 This time: Entering 2nd “mental hospital”* Picture captures space I sensed. Flickr Pulling the thin blanket to my neck exposed my feet from the other end. Curling up on my right side, I wrapped the wrinkly sheath around me, aiming for full coverage and coziness, seeking longer escape in sleep. Instead, a burn in my throat, sour bile aftertaste lingering there, and a gurgle in my gut alerted my conciousness slightly. Waking half-way, I peeked; seemed like a mini ceiling was arm’s length away, touchable. I felt enclosed, like in a Space Age sleeping pod. “Coming to” fully, I resigned to the situation with clarity: “Oh yeah, I pushed the buttons on that red phone in the living room, and said out loud, ‘maybe I actually do need help’ after taking that bottle of aspirin. I wanted to die but changed my mind.” This must be the next hospital. After a foggy wait, a generic medical person carrying a clip-board, followed by a resident shadow, shuffled in with blue disposable shoe covers, “We gave you charcoal mix and something to make you vomit, to get all the aspirin out of your system. Let it run its course." Emotionally I felt numb and “watched”. Alone inside but not outside. Acceptance or perhaps surrender, since I asked for it this time. I went back and forth to the toilet as needed, waiting for what would come next. Were there windows or a little opening to watch me in my cocoon-like assigned space? Would I be quizzed and counseled from here? Once that was over, I waited. My memory hears activity of professional chatter by the nurse counter: “What will we do with her next?”, paper shuffling, pens scribbling, suitcase rolling. “That amount would not have killed her but oh well, we followed procedure”. Then a cheerful voice, maybe family member, near and directly to me: “We got you a great place this time and you get to wear your real clothes. In the white sterile bathroom, I felt wobbly, but glad to pull on familiar jeans and a cotton T-shirt self-selected from that suitcase. A tour guide type person walked me, and I think a family member, across a little campus-like space, then through silent indoor hallways. They opened cold heavy metal double doors that closed, locked and sealed, behind us, with a vacuum seal swish. A spacious hotel-lobby reminiscent space stood before us. The guide proudly introduced a ‘state of the art facility’ that would ‘feel like home’ for a while. I recall a sense of.... responsibility: Ya Better make something of this one, since you initiated, and it obviously comes with a hefty $price tag$. copyright Lynn Jodeit Ouellette, 2024 | ___Says it better than I can. |
