“Is that this sheet of paper by the phone?”
“Yeah, you can throw that away. They said, you know … if I was feeling like I was in an emergency, I should come to the emergency room, and I put on my shoes and came here.”
“Oh, Craig, so you didn’t do anything to yourself?” She pauses.
“No, I checked myself in.”
I hear her breath catch and I think, in my house a few blocks away, her hand is on her chest. “I am so proud of you.”
“You are?”
“This is the bravest thing you’ve ever done.”
“I. . . thank you.”
“This is the most life-affirming thing you’ve ever done. You made the right decision. I love you. You’re my only son and I love you. Please remember.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
“I thought I was a bad mother, but I’m a good mother if I taught you how to handle yourself. You had the tools to know what to do. That is so important. And they’re going to be great over there; it’s an excellent hospital. I’m coming right down—you want me to bring your dad?”
“I don’t know. It might be good to just have as few people as possible, if possible.”
“Where are you now?”
“In the emergency room. They want you to sign some forms.”
“Where are they taking you?”
“To talk with this doctor, Dr. Mahmoud.”
“And how are you feeling?”
“I don’t know. Like the whole thing is unreal. I didn’t really get any sleep last night.”
“Oh, Craig—if I had known… I didn’t know …”
I smile. “I love you, Mom. I have to go.” Chris is looking at me.
“I love you. I’m so proud of you.”
I hang up. My mom seems happier about me getting into the hospital than she was about me getting into high school.
I turn to Chris and notice that the room next to him, Room 21, is now occupied. A black guy is in there, sitting up on a stretcher. He’s bald, but not shaved-head bald—old bald with thin white hairs in a halo around him. His face is unshaven; his arms lie on his legs at cross-purposes. He’s skinny, in sweatpants and a white T-shirt covered, from the neck down, with an unidentifiable dark stain. He turns his head toward the wall and I see a scar running from his ear down to his neck. Then he turns back to me. The only thing you can say for him is that he has all his teeth, and they’re white, and he’s smiling.
I slink back into Room 22 and return to watching the guy with the dreads. He’s not writhing anymore; apparently the nurse gave him what he needed, because he’s sitting up, eyes closed, pants rolled up to his knee, scratching everything—his lower leg, chest, face—mumbling and swaying. His scratches are light and don’t seem intended to actually relieve any sort of itch. He rocks back and forth at a slow rhythm that fits in with the beeps, and opens his eyes about a quarter of the way every minute.
Maybe that should be me. If I were on drugs that good, maybe I wouldn’t have time to get depressed. It’s heroin, right? That’s what I need: some heroin.
But I reconsider. First of all, it’d be pretty tough to ask my friends: Hey, who knows where I can get heroin? They’d think it was a joke. Plus it has the worst nicknames: “horse,” right? How could I ask for “horse” with a straight face? And, if I were doing heroin, then I’d be a depressed teenager on heroin. I didn’t need to be that cliché.
“Want some breakfast?” Chris asks, and before I can say no, one of the sad yellow trays is pushed in at me. The tray has a half pint of what appears to be oatmeal, a hardboiled egg squished into a lidded Styrofoam container, a coffee (I can tell, because the lid is stained with coffee), a foil-topped cuplet of orange juice, and a piece of wheat bread individually sealed from the elements. Also a fork, spoon, knife, salt, pepper, sugar. It disgusts me. I have no interest in any of it. But they might be monitoring me, so I open the bread and force myself to eat it strip by strip, chasing it with orange juice. I ask one of the nurses for a tea and she brings me another coffee. I sniff the coffee but it smells pretty dangerous, so, just to annoy him, I offer some to Chris.
“Got my own,” he says, and holds up a popular worldwide brand of coffee. It’s strange to see brand names in the hospital.
As Chris yaks on his cell phone (I’d like to know what company gives you service in here; they could like, use it on a commercial: a guy behind padded walls, “Can you hear me now?"), Dr. Data comes back with forms for me to sign about my age and residence. She also brings forms to the older man next to me, the one in Room 21.
“How’re you doing, Jimmy?” she asks in there. She has to talk very loud.
“I toldja: it come to ya!” he yells back in a succinct Southern voice.
She makes a tsk tsk noise. “How’d you get back in here, Jimmy? We didn’t think we would see you for a long time.”
“I, I, I woke up, and the bed was on fire.”
It’s pretty clear at this point that Mom is going to be late. She’s probably trying to pack me an activity bag. I should really get some sleep. I crash on the stretcher with my hoodie draped dejectedly over my head, but there are way too many thoughts in my brain. What am I going to do? It’s starting to hit me under there. I’m in the hospital. I’m supposed to do stuff tonight. There’s a party—a big one—at Aaron’s house. Am I going to be able to go? And if I don’t go, what will I say? And what’s the alternative? Will I stay home and try to work but not be able to and end up with another sleepless night? I can’t have another sleepless night.
How do you know when you’ve hit bottom? Real bottom involves being on the street, I think, not in a hospital. But the Cycling is starting and I can’t deal with it and it feels like bottom. I sit up, throw the hoodie off.
“Can I use the bathroom?” I ask Chris.
He leads me past the chatty Hispanic patients to a chrome-and-tile bathroom that’s probably seen some bad action. He stays outside. I look around and muse at how I would kill myself in here if I really needed to—I’d have to crush my head in the toilet seat. Ouch. I haven’t even seen that in a horror movie. I look at the toilet and decide to stand. I’m not going to sit down like the world’s beaten pup anymore. I stand, push hard, wash my hands, and step out.
“Wow, that was quick,” says Chris.
We pass Jimmy in Room 21 on my way back. His hands are still crossed in his lap as Dr. Data tries to ask him questions.
“I tell you once: it the truth. You play that number, that number will come to you!”
The guy with the dreads is still tripping out.
I lie down. A nurse comes with a cart that threatens to have more food on it. She knocks—as if there were a door—and says she
has to take my heart rate. This involves the placement, all over my body, of sticky tabs attached to wires. They don’t hurt; I have a feeling they will when they come off, though. I turn to the cart as she puts them on, and a metal arm like a record needle is reading out my pulses. I watch it: a spike, then a flatter spike, then a dip and a repeat. That’s you. That’s your heart.
“All right,” the nurse says. She pulls the tabs off my skin. They don’t hurt—the adhesive is kind and soft. My tabs hang off the cart like a tangle of roots as it rolls away. I lie doing nothing for a second, then put my shirt back on, then my hoodie. How long have I been here? I open my phone. Two-and-a-half hours.
“Mr. Gilner?”
A man in a dark suit and a gray tie stands at the entrance to my room. He almost completely occupies it; he’s large and barrel-shaped with a stately, pockmarked face, gray hair, big eyebrows, and a firm handshake.
“I am Dr. Mahmoud, yes? You are feeling how? Why are you here?”
I give him the rap.
“Are your parents here?”
“Urn, I called them but. . .”
“Here, okay, thanks!” I hear Mom’s voice out in the ER. I put my head in my hands.
“He’s here? Twenty-two?”
Dr. Mahmoud steps aside, and there’s Mom, trailed by the nurse who let me in, with an overstuffed tote bag on her left arm and Jordan in her right.
“Miss!” the nurse is yelling. “You really can’t have dogs in here!”
“What dog?” Mom asks, slipping Jordan into the tote bag. He pokes his head up at me and barks, then dips down.
Everyone in the ER is silent all of a sudden. Even the cracked-out guy with dreads looks at my mom. Chris approaches her; the nurse who let me in points to me—
“Wait a second,” says Dr. Mahmoud. “Mrs. Gilner?”
“Yes? Craig! Oh my gosh!”
Everyone lets her into Room 22. They fan out in a three-person semicircle as she hugs me tight, the kind of hug she used to give me when I was a five-year-old, complete with swaying. Jordan grrrs at me.
“He had to come; he was making a fuss. I love you so much,” Mom whispers into my ear, hot and full of spittle.
“I know.” I hold her back.
“Mrs. Gilner—”
“She really needs to leave with the dog,” the nurse says.
“She has a dog? Dogs are against policy,” Chris says.
“Just one second,” Dr. Mahmoud says.
We all look at him.
“All right, Mrs. Gilner, since you’re here, your son has checked himself in due to suicidal ideation and acute depression, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“He was on his Zoloft but he stopped taking it.”
“You did?” Mom turns to me.
“I thought I was better.” I shrug.
“Stubborn like your father. Yes, Doctor?”
“Well, the next question is for Craig. Craig, would you like to be admitted?”
Admitted. That probably means to the special room where I get to talk with Dr. Mahmoud. A quick visit and then I’m gone. It’ll give me the feeling that I’ve accomplished something, that I haven’t just languished in the ER.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good decision,” Mom says.
“Mrs. Gilner, you have to sign off for Craig on that decision,” the doctor says. He swivels his clip-board, which he had been holding in front of me, toward her. There’s a terrible amount of very small writing on the top half of the page and even more on the bottom half; in the middle, an equator of sorts marks where you’re supposed to sign.
“There is one thing,” the doctor says. “Right now the hospital is undergoing renovations and we’re very tight for space, so your son will be admitted with the adults.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“He will be admitted along with our adult patients, not with the teenagers alone.”
Oh, so I’ll be waiting with old people to see Dr. Mahmoud? “That isn’t a problem,” I say.
“Good.” The doctor smiles.
“Will he be safe?” Mom asks.
“Absolutely. We have the best care in Brooklyn here, Mrs. Gilner. The renovations are only a temporary situation.”
“All right. Craig, you’re okay with that?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Mom puts her loopy indecipherable signature on the sheet.
“Great. We’ll get everything ready for you, Craig,” Dr. Mahmoud says. “You’re going to feel a lot better.”
“Okay,” I shake his hand. He turns and heads out, a large suit greeting patients left and right in the ER.
The nurse touches Mom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, you really have to go with the dog, ma’am.”
“Can I give my son a bag of clothes?”
“What am I going to need clothes for?” I ask. I look in the bag: not only are there clothes, and not only are they the clothes I hate, but Jordan is sitting on them.
“If you want to bring him items, you can bring them to the hospital later in the day,” the nurse answers.
“Where is he going to be?” Mom asks, like I’m not there.
“In Six North,” the nurse answers. “Just ask for him. Come on.”
“I love you, Craig.”
“Bye, Mom.”
A quick hug, and she’s on her way—Chris watches, with his hands on his hips. I’m really curious about his efficacy as a hospital security guard.
“What’s Six North?” I ask him.
“Ah, uh, we’re not supposed to be talking,” he says, and sits back down with his paper. I look out the door for some news, but it’s all the same. You know, this is a crappy place to be. I wish I wasn’t depressed so I didn’t have to be here.
“Mr. Gilner?” someone finally asks. A new guy walks up to the door, a thin, short-bearded, older hippie-looking guy—except without the long hair— with glasses. He’s not wearing a white robe or a blue robe or a cop uniform. He’s wearing jeans, a blue-collared shirt, and what appears to be a leather vest.
“I’m Smitty. We’re ready to take you up now.”
“There’re two!” a doctor says as she passes by. “Twenty-one and twenty-two.”
“Well, I don’t have papers for Mr. Twenty-One.” Smitty shakes his head. “So I’m going to be taking up Mr. Gilner, and I’ll be back down, all right? Hey, is that Jimmy!”
“He’s back” the doctor moans.
“Hey, it’s Saturday, baby. Everything is going to be all right. Mr. Gilner?” He turns to me.
“Uh, yeah.”
“You ready to get out of this crazy place?”
“Am I going to see Dr. Mahmoud?”
“Sure. Later in the day.”
“You got this one, Smitty?” Chris asks.
“I don’t think you’re going to give me any trouble, are you, Mr. Gilner?”
“Um, no.”
“Okay, do you have your stuff?”
I check my bracelets, my keys, my phone, my wallet. “Yep!”
“Let’s walk.”
I hop off the stretcher, nod at Chris, and follow Smitty at his slow pace through the ER. We open a door near the bathroom and pierce a seal into an entirely different biome of the hospital—red brick, indoor trees, posters of notable doctors who practiced there. Smitty leads me through an atrium to a bank of elevators.
He hits the up button, stands by me, and nods. I notice a plaque between the two elevators, showing us what’s on each floor.
4 - Pediatrics.
5 - Delivery.
6 - Adult Psychiatric.
Oh, he’ll be up in Six North.
“Going to adult psychiatric, huh?” I ask Smitty.
“Well"—he looks at me—"you’re not quite old enough for geriatric psychiatric.” And he smiles.
The elevator dings; we get in and turn around, each taking a corner. Smitty leads me left when we get to six. I pass a poster with a chubby Hispanic man in blue robes holding his hand over his mouth: SHHHHHHHH!
HEALING IN PROGRESS. Then Smitty passes some kind of card in front of two double doors, and the doors open and we walk through them.
It’s an empty hallway, wide enough for a grown man to lie across with his arms stretched up. At the end are two big windows and a collection of couches. To the right is a small office with a glass window that has inch-wide squares of thin wire embedded in it; inside, nurses sit at computers. Just beyond the office, another hall branches off to the right. I follow Smitty forward, and when we come to the crossroads of the two halls, I glance down the one to my right.
A man stands there, leaning on the banisters that line the hall even though there are no steps. The man is short and stocky; he has bugged-out eyes and a squashed face and an almost-but-not-quite harelip. There’s fuzz coming out of his neck and a big swath of black hair on his little head. He looks at me with homeless-person eyes, like I just popped out of a manhole and offered him valuable paper clips from the moon.
Oh my God, it hits. I’m in the mental ward.
nineteen
“Come this way, we’re going to take your vitals,” Smitty says, seating me in the small office. He takes my blood pressure off a rolling cart and my pulse with delicate fingers. He writes down on a sheet in front of him: 120/80.
“One-twenty-over-eighty, that’s dead normal, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Smitty smiles. “But we prefer live normals.” He wraps up the blood pressure gauge. “Stay right here, we’ll send a nurse in to talk to you.”
“A nurse? What are you?”
“I’m one of the daytime directors on the floor.”
“And what is this floor, exactly … ?”
“It’s a short-term facility for adult psychiatric.”
“So like, a mental ward?”
“Not a ward, a hospital. Nurse’ll answer any questions.” He steps out of the office, leaving me with a form: name, address, Social Security number. Then—wait—I’ve seen this before! It’s the questions from Dr. Barney’s office:
Feeling that you are unable to cope with daily life. 1) Never, 2) Some days, 3) Nearly every day, 4) All the time.
What the hell, I’m in the hospital; I put 4’s down the line—there are about twenty prompts—except for the lines about self-mutilation, drinking, and drug use (I am not putting anything about pot, that’s just the rule, told to me by Aaron—you don’t ever, ever admit to smoking pot, not to doctors, not to teachers, not to anyone in authority no matter how much you trust them; they can always report you to the FBI Pot-Smoking List). As I’m getting done, a squat black nurse with a kind wide smile and tightly braided hair steps in. She introduces herself with a thick West Indian accent.