This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.
I realize that this story has ended up being very long. If you have not gotten so bored that you have quit reading it by now, I probably should warn you that I am not sure how much longer it will take me to finish telling it. Once I started writing it, the thoughts and the memories started to flow and I feel the need to keep writing the story until it is completed. I want to hold on to the details, the thoughts and feelings I had during that time, and this seems the best possible way to do that.
I was up at my usual four in the morning time that Saturday morning. It was nice and quiet and I was just using the time to get myself prepared for the day. Since it was Saturday and there were no groups, I had an idea that it was going to be a very long and boring day, up until the time my visitors arrived.
A few minutes after I sat in the common area, one of the other patients got up and went to the restroom. When she came out she realized that I was sitting out there and she decided to come and talk to me. Her name was Patty. I had seen her around the day before, and my impression of her was that she was loud, and used to getting her own way. She started the conversation off by telling me she was getting out of the hospital that evening. I did not say much to that because even I knew that patients were not discharged on the weekends. She started to tell me how she ended up in the hospital, basically her husband tricked her and dropped her off there is how her story went. She also shared her theory with me about why all of us women were in the hospital. She felt that it was a punishment from God. That because we had all married someone that God did not want us to, and that was the ultimate sin, that God was punishing us by making it so we had to be in the hospital. I should not have done it, but I challenged her on what she said and told her that I thought she was wrong and why. It appeared my disagreeing with her set up some kind of weird competition in her head. She decided that she had to do anything she could to prove to me that she and I were equals or maybe even prove that she could dominate me. Finally, I got up and wandered off and did my morning routine.
While everyone else was scurrying around taking showers and getting dressed, I sat on the couch near the pay phone. Patty took that time to call her husband and give him some very strict, and slightly scary, instructions. Like I mentioned earlier she had it in her head she was getting out that day. Nothing that anyone could say would deter her from that thought. So she called her husband up and told him she was getting out that evening when he came to visit. I heard her say that she had not discussed it with the doctor but felt like if her husband came and brought a couple of friends with him, they could convince the doctor to let her go home. I do not think her husband was all that convinced that she should come home, because the next thing I knew she is screaming “Be a hero, don’t be a zero” and telling him that if he did not do exactly as she told him to do and bring the proper friends to the hospital to get her, when she finally did get out of the hospital she was going to make his life miserable and even trick him and stick him in the hospital to see how he liked it. She proceeded to scream the “Be a hero, don’t be a zero” phrase several more times, she told her husband what a complete idiot he was, and then she would let him know he was coming to get her out that day. She seriously reminded me of the character Kathy Bates played in the Stephen King movie Mercy.
We ate breakfast. While I was in the dining room eating my breakfast I heard some woman screaming “I want my medicine!” and a lot of things being banged around. I did not think too much of it until I got back to the women’s side of the unit, then I realized it was my new roommate pitching a fit because of the doctor not letting her have her regular medications. My thought at the time was, I hope she does not get too nutty at night when I want to sleep.
After breakfast there was nothing to do and most of the patients went back to bed and slept most of the day. One of the nurses had clued me in on the fact that they take notes about us all day long and one of the things the doctors look for is if we are able to get along with our “peers”. I decided it would be a wise decision to mingle with the other patients for a little bit. That is when I met Dorthy.
Dorthy was a very young black woman, who had been in that hospital for four months, this time around. She and I were talking and I happened to mention that it was too bad there was not even a deck of cards around the unit for us to amuse ourselves with. She told me she had a deck in her room and went to get them. She and I spent hours and hours playing rummy and talking. Since we were not allowed to have anything to write with we could not keep score, the winner was decided by whoever had the most books by then end of a hand. It greatly helped the time pass by. Every once in a while another patient would join us. Even though the setting was rather yucky, I really enjoyed getting to know Dorthy.
Patty decided she wanted to play rummy against me. She made up this rule that if she won or we got the same amount of books then that meant we were equals. It took her three hands but finally she and I ended up with the same amount of books. That is when she decided we were “equals”, that thought see to make her very happy.
Lunch! Blah! Thank goodness for the jello! I had decided that after lunch I would head back to my room and take a nap. As I turned the corner, I noticed that my room door was shut. I had been leaving it open because my roommate needed a shower and leaving the door open allowed the air to circulate more. I figured she had shut it again because of the noise in the unit. I opened my room door, and I remember standing there in shock, not really understanding what I was seeing. My roommate had taken one end of her bed sheet and had wrapped it around her neck and then taken the other end of the bed sheet and wrapped it around the foot of her bed and was trying to choke herself. I started hollering for a nurse, and they all came running. After that she was moved to another room, where she could be placed on one on one observation.
My new roommate was a patient who had been in the hospital for a few months and was going to be released on Monday. Her name was Rhonda. When she came into the room with her sheets and pillows and her other belongings, I noticed that on top of her t-shirt she had a man’s pajama top on. She asked me if I had heard the news about her and Chester. Chester was a patient from the men’s section of the unit. The story she told me is that she and Chester met the day before in the unit where the groups are held and it was love at first sight. Chester had given her his pajama top to wear, in much the same fashion that teenage boys let their girls where their letterman jackets. So all that Rhonda needed to do at this point, was break up with her fiance, after he picked her up from the hospital, and then she and Chester, and her children would live happily ever after.
All of this made for a very chaotic Saturday. My brain felt over loaded with all that I had seen and experienced so far that day. Right about the time, I thought I could not take anymore craziness, I was told my visitors had arrived.