For the third night in a row sleep eluded me, and for the first time in my life I almost succumbed to my murderous impulses. The cacophony of grunts and moans coming from the senior unit of the Pavilion, coupled with the fusillade of translucent silver bullets plummeting from the stormy night sky, nearly brought me to the edge of complete hysteria.
I was not insane, and denial was not just a river in Egypt. I had never heard voices in my head that were not those of my own inner demons, and I’d never dressed in drag claiming to be Barbara Streisand. I’d never even taken pleasure in slicing quarter-inch thick incisions into my abdomen with an exacto knife. It was just very hard to get any shut-eye when it sounded as if your roommate was dying in a bed only six feet away.
“Uh, UH-UH, Uh, UH-UH-UH.”
The interminable staccato of uncontrollable moaning could almost have been bearable if I had better earplugs than the two rolled-up pieces of toilet paper that were presently shoved so far into my head that I was risking permanent damage to my eardrums. But then there was the SMELL!!
Apparently, this bed-wetting psycho also had trouble controlling his bowel movements, and just as I was finally getting used to the redolent odors of stale urine! Don’t get me wrong. I can put up with some terrible scents, including the smoke of PCP, crack, heroin, even some ghetto schwag. But even under two sheets and a blanket I felt as if I was going to vomit, and it would be the first time since my arrival at Columbia Hospital’s mental health wing that the catharsis would not simply have been opiate withdrawal.
“Uh. UH-UH. Uh. UH-UH-UH.”
I crept silently out of bed, pillow in hand, ready to smother this pathetic little creature, but just as I was about to suffocate him, put him out of his misery, and end his futile existence, the rank smell overtook me. I emptied my entire dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and Lorna Doone rehab cookies in a single projectile vomit that covered all of his face and neck. I proceeded to run out of the room, screaming, “The end is near. The end is near. I’ve seen the face of the Devil, smelt his wrath!”
I started pulling the sheets off of everyone’s beds, throwing women and men old enough to be my grandparents to the floor, until I was finally subdued by a pair of 200 pound orderlies. I kept kicking and screaming the same paranoid schizophrenic chant until I felt the quick sting of a hypodermic syringe in my left thigh. And then the darkness finally took me. Thank God for the darkness.
Light. Burning through my eyelids, tugging and pulling me from the darkness, ripping into my subconscious and extracting my very essence. The scintillate sub-tropic rays of a Florida morning, black hole for tourists and half-naked beach-goers, silent killer of vampires and other creatures of the night.
My mouth is a cotton desert. My nose is clogged with half dried blood and snot, and my swollen lips are dripping saliva from both sides. I guess I shouldn’t have challenged a security guard twice my size. But why do I always have these clutch realizations after the fact? I guess I can only plead the hindsight bias, to my defense, rationalization, excuse, whatever else you want to call it.
Both my arms are strapped to my bed, along with my feet; I feel like a Junky Christ on a cross, except I won’t die of suffocation or even from loss of blood. No three days in hell followed by an eternity of bliss. No, not for me. I’ll be lucky if it’s just a week in this hell of withdrawal, and after that? Who knows, I’d really like to say I could walk out of this at the end of the week a completely changed man. But daNial sure is one hell of a long river, and I imagine it will flow for the rest of my life.
My whole body feels weak and brittle, but I don’t think even a B12 injection, mixed with liquid coral calcium and boron would do me any good. My arms are so heavy I don’t think I could lift them even if they weren’t restrained. It would certainly require more effort than I’d be capable of right now. But I can be a very capable person. Take off the restraints, flash a bag in my face and I think I just might be able to muster the strength to snatch it out of your hands. Especially since last night’s shot is starting to wear off. I wonder what I’d have to do to get another?
It doesn’t matter because once again, all I care about is that SMELL!!! I wonder if I’m hallucinating because everywhere they take me in this hospital reeks of feces. Last night wasn’t really that bad, now that I’ve a firm basis for comparison. Last night there was a rumor of excrement, just enough to agitate an already fragile mind. But suddenly I’m in a feces factory, and the tour guide is an eighty year old baker of Poo-Fly-Pie, no-where near as tasty (or pleasant smelling, I might add) as the Amish variety of a similar name.
“Get me out of this sh*t-hole,” I demanded, pun intended.
“If you knew how to behave like an adult, you wouldn’t be there in the first place,” informed the assistant nurse from outside the clear glass door to the quiet room. The quiet room, also known as the “time-out” room, had padded walls on all sides, except for the double-framed plexiglass windows. It was designed to be a safe room for patients who might hurt themselves or others, now it seemed more like a quarantine zone for victims of the excrement attack.
Outside, the nurses and aids were suiting up in what looked like biological contamination suits. The attire included 2 pairs of rubber gloves (latex standard issue), a face mask (that looked more like the ones so popular after the SARS epidemic), eye goggles, and two emergency examination robes. Their shoes were covered with plastic grocery bags (not hospital issued, but effective nonetheless.)
Inside, I’m choking on excess saliva, still breathing through my mouth, thanking the powers that be for my partially clogged nose. Hilda’s continuing to spread her toilet treasures all over the walls and windows, and I’m just praying that I don’t get hit in the crossfire. If you truly need to hit some kind of rock bottom before you can make radical changes in your life, I’m also praying that this is that bottom.
—VS23
*Previously published by “Breath and Shadow”, an online magazine*
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