Chapter 6: Weekend Visitors

I grew tired of correcting all the doctors and therapists when they insisted I told the ER doctor I was "going to crash my car."  Instead, I began to talk - and talk and talk and talk.  I felt like I'd been silent for so long, just carrying all that pain and dark around inside of me, not wanting to "burden" anyone else with it.  So I let it out - to my shrink, my assigned therapist, even bits and pieces to my fellow inmates and during group sessions.  I talked about my feelings of shame and guilt and anger and devastation and hopelessness, and how often they all occurred at once.  I realized I may as well make the best of my time there, focus on what I needed to in the first place - getting better for me.

I got to speak with my son by phone, but was adamant that he not come to the facility.  He didn't need to see that.  He tried to put the dog on the phone to say hi.  *sigh* 

Friday was relatively uneventful, aside from stomping the guys in a few rousing games of Scrabble and being allowed to shave my legs (with a female nurse watching). 

Amy:  Can we shave our bikini line?
Nurse:  I'd rather you didn't.

But I called it on Friday evening - "Watch," I told Arnold. "Watch the freaks come out this weekend - everyone is crazy, but on the weekend people lose their goddamn minds."  And my prediction blessedly came true - we began to see more insanity in the next two days than we had all week.

Saturday:

One creeptastic new guy in a nuthouse tuxedo asked everyone to call him "Shout".  Shout, like the verb or the stain remover or the Isley Brothers song.  Shout.  He looked like Bobcat Goldthwait and swaggered around like Johnny Bravo - chest and arms puffed out, neck pulled way back, chin to his throat.  Shout.  Okay then (I promise this is relevant later on).

To get to the cafeteria (where I was now allowed to go eat, huzzah) we had to walk through the courtyard and be escorted across the campus.  The techs began calling role call before we left the ward to make things easier.  One girl in a nuthouse tuxedo who just got there (like 30 minutes prior) decided she wanted to go to dinner with everyone and shoved her way past the door.  The nurse informed her that she'd have to get cleared by the doctor before going to dinner, and her reaction was less than pleasant.  Ignoring her, she walked out into the courtyard, circling the gazebo, fists clenched and lips pursed so tightly I thought she was going to vomit diamonds.  Everyone groaned as the line came to a halt while the techs tried to coax her back inside, like a feral cat.

They re-routed us on the other side of the gazebo so we could avoid running into the tiny temper tantrum, but "Mattie" was still pacing furiously, and now started twitching her fingers back and forth like she was doing air-calculations for NASA or some shit.  We're all standing around baking in the sun, waiting to go to dinner, but they can't open the gate because of the potential escapee.  And then the PA system informed us we'd probably be eating cold pasta: "Attention.  Attention.  Code Gray, North Wing - Code Gray, North Wing."

Many pairs of eyes rolled and many a "here we go" was uttered.  A larger male nurse appeared in an attempt to corral the wild stallion, who was on the verge of a full-fledged fit at this point.  She kept trying to rejoin the line patiently waiting and cleared for cafeteria, and after a solid 10-15 minutes of being really nice about it, force was deemed necessary.  She was snatched up by two techs and physically dragged back into the building, her paper scrubs sliding down around her knees as they did so.

We returned from dinner and I chatted with my other roommate about our kids and anime, because why not.  When in walks - you guessed it - Mattie, looking just as pissed off as ever.  It's like having a bear wander into your campsite, or a T-Rex.  We stayed absolutely still and silent, watching her with only our eyes.  Now, patients aren't allowed in other patients rooms, except for, like, the leg-shaving thing which was monitored and done out of convenience.  So we're already a little wary, and her erratic behavior at dinner didn't put us at ease at all.  She asked us when meds were, we said later that night, she kind of nodded and we held our breath as she ever so slowly made her own way out, like a bug that gets trapped in the car until you roll down the window.  It wouldn't be my final encounter with her that day...

Strangely enough, this was not the person we referred to as Running Man.  That was Mary.  She'd get so amped up that her knees would start bouncing up and down and she'd run in place.  John would stand next to her and race her in place.  I still don't know who won, but he loved to mess with her since she was such a PITA and took about 20 minutes at the med window every night, arguing with the techs about the meds she would/wouldn't take because of the conspiracies against her and the HIPAA-violating medical students.  It was so mean, but some of us started talking about what classes we were taking.