Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [66]
When I got tired, I headed for the day room and my cigarettes. After puffing for an hour, I'd get bored again and resume my walking. I'd walk to the bulletin board and study the notices for five minutes as if they were the most fascinating things on earth. Then I'd walk away, pace some more, and return to the bulletin board for another five minutes as if I were mesmerized by the notices. Then back to the day room for more cigarettes.
Just as I put my tenth butt out, it was time for noon medications, followed by lunch. I swallowed my pills, snarfed down my foot-long hot dog and was back in the day room smoking my after-meal cigarette all in twelve minutes flat.
The afternoons dragged on as if they would never end. Three afternoons a week, I met with my psychiatrist. Because of a hospital rule that doctors couldn't see private patients in the hospital, I couldn't see Dr. Rockland anymore. I didn't like the doctor I was assigned instead. He didn't understand me. I didn't care if I understood him or not. So our sessions were a dreary waste of time.
At 5:00 P.M there were more medications, and my day brightened a bit. For after the late-afternoon medications was dinner, and then by 6:00 I could go to the window, and begin anticipating my parents’ arrival.
When they came, which they did nearly every day, they brought me packs and packs of bubble gum. They brought me chocolate. They brought me sweatshirts and sweatpants in a variety of colors. They brought me little windup toys that I had a passion for. And they brought me themselves, and love and reassurance.
Just after visiting hours, the staff put out snacks. It always seemed a particularly touching gesture. So many of us were aching from our visitors—or absence of them. It seemed like a way of consoling us. “Your visitors have left and gone home,” the snack table seemed to say. “One day, you too will go home.” The snacks served their purpose for a lot of us. It changed the focus from intense to casual. I started in on the cherry Italian ice, moved on to a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, and then packages of Sugar Wafers and Oreos.
At 9:00 P.M., it was time for the last medication of the day. After that, most patients fell almost immediately asleep. Not me. I stayed up until 11:00 so I could pig out on “midnight” snacks. What a pathetic existence, I thought to myself.
The next day was exactly like the one before, including all the same feelings, Voices and overpowering fears. The only difference was that at lunch they served spinach quiche.
The only thing that punctuated the bleakness of my hospital day was ray rage. I became really furious after Christmas in 1985 when I was transferred to an intermediate-care unit, where the sicker patients were housed.
I had been conned. Dr. Rockland had tricked me into going back into the hospital to have my medication adjusted. It all sounded so simple. Take away one pill, add another, home again just like that. But one week had become two weeks, two weeks had become two months, and now they were settling me down for an even longer stay. I was a captive.
I fantasized about beating the crap out of Dr. Rockland. He lied to me. Psychiatrists weren't supposed to do that. My Voices became extra-vindictive, fueling the fire of my already sizzling rage.
To make matters worse the staff of the new unit was unsympathetic.
Some of the nurses and mental health workers, of course, truly seemed to care for me. At night, Jean, a nurse, and J.J., Gladys and Danny, who were mental health workers, always seemed to be like a team on my side. J.J. was an enormous black man, truly huge. He was kind to me even when I ripped his favorite sweater right down the middle in one of my struggles.
He and the others were always sympathetic. One night I escaped and was found shoeless in a snowdrift. When they found me, the four uttered not one word of reproach. Jean made sure I was warm. Danny tried