Bipolarland, Texas part 17

 15

I ask Geoffrey about the mysterious visitor last night that didn’t get to come up and see me. He tells me it was him, and that it was his mistake, that he came at the wrong hours.

He’s wearing his suit again. He says he went to court again. The lawyers there said that what Podemskaya did is bad and could land her in jail and end her career. They said, apparently, “That’s bad. That is bad.”

So much for my paranoia.

Up until now, all that’s been going on between me and Podemskaya is her asking me if the meds are working and me saying no (except maybe for the Thorazine, and the Cogentin they give me with the Thorazine to take away most of the side-effecty stuff).

She’s an incompetent doctor too. She discontinues the lithium because “it’s not working”. Lithium takes about a week to start working. She puts me on Depakote at such a high dose I feel like I’m on the outside of my head looking in.

But I still get my moods.

Finally, she tells me she’s going to have to give me ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy.

When I start laughing, the nurse that denied me meds when I was in the seclusion room (until they went and got some Thorazine anyway) says to me, “Do you know what ECT is?”

“Yes,” I say, without saying what.

“I give it a week,” Podemskaya says. “After meds don’t work I give ECT.”

“But I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. “You see, my memory is bad enough, and I’m trying to remember all this stuff that traumatized me, but if the memories are wiped out I won’t ever know what traumatized me so I’ll never be able to solve the problem. I mean, with the people that traumatized me.”

Like you, I want to add. Maybe that’s what she wants. She wants me to forget what she did to me because she knows her job and her very freedom and future are in jeopardy.

Podemskaya can do nothing but stare. She doesn’t know what to say to that one. I think she knows ECT can have some pretty permanent effects. And I think she also knows it wouldn’t be in her best interests to lie.

What can I do? OMG, these meds are slowing me down so much I can’t even panic even if I had to to save my life.

Wait a minute. You don’t need to panic to save your life. You can work just as fast without panicking.

But I wish the higher power would just stop playing cruel games with me and reveal what I can possibly do about being threatened with electroconvulsive therapy, of all the damn treatments she could have tried on me.

I know that they have to go to a court to get a judge’s permission to force meds on someone. And I read my patient guide, which says they can’t force ECT or any other procedure on anyone without a court order.

Fuck. A race against time. If this was a movie I’d find it fun and suspenseful. But this is happening for real, and I don’t find it fun at all.

So I have a week to pretend to improve. But the problem is, I can’t control my outbursts.

I just have them.

But ECT? What the flying fuck?!

They’ve only tried four drugs on me. Four.

Geoffrey is outraged. He calls Zygmunt to the phone. Zygmunt says to me, “Remember when they gave you all that bipolar information at the Ripley Clinic? I read it too, when you were done with it. It says that they only do ECT after four specific meds combinations are used first.” Then he goes explaining all the types of meds, and I’m even more shocked and finally say he’s made his point. “I’m going to give the paper to Geoffrey to bring to you tomorrow,” Zyg says.

Then Geoff is back. “Yeah, I’ll bring the paper,” he says. “And Anne, I talked to Sarah about all this. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No; it’s okay.”

“Sarah wants to go down there tomorrow too. For extra emotional support, because she thinks you’ll need it.”

Gratitude washes over me for some odd reason. “Sure; that’ll be fine!”

I’d keep away from all instances that might ignite my temper, or my excitability. I even try to keep away from things that might make me go too far the other way, as in making me laugh too much or something.

But I can’t.

Lillian comes to visit on the same day as Geoff and Sarah. Each patient is only allowed two visitors at a time up on the unit, and Podemskaya won’t give me a lobby pass to see them down in the front off the units, so we decide that Geoff and Lillian come up first. Then it will be Sarah and Lillian, then Geoff and Sarah. And visiting time is only two hours long!

Geoff shows Lillian the paper from the clinic explaining the usual treatment regimen for bipolar disorder. Lillian then asks me if I made an advance directive ever.

And I remember.

Yeah, when I was supposedly still of sound mind. Twice. At the NPC. And both times I revoked my consent for ECT by ticking off the little box that said “I revoke my consent for electroconvulsive therapy”.

“That is a very good thing in your favor,” Lillian says. “Now you’ll just have to sign these papers to get your files from the NPC. And this one too. This one is for your files from the HCPC.”

I’m sitting across from Sarah and Geoffrey. Sarah says she has something for me. She puts it on the table. “Don’t open it,” she says. “Only play with it like in your room or where— whatever space you have that’s private. Don’t aim it at your face or any part of you.”

“Sarah, how did you get this in here without them making you open it?”

“I did have to open it.”

“Then how come you still have it?”

She leans over the table and whispers to me, “It’s disguised as a pen.”

In my bedroom, I open the box. Sure enough, it’s a pen. A gold or fake-gold-plated pen.

So what is it really? She said it was disguised as a pen. Better open it up. Must be a gun or a knife.

It’s not a knife.

It’s a regular pen. I try to write on my hand. It writes. I write Oh, shit! on my hand.

Why did she say disguised as a pen?

There’s no blade, so it must be a gun. I try to unscrew it. I remember seeing pictures of weapons used by resistance movements in World War II. Including a little pen-gun that actually killed someone.

This must be the trigger… I need to test it before I use it… they won’t know what the sound is from even if they search my stuff… they’ll just find a pen, a patient guide, three stapled-together court papers, a pair of shorts, a tank top, a pair of dangly pink earrings, a towel, a facecloth, a comb and some toiletries.

I pull the pen’s clip, gently, aiming the nib of the pen toward the air grate under the window.

And spray the nastiest-smelling substance ever outside and onto the window, the wall, the floor, and luckily not me.

Oh. My. God. I need to clean this up, now.

But the smell is already spreading out into the dayroom. I’m done for. I’m finished. I’m dead. I’m as good as zapped now.

It’s fucking pepper spray. Why didn’t she just TELL me?

Calm down, Anne. Remember, they won’t be able to tell.

But they’ll be suspicious of the pen. These people have probably seen everything.

Just flush the damn thing down the toilet, then. Quick!

Someone is retching. Quick, run to the restroom.

Why isn’t the darn thing flushing?

Because it’s not for pens, that’s why! Dumbo!

Drop it down the sink drain.

Damn! The drains have strainer baskets.

Just throw it somewhere. Hide it. They can’t know it’s you that did it. They have to believe it’s someone on the outside that sprayed through my grate.

But no; it has my fingerprints on it.

“Special teams. Two. Delta. Special teams. Two. Delta.” A stern, totally serious male voice, on the intercom, sending the tie-down team to 2D. That can only mean one thing.

More pepper spray.

Or worse.

I’m back in a toilet-and-shower stall, wondering what to do.

“Everyone to your rooms! Everyone go to your rooms and close the doors!”

“Cummoooon; there’s a crisis on the unit! Move!”

I tell myself: Anne-Marie, put the damn thing in your pocket!

No; that’s the first place they’ll search, dumbo. It was your room that got sprayed.

There’s only one thing to do, Anne-Marie, and it might not work. It might even harm you. Remember when they searched you when you came in? They just did a visual search; they never told you to jump up and down. So about this pen—

Wash it off— quickly!— , pull down your pants, and shove it up inside you.

Luckily only the tip has any spray on it.

I washed it off with soap from the shower and no water, because if I came out into the sinks-and-mirror area, they might see me when they opened the door and wonder why I wasn’t in my room. Here they’ll just assume I was sitting in there all along when the crisis happened and couldn’t get up and go to my room. Otherwise I would have used water from the shower to wash the pen.

Anyway—now pretend to go back to your room. AAAAAH! Smells bad, doesn’t it? It’s interesting how fast you forget. Now go to the desk instead. Play innocent.

“Anne-Marie, there’s pepper spray in your room. Did you have any there?” It’s the nurse that I talked to about lithium. She’s alright. Her name is Natasha.

“What? Nope. Is that what the smell was?”

“Oh, so you were there. Tell me, what happened?”

The Special Teams suddenly come barging onto the unit, with all that fancy crap under their belts. They look from me to Natasha to the other nurses to the source of the smell—my room.

“Where’s Shaniqua? Is she in your room?”

“Nope.”

Natasha looks at the other evening nurse, panicking. “Go find her,” she tells her. She doesn’t tell me what to do, and indeed I don’t know, so I stay standing at the desk pretending to casually check the time, etc. What will my story be? Of course! That I was laying on my bed and suddenly this stuff came in through the grate under my window.

And so the special teams investigate. And then they leave, shaking their heads. Nobody from any other unit was in that courtyard my room faces, so they assume it was a staff member on their break, and they wonder which one.

“Mary Anne?”

Ohmygod. I jump out of bed. They mean Anne-Marie. They mean me. They put Shaniqua and I in the special private room with its own restroom, temporarily, until my room is finished airing out. Shaniqua gets the bed, I get a mattress on the floor, but the bed is harder than the floor, so I’m the lucky one. There’s no room to put Shaniqua’s mattress on the floor too, and still be able to get to our little restroom without stepping on someone’s bed.

This is it.

“Mary Anne, you have to come to the desk and sign the paper to waive your right to go to court.”

“I’m going to court.”

“Okay, then.”

Damn. On top of all the other worries, I now need to find something to wear to court.

I have no idea when I’m going. My papers are back in my bedroom that’s being aired out.

In the midst of all the court stuff, Geoffrey forgot to bring me anything at all. I go out into the dayroom to call him.

Okay, so Geoff says that tomorrow he’s coming with five changes of clothes for me, with as much suitable-for-court stuff as possible. I also just told him that something went wrong with the present Sarah gave me, using “oh, remember when?” to make it sound like I was reminiscing about something outside, just in case these phone lines are tapped.

I also just asked the nurse to look up when my court date is. It’s tomorrow at nine in the morning. Visiting hours are at six in the evening!

I run back to call Geoff. He tells me to chill and that he’ll drop my stuff off at the front desk tomorrow morning and they’ll get it up to me on time.

Geoffrey is so nice. He’s a jokester, but he’s also reliable when you really really really need a friend.

I sit at the breakfast table waiting for news that Geoff dropped off my stuff downstairs. Nothing yet. It’s 7:15.

All I have for court are my court papers (finally my room is finished airing) and my patient guide as evidence that I shouldn’t be here or be subjected to these practices. I get up to call Geoff again, to tell him he needs to bring that paper I wrote about the abuses in here, and that paper we got from the clinic about the courses of treatment for a bipolar person, using ECT as a last resort. I find that the phones are dead. Oh yes; I forgot; they don’t turn them on until after nine-something, after the group. Fucking hell; I’ll be in court by then! I also need to write a list of witnesses, people who saw and heard what Podemskaya did to me. I list all the people who were in the room when Podemskaya said that crap about me. I’m writing with my pepper-spray pen, the only one I have. I wonder if it has any spray left in it.

I go tell Frank about my dilemma. He leads me right to the cupboard and we start looking for clothes for me again. Nothing. Just casual stuff. He opens another cupboard. More casual stuff. Frank calls the desk downstairs. Then he calls the property room. They have something for me. They’re going to send it up. Whew! Thanks, Frank!

Five minutes later, I get my two paper bags. I run with them into my room.

I love you, Geoffrey.

He brought my business suit.

He brought four more of my outfits too, even the makeup and accessories that go with them (though not in their plastic bags any more because plastic bags are banned here). A few things are missing, but that was probably Geoff taking them out because he knew they would be confiscated, or maybe they were confiscated because they could be used as weapons. My Stilettos are gone, for instance. The ones I got to wear with my business suit. That’s okay; the hiking boots (laces and all) that are in the bag with my military camouflage outfit will do. But no papers!

Then I remember that he’ll probably be in court with me. But will he remember to bring those papers?

Then I remember Lillian. Yes! If Geoff forgets the papers, Lillian will not. She told me she’d make copies of everything.

I’m just finished changing my clothes when a police officer comes to take me to court. He waits for me at the desk as I rush back into my room to get my papers.

Some of the patients I chat with hang around the desk-and-doors area, wishing me good luck, asking me for more info on what happened, or just leering because they’re curious. The nurse tells them to get away from the doors as the police officer leads me out into the passage. Then out into the hallway. Then down the stairs, down another hall, and a nurse opens the locked doors for us to go out into the waiting room, which I’ve never seen before. It’s full of kids’ drawings. Probably mentally ill kids’ drawings. There are people waiting to be taken in. A woman is laying on the floor, trying to sleep. A whole family is trying different nice things trying to get a baby to stop crying, but he never does. A staff member nearby tells them, “And there is no other medical explanation? We’ll have to look into this.”

Past the metal detector and the guard with his Garrett handheld metal-detecting wand; outside. Into the police car. We’re the only people in this car. I sit beside the officer in the front. “So,” he says, “What brought you to the HCPC?”

“I’m bipolar, I lived a little bit too much lately in too little time, and here I am. But then things that happened in there complicated everything.” I start to cry. Luckily I stop sobbing before we get to the courthouse.

The courthouse is a tall pink building. Wow; there must be a lot of shit going on if they need a courthouse that big.

I make my first impression by setting off the metal detector with the eyelets of my hiking boots. Then I’m told this is normal even for courthouse staff, and I relax a bit.

It’s 9:30 by the time we finally get into the courtroom. The judge is there, Lillian is there and greets me warmly and enthusiastically, a secretary or similar is also there...

And Geoffrey, Sarah, Zygmunt, Jules, Don, Filip, even my parents and my brother Ira. (No Jakub.) One of my friends must have called them. So they must be here to actually support me.

And holy crap, my neighbors. Two of them, anyway. The couple that lives under us, the couple that defended us to the landlord when another neighbor (and one that moved his furniture around at 11:00 every night, at that) complained that we were making too much noise.

Uncle Matt isn’t here, obviously. But my grandmother turned up too. The one whose credit card I bought things with unbeknownst to her. Is she going to tell the judge that? If so, I’d better run. If not, time to confess.

I look at Geoffrey with my "What the flying fuck?" expression. He just stands there and grins from ear to ear.

Maybe this will be okay.

But then what looks like the entire staff population of the Harris County Psychiatric Center comes in too.

Maybe it won’t.

But they’re all the nice ones. The students, the tech in the black scrub suit, even Frank. Even the fat counselor I talked to on my first night at the HCPC. Geoffrey must have really done his homework, working his mouth off on the phone while I sat and bemoaned my fate (because there was nothing else I could do!) I never knew he was capable of such things. But it makes sense in a way. I can see Geoffrey being charismatic enough to convince two psychiatric technicians to take time off.

“And you are Anne-Marie JoEllen Kornek?”

“Yes.”

“When did you write this note here? It sounds like you’re trapped in a gulag being tortured. That’s what your tone conveys.”

“In a way, ma’am, I was,” I say, smiling. “As the evidence—”

“Show me that evidence.”

Lillian hands the papers to a court officer. I also hand my patient guide to the officer, who gives it all to the judge.

“I understand that you have outbursts,” the judge says, looking at the papers that were served to me days ago from the court. The papers from that Jessop woman. Modified, of course, by notes from me and my lawyer. I wrote “inaccurate” on it many times, with arrows pointing to all the circled crap that the Jessop woman wrote about me.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that you didn’t do these things. Because you did have an outburst at the NPC that did not stop until you were injected with an antipsychotic drug, which proves that the NPC is unable to handle you. That is why you are at the HCPC. Tell me about these outbursts. Do you still have them?”

“Yes, and I can’t seem to control them yet, but that is no grounds for ECT. I know I need to be in the HCPC to get my meds combination fixed, but I don’t need anything else, except maybe psychotherapy.” My voice is just a squeak at the end of that. I sound like such a little wimp.

“We’ll let the doctors decide that.”

“Excuse me…” Lillian raises her hand and clears her throat. “These papers here—” and she produces ALL the papers they gave us on bipolar disorder from the Ripley Clinic... “—were put together by multiple doctors and other mental health professionals. This one in particular shows the treatment regimen for a person in Anne-Marie Kornek’s condition.” She hands over another copy of that paper, because she knows the judge isn’t going to take the time to read any of the other stuff handed to her. “ECT is used as a last, last resort."

“What say you?” the judge asks the two psych techs. Frank speaks first. He agrees. So does the other one.

Then the judge calls the HCPC to speak with other doctors, including Maria Podemskaya.

Even on speakerphone, I can tell she’s a bitch. She says I look like a mussed-up, raggedy prostitute. That I wear short shorts and shirts with the collars cut out to make them lower. She says that I also do drugs and have no life and no job, career or education. She says that therefore, I am a danger to myself and others.

But Frank actually has guts. He stands up to her. He tells the judge that that shirt was the only thing he could find for me to wear until my friend brought over proper clothes, and that I had only worn the short shorts once and only continued to wear them because I had nothing to wear. The other tech and all the students are nodding. The intake doctor that saw me says that my drug and pregnancy test results came back completely negative.

My friends testify that some of them used to use drugs but that they’ve all quit now, and they all agree to take drug tests.

Then we move on: the intake doctor speaks. She says I knew who the president was (how could I forget after Uncle Matt’s attack on me?) and all that, yadayadayadaquackquackquack, and that I admitted to all my psychiatric problems and behaviors, and that therefore, I’m perfectly capable of deciding on my own whether or not I need ECT. Saved!

And then she looks at all my files, and confirms that the lies were even written in them, and nods her head and smiles at me. “Anne-Marie, I’m going to send you back to the Harris County Psychiatric Center, but you are going to have a different doctor.” Then she looks back at the phone, as though it's Podemskaya herself. The judge's look is a dirty one.

“Now Ms. Podemskaya,” the judge says, “Your reign is at least temporarily over. Probably permanently. If you would be so kind as to stay put, I am going to send some officers over right now with a court date for you. In the meantime, I order you suspended from your job and any other jobs at the University of Texas Harris County Psychiatric Center. I will be contacting your superiors.”

She looks at me. “The petitioner and her supporters and legal counsel may leave.”

“That was pointless,” I hear one of the students say to another as we leave, the officer holding me firmly by my upper arm.

“It was enlightening, though,” Bambi says.

“It was interesting,” the tech in the black scrubs (What’s his name again?) says.

“God, if that happened to me—I’m glad I saw that, it gives me hope,” Ima Mann says.

“I know; it’s creepy what Dr. Po did,” Euphemia says.

“I wonder what her motivation was,” Julissa says, always being nice and seeing the good in everyone.

“You talk now that she’s not your boss any more. How very honest and honorable of you,” Geoffrey says nastily to them as he and the rest of my friends pass by.

Then my mother’s voice: “Anne-Marie, why didn’t you tell us you weren’t feeling well? Why didn’t you tell us you were in the hospital?” She doesn’t sound mad at all, she’s all sweet out here. But what will she be like outside of the court? And I’ve seen this before from her… in a pattern. It’s always only when she’s trying to reel me back into her controlling life after I leave her.

And my grandmother’s voice: “Oh, it was way worse back then. These court things; you didn’t stand a chance back then. There was no going to court. If you saw a psychiatric doctor, you were at his mercy. And it was always a he.”

I think about that. You know what? Maybe Dr. Pod (I’ll call her that because she looked like a fat pod) was at the mercy of shrinks in the old days (hey, it's possible... she's crazy, right?) and wanted to be at the other end of the stick for a change, so she became a psychiatrist.

The cop tells me congratulations for winning my case. Most patients don’t win their cases. Many of them, she says, end up getting meds against their will, getting unwanted ECT, getting put in unnecessary conservatorships and even worse, guardianships.

I never knew all this went on. There are some things that many patients who take their meds voluntarily and sign themselves into psych facilities do not know.

The HCPC seems so much warmer and more welcoming now that she’s gone. Is that just my imagination? Is it just psychological? But it seems more therapeutic now. After we get back from court, people swarm me with their problems with another doctor too, asking me to get Lillian to do something about it. I tell them I'll try.

I have a new doctor now. I can’t wait to meet her. Her name is Dr. Jory Warner. They all usher me into the meeting room. I’m scared. What if the process with Dr. Pod repeats itself?

I have to tell her all over again about myself to make a new file, but that’s okay. Even telling them about Uncle Matt and seeing and hearing them trying not to laugh is okay. I hear a student, one I never met before, saying (as we leave): “That was funnier than that other guy’s stories, saying he was a firefighter and a rescue worker during Katrina and 9/11… you could tell he was lying… that was just wrong.”

I look back at everything and realize I never had to use my pepper pen, not once. But there’s a first time for everything. I leave it where it is.

Tiella is still miserable. Shaniqua is still miserable. Chantal and Kurt and Riley the 9/11 and Katrina hero (or not) and Professor Pierre Head are still miserable. I can’t imagine why they would be miserable. Dr. Pod is gone.

Unless there’s another Podemskaya.

Or maybe, like I was at the NPC, they’re just miserable about their lives.

But I tell Tiella, Chantal, Kurt and Pierre, who all also had Dr. Pod, about my experience. Then, as if on cue, the tech comes with a pair of scissors and new tags to put on their wrists with the names of their new doctors. Suddenly they’re smiling and suddenly we’re all laughing. And then we start telling stories.

Some people were discharged today. There are three new people on the unit. They all have a doctor here named Randolph. And I can tell by their tone that they all hate him.

“I have Dr. Randolph,” a skinny boy with a mop of blond hair says. “He wants to put me on Thorazine without Cogentin.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants to see how people react without Cogentin. He's doing experiments on me!”

“Dr. Randolph is putting me in a guardianship,” a shy girl who looks a little so-called “retarded” says.

“Why?”

“Because I said I wanted to date and get married and have children.”

“What's wrong with that?” an older woman with short hair and glasses says. “Every young girl wants that. I have Dr. Randolph too, and he keeps pressuring me to sign one of those-- Do Not Resuscitate forms. For, you know, them not to do CPR on you.”

“Why?”

“Because of my age, I guess. Look, Teresa, is that your name?” she says to the so-called retarded girl. “He also wants me in a guardianship. He keeps saying 'Are you at peace with your decision? And you're at peace with that?' And I said YES! And he said that maybe I needed someone to help me make the decision. I keep telling him I know what I want, but no, no, no-- he thinks I'm totally incompetent!”

“Right, and as if even if you were incompetent you wouldn't have the right to exist!” I explode.

“It's crazy,” the older woman says, shaking her head. “He said, 'I could just—' He said, 'You know, I could just not treat you for your lung infection.' Pardon my expression, but WHAT— THE— FLYING— FUCK?”

“All the more reason to stop smoking, then,” Pierre says. “Don't get any more infections. They won't treat you if you have emphysema either. They just let you suffocate.”

I look at Pierre. “Do you know anyone this has happened to?” I'm dreading the answer.

“Nobody, but I read of this woman in a nursing home whom... the nurses didn't treat for her infection because she— well, because they claimed she had told them she wanted to die. She told them this when she was having a coughing fit. She was in pain at the time. It wasn't like she wanted to die in general.”

“But I was in this place in San Angelo and I did an advance directive and it said they don't honor DNRs,” the blond mop boy says. “I mean, I don't have a DNR; I'm just saying I noticed that on the intake patient guide thing.”

“Well, maybe these doctors are breaking the law,” I say.

Pierre is suddenly not shy any more, and orders pizza for all the patients and staff on 2D. Chantal breaks down and admits that she hated Dr. Pod all along. Kurt is able to sit still long enough to tell us he asked his new doctor where he might be going next and that it wouldn’t be that place in Massachusetts that uses “aversives” after all. Even though aversives are banned in Texas for people like Kurt, Kurt has a guardian who could go to the Supreme Court to try and get the feds involved to allow him to bring him to Massachusetts, if the guardian knew about Dr. Pod’s proposition.

We ask the others who have my new doctor what she’s like. They all answer honestly that they either like or don’t mind her. What a blessing. But for every bit of good news, there seems to be more bad news.

Tiella is one of us though: she remains miserable. She feels she can’t feel happy until we oust that tech that forced us to hang up when we were calling the people who are supposed to protect us.

I just talked to my parents. They said that I should just GET OVER Uncle Matt stabbing me and MOVE ON. (What do they think I was trying to do by calling them to talk about it? And they completely miss the point, as usual. It’s THEIR INDIFFERENCE and their SIDING WITH HIM that I can’t get over.) They’re angry at me. They call me a hateful person who holds grudges.

Fine; put your brother-in-law and brother above your daughter whom you brought into this world without her knowledge or consent. I mean, Matt was also born without his consent, but he’s not suicidal so I’m assuming he wants to be here, and he quite literally stuck the knife in first, so lay into him, not me. It wasn’t my fault I was born. So don’t force me to talk to you. Stop calling me selfish because I don’t.

So far, Dr. Warner is really nice. And competent. She seems to have heard of what happened. She seems to want to make the rest of my stay here as nice as possible. She smiles a lot. When I told her about Uncle Matt, she laughed with me, not at me. She asks me if I have any food preferences so that she can prescribe that food to me. She asks me what meds I liked, what meds I didn’t, what meds I enjoyed, what meds gave me what side effects, what meds gave me pain and what meds made me depressed and what meds made me manic and what meds made me too tired to function. I don’t have much experience with meds, so this doesn’t take long. In the end she gives me Abilify (which is actually FOR bipolar disorder), 20 milligrams to work up to 40. She gives me back my Celexa for the extra depression, and says that Abilify actually helps out antidepressants too and that they give it to people who are just depressed without any manic episodes as well. And finally: three Ativans a day if needed, making the patients who have other doctors jealous.

Now is the time to just enjoy it and get to know the others better. Provided the meds work, of course. Provided they give me back control over my outbursts and make me motivated enough to function when I’m low (as in, eliminating those low lows). And the Celexa allows me to keep my highs! This is it! This is the solution! I finally have a competent doctor.

I just know that Tiella and I will be friends. Also, the new girl, Lucille Lucerne. She and I play catch with an orange, until the orange hits Riley Fontaine in the mouth.

Then I know there will be trouble once again.

I see blood.

Coming from Riley’s mouth. I can still see the outrage on his face through all the blood. God; I must have hit him hard. Will Lucille be punished too? We were playing three-way catch with Tiella, so will she be punished too?

I am going back to court. I am going back to court. I am going back to court. I am going back to—

“I told you three you couldn’t throw things around inside! Least of all food!” the tech storms. It’s the same one that made me hang up on the human rights committee! What’s her name? I should have gotten her name! Do the human rights committee even know her name?

I shoot back, “I told you to take us outside more often to get fresh air and exercise!”

Oddly, she says nothing.

I am going back to court. We are going back to court. Calm down and think “We are going back to court.” Not “I.” “We.” At least I’ll have co-defendants this time. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll decide it’s not Lucille’s fault or Tiella’s fault.

It’s mine.

How very fitting. I’m always the one that’s the center of attention (either good or bad), whether on purpose or by accident.

I am going to jail!

But maybe they’ll decide I’m not mentally fit for jail.

Then they’ll move me to a more secure unit! And give me ECT!

Suddenly, I know I’m going to have a heart attack. I’m having chest pains like my grandfather had. I feel like passing out too, come to think of it. Probably because my circulation is compromised because of the heart attack! Now I can’t breathe either. Am I having an asthma attack too? No; that must be another symptom of the heart attack, of the compromised circulation. I couldn’t stay standing if you paid me. No part of me has energy any more. And yet I can feel every cell I possess panicking because it can’t breathe and it’s in pain and it’s got this other feeling too that I don’t know. I feel my head hit the floor and crack open. I can see the tech that made me hang up on the human rights committee standing mere feet away. Is she the last thing I’m ever going to see?

I’m in the seclusion room. Again.

I feel oddly chilled out. They must have given me something. I’m enjoying it, anyway. But my head hurts like there’s no tomorrow. I bring my hand up to my head to feel if there’s any—

“Don’t touch it.”

It’s the tech. The same one, you know.

“You’ll get it all infected.”

I slowly lower my hand and sit up properly.

“I just want to tell you that I’m sorry I yelled at you and the— the two others. I didn’t think this would be the result. I got reprimanded. I realize now that this is a psychiatric institution and that people are hurting. I keep forgetting this is not a jail.”

I decide not to tell her just yet that a lot of people in jail are hurting, too. That they really should be in a psych facility, as a matter of fact. It’s just irrelevant.

“Did you work in a jail?” Sorry; couldn’t help asking that one.

“Yes, I did, actually. For five years. I burned out. I thought coming here would be easier. I thought, because, I thought here the people would at least know they have a problem, and not, you know, think it’s cool.”

But yet you still treat us like we think it’s cool, but have nothing wrong with us.

There’s something off about her.

“Where are Tiella and Lucille? Where’s Riley?”

“Miss Tiella Aguecheek is in the other seclusion room. Your other friend, the one that just came in, Lucille? She’s eating dinner out in the day area. I’ll bring you your dinner in here. I don’t want you mingling with the others just yet, especially Riley Fontaine. Riley Fontaine had to be taken to a dentist. You knocked out three of his teeth!”

Shit!

She leaves the door open.

“Tiella!” I call. Then I moan as another wave of pain washes over my poor head.

“Oh my God, Anne-Marie, are you okay?” she shouts.

“I don’t know,” I moan again, letting the wave of pain direct my moan. Being injured must be like giving birth. Moaning a certain way and moving around a certain way makes it hurt less and last a shorter time. Not that I’ve ever given birth, and I’ll be sure to have an epidural if I ever do.

“Man, I got a court date tomorrow, girlfriend, did you know that?”

“I didn’t.” Too preoccupied with my own problems.

“Girlfriend, the next time you have a panic attack, sit down on the floor! Don’t scare me like that ever again! I heard your head smashin’ from across the day area!”

“I know, okay, I will. How you doing in there?”

“I’m so booooored,” Tiella moans. “Did you hear me shouting? I was so mad at that bitch!”

“Is that why you’re in there?”

“Fuck, no. I’m in here because I hacked up a clam and spat it into her mouth. When she was standing like a foot away from me shouting at me.”

“Did she throw up?”

Tiella laughs. “I dunno! But she went away and she was angry. You could see that she was mad.”

By now we’re sitting in the doorways of our respective seclusion rooms, barely able to see each other because we’re not allowed to leave the rooms, but nobody’s doing anything about it, and there’s a bunch of staff right there at the staff desk just in front of us and a little to the right.

A student doctor comes to bring us our pills. There’s an extra one in my little paper shot glass. He says it’s an anti-inflammatory pill for my head. I suppose there’s two ways one can interpret that. Has my victory over Dr. Pod gone to my head and inflated my ego?

Riley Fontaine says he’ll press no charges on me. Let alone Tiella or Lucille. (Poor Lucille… her first day here and she gets in trouble. Luckily she isn’t going to.)

Maybe Riley isn’t so bad after all. He just likes attention… of the positive nature. I wonder how else he can get it besides not pressing charges against someone who knocked three of his teeth out and pretending he saved lives on 9/11 and in that hurricane.

You know, I’d like to talk to Riley. But it might be embarrassing because he knows some of us already know he lied about his 9/11 and Katrina adventures.