Free Write
I’m pretty sharp, but life is sometimes dull. Today, I’m lying stiff-backed on my cot, looking up at the padded ceiling. The door swings open. It’s the Doctor.
“Today, Patient Number 2, you will perform an exercise that might help you overcome your past. You will write a story about your life prior to your stay here at the psychiatric ward. Describe your surroundings, the friends you made, the things you did. Most of our patients find this exercise very therapeutic, and I think you will also. Take some time to gather your thoughts before you begin. You have plenty of time to finish, so don’t rush. I’ll be around if you need any help.”
The Doctor set several sheets of paper down on my stomach and turned on the bed light. He walked briskly out of the room staring at his clipboard and shut the door.
I knew exactly what to write and eagerly angled myself in a writing position. The doctor better like unconventional stories against reality! I thought, proceeding to write about my former living environment.
***
The walls were green, the ceiling white. Each wall had distinctive traits; a light switch, a poster, a door, a desk, or a bed. There were short shelves on two of the walls that tabled various objects, such as alarm clocks or books. One of the shelves over the desk held an assortment of goodies. From left to right, there was a row of empty bottles, a glue stick, a Rickey Henderson rookie card, a boomerang, an eraser, a stapler, a box of matches, a wooden incense case, incense, and a cup of pencils.
As you walked in the door, the desk was against the left wall. Straight across from you was a window, and next to that was the bed. Hanging over the bed was a shelf holding a jumbled collection of literature. In front of the window was a poker table. Between the poker table and the base of the bed was a cluttered bureau. It held piles of papers and a jar of coins. The poker table had its fair share of clutter as well.
On the wall to the right was another door leading to the street. Next to it hung a 64’’ by 32’’ poster of a young Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack overlooking a CD player. Next to the CD player was a moon chair piled with mounds of clothing, both clean and dirty. Behind the chair in the corner was the coat rack, holding many different hats, jackets, and sweatshirts.
To the left of the door was another bureau (with just as much clutter as the other) next to a make-shift closet. Here there were many different types of clothing, anything from blazers to jeans to jerseys to bath robes to Hawaiian shirts.
But I spent most of my time at the desk.
I heard about a lot about universal healthcare. The US spends the most money on healthcare of any nation in the world, but there are still 40 million people uninsured at some time during any given year. In some hospitals, gunshot victims are sent out because they don’t have health insurance. For people with fatal diseases like cancer, private insurance companies are able to jack up insurance costs as high as they please so that when it comes time to pay the bill, they don’t have to pick up a huge tab. Life is treated like a commodity to be bought and sold.
And what is the deal with these politicians campaigning for the presidency now when the election isn’t for two years? Hilary, Barrack, and all these other yahoos should be in Washington doing their jobs, and instead they are shaking hands and making speeches all over the country, wasting time and money because only one of them is going to get elected. Do they really think that we are going to take into account what they did one and a half years before the primary when we vote in ’08? No!
Master
Most of the time I saw him around seven or so. He came into the room, slamming his stuff all over the place, and made straight for the computer. Master must have loved that computer. He always sat on the bed with his hand propping his head up, clicking on email, games, and who knows what. When he typed at it, I really got pissed. I’m over here!
Most nights he got to bed around eleven or twelve, but on rare occasions he pulled all-nighters. This was when I was at my best. I guided my way through classical texts, skimmed over the anatomy of the foot, or learned an entire semester of Math Analysis. After nights like this he wouldn’t sleep, but would lie in bed for an hour or two to feel the slumber, to slightly taste what it felt like to rest.
Some days, usually Friday or Saturday, he came staggering in late at night and woke us all up. In a frenzy, he tossed his clothes and nightly effects (cell phone, wallet, and keys) onto the bureau and headed straight for the bed. Sometimes I got knocked to the floor by a renegade t-shirt. That was never fun.
Appliances
The clothes in the closet were always bickering about something. Often it was who’s more appreciated, who’s better looking, and who got the better hanger that week. The pants and collared shirts that got rumpled at the bottom of the pile were especially grumpy. The jerseys and t-shirts, fortunate enough to have received a hanger, jeered at the more expensive but poorly treated tuxedo pants.
“Look who’s on a designer line now!” they would mock.
Everyone on the desk hated those in the closet. For all their complaining, most of them got attention at least once every two weeks, while some of us could potentially go for months without so much as a glimpse (accept for me, of course, a homework essential). Those on the bureau had it even worse. Business cards and post-its were only good for one-day use, so after that phone call was made or that note was no longer noteworthy, at clean-up time they were garbage. They didn’t gossip much, being too fixated on trying to find a small space to huddle in and hide for as long as possible.
Among the more domestic and domineering objects were books and papers. If you weren’t careful, you could get hidden under a hefty, rarely used textbook, and the next thing you know, you could be dormant until the end of the school year. Paper by itself wasn’t so bad, but its ability to clutter could be just as smothering as a textbook.
A hectic and
hazardous world mine was.
People
The way I knew they were coming was the sound of their shoes stomping down the stairs. Master never wore his shoes inside, but the others didn’t know any better. Days like this, when they pillaged the room, cleared everything off the poker table, and piled it onto the bed. They were loud, laughed boisterously (others louder than some) and cussed frequently (sometimes louder than others). The poker chips would be busy, in constant circulation (and good riddance, since they stay in that box, enveloped in the darkness at all other times), as was the money, which traded hands quite often. When it was all over, the guests would clomp out of the room and leave chairs all over. Master folded up the chairs, threw all the clutter on the bed back onto the poker table, and relaxed in the moon chair.
I hate it here. My walls are padded, I only have one window, the cot is too hard, and the floor is marble. I hate marble. When I rolled off the bed in Master’s room, the rug at least had some cushion; now I suffer a loud thump and a bruise every time.
When they wheel me into the common room, there’s usually some crappy television show on. The common room has a TV set up above a corner window and three couches angled to face it. The other patients don’t notice me and just sit there watching the tube, smoking away their lungs.
Sometimes we sit in a circle and do intervention. I usually just watch, but some people get really into it. Once they told us to go around in a circle, say what we didn’t like about our former lives, and then what we did to change it. This was the time when we separated the articulate psychopaths from the incoherent crazies. Sally Pesticiutto started, speaking very slowly and casually about a crack-head from New Jersey who he once knew, and how he wanted to bust his head in with a nine iron. After that freaked everyone out, Daisy went off on a tangent about hair lice.
“They started in my hair,” he said, slicking it back, “but then they went down my beard, and then onto my back and my shoulders and my chest! AH! Those little bugs were all over me.”
Daisy would cringe uncomfortably, rubbing his head and arms for comfort. The aids would come and escort him back to his room. I don’t think Daisy will ever figure out how to cure himself.
Most of the time I’m in my room, thinking about how bad it is to be here. To be quite frank, the whole place needs a makeover, but that’s not the reason I don’t like it. The doctor’s will never listen, but maybe you will; I’m not crazy.
Chain of Master Command
Master wasn’t the supreme ruler of my former facility, though it seemed so for a while. A few years after I moved in, I realized that even the Master had Masters, who lived upstairs. This occurred to me when I was writing an essay with a “mom” and “dad” in it, who seemed to have a lot of sway on Master’s decisions.
I became accustomed to who was coming downstairs by the intensity of the stomp. The dad stomped hard and slow, and he paused a bit before each stair. The mom took her time, also, but was lighter of foot. I always knew it was Master because he would bound down the stairs and violently swing the door open.
Spring-Cleaning
Every year, Master would clean out all the junk that was in the room and make way for new appliances. This was the day that all the accessories dreaded, especially the post-its and business cards that knew there was no more hope. The tired and worn out clothes usually were a bit scared for their lives as well.
I remember there were piles of stuff everywhere during spring-cleaning, piles of laundry, piles of books, CDs, papers, and anything else that needed to be gotten rid of. The piles in the middle of the floor were worn down, and eventually the room would be stripped to clean nakedness. New clothes stuffed the bureaus, new pens and pencils sat on the desk. Everything was neat, and for that one moment when everything was where it should be and there were no dirty clothes on the floor, no one cared to think that in two weeks or so the room would be back to its normal messy self.
The last spring-cleaning was different, however. The old clothes were not just being thrown away, but everything seemed to be exiting the room. There were more boxes than usual, more things being packed away. And the boxes were different; they were made of leather instead of cardboard. They were prepared for a long trip and not for storage.
Everyone’s mood seemed different also. Master excitedly bounded in and out of the room, while his parents seemed encouraging but sad at the same time. It was truly a strange day.
They took everything out of the room but the desk. The bed, the bureaus, the poker table, all gone. We sat on that desk for about a week until Master came in the room and finally moved me out. Another week later I found myself here in the mental hospital.
***
The Doctor walked in, looking over Patient Number 2’s chart. He was lying stiffly on his bed.
“All finished?” the Doctor asked, taking the paper away. Patient Number 2 didn’t roll over or give sign of recognition, so the Doctor took his silence as a yes.
Back in his office, the Doctor read the manuscript. After editing a great deal and letting out a big sigh, he took his glasses off and looked out the window.
“Poor Patient Number 2 thought he was his pencil.”