February 18th, 2018 (NOW)
There’s still blood caked in my hair from when the cops had me put my hands behind my head so they could frisk me. I haven’t slept for thirty hours, but sleep eludes me because there are no real beds here, only mimics masquerading as beds that feel as though you’re in a sleeping bag on bare concrete. No pillows. Sheets that have the faint memories of bloodstains whispering stories you’d rather not hear. I try to sleep and block out the screams of the thin man right outside the door that, understandably, does not have a doorknob on the inside.
On the first floor of the hospital is a holding room for lost souls. When there’s no room for you in the psych ward, or the rehab, or if you’re in detox, you get unceremoniously dumped on the first floor. After I walk in through double doors that ominously slam shut and lock behind me, they take my shoes. Because of the laces, they say. I understand, even in this state. They’re right not to trust me around shoelaces.
This area of the first floor consists of a short hallway with no blind spots. On one side are elevators, the only bathroom, and the double doors that every so often open with the beep of a keycard and then slam shut, reminding you that you’re trapped here for the foreseeable future. The middle, main area is a waiting room with two padded benches and a television facing a row of desks separated from everything else by a glass partition. Staff wearing scrubs sit at the desks, taking in the full view of the hallway. At the other end are rooms that, although you are allowed to go in and out of them, are still obviously cells. They have glass windows and locks and no doorknobs on the inside. In each room are two beds—if you can call them beds—and nothing else.
There are two other patients in the waiting room when I arrive. These travelers trapped in liminal space take no notice as I shuffle past them. A beast of a man sleeping and splayed starfish on the right bench and a tall, thin man pacing the hallway and intermittently yelling at the staff. The man on the bench is snoring. The snoring sounds like the growls of some feral beast with its legs caught in a bear trap, but his face says he’s dead to the world.
He still has his shoes, pastel-green kicks with hot-pink laces that twitch erratically every so often. He’s also wearing a faded red muscle shirt that boldly states MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and sweatpants caked in what I think is vomit at the crotch. What I hope is vomit anyway. His eyes are recessed and his brow protrudes over them like a caveman’s, his eyes scrunched in a scowl from whatever dream he’s having. His teeth jut out and his lips flutter with the growls under an enormous, bulbous nose. His shirt doesn’t even attempt to cover his gut, which hangs sideways over the edge of the bench.
The other scarily thin individual wraps himself in one of the sheets from the beds. Vacancy wraps his face in the same way. His eyes hollowed out husks, he accusingly asks the scrubs why they won’t let him leave to smoke a cigarette.
“I’m fuckin’ dying here,” he says. “This is cruel and unusual punishment. I’m detoxing here, and I’m not asking for a fix for Chrissakes. Just a cigarette.”
The man rearranges the sheet and I see his gaunt frame beneath a white undershirt and black pajama pants. He finally notices me sitting on one of the uniquely uncomfortable benches and says, “I don’t even know why I’m here, man. I’m not crazy. I keep trying to tell them. It’s not like I tried to kill myself or anything.” I don’t respond. “I’m not crazy. You believe me, right?” I nod without any conviction and lean my head against the wall, closing my eyes and feigning sleep. Maybe he’ll leave me alone if he thinks sleep is possible in this place.
“I NEED A FUCKIN’ CIGARETTE,” he says, turning back to the scrubs. “I’M FUCKIN’ DYING HERE. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.”
His attention now focused on the scrubs, I feel safe to open my eyes. There’s a small television in the upper right-hand corner of the room playing Rush Hour 3. Chris Tucker’s voice is almost as annoying as the thin man’s. Growler continues to snore and jerk lazily on the opposite bench. The fluorescent lighting dulls the edges of my vision and emphasizes how sterile and unempathetic everything feels. The thin man taps me on the shoulder, and I realize that he’s turned his attention back to me.
“Why’re you here?” he asks, ignoring the gauze wrapped around my forearms. This is the first of many times I’d hear this question in the coming weeks. I lift my arms, showing him the gauze.
“What’s that?” he says. “What’d you do?”
“Leave him alone,” one of the scrubs says. “Let him sleep.”
“He’s not fuckin’ sleeping,” the thin man says. “And you didn’t answer my question. Why the fuck won’t you let me smoke? I’m fuckin’ dying, man.”
“This is a smoke-free campus,” the scrub says. “Can’t smoke anywhere on the property.”
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND,” the thin man says. “I NEED A FUCKIN’ CIGARETTE. I’M FUCKIN’ DYING HERE.” And so on and so forth.
I’m wearing two ill-fitting gowns that they gave me in the ER: one that covers my front and one that covers my back. They’re too small and hug my shoulders and I’m readjusting them when one of the scrubs offers me a change of clothes, which I take wordlessly. He hands me a large blue shirt with the texture of cardboard and beige pants. Both are too big for me.
“These are disposable,” he says. “You’ll get another pair once they ship you to the fourteenth floor.” They’ve literally given me garbage to wear and I bite back a sarcastic comment. I guess I understand the need for cheap, disposable clothing for the patients. The shirt and pants I was wearing earlier were soaked with blood and needed to be thrown out. “You can change in the bathroom,” he says.
The bathroom does not have a doorknob on the inside. I’m sensing a pattern here. I try to close it twice before realizing the outside knob is broken. Instead of a mirror there is an uneven, mottled metal surface that distorts more than it reflects. It works well enough to show me that there is still blood underneath my nose and on one of my ears, which I wipe off. At some point I’ll need to clean up more thoroughly, but now isn’t the time.
The faucet in the sink aims upwards and weakly spurts water in an arc, like a water fountain. It stays on for three seconds and it takes five pushes of the button to get enough water to clean my face with a handful of poorly absorbent paper towels. I change my clothes and leave the gowns on the floor of the bathroom in a pile. No one asks me for them as I walk back to the waiting room and sit down on a bench.
Ten minutes later, one of the staff, not a scrub but an older man with a salt-and-pepper goatee wearing a black T-shirt, walks over.
“So,” he says, and pauses. “Why are you here, then?”
I can’t say the words. Not yet. I don’t fully comprehend the situation or the circumstances that brought me here. I lift my arms and show him the gauze that is already starting to soak through with blood.
“I don’t catch your meaning,” he says, but I think he does. I think he wants me to say the words. Saying the words is important to him somehow, but I can’t. One of the scrubs offers the thin man a nicotine patch.
“That won’t do shit and you know it,” he says. “Have some compassion. Have some goddamn empathy. Just one cigarette.”
“Are you having any bad thoughts?” Black T-shirt asks me. “Thinking about hurting yourself again?” I shake my head no. I’m barely having any coherent thoughts, let alone destructive ones.
“I NEED A FUCKIN’ CIGARETTE,” the thin man reiterates. “THIS IS BULLSHIT.”
The man with the salt-and-pepper goatee wearing the black T-shirt gestures down the hall to the cells. “Room fifty-six is open,” he says. “If you need to get away from the noise. But don’t close the door. And don’t get any ideas. We’ll be checking on you.” I nod and aimlessly wander down the hall.
Lying down, I’m still unable to get anywhere close to sleep. Any time I close my eyes, my vision turns hot crimson wet and the sounds of ripping and tearing overpower everything else and the smell of copper and pennies makes my eyes water. The dense air full with the smell of dull maroon-drenched fabric and bright lipstick-red drops that don’t absorb and pool on top of bed sheets. The sound of drip drip dripping on the hardwood floor and the sound I can’t escape: the riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip of splitting flesh—
I return to the benches, hoping that the sound of the television will drown out the ripping sound. It does, a bit. The elevator dings every minute or so but no one gets on or off. The thin man’s still at it, yelling into a phone now instead of at the staff.
“MATT, YOU FUCKING SNAKE, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. THEY WON’T EVEN LET ME SMOKE A SINGLE FUCKIN’ CIGARETTE AND I’M FUCKIN’ DYING HERE.”
There’s a red spot on the wall and I stare at it for a few minutes, trying to ascertain the origin. Vaguely wet and six inches in diameter, I don’t remember seeing it before.
“THEY’RE TRYING TO GIVE ME FLUMAZENIL AND THAT’S FOR FUCKIN’ BENZOS. I NEED METHADONE. METHADONE FOR CHRISSAKES.” His voice is hoarse and cracks from all the yelling and, despite my better judgment, I chuckle at the absurdity of the situation. The thin man notices and whips his head around, fury in his gaze and intent on his face. He lunges toward me; the phone is on a counter next to the glass partition and the spiral cord stretches with him.
“What’s so funny?” he whispers, leaning over me, his face inches from mine. “You holding, newbie? Is that what’s so goddamn hilarious?”
The scrubs aren’t paying attention to his antics and I look past him, trying to get their attention without saying anything that might anger the thin man.
“You holdin’ out on me? You goddamn snake.” And then he’s ripping at the garbage clothes, grabbing my arms and groping me. I stand and try to maneuver my way closer to the glass partition. His breath smells of burnt onions and mustard. His eyes are wide and frantic and no longer vacant, bulging out of their sockets and eager and hopeful. The scrubs finally notice us and they bark their hyena laughs but don’t interfere, not yet. One of them picks up a phone.
“Give some to your pal, newbie. You wouldn’t hold out on a friend, would ya?” I want to tell him that I wouldn’t but I don’t have what he wants. I don’t have heroin or methadone; I only have forty stitches in my arms that are now bleeding more heavily than before. The gauze is completely soaked through now.
An eternity passes and instead of worry, I feel actual fear: fear that he’ll start yelling instead of asking, fear that he’ll start to attack me instead of just grabbing, fear that this scarily thin man on the first floor will accomplish what I started nine hours ago. But three security guards stroll in through the double doors just in time, approaching the thin man and lifting him off of me before the doors have time to slam shut. He pushes them back, swinging elbows and fists in indeterminate arcs, not connecting any of his blows. The guard on the right kicks the back of the thin man’s left leg and he falls to his knees. The other two then lift him by his elbows and start to drag him down the hallway toward the cells with their empty beds. I hear him screaming as they take him into the one on the end, locking the door behind them.
“I’m comin’ back for ya, newbie,” he screams before the door closes. “And then you’re gonna fuckin’ share. Then you’re really gonna fuckin’ share.” Then I can’t hear him anymore.
Dazed, I walk back over to the bench opposite the still sleeping Growler. A woman comes out of one of the other cells, yawning, and walks over to me.
“Jeez, what did I miss?” she says, eyes still groggy from sleep.
I don’t answer her and look back over to the red stain on the wall. Suddenly, I make the connection. That’s my blood that I left there when I leaned against the wall, pretending to sleep. I run my fingers through my hair, and it feels damp, but dried flecks of blood fall lazily to the ground.
That’s my blood from when the cops had me put my hands behind my head so they could frisk me. That’s my blood from earlier this morning, staining the walls of this place that I’m already fearing I’ll never escape.
