Get Me Out of Here (3 page)

I called Tim. Twice. He answered the phone, relieved to hear from me. He pled with me to come home, apologizing for anything he could think of. He begged me to tell him where I was so he could come and pick me up. Instead I told him I was going to die and that he would be better off without me. I hung up without giving him a clue as to where I was.

I didn't quite make it to the projects. I'd run about five miles, which burned off some of my excess energy and a lot of my anger. It was dusk—about two hours since I'd left the house—and I started to feel afraid. But I wasn't about to call and tell him where I was. That would mean admitting my stupidity. I sat on a park bench and suddenly spied our red Dodge. Tim pulled up, the kids looking out the windows from their car seats.

I climbed in, and he drove home without one word of admonishment. He was too tired and scared, afraid, I guessed, that I'd go running out the door again and the next time I wouldn't be so lucky.

For the next few weeks I was a tornado, raging out of control, fury swelling, destroying everything in my path. The run became a nightly routine. Tim was concerned about my safety in the darkness of the neighborhood, but he didn't try to stop me from the ritual. Perhaps he was afraid that if he were to resist me, I wouldn't stay within our neighborhood but would instead begin heading westward again. The moans were more frequent now, and Tim stopped making night appointments for fear of what could happen in his absence.

I don't know why, but up to this point, I had not taken out my fears, frustrations, and anger on my children. As wildly erratic as I could be with Tim and others, a calm came over me when dealing with Jeffrey and Melissa. The demons within me were at peace for a while, and I was much more patient with them than a lot of other mothers are with their children. Seldom, if ever, had I become impatient or lost my temper with the kids.

But in the spinning fury of my loss of control, even this bond began to fray. Jeffrey was talking like a boy twice his age. Unfortunately, he was capable of understanding the words I had begun to hurl at him. I saw a stunned look of betrayal in his eyes; he'd never seen anything like this before. He was frightened. And I was frightening myself.

One Friday in late June, about three weeks after my “West Side Run,” I woke up shaky, irritable, and more out of control than usual. I restlessly tried to read a book and lose myself in it in an attempt to kill time.

Jeffrey, however, kept trying to crawl onto my lap. Irritated, I shoved him away, not wanting to touch him. At first Jeffrey thought it was some kind of game. But finally something snapped, and I slapped him so hard he went reeling to the floor.

I looked at him lying there, crying in earnest as the thoughts began to spin in my head.
Jesus Christ, Rachel, you aren't even a good mother anymore. You have nothing. You are hateful, crazy, awful
.

Jeffrey didn't take his eyes off me, nor would he stop crying. He lay there on the floor, wailing, and the sight and sound reminded me of what a wretched human being I was.

“Goddamnit, Jeffrey. Stop it!” I screamed.

Jeffrey didn't stop.

“Goddamnit, you little pain in the ass. Shut the fuck up!”

He didn't.

Overwhelmed with rage, I grabbed him hard by the shoulder and began to vigorously spank him until my hand was red and stinging. I couldn't stop—until I got another look at his eyes.

He had stopped crying, his fright overcoming his need to express his emotions. But his eyes were wide open, as big as I'd ever seen them. And absolutely, unequivocally horrified. That look stopped me.

The familiar feeling of weightlessness overtook me again. I knew Jeffrey's look. I knew that feeling.

It had been a common part of my childhood—enduring rages that began and ended just as unpredictably. The reality slowly sunk in. I had beaten my child. Just as my father had beaten his. Just as I swore I never ever would. A wave of nausea rose within me.
I was just like my father
. Even my children would be better off without me. There was no longer any reason to stay alive.

Suddenly I felt a great sense of calm. I knew what I needed to do. I was going to die. Yet somewhere within me a shred of self-preservation insisted I give myself one more chance. Fully “floating” by now, I calmly gathered the children as if I were someone else, asking them to play in the yard. I had a phone call to make. I was a death-row prisoner awaiting execution at my own hands, making one final attempt for a reprieve—one I was not altogether sure I wanted.

I didn't call Tim. Lord knows I'd done enough to Tim. Instead, I called a church-sponsored family crisis hotline. I stayed on the phone for over an hour and a half. I spilled out a wild flood of self-hatred, punctuated by moments when I would interrupt the conversation to check on the children.

I'm horrible, I told the man on the other end of the phone. I hate myself. I'm crazy. It would really surprise him that once upon a time I used to be somebody. I used to accomplish things. People who knew me, I told him, wouldn't believe that all of this was going on. It was probably hard to believe, but they think I'm a nice person.
They don't know me
.

The man, however, was not about to let me off the line. Again and again he tried to get my name and phone number. But I refused. I didn't want him to stop me from my destiny.

But finally, thoroughly exhausted, I relented and gave him my name and number. As I suspected, he said he was going to call an ambulance to come get me. I couldn't imagine it—the sirens going and everyone on the block coming to see what was going on with their crazy neighbor. An ambulance simply wasn't an option.

What followed was a negotiation as the man sold me on the importance of not being alone right then. He insisted that if I couldn't come up with a better plan, he was going to call 9-1-1 within the next five minutes. I ultimately agreed to call a teenager to watch the kids, and I agreed to see the pastor of my church. He was vigilant; if I hung up the phone, or if my pastor reported I had not arrived, he would call the police and an ambulance.

By then, however, it didn't make a difference. I was resigned to go ahead with the meeting as promised, to give life one more chance—albeit a temporary one.

I mechanically picked up my Walkman, kissed the children good-bye, and walked to the church rectory—stopping for a Big Gulp and a carton of cigarettes along the way. Why a carton and not a pack? Perhaps I knew where I was destined to go.

Without much effort, the pastor persuaded me to let him take me to the emergency room. Numb by then, I acquiesced.

Never once in this whole surreal episode did I call Tim, nor would I allow anyone else to do so on my behalf.

I'd agreed to their terms. They'd agree to mine.

It was all too surreal. Me. A psychiatric inpatient.

Sitting back in a generously padded chair, drawing hard on a cigarette, I tried to make sense of it all. Tim, whom I'd finally contacted once I was settled in my room, hadn't been as disgusted or angry as I'd anticipated. Indeed, he'd been relieved. Perhaps tonight he'd sleep well. He needed it; he looked like hell. A number of other patients were socializing in the smoking lounge. Most wore blue jeans and sweatshirts. A group of them sat on the sofas, bantering, laughing, and acting as if this were some sort of party. No one wore the dowdy, overlaundered hospital robes or paper slippers I'd expected. I stayed in a corner, alone. These people were
mental
patients. I wondered how these laughing women, who appeared more like carefree coeds, had ended up in this place.

Of course, I was also a mental patient, although I'd had no idea that a trip to the emergency room would lead to this. I wasn't sure I belonged here. I mean, I'd been upset and all, but this—
this
was extreme. As bursts of laughter echoed through the lounge, I couldn't help but feel they were laughing at me, speculating on what had brought me here.

Panic hit me. I didn't want to be here. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't need to be here. I would leave first thing in the morning.

At ten o'clock I heard the squeaking wheels of a cart as it was pulled into the lounge. A nurse, the “Good Humor man,” was dispensing a kaleidoscope of medications. The laughing “coeds” gravitated to the cart, almost greedy for their pills. It was straight out of
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
. Mind control. It frightened me.

At first I refused the tiny, white anti-anxiety pill and the black, round sleeping pill he tried to give me. I needed my wits about me in this place where I didn't belong. Ultimately, I relented. It wasn't like I was a novice at drugs. How could a few pills hurt? I'd be leaving in the morning anyway.

At midnight a new shift came on duty, and a heavyset nurse with a jet-black pageboy haircut, excessive makeup, and an attitude of authority came into the lounge, grabbed the TV remote, shut it off, and announced that it was bedtime. Bedtime? What gave her the right to tell me when I can or can't watch TV or go to bed?

I made a few snippy remarks that she obviously didn't appreciate—a fact that placated me. But the pills I had taken dulled my ability to stand up for myself. I reminded myself that I was going to bed because I wanted to, not because some drill sergeant in white had ordered me to do so.

My stark room had two single beds, institutional carpet, a built-in desk with a Formica top, and nearly empty walls. The place lacked the antiseptic tile floors of a typical hospital wing, but it wasn't quite like a dorm room. And it wasn't like a hospital either.

What was this place? Why was I here? Panic filled me, despite the numbing effects of the pills. They were beginning to wear off anyway. I was wide awake. Alone. It was two o'clock in the morning. I was convinced that I couldn't stay in this place, with the drug cart and the nurses who ordered patients around as if they were children. No, I couldn't stay another minute.

Tim, in his haste and worry, had forgotten to bring me clothes. So I had been forced to wear one of the hospital-issue gowns I so hated. The drill sergeant got some sort of strange satisfaction out of that. She wanted me to look like a mental patient. She wanted me to go crazy. Forget it. Cheap gown or not, I was getting out of this place. Right now.

As I crept down the hallway, I saw her sitting there at the nurse's station, reading
Vogue
and sipping coffee. Sitting on her fat ass. No wonder she was so insistent that I go to bed: she was lazy.

It was laughably simple to get past her, her eyes riveted to the magazine. Quietly I tiptoed toward the double entry doors to the ward and slowly, silently opened them. The fresh, cooler air of the hallway and the cold tile floor were proof that I had successfully escaped. When I left the building and inhaled the brisk outdoor air, reality set in.

Where the hell did I intend to go?

I didn't have a car. I hadn't brought my purse. Tim had gone home and was probably getting the good night's sleep he'd seemed to anticipate with a little too much relish.

I thought about Tim's visit. He'd been relieved. I was in the psych ward with all of these mental patients, forced into a fog of complacency. And the sonofabitch was relieved! I'd called myself crazy in front of him before, and he'd always gently answer, “No, sweetheart, you aren't crazy.” Fucking liar, he did think I was crazy. He'd kept looking at his watch the whole time he visited me—couldn't wait to get out of there and leave his wife a prisoner in the loony bin.

Screw him, I thought. He doesn't want me around.
Well, I don't want to be with him anyway!

There was only one place to go. West. Only the most dangerous neighborhoods of the West Side were much closer from here than they had been from home. And it was nighttime. Perfect. This time, I would make it all the way to the projects. And this time, I wouldn't make it out alive.

I was on the sidewalk of a major thoroughfare, moving as quickly as my drug-numbed body would let me. I shuddered and sobbed uncontrollably as I headed west in my bare feet. I knew damn well I was the perfect victim—which is precisely what I wanted to be.

I didn't get very far when a uniformed security guard approached me, a logo of the hospital on his pocket. Resistance? I hadn't planned on resistance. I didn't have the energy for it.

“Ma'am, do you realize it's two in the morning? I don't know where you think you're going, but the streets aren't very safe around here at night.”

His words were music to my ears.

“I'm going west,” I sobbed. “These streets are too safe, goddamnit. I gotta get outta here.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. I wanted to push it off and start running in earnest, but the damned medications dulled my reactions. The guard soon realized I was from the psych ward and escorted me back to the unit. I didn't fight him. I just wanted to go to sleep.

The night nurse/drill sergeant had set down her coffee and magazine and was standing by the double entry doors to the unit, arms folded, awaiting my return. She was clearly angry and wasn't going to let me go to sleep until she'd had her say.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, her brown eyes burning into me. “You don't leave this unit at this time of night. You don't leave this unit without a signed pass from a doctor. What on earth is wrong with you?”

Don't you know, you idiot? I'm in the goddamned psych ward. I'm crazy. And I'm doing what crazy people do!

“I want to go home,” I mumbled through my tears. “I just want to go home. I'm not supposed to be here. I don't belong here.”

“Humph,” she sniffed. “We'll let the doctor be the judge of that. If he decides to release you or gives you a pass, fine. But you do not leave this place without one, and you surely don't do it at two in the morning. As long as I'm the charge nurse responsible for you, you aren't going anywhere. Look at you—you're a mess. You're in a hospital gown for God's sake. You've taken some pretty large doses of drugs. It was downright dangerous.”

It was my turn to be angry. “Hey! This is a free country, and I can go any goddamned place I please. You made it easy actually—just sitting up there on your big fat ass reading. You just don't want to have to stop reading and get up from your little throne behind the desk. You don't care about me. You're only pissed because you screwed up, and you're scared you'll lose your fucking job!”

“
Look
,” she practically spit the word at me, her eyes narrowed, “you obviously don't like me. Well, I don't much like you either. I don't have to like you. But I'll tell you one thing. I'm not going to lose my job over someone like you. I've worked here for ten years. I don't know what your problem is, but let me tell you one thing. Don't mess with me because you'll be in lockup so fast your head will spin. You don't scare me, you don't move me, you don't intimidate me. And if you want to make this all into some sort of a game, I guarantee you that I'll win it. So don't even think about trying it again. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I was numb, way too tired to fight.

Glaring at her, I shuffled back into my room and then fell asleep, defeated, hating the night and its mind-deafening silence.

Morning brought a new atmosphere to the ward. Different nurses appeared, and the bantering patients filled the smoking lounge once again. The ward smelled of hospital food, and I could hear the clattering of tray carts, the whir of the housekeeping vacuums, and cartoons on TV. The place was not nearly as frightening as it had been the night before, although I was still convinced I didn't belong there.

As I pushed aside my half-eaten tray of cold pancakes, powdered eggs, and soggy bacon, the day nurse tapped me on the shoulder.

“Rachel, Dr. Padgett is here to see you. He's the on-call psychiatrist assigned to your case.”

Psychiatrist. My case. Reality slapped me again. I was a mental patient. It was all a mistake. I felt fine. A little upset yesterday, but today I was okay.

I turned around to see Dr. Padgett. He was smiling broadly in almost a goofy sort of way, a slightly built man of average height. He was dressed not in a lab coat, but in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and a pair of tan Dockers. His fine, black hair was slicked straight back, and a pair of thick wire-rim glasses magnified the brown eyes behind them. He appeared neat except for an unruly mustache in dire need of a trim. He didn't look like a psychiatrist. He looked like a geek. I sized him up. He wouldn't pose a problem. A few minutes with him and I would talk my way out of this place by afternoon.

“Small conference room” was a misnomer. It was a cubicle with barely enough room for a small, round table and two chairs. White walls. No windows. No pictures. I sat in my chair, and Dr. Padgett sat across from me. I fidgeted, deciphered the pattern of the carpet, counted the acoustic ceiling tiles. Silent. I had nothing to say to this man. He was supposed to be the psychiatrist; let him ask the questions.

I was waiting for a barrage of open-ended inquiries. Why did I think I was there? What did I think of my mother, my father, my childhood? When I looked into the ink splotch, what did I see? I waited for him to try to get into my head, something I was convinced he would never be able to do. I wanted out. Today.

Yet he sat there, as silently as I did, not saying a word, and seemingly content not to do so. At first I was determined to outlast him; after all, he couldn't stay there all day, could he? Soon, however, the silence became oppressive. My emotions were spinning, nearly overwhelming me. I looked up into his eyes, which were intensely focused on me. Not a stare, exactly. Nor was it a look of clinical dissection, of trying to categorize me. It was a look of genuine concern. As much as I had been determined to distance myself from the man—to control the meeting—I found myself drawn to those eyes.

Finally, I couldn't contain my emotions.

“I'm not supposed to be here, Dr. Padgett,” I finally told him. “I went a little overboard yesterday, maybe, but I can handle it. I just kind of went along with what the pastor at my church suggested, but I didn't realize I'd end up here. I don't need to be here. And I don't need a psychiatrist.”