Chapter 23
THE NEXT MORNING, THE NURSE WALKED INTO MY ROOM TELLING me to rise and shine. She handed me my paper cups, and I popped the pill in my mouth, hiding it under my tongue. I took a sip of water and opened my mouth wide.
As soon as she was gone, I spat the capsule into the toilet.
This went on day after day, and I wasn’t in a stupor anymore.
But my anxiety raged. I had insomnia and lay in bed at night listening to distant whispers and laughter, wondering what the nursing staff found so funny. I’d hear patients crying and shouting.
During my free time, I’d put on my coat and walk outside around the hospital with its rows of windows, wondering who was looking out them. If I heard a car coming, I’d flip up my collar, tucking in my chin, staring down.
Don’t look at me. I’m not a patient, I’d silently say to the car as it drove past. I’m not like the other people here. I’m walking in the free winter air like you or anyone. So don’t stare.
I’d watch the car disappear around a bend, walking and walking as my cheeks turned red in the wind.
The wing behind the hospital was called Back Hall where extremely sick patients were locked up.
They were considered at risk for hurting themselves or others, I’d been told.
Often, I’d hear wailing and wild laughter that made me pick up my pace.
When I’d stare up at the windows, I’d see nothing but gray glass that looked like slabs of ice.
As I’d walk by myself, I’d contemplate my therapy and that nothing was helping.
I wasn’t keeping down anything I ate. The only advantage of bulimia versus anorexia is I absorbed at least some calories.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t control myself, and Dr. Bill’s explanation didn’t ring true.
“You’re hostile toward your father,” he told me during our second session. “You’re hurting yourself to hurt him.”
Several of the nurses told me I didn’t want to grow up.
“You’re afraid to be a woman,” they’d say as I’d listen silently, my hands folded in my lap, my eyes lowered.
My social worker, Don Boone, was of a very different opinion.
“You’re afraid of sex, Patsy. That’s what’s wrong with you.”
He decided I needed to learn how to masturbate, and had a female social worker give me a book that was step-by-step.
“I want to hear your bed creaking!” she chortled to my horror.
Meanwhile, I flushed my Navane every morning.
I visited the dining room three times a day and didn’t eat.
Or I did and got rid of it. In fact, I was worse, the urges more unstoppable.
It didn’t seem to occur to Dr. Bill that I was depressed.
He never once asked questions that might explore whether I was delusional like my mother. I wasn’t. But I wanted to die.
Every day was scheduled with therapy sessions, both one-on-one and with a group.
It seemed I had plenty of free time to walk, hang out in the recreation room, or talk to someone who seemed reasonably normal.
I got the impression that a lot of the elderly patients were being warehoused.
They came from money, and this was their retirement home.
They had dementia or some other disability that required full-time care.
I don’t remember most of their names, but if I did it wouldn’t be fair to share them.
They didn’t ask for the nineteen-year-old in their midst to one day become a famous author and write her memoir.
Not that I had a thought about that either.
By now I was sure I had no future at all.
I don’t know how many patients were there when I was, but it seemed I saw the same dozen or so all the time. Some had been extraordinary once, like Victoria (as I’ll refer to her). In her eighties when I met her, she told me she’d graduated with honors from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
She wore her Phi Beta Kappa key on a bracelet, and every time we chatted, she’d hold up her arm, charms softly jingling.
I’d inspect the gold key as if for the first time, remembering my father’s that was in Mom’s jewelry box.
I thought how regal Victoria looked when opening her purse, sliding out a silver case of slender brown More cigarettes.
When our paths crossed, she’d launch into stories about her illustrious past, much of it not making sense, her eyes staring at something I couldn’t see.
She was always impeccably dressed, as if on her way to church or a business meeting, her posture perfectly straight, reminding me of Alice Coburn from my Camp Merri-Mac days.
Victoria had lived at Appalachian Hall for years.
So had Harold, and that’s not his real name either.
Closely related to a legendary Hollywood producer, Harold was sweet but disinhibited.
Every Thursday night the hospital held a mandatory social in the ballroom, a cavernous space with wood paneling and floors, everything echoing.
There wasn’t a stick of furniture except metal folding chairs, and a table offering paper cups of punch, and bowls of potato chips and onion dip.
Harold was yet another permanent resident, and my dance partner at every social that I hated attending.
I remember him as very short with strong features and thick white hair.
He’d talk the entire time we shuffled around to big-band music like Glenn Miller.
I didn’t understand much that Harold rambled on about close to my ear.
But every other sentence was something about Gone with the Wind.
I’d catch mumblings about Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Vivian Leigh, and then he’d tell me I should be in the movies.
That’s when I knew he was impaired or couldn’t see worth a hoot, maybe both.
He said his family lived far away in Los Angeles, and I wondered why they didn’t want him nearby.
I could tell he desperately missed the past and was lonely.
Then there was Fred, as I’ll call him, in his fifties, balding, and built like a fire hydrant.
He’d been admitted around the same time I was, a thick bandage above his left eyebrow from being pistol-whipped.
Or that was his story. He was a self-avowed alcoholic. But that wasn’t his reason for being at Appalachian Hall, according to him. Fred claimed that he was hiding from the Dixie Mafia.
“Yeah, I drink,” he said one day in group therapy. “But lately I’ve been drinking due to the extreme anxiety from having my life constantly in danger. I felt that coming here was a smart move.”
He told me that he was a very successful businessman and fantastically wealthy.
Whatever he supposedly did was related to Roto-Rooter, a company that cleaned sewers and drains.
But he also was a private detective and had information that could get him killed.
Fred and I often played cards, and he taught me poker.
“You can’t let anybody read your face.” He’d point to his bandaged one. “And you gotta learn to bluff, kiddo.”
We took walks together as he’d tell me about organized crime coming after him because of the secrets he held.
I talked about my family dramas, and Fred was understanding right before he’d bring up hit men again.
He mentioned notorious gangsters like Billy Sunday Birt, who’d murdered someone a few years back.
Fred seemed to know an awful lot of details and was paranoid.
As we’d walk around the hospital’s big paved circle my attention was everywhere, especially if a car approached.
I was waiting for men in double-breasted suits to boil out with tommy guns.
When Fred and I sat in the lobby chatting, I kept my eye on the front door.
I never had my back to it, a habit long before I became a volunteer cop, riding with detectives and going to crime scenes. It crossed my mind that Fred might be telling the truth. Who’s to say that his stories about Roto-Rooter and gangsters were made up?
The only female patient I palled around with was Sheena, another made-up name. She was closer to my age, probably in her thirties or early forties.
Sheena had started out in Back Hall, her room having nothing inside that could be weaponized.
She told me the story of pissing off the staff by detaching her bed from the floor and dropping the screws through a hole.
She violently rearranged her room and remained on Back Hall for a while, she confided, laughing hilariously while smoking a cigarette.
I wondered if she was one of the patients screaming while I hurried past the back of the hospital.
After a while she was moved into general population.
She seemed normal by the time we met except for her loud laughter that erupted with no warning like a geyser.
I never knew what her problem was. She didn’t say why her family wanted nothing to do with her.
Weather permitting, Sheena and I went on walks daily, sitting in the sun to chat far away from everyone else.
I don’t recall what we talked about, but much she said made little sense, her comments conspiratorial and disconnected.
I was getting used to the way the other patients expressed themselves, somehow following along or at least pretending I understood.
Sheena taught me to smoke cigarettes, and I remember my first few drags on an unfiltered Camel.
After I stopped hacking, I lay back in the grass as the world spun like a slow merry-go-round.
It reminded me of the way I felt when swinging.
Occasionally, I’d invite her into my room and give her a snack I’d charged in the commissary.
This caught the attention of Don Boone, who confronted me about it one day. Barging into my room, he wanted to know why Sheena had been in there with the door shut.
“She was eating a snack, and we were talking,” I told him.
“Are you sure that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing else was going on between the two of you?”
“No.”
“I need you to be honest, Patsy.”
“I am being honest.”