Clown Girl - Monica Drake [84]
The nurse picked up the napkin. “Is this yours?” She unfolded it and read it out loud: “EKG = Nazis.” She turned the napkin over and read, “Christ was a Christian clown. Work on tying Madonna.”
“EKG equals Nazis?” the doctor read again. He caught the nurse’s eye.
She turned the napkin sideways and read, “Every clown is Christ.”
“Ah, the heart of the matter,” the doctor said. The matching caterpillars of his eyebrows raised. “A Christ complex. Delusions of grandeur. Persecution.” He nodded slowly. Put his reflex hammer back in the drawer. The nurse tucked the napkin in a folder, then turned away and disappeared behind the curtain.
Here’s what I know now: never let a misunderstanding go unclarified in a hospital, same as in a school, jail, or prison. Never carry a diary with you, not even a day planner if you write notes in it. Don’t say, “Yes, that’s mine,” to any odd scrap of nothing, to what might have been interesting in the free world.
The hospital, it’s a gateway. The path to incarceration.
Your best bet is don’t even write anything down. Ever. Most of all, don’t go near the hospital unless your problem is obvious as a bullet or a broken leg, and don’t go more than once. Otherwise you’ll learn about a two-doctor hold, Doctor Two-Hold, a seventy-two-hour detainment—and seventy-two hours can be longer if it’s late at night or over a weekend.
Two nurses came to escort me down the hall, one on each side. The Fat Ass clung to my waist like a sinker. The boobs were a yoke around my neck. We came to a set of double doors where a sign said L-Ward, in big purple letters above the doors. One nurse pushed a button. With a click the doors swung open. We moved through them. I heard the soft click a second time as the doors locked behind us.
“You’re in a safe place,” a nurse said.
Another, behind a desk, said, “We’ve got a little paperwork. Standard admitting procedure.” They showed me to a small room with windows on three sides. The windows were blocked with cream-colored blinds. “Have a seat.”
There was one chair, the only thing in the room. The Ass barely fit in the curve of the molded orange fiberglass. The admitting nurse handed me a clipboard of paperwork and a purple crayon.
“A crayon?”
“For your own good.” She smiled. “No sharp edges.”
I balanced the paperwork on my knee, used the back of my arm to hold a flopping boob out of the way, and used the crayon to fill in the date, my name, and social security number. “You start with the easy questions, I see.”
The nurse smiled again. “If you need me, press this button.” It was a silver knob on the wall. She backed out of the tiny room, pulled the door closed.
The crayon stuck against the blisters on my palms, and the whole writing kit made for big, sloppy letters. Then came the real questions: True or false. I believe sometimes violence is justified, when a person is asking for it.
I crayoned in, Define ‘asking’?
True or false: The world is against me.
Sometimes?
A dark shape moved just beyond the windows, outside the room. I reached to part the blinds. My hand hit glass before my fingers reached the blinds, like a mime routine. An invisible box. I spread my fingers over the cool window. The blinds were on the outside? I crouched low and tried to squint through the narrow slats. The Pendulous Breasts swung forward as I leaned. I could only see bits. A security uniform. I went back to the questions:
I believe I am a danger to myself