Long Past Stopping (27 page)

“Don't worry, we don't believe in making people suffer here. I've found that method ineffective,” he said, handing me a cup of pills.

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“So listen. Just take it easy for now, and when you feel up to it, we have various group activities going on all the time. You might feel better if you get up and participate.”

I wasn't alone in the room. There was another kid—who must have been eighteen or so—sitting on his bed, staring straight into outer space. I watched him stare at the wall for close to an hour.
What the fuck happened to him?
I asked myself until my bladder was about to explode and I got up to go to the bathroom.

There were no locks on the doors, which was to be expected. I wasn't worried about my roommate, as he was completely occupied at the moment, but there was a door leading to another room, making what I was about to do more risky. I turned on the shower and fixed myself a shot as quickly as possible, then got in the shower and injected it, using one of the rubber bands from my shoes as a tourniquet. When I came back out, my roommate was still sitting in the same position.

I wanted to avoid my room as much as possible, which only turned out to be a few minutes. When I walked out to the ward, one of the nurses guided me to a circle of people talking about their feelings. No sooner had I sat down than whatever drugs the doctor had given me
started taking effect on top of the heroin. I was determined to stay, but when I started sliding off my chair, I knew it was only a matter of time before I ended up on the floor. I excused myself and used every ounce of strength I could muster to walk the thirty feet back to my room.

 

T
HIS TIME
I woke up to a nurse telling me I had a phone call. “Huh? Nobody knows I'm here.”

“Someone does, and she's waiting for you.” God, it was a struggle to get up.

“You can use that one on the wall,” she said, after I had followed her out to the hall. I had a bad feeling about this, but I picked up the phone.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Ory? Finally. God, they've had me on hold forever.” Oh, fuck. How did she get my number?

“How did you find me?” I asked my mom. I had explicitly told Jack not to tell her I was here.

“I found out from Jack after calling every one of your friends, who had no idea where you were. Everyone's worried about you. I called Jack just to let him know you were missing and I was shocked when he told me you were there.”

“Uh-huh.” I was pissed at Jack for telling her.

“How do you think that made me feel?” she asked.

“SO YOU'RE CALLING ME AT THE FUCKING HOSPITAL TO GIVE ME A GUILT TRIP? FUCK YOU!” I had snapped and there was nothing I could do to turn it off. “DID YOU EVER THINK THAT MIGHT BE THE REASON I DIDN'T TELL YOU WHERE I WAS? THAT MAYBE I ALREADY FEEL SHITTY ENOUGH WITHOUT YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL EVEN SHITTIER?” I had to pause for a breath of air.

“Hey, Oran. That's not fair. I am not trying to give you a guilt trip, but what'd you expect me to do? You think I'm not going through a hard time too? Do you have any idea what it's like for me to watch you go through this?” She was surprisingly calm. I noticed two orderlies walking toward me down the hall, but I didn't think anything of it.

“SEE, THERE YOU GO AGAIN BLAMING ME FOR YOUR HARD TIME. IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME FUCKING SHIT. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I DIDN'T TELL YOU WHERE I WAS. I CAN'T FUCKING DEAL WITH IT ANYMORE. MY WHOLE FUCKING
LIFE HAS BEEN….” Then one of the orderlies had me in a bear hug, while the other one ripped the jack out of the phone.

He held me until the other guy had taken the phone from my hand and then he let go.

“You okay, man?” the orderly who grabbed me asked. I was a little bewildered by the suddenness of what had happened, but actually I felt fine, even thankful that these guys had intervened. It was the first time I had felt like someone had seen the truth about my mom.

“Yeah. I'm fine. Sorry. That was my mom,” I answered as if that would explain everything.

“Your mom? Holy shit, man, I ain't never heard no one talk to their mom like that,” he said. “Well, let's go talk to the nurse. She didn't know what was going on. Thought you was in a fight or something.”

We walked around the corner to the nurses' desk.

“What was that all about?” the nurse asked.

“He was on the phone with his mom.”

“His mom?” She looked surprised.

“Yeah, sorry. She wasn't supposed to know I was here,” I said.

“Your mom? Well, we better make sure that doesn't happen again,” she said, picking up the phone. “Hello. I need a block on any incoming calls from…. What's her name?” she asked me, holding the phone away from her mouth. I gave her Mom's name, which she repeated to the operator before hanging up. “That ought to do it then. I think you scared the whole ward, certainly scared me. By the way, if you want to eat, dinner ends in ten minutes.”

 

F
UCKING HOSPITAL FOOD.
I hadn't eaten in so long, yet it was still a struggle to force down the piece of toast, the cold tomato soup, and the cube of bright red Jell-O that was on my tray. Noticing a bunch of people filing out of a door holding cigarettes, I gave up on the Jell-O and followed them out to a patio, which was walled off with chain-link fencing. A nurse lit all our cigarettes, and, while I was smoking, a girl somewhere around my age approached me to ask if I had an extra cigarette.

As I handed her one, I noticed what looked like shoelace marks around her neck.

“So what are you getting off of?” she asked me.

“Heroin. How did you know I was in here for drugs?” I asked her.

“'Cause you're not wearing a gown. That's how you can tell the druggies from the psychos.”

I looked around the patio to get a sense of how many psychos surrounded me. The druggies were outnumbered four to one.

“So I take it you're the reason they took my shoelaces?” I said, unsure if it would be taken as a joke or set off another suicide attempt.

“Those fucking bastards took everything from me. Not just my shoelaces…all my clothes, even my bra and underwear. Now I have to walk around looking like one of these psychos.”

I didn't bring up the fact that strangling yourself with a shoelace was clearly psychotic behavior.

“How does that help someone who has just lost their kid and is trying to
build
self-esteem, not lose it? All they do is try to make you feel shittier to justify keeping you here, so they can take more of your goddamn money,” she said, getting completely worked up. In a change of tone, she asked, “Heroin, huh? I'm here for speed.”

“Speed? Where are your clothes, then?” I asked.

“Oh, they took them yesterday when I supposedly tried to kill myself. They're supposed to be these professionals and they couldn't see I was just trying to scare my ex-husband? Fucking bastards. Do they know how degrading it is to walk around dressed like one of these nuts?” She said it loud enough for the nurse to hear. The nurse ignored her, but the other gown wearers were starting to give her nasty looks.

“You believe me though, right? That I'm not one of these crazy people?” Again she was talking a little louder than I thought she should have. I didn't know what to say. I was never good at these on-the-spot situations.

“Honestly? Well, I only met you two minutes ago.”

“True. I'm in a psych ward, but you can tell that I'm just angry, right? Not crazy like the rest of them. Who wouldn't be angry the way I've been treated? In fact, I would be crazy if I
wasn't
angry. They took my daughter away from me.” With that she broke into tears. I stood there uncomfortably for a while. “I needed the money. I was broke, and Gary wasn't paying his child support. What'd he expect me to do? I only did it once,” she sobbed.

“Canfield…Oran?” The nurse with the lighter called to me just in time. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what it was she had done just once. “Time to get your meds.”

“Uh. I guess I have to go,” I said, but the girl didn't respond. She just stood there crying. I wasn't safe anywhere in this place.

The nurse walked me through the door and said, “You looked like you needed some help. I would stay away from that one. She's a bit crazy,”
which seemed an odd thing for her to say. It seemed to me that everyone here was more than just a bit crazy, they were totally fucking nuts. “We'll find you when it's really time to take your meds,” she said.

I shuffled back to my room and was relieved to find my roommate lying down, staring at the ceiling. I did the same until a nurse came in with my medication.

“Thanks,” I said and quickly nodded off.

Again, I was woken up by the doctor. “So how are we today?”

“What? I have no idea how we are, but I feel like shit.” My eyes were trying to adjust to the sunlight.

“Really? Because based on what you told us during your intake, we're giving you more than enough medication. You should be quite comfortable.”

“That's the thing. I think I might be a little too comfortable. I feel like a fucking zombie. I've been mostly asleep for two days. I may regret saying this, but I think it might be too much,” I said, neglecting to mention that I had been doing heroin on top of whatever else they had me on.

“I've been at this for twenty years, and I'll never understand you heroin addicts. When you guys are out on the street, you'll stick anything that some stranger tells you is dope in your veins, but when a trained doctor gives you something, you don't want to have anything to do with it.”

“Yeah? And?”

“So we're going to stick to the regimen as planned for now, and we'll start tapering you down tomorrow. Okay?”

“Uh,” I hesitated, but I was too medicated to come up with an argument.

“Good, and I would try to check out some of the groups today. You might hear something.”

“From these people? I doubt it, but I'll give it a shot.”

“There you go. Just give it a shot. You never know, right?”

I did know, but I gave him a noncommittal nod in the hope that he would leave.

After getting high in the bathroom again, I went out on the patio. I found an unoccupied corner to smoke my cigarette in peace, but the girl from the day before found me and interrupted my isolation.

“Hey. Sorry about yesterday. You must think I'm crazy.”

“I'm here, too,” I said, neither confirming nor denying her.

“Anyway, I just wanted to explain—so you don't think I'm crazy—
that all this started when my ex-husband saw me acting in a porn movie. It was stupid, but I was broke and it was just a onetime thing. Anyway, he flipped out and used it as evidence to get my daughter back from me, and that's when I started doing too much speed.”

It was a strange explanation for not being crazy. I had never met a porn star, though. I didn't actually know whether being in one movie qualified someone to be a porn “star,” but suddenly I found her a lot more interesting.

“Yeah, that's terrible. I mean, you said he wasn't paying child support, right? What did he expect you to do?”
Jesus. What the hell was I saying to this girl? Not receiving child support seemed like the worst excuse to have sex with a stranger for money—especially on camera.

“Exactly. What's the big deal? I don't know how I could tell, but I knew you would understand,” she said, stepping a little closer to me.

Because I will say the stupidest shit in the world to avoid awkwardness,
I thought to myself.

“It's too bad we're stuck in this hospital,” she said, edging even closer.

“Oh, the doctor told me to check out one of these groups,” I said, uncomfortable with where my thoughts were going. “I should probably go.”

“I'll go with you,” she volunteered.

There were three groups sitting in circles when we went back into the ward. We found one with two chairs available and sat down as people were introducing themselves. Two of the other patients got up and left when we showed up. It wasn't long before I understood why.

“Hi, I'm Oran,” I said when it came around to me.

“Do you mind telling the group why you're here?” the counselor leading the group asked.

“I'm kicking heroin.”

“Okay. Very good. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I'm Stacy and I'm here because my ex—”

“Thanks, Stacy, but I only asked Oran because he's new to the group.”

“Now, who wants to start?” she asked, staring directly at me.

“I will,” Stacy said.

The other patients rolled their eyes and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“Actually, I was hoping to hear from Oran, since he hasn't been with us. Oran, would you like to start?”

“No, thanks. I'm still pretty foggy. I thought I would just listen today.” I had learned in the other rehabs that this was the right way to decline because it implied a sort of silent participation.

“Anyone else want to start then?”

“See what I mean?” Stacy turned to me, but she was obviously talking to the counselor. “They don't want me to get better. Every time I try to help myself, they try to shut me out.” Then she turned and stared straight at the counselor. “It's because they know my parents' insurance is covering this and you want to keep me here as long as you can.”

“Stacy. We've been through this over and over again, and you know that's not what's going on.”

“Oh yeah? Well then, tell me again because I don't understand why else you guys would keep me here when I'm about to lose my daughter to that fucking asshole. Do you even know why I was in that movie? Because that bastard…”