2 of 21

I opened my eyes to the smoke-stained ceiling and put my hand out. Yep, there was a bed underneath me. I looked down and there was my bra and my jeans from the night before. The sun was trying to bleach the yellow walls.

"No more FUCKING drugs!" I yelled out, touching my sore, crusty nose. I wiped my cheek and felt the dried snot streak tracing all the way to my ear. Gross.

"Ok," I heard from another room. And then a chuckle. "No more drugs."

“You know I hate that shit,” I said, putting my hand to my forehead. I rolled over on the bed and stared quizzically at the gray and white ashes that covered the dark sheet. "What the fuck is this?" I said to myself. I shook out the dirty sheet. I saw the ½ inch burn hole and watched the butt of a spent cigarette fly against the wall. I rolled my eyes and looked up to see Henrik standing in the doorway. Shirtless, red-eyed, blue jeans, bare feet. His adam’s apple bobbed beneath a few days of stubble as he laughed at me in that throaty way that made me for a second wish I’d at least dusted my face off before he saw me.

“Jesus, Henrik, you let me fall asleep with a cigarette in my hand?” I said, flailing my body over to the end of the bed to find the old Lollapalooza shirt I threw on the floor last night. This morning, whatever. "We coulda burned the fuck up!"

“Whatever, Hal, I was so fucked up last night I would have slept through that fire,” he said, smiling at me. "Hey," he said, his lips curling into a slow grin, "speaking of, ya wanna get fucked up?"

I jumped up out of bed and found myself staring again at the smoke-stained ceiling. I put my hand out. There was the bed underneath me. The sheets were rough. I touched my nose and for once it didn’t feel like sandpaper. It didn’t feel like it was missing. I rolled over to check the time and saw the bed next to mine. Shelley was still asleep. I got up silently and went to the bathroom, slowly shutting the door behind me. Click! I flinched a little, then laughed when I remembered that Shelley was deaf.

“What the fuck am I still doing here?” I asked myself, rolling my eyes and pulling down my sweatpants. As I peed, I looked around at the sterile bathroom, the spindle-free, one-piece toilet paper roller, the light green tiles, the pull-to-close shutters on the stand-up shower. There was no detachable spindle because you could stab someone. There was no curtain because you could hang yourself. There were no rings because you could cut yourself. There was no bathtub, because you could...drown yourself? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how anyone might drown themselves. At least when I attempted to die there was blood and sharp objects. Some pills and crying, too. It seems like such a silly way to try to die, drowning in a tub. Henrik would have agreed, in that detached way he always agreed.

There was no romanticism to it at all. It was like the Special Olympics of suicide. Really putting yourself out by doing something you probably do every day? It’s sad, really. The most pathetic of all of us.

They put me on the floor with the alcoholics, instead of the next floor up with the tried-and-true crazies. Overcrowding, they said. It was fine with me. Easier, somehow. It seemed to me that quitting an addiction was more possible than quitting an actual mental disorder. Couldn’t you just decide one day to not go buy that crack in the alley? Or not take that pill? Or not drink a case of beer? Just never go back? Seemed reasonable and easy enough. Or not so much, maybe, when you’re fighting monsters that nobody else can see. I guess maybe sometimes that’s where the beer comes in. Assuage...assuage. Who gives a shit? I wasn't an addict.

I mean, I was seven-thirty as fuck, there was no doubt about that. I didn’t belong on this floor and I had the yellow snap wristband to prove it (as opposed to the green ones the addicts wore), but I had been upstairs for group and it was a whole mess of crazy. I went along with the E/R staff and only pretended the drug and alcohol addiction was the problem so I didn’t have to sit up there...with them. The real lunatics. The ones who thought everyone was out to get them. Not just theorist nutjobs – sure there was an Alex Jones or two - but people who thought you were going to stab them in the neck or suck their brain waves out the second they glanced away. It makes total sense. Control is an illusion. So is power. All the loonies know that. Henrik told me that.

I was getting out that day. I could see the street from the other side of Shelley’s bed. People probably crazier than me were going to work. People who drank more than me were hungover, or still drunk, and on their way to work. I snickered about it and walked down to the common area.

I actually didn’t mind being here. If you’re tired, it’s the place to go. Seriously. Ready to shed the uncomfortable stewardship of your own existence? Take pills. Just enough to put you into a disco coma and when you wake up, there’s pudding and tiny packs of crackers whenever you want. If you’re homeless or hungry, wander into an emergency room with blood all over your arms and get yourself committed. You can eat any time you want. And it’s all carbohydrates and starches. Those are the most difficult to digest, so it slows all of your other processes down. They give you your meds, those make you hazy. Then they feed you non-stop and that makes you lazy. Then you fall asleep. It’s a funny little circle, really, and you can fall into lumber step pretty fast.

Quite like falling in love, or something equivalent. I guess love was the reason I was there in the first place. His throaty laugh, his casual attitude. I think at one point it actually was love. The drinking was fun and the sex was great. The coke, the pills, the lack of sleep, the oversleeping, the comfort food he cooked when we weren’t smoking coke and the way he made coffee made my ovaries quiver a little. I thought I possessed him. I imagined he loved me.

Eventually, it became lots of sex and getting high and not much more. No talking, no caring. I felt a lot that when we fucked he was really trying to re-negotiate those feelings he used to have for me. But, he couldn’t find them. I tried to will it to him. I tried to look into his eyes, to stimulate that reward center in his brain and make him feel god in me again. But, it was gone and even though I knew it, I still thought I possessed him. Or at least I would again. I swallowed all the Ambien that was left. Then I stood in the bathroom, teary eyed and weak, slicing at my wrists in the bleak and filth. I turned on the bedroom light and proclaimed to him, “I can’t even kill myself right.” Henrik jumped up from the bed and grabbed a towel.

“What the hell did you do?” he asked, sitting me down on the bed.

“You see? I need you to take care of me,” I mumbled.

He sat still, holding the towel on my wrists, choking up. “I won’t tell anyone,” he said, over and over, as he tightened his grip on the towel and rubbed the part of my arm that wasn’t on fire.

I looked into his desperate eyes and it felt like love. Soft and out of focus. He picked up the phone.

The room turned to twilight. I heard him talking to someone in a voice I’d never heard from him before. I fell over on the bed, feeling warm and sticky.

“I possess you, right...”




I made it through breakfast and med service and sat down in front of the television. Another device they used to desensitize, destimulate. There is a reason it’s called the idiot box. I wondered how many other people outside of the loony bin were operating on this level every day. I didn’t wonder for long, though, because my eyelids were starting to become leaden.

I headed back to my room to catch Shelley putting on a cardigan. She had bothered to dress. I looked down at my plain white shirt with cheese cracker dust on it and my hospital socks. I was going to keep those when I got out. They were cozy. Shelley did as she always did and walked past me as if I were some ghost or spectre. She would shiver and cower toward the wall, giving me serious side-eye and never slowing down.

She was on the painkillers. I guessed we didn’t relate because I didn’t know ASL. Fine with me, the less communication with the junkies, the better. I laid down on the rough sheets and closed my eyes.

“Halcyon?” I heard from above me.

“Fuck,” I whispered. I’m dead, my head told me. And it’s my Mom calling me to her.

“Halcyon, how are you feeling?”

“Mom, I’m in the loony bin, I...” and I opened my eyes to a doctor I had never seen before.

“I’m Dr. Riget and I’m here to discharge you,” she said, picking up my arm and looking at my wrists. “Those have healed nicely. Nobody will even see your scars if you keep taking care of them.” She glanced at her notes.

I looked at my wrists that were only covered with big Band-Aids now. They seemed almost unnecessary. Dr. Riget couldn’t and Henrik would never tell.

We went through a series of questions. Are you going to harm yourself again? No. Are you going to some place safe? Yes. Do you have anybody who you can call if you feel that way again? Yes. Are you going to stay away from Henrik and others that might do damage to you? Yes. Are you sure? Yes. Do have a ride? No. Do you need a bus pass? Yes.

Well, then here’s your paperwork, your social worker, your clothes. Here’s your first session for therapy. Here’s your psychiatrist. Here’s our card. Call if you need us. Dr. Riget, who I’d never seen before but would eventually see again, had determined I was safe to be released back into the kingdom.

I put on the silly Lollapalooza shirt and laughed at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I was full on deranged. I didn’t possess him. He possessed me.

The nurse cut the yellow wristband with a pair of safety scissors. A big dude in scrubs escorted me to the elevator and down to the security at the front door. The guard was a tiny Hispanic woman with pink lipstick and a big smile. “Getting out today?” she said, grabbing the paper bag with my socks in it. “Yep,” I said. She folded the bag back up and handed it to me. “Good luck,” she said, brightly. I think she believed in me.

I looked at the sun shining through the sliding doors, stood up straight and walked out. The streets looked different. Clean. And the grass was green. I saw Henrik down the street, waiting in his car. I felt my ovaries shake and wished I’d taken one last look at myself in the mirror back in my room.

I wanted to run as fast as I could to get to Henrik and the car that would take me away from here. I wanted the rush to come fast and last long. I wanted to look in his eyes and feel the way I felt in those first days. As I felt my footsteps and my heart quicken and the back of my throat start to dry up, I realized something.

Whaddya know? I thought. I guess I was on the right floor.