A Pair of Strengths

Moments and places like these are why words like “indelible” exist. Once you are here, you never forget no matter how hard you try. The way the lights slightly buzz with their unnatural blue hue. The same white floors with different black flecks, and if you stare long enough, you can see there are speckles of other colors within the old white tile. No matter the quantity of times the cleaning crews come by to spray their cleaning solutions, the floor never seems to sparkle in a clean way, only dolefully shine. The shine reflects the light and makes the rooms and halls brighter and blinding to further sear the memory into the brain. It always smells the same too. Stagnant. If I could describe “stagnant” as a smell, it is the mix of antiseptic cleaners, stale old coffee, sadness, anticipation, cold, and stress.

I sit in a comfort-deceiving chair of dark colors that hide years of old stains. I stretch my arms forward and back for the fifth time in an hour and return to a posture in the chair where my feet are planted flat on the floor so I can continue to nervously tap them as I wait for an update, knowing that there will not be any news anytime soon. Waiting rooms in Hell must have the same interior designers. “The intake process may take several hours after patients arrive at the hospital,” which is what I recall the officer telling me earlier in the day as he looked over the bandages from the EMT to cover the scratches and cuts on my own hands and arms. What he did not tell me was that it might be a day or so before anyone would tell me the actual plan going forward, and when it would be appropriate for someone to visit. “Visit” is the wrong term I would use for what I want at this moment. The word “visit” implies I voluntarily want to go there and might look forward to it, like “visiting” Grandma’s house. This time is not that. I glance over to a corner of the room and see a small red placard with white lettering that says “Visiting Hours: 9 am-4:30 pm, Max 2 Guests”; of course it is facing the wrong way. It might be more helpful if it was in the hallway entrance to the room. The clock on the wall says 9:36 pm. I should consider myself lucky that they kept me waiting here instead of telling me to go home and come back tomorrow. My bloodshot eyes and puffy face may have earned me a little credit from the staff to let me wait and give me a chance to get more information. Had they seen the bandages under my baggy sweater, then I might have even gotten a pity sandwich from the cafeteria.

I have never been on this side of the door before. Waiting is the worst part of the torture. I can only imagine how it was for Mom and Dad when we were all here last time. But it is different this time; Mom is not here, and he is on the other side of the door. I suppose everyone manages things a little differently each time. Mom and Dad had each other to lean on last time, and that did not go as planned. They never really knew how to work together and comfort each other when times were dire. They only knew how to have a functional relationship when things were going well. This time, things were not going well again, and neither of them learned from the past how to repair things, only how to dig in and make it worse. I lived most days like wallpaper. A decorative piece in their world that took damage from dishes thrown (and only had minor wear) but was still pretty enough to take posed family photos for Christmas to fool the rest of the outside world of our fake happiness.

Finally, a nurse comes out of the door I have been staring at for hours, hopefully to relieve a bit of my anxiety. “Are you waiting for information about Doug Chambers? If so, how are you related to him?” she says calmly.

I answer tiredly, “Yes, I am his daughter. His wife cannot make it today, so she sent me in her place.” I end with that lie to not expose the truth that she did not care to come because she had other plans to go out to eat dinner at her favorite restaurant.

“Well, I assume you are over eighteen and he would give you consent to have his information given to you?” she questions as she looks me over up and down.

“Yes, I am over eighteen just barely, and he has signed forms before at his last physical to include me in all his medical history if my mother is indisposed. I assume that is in his records somewhere. I am sure if he is lucid right now that he would also sign a form to attest to this, but I don’t know if that would be entirely legal,” I utter in the most pitiful voice I can muster.

“As of right now, I cannot find those forms; but if he agrees to see you, I can set up a few minutes for you to visit with him, and you will just have to leave your contact information with the desk staff, and they will have the doctor call you tomorrow, and you can then find out the information you need. Let me go to the back and see if he will see you, and I will return shortly.” She scans her card and then walks behind the locked doors.

“Ok, thank you,” I reply and return to my chair to resume the waiting posture. He better say he is ok to see me. I did not just experience this nightmare for him to dismiss me right now.

The nurse returns twenty minutes later and tells me how this visit is not at all routine. She emphasizes that this is a one-time event they have allowed and that there are rules that I must follow or they will end my visit and have me escorted off the property. I agree to do as they say, which I did not realize would be difficult to follow the moment I walked past those locked doors. We walk silently past the first door that requires a card to be scanned, then we wait in a small corridor and wait to be seen by the desk nurse to buzz us into a larger area. She instructs me to wait by the nurse’s desk, and another nurse would then take me to the area where I can visit my father for fifteen minutes. The nurse behind the desk hands me a pen and tells me to write down my contact information and then instructs me to give her any loose possessions I have on my person.

While I am writing down my information and handing over everything I have, I ask her, “Where do I drop off his clothes and toiletries from home? He left in an abrupt way and did not take any clothes for his stay.” This statement was such a stretch from reality. He could not pack a travel bag in the police car while handcuffed in the backseat. I am sure Mom would have packed one if she had thought of it, since she was in her sofa chair drinking coffee and watching the morning shows when all the calamity was going on.

The nurse coldly states, “Patients are not allowed to have anything from outside in their possession when they are not being supervised. The hospital will provide clothes, slippers, and bath essentials.”

I finish writing and was about to put the pen in my back pocket out of habit when she stops me and asks, “Miss, can you please return the pen? I need to put it back in the lock box behind the desk. We cannot have anything out that the patients might use improperly.” Embarrassingly, I return the pen and wait for another person to escort me to the next spot.

I hear chairs shuffling nearby and see a large burly man in white scrubs setting up two chairs across from each other in the middle of the hallway. He signals for me to go and sit down. I turn my back, and the nurse from behind the desk nods and waves her hand for me to go and sit and wait again.

The man then gives me the rest of the instructions for this visit in a stern voice: “Remember, this visit will only be for fifteen minutes. Both of you are to remain in these seats until the visit is complete, and he will leave first, and then I will walk you to the desk and escort you through the locked doors. For the time being, you will not touch each other, and that means no hand holding or hugs. I do not have any doctor’s instructions, as this visit is so unusual, especially since it has only been a few hours since his preliminary intake. So, I cannot allow him to get close to you for you and his safety. At any moment, we can end the visit if we feel your safety is in jeopardy. I will tell him all these same things, and if he agrees to follow directions, I will bring him out to this area. So far, he has been agreeable to following directions, so I do not see any problems. I will be back in a minute.”

I nod in agreement and wait again.

Ten minutes pass, and I can see my dad far down the hallway walking behind the man slowly. He looks terrible under these awful blue lights and the dingy scrubs that are two sizes too large, making an even worse impression.

I suppose this is better than the last time I was here as a patient. When my parents came to see me, it was after I spent the night alone with my arms strapped to the bedrails to prevent me from trying to harm myself more. I wonder if my parents even tried to see me that first night. I wonder if they sat in that waiting room like I did. I bet they if they did, they would have just been more consumed with tearing each other down and assessing blame rather than planning what they were going to say to me when they saw me.

When Dad gets to the chairs, the first thing I do is stand up and reach out to give him a hug, out of instinct. The man puts his hand in the middle and gruffly says, “Remember the rules, no touching and stay in your seats.”

I mutter, “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. I promise I will not do it again.” I sit back down, and then my dad sits in the other chair. For the first few minutes, we rotated staring at each other and the floor, not saying anything with the man standing in the middle of the setup. A code goes out over the loudspeaker, and I look at the man thinking he is going to rush me out and end the visit, but he shakes his head and says, “No worries, it’s just a patient that needs help to get out of bed.” He looks towards the nurse’s desk and decides to go and sit over there to give us our final minutes in privacy.

When he walks away my dad asks, “How are you doing?”

I thought that to be a strange question to ask, but I answer the best way I can without bursting into tears and making the staff think I need to get a room here too. “I am doing ok, Dad. I can go home after this and sleep in my bed tonight.”

“That is good. I do not really remember much from this morning. How is your mother doing? Did she get to eat dinner at her favorite place?”

I sit bewildered at how misplaced this conversation is. But my face is too tired to make reactions for him to notice how this entire situation is so strange. “Umm, yeah, this morning was a bit difficult. I do not want to talk about Mom or what she did or did not do today. I am a bit pissed at her, and you too. I do not really know if I am managing this all too well. I wonder when I go home tonight if I will be able to keep it together, or if I am just going to breakdown.”

He sits quietly and takes in all I say. Then he tells me, “I am sorry for what I did. I hope I did not hurt you too badly. I only meant to hurt myself. Do not blame your mother. She did not do anything wrong. I have always been in the wrong with her, and nothing in the world will ever make that right. She has had so many things go wrong in her life, and she is just reacting to all of it right now, even if it does not make sense. This morning, I just got tired of living, and for a little bit I did not have the strength to continue for one more minute.” He paused as he wiped a tear from his eye.

I sit with my eyes welling up with tears that I thought I ran out of. The man who jumped out of a plane in the army and survived a long deadly war decades ago, who worked cotton and vegetable fields in hot Texas summers, and who continued to work hard labor to scrap up any extra money to put me through treatment and counseling – this man who is the epitome of brute strength, telling me he is not strong enough. I did not understand any of this day until that minute. I then understood exactly how he felt, and now I know exactly what to do. I let him finish what he needed to say.

He continues, “I do not know what is going to happen tomorrow since they have not told me much, but I think this might be the best place for me right now. So, do not worry about me. I will be ok. The nurse said she would get me a sandwich later since I missed dinner earlier.”

I nod and wipe the tears from my eyes. I had to siphon a bit of strength from my soul to say with a steady resolve, “You might not remember what happened this morning, but I will live with the literal scars on my arms for longer than I want them. I do not think you can recall how strong you were this morning when we fought, but that is something that I want you to realize. After all of this, I found out that I am stronger than you, and all of that came from you. So, just as you helped me before when I was not strong enough, I am going to lend you a little bit of my strength to carry you through this, and we will both be stronger when this is all over.” I pause and then finish with, “And next time when you need a little strength, just ask and I will let you borrow a bit of mine.”

As I finish, I look at the man coming over. “Time’s up, let us get you to your room, Doug. Your daughter can come back tomorrow during visiting hours if you are available.”

My dad stood and nodded to me and calmly uttered, “It will be ok, just like last time.” He chuckled a bit and continued, “The bathrooms do not have doors, so I am going to be humbled a bit during my stay. I will see you tomorrow. Get some food and rest. I will be ok here. Tell your mother I love her. I love you too. Thank you for coming to see me tonight. I know this was not easy.”

“I will see you tomorrow, and I love you too. Bye Dad.” I wave as I stay in my seat, waiting for the nurse to come back and lead me out.

The nurse comes back and starts to lead me out. She stops at the nurse’s desk, reaches around the desk, pulls out tissues for me, and says, “I am sure you know when visiting hours are tomorrow. The doctor will call you in the morning after he does rounds, and then he can answer any other questions you may have.”

I nod, collect my possessions, and stand in front of the door waiting to be buzzed out, and she walks me to the second door and opens it for me and leads me to the elevator, presses the down button, and waves at me goodnight.

After that night, I come back every day for nine more days and stay for every minute of visiting hours each day and go home the same way: wait in front of door one, buzz, walk, wait in front of door two, and then walk alone to the elevators. On the last day, I do not get buzzed in. My dad gets buzzed out of the first door and walks through the second door, and then we wait and go down the elevators, both of us venturing into our second chance – together.