Get Me Out of Here (6 page)

The lockup ward, although adjacent to the regular psych floor, was a vastly different world. Here there was no confusion as to whether or not this was a mental ward; it was painfully obvious. There was only one sitting area, and all the patients were there. An elderly man with a pasted-on grin and vacuous look mumbled unintelligibly and shuffled up and down the hall in pajamas that were too big for him. A wild-eyed woman with overpermed, bleached hair sat at the table telling anyone who would listen how she had been sent by Jesus to let all people know that the world was ending and we were just moments away from a fiery eternity. A young teenage girl with slice marks all over her arms and the gaunt dark-circled ashen look of the near-dead slumped in a chair. She had just been released from surgery to thwart the effects of her latest suicide attempt—her tenth in a year. It made me feel positively sane. I hovered by the nurses, engaging them in conversation, trying to cling to my sanity in the face of those who had clearly lost theirs.

There were four nurses working the unit, all African American (as opposed to the regular psych floor where all of the nurses were white). They were energetic, witty, and unbelievably patient as they dealt with a ward full of people who needed constant assistance. Behavior that the drill sergeant would never tolerate was nothing to these nurses on the front line of the mentally ill. How they could so easily placate the erratic patients and still keep smiles on their faces absolutely amazed me.

“Girl,” one of them said to me, “what on God's green earth happened this mornin'? You know, honey, you really blew it. Dr. Padgett came in here all set to release you back to the other ward until you let him have it.”

“He was really going to release me?”

“Yes, ma'am. He had the papers all ready, just wanted to talk to you first before he signed 'em. Shit, girl. What in the world were you sayin' in there? I could hear the cussin' all the way back in the nurses' station.”

I winced at the thought. Everybody knew I'd lost control.

“I dunno. I guess I was just pissed to be here. I still don't know why I'm
here
, especially. These people are hard-core. I don't belong here.”

“Well, you sure didn't do much of a job convincing the good doctor of that. I don't see Dr. Padgett lose his cool like that very often, so you managed to really piss 'im off, honey. I wouldn't mess with him. He's in charge of the whole psychiatric division of this hospital. He may not act like it, but he's a powerful man, that Dr. Padgett. Big brass around here. I mean
big
. Also happens to be one of the best docs around. How'd you end up with him, anyway?”

“He was the guy on call.”

“Well, honey, you're a very lucky lady. You got the best. Don't blow it. Next time you're feelin' pissed off, bite a pillow or something. Because if you're trying to convince this guy you don't need to be here, you're goin' about it the wrong way. I can tell you're a smart lady, Rachel. Next time, why don't you use some of those brains God gave you? You can say and do a lot of things on the outside and no one pays it any mind, but in here you're under a microscope. If you wanna get out of this unit, honey, you gotta watch your p's and q's. You're way too young and smart to be stuck in this scene for too long. Don't waste the gifts God gave you, honey.”

I waited to be released all day, well-behaved, helping the nurses and keeping them company. I had called my husband and calmly explained where I was and my version of the unjust circumstances that had led to my confinement in lockup. Tim, believing every word I said, vowed to help me be released. He called Dr. Padgett's office and spoke to him and heard an entirely different version of the story.

“But she always goes running late at night, Dr. Padgett. She's been doing it for a long time. She has a lot of nervous energy. The running helps her.”

“At two o'clock in the morning?” Dr. Padgett had replied. “It may be something she always does, but do you really think it's normal?”

Truth be told, Tim didn't find it normal. He had merely coped with it, the same as he had with so many other erratic emotions and behaviors. He was torn between the wishes of his wife and the common sense of her doctor. Ultimately, he decided to continue to support me but to leave the decisions up to the doctor whose judgment he trusted a lot more than his own.

That day I gave the nurses the six-hour AMA written request, complete with witness signatures. It was an eloquently worded contract of sorts in which I agreed not to exit the hospital if I were released back into the regular psych ward before the six hours were up. Dr. Padgett waited until the last minute of the last hour before he signed the order to let me out of lockup, return my personal items, and move me back to my previous room.

Several months later he told me he had received the written notice within fifteen minutes of my handing it to the nurses. He knew he would ultimately sign it and release me, but he had me wait for the rest of the day for him to do so. It was in my best interest, he said.

As it turned out, many of my fellow patients in the “regular” psych ward (otherwise known as the stress unit) viewed my short stay in the lockup unit as a rite of initiation, a badge of courage. They simply had to meet the woman who'd gained grapevine infamy for hurling a radio at the charge nurse's head and being thrown in lockup for kickboxing. My weightless, frightening lockup experience became, in retrospect, a tale of brave antiauthoritarianism and defiance. I told my story with the same tough, false bravado I'd displayed in grade school when I got into trouble. James Dean with lipstick. Never let 'em see you sweat.

It became a fraternity of sorts, a half-dozen of us masking our pain by trading war stories of lockup and nurse oppression, mocking the instructors, giving them all nicknames, and basically turning the whole experience of psychiatric hospitalization into a running joke.

There was “Yoko Ono,” the Asian American psychodrama specialist. She led us through bizarre, emotionally venting psychodramas complete with pillow bats to beat the object of inner anger. “Peppy” was a young, blonde, perpetually smiling and energetic activities therapist. “Weebles” was our code name for the group therapy leader whose sessions we always disrupted, thus named for her disproportionately bottom-heavy physique (as in “Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down”).

By the end of the first week, I had become quite comfortable in the hospital environment. As patients were released and new ones admitted, I emerged as a ringleader of sorts. A veteran. It was a replay of the sixth grade as I led the laughter, making a mockery of scheduled activities with little of the fear of consequences I had at twelve. What could they do? I was an adult. And a mental patient. I relished my daily visits with Dr. Padgett when he did rounds, the soothing tonic quality of his voice. Tim and the kids visited most evenings, and after that I settled into the ritual of dorm-style, late-night bull sessions. I was beginning to enjoy having my every need taken care of—no cooking, cleaning, or giving the kids a bath. My “frat” buddies spoke of the place as if it were a prison, counting the days until they would be “sprung,” and I would chime right in with them. The truth was, however, I was getting too comfortable and beginning to secretly wish I might never be released—a covert desire I'd damn well never share with the others.

Dr. Padgett, alas, did know. He sensed my attachment and felt that the hospital environment was making me “lose touch with reality” and “regressing me to childhood.” With both fear and profound disappointment, I received the news he had ordered my release for the next day. If I were still amenable, I was to be in his office at 3:00
P.M.
the day after to start psychoanalytic therapy in earnest. Being ordered to return home was like being sent back out into the hall as a kid. To a scary place. Alone. Without my cohorts to keep my mind off a reality I couldn't bear to face.

In a little over three weeks, my inpatient stay had only served to place me on the proper anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications and monitor their effects.

The rest, it seemed, had been a very expensive game indeed. Wasted time. Wasted money.

I could hardly wait for my first official, full-length therapy session with Dr. Padgett. With the exception of our first consultation meeting, his visits in the hospital had been disappointingly short—typically ten minutes or less. I relished the thought of a full hour with the man, hoping that the magical moments of the initial meeting would be replayed and that the hunger to be understood that he'd awakened in me would once again be satiated. Unlike my childhood teachers, whose attention increased proportionately to my level of disruption, Dr. Padgett seemed to have grown more distant to me in the hospital as my psych ward antics increased. Now that I was released, I was ready to be serious again—and even more ready to receive his kind words and affection. I was determined to win him back.

Although it was located on the first floor of the hospital wing, very little was institutional about Dr. Padgett's office. The waiting room walls were a muted eggshell-white, adorned with inoffensive nature scenes—higher quality than their counterparts in the unit upstairs. The furniture was comfortable, but unlike that of the ward smoking lounge, it was contemporary and expensive.

With the bronze plaque on the door identifying him as “Medical Director of Psychiatry,” the geek with plaid shirts and squeaky voice gave way to a new image of a very powerful man indeed. I was intimidated to be waiting in this room for Dr. Padgett to emerge, hoping no one I knew would walk in and see me here in this strange place.

After a few moments, Dr. Padgett appeared from around the corner with the same broad smile I was beginning to realize was his trademark. I followed him into his office.

If the waiting room had been an exercise of subtle high quality, Dr. Padgett's private office was even more so. Portraits hung on the wall, some appearing to be originals. Cherry wood bookcases were built into the wall, filled with leather-bound books on a host of psychiatric topics. The desk was carved of cherry as well, the surface immaculate. The subdued lighting and luxurious furniture softly—and expensively—whispered professionalism.

The only indications of the Freudian purpose of the office were the full-length couch and the presence of designer tissue boxes at several places throughout the room. Two contemporary armchairs faced each other with a small mahogany table in between. I quickly sank into one of the chairs as Dr. Padgett sat comfortably in the other.

While the office made a strong impression on me, the first session itself was a disappointment—much more like a professor outlining a course than the riveting emotional catharsis of our initial consultation. It was dry, unemotional fare as he listed his session fees, elaborated upon the terms and methodologies mentioned in the pamphlet, described schedules and billing procedures, and checked up on my medications.

Finally, he laid down the ground rules of therapy. There were plenty of them. Therapy was conducted with heavy reliance on free association—uncensored thoughts in a controlled setting bounded by a daunting number of rules. An “hour” was only fifty minutes, whereupon sessions would end regardless of the point we'd reached. Questions about his academic credentials would be answered at any time, but none whatsoever about his personal life. I was, at all times, to be candid. If he sensed that I wasn't, or was hiding behind defenses, he would interrupt and redirect the conversation. It was not his policy to take phone calls from patients while in session with another patient, nor was it his policy to allow after-hours calls to turn into therapy by phone. I had fifty minutes of his undivided attention and focus to explore my feelings in session, and I would need to learn to make good use of that time rather than act out the emotions elsewhere.

Free association? Somehow the context seemed anything but free.

In the final minutes of the session, as he glanced at a digital clock on the table that only he could see, he handed me a three-page report to review before our next session. It was the result of a multiple choice, fill-in-the-dot psychological profile test I'd taken and barely recalled from my first full day as a hospital inpatient. As I read the first paragraph, I was gripped by nausea. I could tell that I had flunked it.

Before I could read further, Dr. Padgett smiled, nodded his head, and said, “That's all for today.”

It was a phrase I would learn to despise with all of my being.

After finding a chair in a relatively private corner of the hospital lobby, I proceeded to read the entire report. I couldn't say what I had expected, but it wasn't the stinging barrage of labels I read in that report. I could have handled words such as “tough,” “misunderstood,” “erratic,” or “unruly.” Instead this bitingly clinical text literally ripped my character to shreds.
Manipulative. Seductive and promiscuous. Overdramatic. Demanding to be the center of attention. Overdependent. Histrionic—at times, hysterical. Severe mood swings. Clear suicidal tendencies, as well as sociopathological ones
.

It took all the self-control I could muster not to vomit on the floor. I was shaking. I was in shock. I checked the cover page again to make sure that this report was about me and I hadn't somehow been handed someone else's. I noticed that the report had been compiled by the same psychologist who had conducted group therapy. Weebles. My hurt and shock transformed to righteous indignation. Weebles had framed me because her group sessions were ineffective whinefests. Because she was really just a pushy bitch who didn't want to hear from those who wanted to talk and stomped on the privacy of those who didn't. Just because I wasn't going to play along with her group orgy of touchy-feely talk. Because of all that, she'd decided to get even and nail me with the test results. She'd made me look like shit. Cheap, dirty, low shots. Fuck her!

And Padgett, it dawned on me, went right along with her. The sonofabitch. He'd lied to me, led me on, betrayed me. How could I have trusted him? How could I have been so stupid to think that he cared?

Still shaking, now with rage instead of shock, I headed for the nearest pay phone in the lobby foyer. While fumbling angrily for Dr. Padgett's card and a quarter, my purse strap broke and the leather bag fell to the floor. With the coin and card in hand, I kicked my purse, catapulting it against the other wall, its contents spilling out on the rug. Finally, I put the coin in the phone and dialed.

“Dr. Padgett's office.”

“I need to talk to Dr. Padgett. Now!”

“I'm sorry. He's in with a patient now. Can I take a message?”

Another goddamned patient. How much was he toying with that one's mind? Jealousy washed over me at the thought that he could be in with anybody besides me.

“Listen, I need to talk to him now! No, no, wait a minute—fuck it. Go ahead; leave him a message. You tell that bastard he can take his therapy and shove it up his ass. You can cancel my appointments now. I'm finished with that lying sonofabitch, and you can tell him that too.”

“Excuse me, ma'am…. Ma'am? Please hold for just a minute.”

The phone clicked, and Dr. Padgett came on the line. My Pavlovian wilting response to his voice made me even angrier.

“You sonofabitch!” I was screaming in tears, and the woman at the information desk in the lobby was staring at me through the glass double doors. “What is this bullshit? Huh? These fucking lies. Why didn't you just have her write ‘asshole’ and be done with it?”

“Rachel,” he replied calmly, seemingly having ignored the outburst, “it's a report compiled from questions you answered. It doesn't fully define you.”

“Then you admit it's a pack of lies? Huh? Will you admit it?”

“I didn't say it was inaccurate. I said it was incomplete.”

“Did you read it?” I was whining now, pleading for sympathy. “Did you? My God—the words. ‘Manipulative.’ ‘Psychotic.’ ‘Dependent.’ Goddamnit, Dr. Padgett, do you really hate me that much?”

“You know I don't hate you, Rachel. You have serious problems, but I don't hate you, and you aren't an asshole. We'll work on it together. Obviously we're going to need to discuss this report in much further detail.”

His voice was a soothing tonic again, almost hypnotic, entrancing. I needed him. Right then. I needed him to bump his other patient and talk to me, soothe me with his healing words for hours as he had the first day we'd met.

“Could we meet right now?” I begged him.

“I have appointments the rest of today and a full day tomorrow. Maybe Regina could set something up for you on Thursday.”

“Not Thursday,” I demanded, my hysterical tears peaked to crescendo. “Now, goddamnit. Now! I've gotta see you
now!
”

“I'm sorry. That just isn't possible. We can discuss this at our next session.”

“I've got news for you, asshole. There's not gonna be a next session. How dare you hand me a piece of shit report like that and then just turn your back on me? You knew it would kill me. Well, fuck you and your Freudian bullshit. I quit!”

In a firm tone of finality, he simply replied, “What you do is up to you. I hope you stay. I think I can help you, but it's your choice to decide if you can trust me or not. I really can't discuss this now. We can explore it more in our next session. Good-bye, Rachel.”