Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [44]
I tried to hide my shock. I was getting pills and liquor, for free, from Natalie’s dad. Although it sucked that I had to take them with my mother and him in the car. I wanted to save them for later, wait and take them with Natalie and then walk around the Smith campus, gooned out of our minds. Instead I placed the pills in my mouth and washed them down with a few sips of the liquor. At first it was like fire sliding down my throat but then I got this incredible warm, soothing sensation throughout my body. Until then, I’d only had beer and wine. This was much, much better.
Again, Dr. F said, “Now you need to promise that you won’t ever tell anybody about this. The story is that you tried to kill yourself and your mother found you and took you to the hospital. Have you got that?”
I nodded my head. “And I don’t have to go to school?”
“Not for awhile,” he said.
“Okay.” I lay my head back on the seat.
* * *
When I woke up, it was because a sweaty woman with yellow hair was trying to stick something down my throat. This seemed to be happening to me a lot lately.
She was a nurse. This registered when she said, “I’m a nurse. You’re in a hospital. We have to get those pills out of your stomach. You don’t really want to die, do you?”
Of course I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to go back to sleep. But when I tried, she pinched me on the arm again and continued to shove what could only be described as a hollow plastic penis down my throat. I gagged, my eyes became blurry with tears as she attempted to empty the contents of my stomach.
I fell back asleep.
The next time I woke up, I was in a bed and there was nobody on top of me trying to cause harm. There was a window in the room, but it hurt to open my eyes because the lids felt so heavy. It was like the light itself had weight, and was forcing my eyes closed.
“Hi,” said a voice next to the bed. It was close, but not standing over me.
“Are you awake?” It was a man’s voice.
I turned my head in the direction of the voice and my eyes focused on a naked figure, sitting cross-legged on a bed and wearing a pointy green party hat. I was impressed with the realism of my dream. I could even see small black hairs sprouting from just above his kneecaps.
“I’m Kevin,” he said.
As more of the room came into focus—the fluorescent overhead lights, the gray metal dresser across from me, and bars on the windows—I realized I was not dreaming. I tried to sit up, but it was like there was a lead dental cape on my chest making it impossible for me to move.
The naked man with the pointy hat came over to me and stood next to me. His penis dangled a few inches above my hand and I had the brief temptation to grab it, as some sort of reality test.
“You tried to kill yourself, huh?’ he said. He scratched under his balls.
And then I knew. I must be in the madhouse. I vaguely remembered having my stomach pumped.
That had happened to me once before when I was six. I had eaten a wax Santa Claus figure from the Christmas tree and had to be rushed to the hospital in Springfield. This was the second time in my life that a Santa-like figure had caused me to enter a hospital for a minor medical procedure.
“You want some water?’ he said.
I nodded.
He left my side and walked over to the doorway where he yelled down the hall, “The new kid’s awake and he wants some water!”
Within moments, a nurse appeared carrying a tray with a small paper cup on it.
“How are you feeling?” she asked abruptly.
“Tired.”
“No wonder,” she said. “You can’t take half a bottle of Valium and a quart of booze and not feel tired.” She seemed hostile. She handed me a small paper cup filled with lukewarm water.
I swallowed the water in one gulp. It tasted like rust. Then I said, “Where am I?”
She said, “For starters, you’re alive.” She wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around my arm and