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.<\/p>\n
All the tests come back normal.<\/p>\n
Because you are abnormal, you are turfed to another hospital.<\/p>\n
You are placed in isolation, so the nursing station can watch your every move on a camera connected to a locked padded cell.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve hit bottom,\u201d they say. \u201cWithout a chance to explore your options, you\u2019re lucky you ended up here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
After the film finishes, a switch is turned on. Some bodies, like yours, are in assholic hospital gowns. Others are in street clothes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Dr. Fisher Marshfield,\u201d announces an authority in a tweed jacket and yellow bowtie. \u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Richard, and I\u2019m an alcoholic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Alice, and this isn\u2019t Alcoholics Anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Thomas, and I\u2019m an OxyContinolic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Emma, and this isn\u2019t Narcotics Anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither you nor any other inpatient evinces an inclination to aspire to the fluency and freedom of the outpatients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are excellent jumping-off points from which we can rap,\u201d says Dr. Marshfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Dr. Philip Rattner,\u201d says the only outpatient dressed in a tweed jacket and yellow bowtie. \u201cNobody says \u2018rap\u2019 anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat would you like to say?\u201d says Dr. Marshfield, still of good cheer.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause all of my patients remind me of my crazy, demanding, and unreasonable parents,\u201d says Dr. Rattner, \u201cI suffer from a condition called countertransference from which I am rightfully depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, isn\u2019t that special?\u201d says Richard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat gives you the right to presume you\u2019re the only one who\u2019s got a right to be depressed?\u201d says Alice.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must be a spy,\u201d says Thomas.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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\u2019s still a stigma about mental illness even among those whose help we\u2019re urged to seek,\u201d says Emma.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you reveal you\u2019re a doctor,\u201d says Dr. Marshfield through his teeth, \u201cwhen you were instructed, in private, to identify yourself as a professional but no more?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoctors, patients, parents, children: What\u2019s the difference?\u201d says Dr. Rattner. \u201cSooner or later, they all croak.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group, including the person purportedly in charge, falls dumb.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile you\u2019re at it,\u201d says Dr. Rattner, \u201cgo to hell while I go kill myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
A posse of nurses and aides eventually tracks down the threat for admission to a cell.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really hung in there during group therapy,\u201d declares a rejuvenated Dr. Marshfield during individual therapy, \u201ceven though you had nothing to say. Or should I say you had nothing you cared to say?\u201d<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the state trooper pulled you over at 90 miles per hour,\u201d furthers Dr. Marshfield, \u201cwhy did you state your goal was to shear your head off?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sorry you\u2019re alive?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to hear you say something for a change,\u201d says Dr. Marshfield.<\/p>\n
Had any family or friends or schadenfreuders taken advantage of visiting hours, they\u2019d have said you didn\u2019t have anything to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven this breakthrough,\u201d says Dr. Marshfield, \u201cis there anything else you would like to say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI did what I thought I was supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid something go wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with life?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fray.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to be afraid of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although you prefer to remain in isolation, they cleanse again, fit another half-assed gown, and lift what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d asks a mask.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpen wide and say ah,\u201d says another.<\/p>\n
The masks attach a blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, cardiac monitor, and mask. Then they stamp electrodes to your head.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeventy milligrams of Methohexital,\u201d says one.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeventy milligrams of Methohexital,\u201d echo others.<\/p>\n
You do not know who gave consent for what they are giving you.<\/p>\n
\u201cBreathe through your mask.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But before all the unfeeling, you do feel something.<\/p>\n
You feel good.<\/p>\n
You feel good because you no longer feel the treatment is worse than the disease.<\/p>\n
You feel good because you no longer feel afraid of the fray.<\/p>\n
You feel good because you feel you are about to die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You neither dare nor care to leave your fetal position to crawl to the commode.\u00a0 When you soil yourself, they come, hold their noses, and hose. \u201cYou\u2019ve hit bottom,\u201d they say.\u00a0 \u201cWithout a chance to explore your options, you\u2019re lucky you ended up here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[3695,1810],"class_list":["post-20437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-black-humor","tag-mental-illness","writer-scott-solomon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20988,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20437\/revisions\/20988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}