After some distance, you are deposited in an emergency room. When asked, you are unable to name the day, time, and place, as well as your name, address, phone, date of birth, next of kin, and insurance. The ER confiscates your personal effects and proceeds with blood work, EKG, chest x-ray, brain scan, spinal tap, and covering its ass.

All the tests come back normal.

Because you are abnormal, you are turfed to another hospital.

You are placed in isolation, so the nursing station can watch your every move on a camera connected to a locked padded cell.

You neither dare nor care to leave your fetal position to crawl to the commode. When you soil yourself, they come, hold their noses, and hose.

“You’ve hit bottom,” they say. “Without a chance to explore your options, you’re lucky you ended up here.”

Amid your round-the-clock sleeplessness, they rig another gown, badly buttoned in back, and drag you out of isolation to one of several stained fabric seats. You are shown, with others, a movie about a group of chimes attached directly or indirectly to one another. When the maestro in the flick flicks the first chime, technically known as the index chime, the other chimes chime in with a sickly sound, as well.

After the film finishes, a switch is turned on. Some bodies, like yours, are in assholic hospital gowns. Others are in street clothes.

“I am Dr. Fisher Marshfield,” announces an authority in a tweed jacket and yellow bowtie. “What’s on your mind?”

“My name is Richard, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“My name is Alice, and this isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“My name is Thomas, and I’m an OxyContinolic.”

“My name is Emma, and this isn’t Narcotics Anonymous.”

Neither you nor any other inpatient evinces an inclination to aspire to the fluency and freedom of the outpatients.

“Those are excellent jumping-off points from which we can rap,” says Dr. Marshfield.

“I am Dr. Philip Rattner,” says the only outpatient dressed in a tweed jacket and yellow bowtie. “Nobody says ‘rap’ anymore.”

“What would you like to say?” says Dr. Marshfield, still of good cheer.

“Because all of my patients remind me of my crazy, demanding, and unreasonable parents,” says Dr. Rattner, “I suffer from a condition called countertransference from which I am rightfully depressed.”

“Well, isn’t that special?” says Richard.

“What gives you the right to presume you’re the only one who’s got a right to be depressed?” says Alice.

“You must be a spy,” says Thomas.

“You remind me of all the crazy, demanding, and unreasonable doctors, who, knowing I was depressed, ignored my injured knee, which ended up needing surgery, proving there’s still a stigma about mental illness even among those whose help we’re urged to seek,” says Emma.

“Why did you reveal you’re a doctor,” says Dr. Marshfield through his teeth, “when you were instructed, in private, to identify yourself as a professional but no more?”

“Doctors, patients, parents, children: What’s the difference?” says Dr. Rattner. “Sooner or later, they all croak.”

The group, including the person purportedly in charge, falls dumb.

“While you’re at it,” says Dr. Rattner, “go to hell while I go kill myself.”

A posse of nurses and aides eventually tracks down the threat for admission to a cell.

“You really hung in there during group therapy,” declares a rejuvenated Dr. Marshfield during individual therapy, “even though you had nothing to say. Or should I say you had nothing you cared to say?”

You don’t know what to say.

“After the state trooper pulled you over at 90 miles per hour,” furthers Dr. Marshfield, “why did you state your goal was to shear your head off?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sorry you’re alive?”

“I’m always sorry.”

“It’s nice to hear you say something for a change,” says Dr. Marshfield.

Had any family or friends or schadenfreuders taken advantage of visiting hours, they’d have said you didn’t have anything to say.

“Given this breakthrough,” says Dr. Marshfield, “is there anything else you would like to say?”

“I did what I thought I was supposed to do.”

“Did something go wrong?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Life.”

“What’s wrong with life?”

“The fray.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Although you prefer to remain in isolation, they cleanse again, fit another half-assed gown, and lift what’s left of you onto a gurney. Then they stick one needle after another into a hapless arm until a vein holds rather than blows up. Blood drips onto your clean gown and mopped floor until it is stanched by tubing descending from a bag of fluid. From there, you are wheeled down a hall into a radiant room.

“How’s it going?” asks a mask.

“Open wide and say ah,” says another.

The masks attach a blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, cardiac monitor, and mask. Then they stamp electrodes to your head.

“Seventy milligrams of Methohexital,” says one.

“Seventy milligrams of Methohexital,” echo others.

You do not know who gave consent for what they are giving you.

“Breathe through your mask.”

You do not feel yourself fall asleep. You do not feel them call Dr. Rattner an asshole and Dr. Marshfield an asshole and you an asshole. You do not feel them rush to execute the electroconvulsive schedule so they can pick up kids or drop off cleaning or get to a twelve-step class. You do not feel them make you seize.

But before all the unfeeling, you do feel something.

You feel good.

You feel good because you no longer feel the treatment is worse than the disease.

You feel good because you no longer feel afraid of the fray.

You feel good because you feel you are about to die.