The Death of Small Creatures (29 page)

I'm looking at it now, swollen and red, a fissure.

It itches.

The further away you drift from me (and you seem so far away now), the more I want to tear myself open, to ease the pain and anxiety. And the more I cut myself open to ease the pain and anxiety, the further you drift from me.

The morning after my OD last week, as I sat at a table across from you in the sunny interview room at the end of the hall, the IV in my arm, my face pale and sickly and my hair a mess, you said, “Well, you look like a real psych patient now.”

“I guess so,” I mumbled. “You seem angry.”

“How do you expect me to be?” you said.

“A little more compassionate,” I said.

“No, I'm frustrated,” you said. “You're wearing your illness like a flag.”

“Oh,” I said, devastated.

“Why do you do that?”

I was near tears.

You lightened a little then. “Okay,” you said, “no more picking on Trisha.”

I said nothing.

“You okay?” you said.

“No.”

“You'll be okay.”

I said nothing.

“Are you okay?” you said again.

“No.”

We walked down the hall together. You softened a little, kept asking me if I was okay, to which I replied each time, softly, decidedly, “No—no—no.”

“Do you want something to help you sleep?” you said. “Do you want to sleep all day?”

“Yes,” I said.

9:05 pm

I am N268A, that is to say, North East wing, number 268, A side of a twin room.

I have had three roommates in the time I've been here, almost two weeks now: Hailey, Jean, Patricia. The room is divided into two by a tall blue curtain that hangs from the ceiling and stops two feet from the floor. The floor is wood laminate, has a nice sheen. I have always liked wood-inspired things. The walls are pale green. There is a window on the far wall of the B side. The window only opens a little. There are white slats covering the glass. You can't really see outside. There is a whiteboard on the wall at the end of each of the beds. The room number is on the upper right corner of my board. On the left side of the board, a column reads:

My nurse is: Amy

Today is: Sunday December 11, 2011

I like to be called: Trisha

My goal today is: nothing

There is a built-in fake wooden desk to my left, and to the left of the desk are four cubbyholes. The bottom cubby is locked and only accessible with the nurse's key. Inside the cubby are my earrings and shaving razor.

They left one pair of earrings out though. Tonight I used the hook of one of the earrings to cut my right arm above the knife cuts.

Dr. P is right—I am a walking billboard of garish and tactless pain and humiliation. I almost like it, but only because it is familiar and comforting to be this person, because this is whom I have always been for as long as I can remember, because I am nothing, blank, immaculate, if I am not a wrecked human being. I am a good person, but that is all, and that is surely not enough to build a life around.

I will see you again tomorrow, then every day this week until Friday, then you are off on Christmas holidays to spend happy and festive moments with your wife of twenty-nine years and your three grown daughters, to live a whole-hearted meaningful life with a woman you've built a life around. How can I compete with that?

I am a mental patient.

I cut myself.

I OD.

Clinical Note:

She is ready emotionally and intellectually to commence ECT. We are awaiting a space on the roster. I will meet with her family members this morning to answer their questions with TC's preferred limits on the information given.

December 13, 2011

Today I gave you your Christmas present, a pair of white Calvin Klein socks, and a Christmas card I made in art therapy a week ago. I included in the card two pictures of me, when I was younger, dating back to 2003. In one picture I am standing next to a stone wall just beyond a slant of sunlight coming in through a window you cannot see in the frame, inside of Château de Chillon in Switzerland. In the other picture, I am standing next to an open window in a hotel room in Rome, Hotel Dolomiti. In both pictures I am more slender than I am now, more beautiful. I want you to have these pictures of me, to keep them in a private folder in your filing cabinet at work, to take them out from time to time and look at them, to look at me.

December 14,2011

I am second on the waitlist for ECT. You popped your head in my room this morning today just as you were leaving to a meeting and told me.

I longed for you, wanted to reach out and touch you, have you hold me, have someone, anyone, hold me tight.

You thanked me for the Calvin Klein socks. You were even wearing them. You stretched out your leg, pulled up your pant cuff and showed me. I was drawn to that little bit of exposed skin above the sock.

Pathetic.

December 17, 2011

Saturday.

The hospital is particularly quiet, sterile.

Just now I thought my roommate was crying into her pillow, but when I stepped around the curtain to ask her if she was okay, she was laughing into her pillow instead.

I had dinner tonight with Danny, a nineteen-year-old patient from central Alberta whose parents are crackheads and dope fiends. Danny smokes weed too but is trying to stay away from it. His eyes are dark blue, his face lovely and young, his hair brown and short. I sat across from him, listening to him talk about wanting to buy a little motorhome so he can drive it back to Alberta and live in it when he gets there. I watched his mouth, his lips, and I wanted to kiss him.

I wonder why no one comes to visit my roommate, and so close to Christmas.

I wonder if they will begin the shock treatment this week.

I asked you if you would be present when they do the treatment. You said, “No, but I will be with you in spirit.”

I wanted to ask you to change your mind, to make an exception, to be an observer in the room as they pull down my shirt and place the electrodes on my body, so that I could feel the erotic tension of your gaze as I drift off to sleep, so that you could bear witness to my controlled seizure as the current flows through me. So that I would know you are partial to my nudity, and so that I could pretend that what I'm about to feel as the electricity flows through me is partial to orgasm flooding through my body.

December 19, 2011

My rabbit Caravaggio died last night at approximately 6:30 pm.

Why did I not note the exact time?

I held him in my arms as the vet inserted the toxic solution into the catheter in his paw.

Which was it? The left or right paw?

He had become tangled in the mesh underneath my couch. I finally found him there when I returned home on one of my day passes from the hospital. His back legs were bound tightly together. For two days I thought he was just hiding under there, the way he so often does. For two days he was tangled under there without food or water, writhing in pain, writhing to get free.

My beautiful Caravaggio.

He was paralyzed in his hindquarters, the vet said, totally and permanently paralyzed. He was incontinent, had peed all over himself, causing urine scalding on his hocks and around his genitals, which in turn caused an infection that I did not know about, which no doubt had been causing him great pain for weeks. He also had an obstruction of the bowel.

Had I trimmed his nails I believe he would not have got tangled in the mesh.

I am now on call for ECT.

They only do ECT early in the mornings, I'm not sure why—perhaps something to do with the ambient temperature of the procedure room so early in the morning, the humidity level as storms swell over the island, or the first light of day slanting into the room, upon the table, slanting inward upon my half-naked body, warming my face perhaps as electrodes are placed onto my scalp.

Am I making the biggest mistake of my life?

My old roommate Patricia said, “Don't do it, kid. You'll never be the same.”

That got to me.

But now that Caravaggio is gone and that destruction has passed, now that I lie here in this hospital room, heartbroken and writing to you, I think,
Fuck me, bring on the ECT
.

Later…

Digging a hole in the earth is difficult.

It is a difficult thing that until tonight was an abstract thing, like playing a violin or skydiving. Or indeed, it is strange to fill a hole with dirt, to heave back into the emptiness the same dirt you have just spent an hour removing, using your foot on the base of the shovel's blade in order to use your whole body, thus forcing the blade to further gather the earth so you can fill up the emptiness.

Digging a hole in my sister's front yard, under the blueberry bush, I was sweating, noticing how out of shape I am, how little I have used my muscles in the last three weeks. One loses muscle strength, cardio and flexibility. Running is not allowed in a mental hospital. I understand this intuitively even though no one has ever told me not to run. Running would be absurd, like skipping the 200-metre sprint at the Olympics. Like me with my nose ring when I was twenty-two—it just didn't fit.

I am digging a hole into which I will lay Caravaggio to rest, having first placed him in a wicker basket, covered him in a blanket, gently rubbing his flank, his belly, then stroking his cheek and ears the way he always liked me to while he was alive. Then I put the basket in the hole, held it for a moment first and whispered, “You're not in there,” and then, “I love you.”

I am on call for ECT for tomorrow morning, which means they will be here early to take my vitals. I will then be escorted over to the other side of the hospital. I will go in my pyjamas, the nurse said. I will either sit in a waiting room or lie on a cot.

I wonder what effects it will have on me. Will I be instantaneously altered in some way? Will it hurt? Will I see a profound change for the better?

Will I know myself when it is done?

Clinical Note:

Seen by Dr. Miller, as Dr. P is away. She is currently in hospital due to depression phase of Bipolar II disorder. Mood low. Pet rabbit died yesterday. Feels anxious as day goes on. Paces and putters around. Early morning wakening. Appetite low. Denies active suicide ideation at this time. Poor impulse control.

Continue with current meds.

Await ECT.

On waitlist for tomorrow.

December 20, 2011

Early this morning I received my first electroshock therapy treatment.

The nurse, Janet, came in at 8:20 am and said that there had been a cancellation, that they could fit me in. “The porter will be here in ten minutes to pick you up and take you over,” she said.

I said, “What's a porter?”

Janet said I had to put on a hospital robe, one of those that opens in the back. I fumbled with the ties in the darkness. My hands were shaking.

Janet came in and said, “The porter is here.”

“I can't seem to tie these,” I said, so she kindly tied them for me.

When I walked into the bright hallway the porter was there in blue scrubs, standing behind a wheelchair.

“Oh, I can walk,” I said.

Janet said, “No, you're going to need this afterward.”

The porter wheeled me past a few fellow patients who were already waiting around for breakfast. I felt embarrassed to be in a wheelchair. But the porter and I soon disappeared into the elevator. He punched in floor three and up we went.

He wheeled me through various corridors, through a maze of sterile hallways and rooms, and I was grateful for the ride, realizing that had I been walking the back of my robe would have been flailing in the air, my ass and purple panties exposed for everyone to see.

Finally we entered the ECT waiting room, a drab brown room with no windows, some inner vortex of the hospital that never sees the light of day.

I just sat there, making mental notes of the room, wanting to remember the details: the shabby Christmas decorations (cheap gold and silver garland draped along the shelf on the opposite side of the room, a red foil three-dimensional star hanging from the ceiling and a red felt stocking laid upon the end of one of the shelves); old framed paintings of lakes and ducks, oceans and gulls flying in flocks above the oceans.

There was an old black woman with dreadlocks sitting directly across from me. She kept staring at me.

Two nurses came through another door, escorting a red-haired lady to a chair. The lady had just had shock treatment. She appeared stunned and shaken, her face was white, her lips protruding slightly, and her gaze was wide and vacant.

Then my turn came.

(I can't remember if I was all this time still sitting in the wheelchair or if I had moved to a waiting room chair. For the life of me I can't remember.)

But I walked to a cot in an adjacent room. A nurse and Dr. S, the doctor administering the ECT, escorted me.

Suddenly, there were people everywhere, all around me. I manoeuvred myself onto the cot, tried to keep the back of my gown shut, didn't want to expose myself to Dr. S, was shy about my body, embarrassed by my lack of physical conditioning, my lack of muscle tone, my generally soft body bulging at the edges.

The nurse placed a blanket over me. Only my toes stuck out at the end. The nurses and both doctors all commented on my nicely painted red toenails.

Dr. S gave me some oxygen and placed gel on my temples, followed by electrodes on my temples, on my chest and behind my ears, which I thought was weird.

This was going to happen fast.

I enjoyed Dr. S's hands on my body, the application of gel. The combination of gel and the pressure of his fingers felt surprisingly soothing. The gel was cool on my skin.

A nurse inserted a needle for the IV into my right arm, forcing me to expose my upturned wrist and the razor cuts on it.

The anaesthesiologist said, “You're just going to go to sleep for a while now.”

I nodded.