Admissions (3 page)

The patient smiles broadly, rolls her eyes. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there. The chronics—not home, if you know what I mean.” She thrusts her hand toward me. “I’m Isabel.”

Patient Name: Isabel P. Jackson


DOB: 6/2/1913 Age: 55


Date of Admission: 8/13/1968


Diagnosis: Alcohol Abuse: Chronic, Severe, Recurrent.


Date: 11/19/68


Notes: Thorazine increased to 150m.


No observed aggressive behavior.


I squeeze the tips of the woman’s fingers and give a quick shake. “Hello. I’m Luanne.”

“They’re doomed. Botched lobotomies or too much electro or too crazy to get better. Thorazine zombies. Hall 5, it’s for the real lunatics. Now, us—we aren’t that crazy. That’s us, over there.” She stabs her thumb toward the west side where tall windows let in a good amount of natural light. Several women stare over at us.

“Come on.” As Isabel leads me across the dayroom, a naked patient whirls up to her, takes her by the arm. “Bitch,” the woman says, spinning away. Isabel doesn’t blink or break stride. She stops in front of the smoking women, waits for me to catch up, and grabs my arm.

“Girls, this is Luanne.” Four women look up. Isabel extends her arm and motions toward each woman in turn. “Luanne, this is Autumn, Heidi, Beth, and Estee.” They each smile, nod, or say hi.

Heidi runs her hand through her greasy hair, rests it at the back of her neck. “Got any cigs?”

“Sure.” I pull out my red and white Tareyton pack, draw out two cigarettes and hand them to her. Heidi looks like a punk, a kid from a girl gang or something. I don’t care. I’d give the girl the whole pack if she’d just talk to me. Heidi’s hand shakes as she reaches out, small chips of tangerine polish scatter across her stubby nails.

Patient Name: Heidi Parsons


DOB: 11/16/52 Age: 16


Date of Admission: 8/23/1968


Diagnosis: Cocaine abuse, Hallucinogen Abuse, Canabis abuse, Amphetamine abuse, Alcohol abuse. Chronic (onset age 12).


Date: 11/19/68


Notes: Patient’s medication reduced Thorazine 200m, Chloral Hydrate 30m since transfer to Hall 5. Remains uncooperative, angry, depressed.


“Thanks.” She turns the cigarettes in her hand, wrinkles her forehead as if trying to figure out what they are. “Thanks a whole lot. I ain’t had one for almost an hour and a half. I should be gettin’ one from the attendant. These’ll hold me over just fine. Thanks.” She waves toward the nurses’ station. An attendant arrives with a lighter. Heidi looks up after a flash of fire crackles her cigarette tip. She exhales slowly.

“I’m broke, so I have to wait for state cigarettes. They’ll only give you one every two hours. So, what you in for?”

“Depressed.” I pull up a chair. What else can I say? I have no idea what’s wrong with me.

“Depressed? That don’t sound too serious.” Her eyes dart around the group. “I’m in for drugs. My mom’s a bitch. She turned me in.” She sounds hostile, but has tears in her eyes. I stare at her face as she talks, something is different. She has an angry case of acne on her cheeks, neck and chest, but that’s not it.

“Yeah, she didn’t pay attention to me since I was really little, then she goes and calls the cops on me. I had to go to court and all. My dad said he’d help me, but he never showed up. The judge said I needed treatment. Shit. This place ain’t treatment.” She glances over at Isabel.

Isabel looks directly at me. “I’m a drunk. This is my third time here. You’d think it was Las Vegas or somethin’ the way I keep comin’ back.” She smiles, looks down. There’s a short silence.

“What do you think of the Lobster?”

“The lobster?” Did I miss a lobster dinner?

“Nurse Lobsinger. The Lobster, we call her.”

I feel a small smile cross my lips, the first one in weeks. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it to her face if I were you.” Isabel laughs.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that Doris Lobsinger, the nurse attendant on the afternoon shift, runs roughshod over Hall 5 from two fifteen until the nine o’clock evening bell.

About eight p.m. Monday night, my first day out of the infirmary, stomach cramps hit, a reaction to being scared to death, medication, and hospital food. Nurse Lobsinger escorts me down to the bathroom and stands in front of me while I sit on the toilet. I feel hot and prickly, my stomach churns.

“Jesus Christ. Hurry up.” Nurse Lobsinger holds her nose. “What crawled up your ass and died? Hurry up. I don’t get paid to stand around watching while you take a crap that lasts a week and stinks to high heaven. That’s it. Mary, she’s all yours.” Thank God she walks out and leaves me under the supervision of the bathroom aide. Women come and go, using the toilets next to me. Each time somebody comes in, they ask the aide for toilet paper. She doles out two squares at a time. The aide informs me I have reached my limit.

When the night bell rings at nine p.m., I’m still in the bathroom. “I’m going to have to get my supervisor.” The aide walks to the door and calls for her.

Nurse Lobsinger stomps through the door and rests her hands on her hips. “You still in here?”

I double over in pain, but ask as politely as I can. “Sorry. I’m sick. Can I please stay?”

“Nope. You’re in bed for the night, Missy. You should have thought about that earlier when you had bathroom privileges.”

“But I wasn’t sick then.”

She grabs my arm and pulls me up. “Nope. Get up. You’ve got a date with the sandman.” I try to hold my gown closed as she drags me through the door. Staff, who just finished night check, stand in the hall as I waddle by, my legs soiled and sticky.

The Lobster
—I like the sound of that.

Chapter 5

THE OBSERVER
            
December 5, 1968

Page 5

Hall 5 had a Popcorn Party Saturday Night, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus Women’s Auxiliary. They had popcorn and Kool Aid, and the nurses let the patients help pop the corn! A fun time was had by all.

I
motion for a light.
The Price is Right
blares from the black and white TV mounted on the wall above reach. Chronics sit silently in front of the screen, their necks craned back.

“How long have you been here this time?” I ask Isabel.

“’Bout three months.” Isabel screws her lips to the side, lets out a puff of smoke.

“I been here fourteen weeks,” Heidi butts in. “Withdrawal is a bummer.” She scratches her arms. “They doped me up. I think I slept for a good three weeks solid.” She brings her knees up, wraps her arms around them. “If I knew how crappy it was being awake, I’d have asked for more of those pills.” She rubs her hand along the side of her face and across her forehead.

I can’t help but stare at Heidi’s face. That’s it. Her eyebrows are missing. “I shouldn’t be in 5,” Heidi continues. “I was doin’ pretty good in 9, but I started savin’ my meds. Just stuck ‘em up between my teeth and top lip. Really pretty easy.” She shrugs. “I wasn’t gonna o.d. or nothin’.” They found ‘em and—Bam! Here I am on Hall 5.” Her voice lowers, she looks toward the nurses’ station. “They stripped me and put me in a protection room
.
Nothin’ but a mattress on the floor.” She takes a long drag.

“Well, hell. I shouldn’t be here either.” Isabel folds her arms behind her head, tips back her chair, balancing it on two legs. “The Doc says I can go back to 9 as soon as they’re sure I’m not violent.”

“Violent?” My chair squeaks as I shift in it.

“Nah, I’m gentle as a puppy. The Lobster had one of the little retarded girls crying. Told her nobody likes her, that her mom wouldn’t ever come to see her, on and on. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I told her to shut up.” She leans toward me. “She got right in my face so close she spit on me. I pushed her back, and that was it. She called for backup; they put me in a jacket and brought me to 5.”

“I’ve always been in 5. The whole time. Probably a homicidal maniac.” We all turn toward Autumn.

Patient Name: Autumn A. Bauer


DOB: 3/23/1936 Age: 32


Date of Admission: 4/5/1967


Diagnosis:Manic-Depressive Disorder.


Disorder: Severe, with Psychotic Features. Borderline Personality Disorder.


Date: 11/24/68


Notes: Patient continues in observation for aggressive behavior. Controlled by medication at this time. Thorazine 600m, Chloral Hydrate 50m.


Autumn shakes her long hair and pulls it back, using her hand as a clasp in the center of her head. She winds the ponytail around with her other hand. She has an exotic beauty, dark hair and eyes and luminescent caramel skin. But her face charts the course of her life.

Isabel raises her eyebrows. “Autumn had a bad marriage.”

“Ladies, Ladies.” The bell summons us to the dining hall. I sit with my new friends at a round table. We wait silently for our food. No sense trying to talk with the chronics babbling and yelling.

Patients on kitchen detail place trays in front of us, a small bowl of vegetable soup with crackers, a half peanut butter sandwich, a cheese slice, milk. I take a bite of cheese and look over at Beth cutting her sandwich into small pieces with the side of her spoon and moving them around her plate. Beth puts down her spoon. She stares at her soup bowl. She picks up her spoon, dips it in the soup and takes a small sip. She lays down her spoon, crosses her hands in her lap. She waits. She picks up her spoon again, repeats.

Patient Name: Elizabeth A. Shaffer


DOB: 8/12/1950


Age: 19


Date of Admission: 8/14/1967


Diagnosis: Anorexia Nervosa.


Date: 11/24/1968


Notes: Pt. refuses to maintain normal body weight. Body Dysmorphia, Anxiety. 5’ 6”, 73 lbs.


I figure Beth is almost an adult. But without makeup, she could be sitting in the cafeteria of any junior high. Her thick bangs crowd across her thin face, large pale blue eyes sink into sallow skin, a full mouth, even teeth. The neck of her state-issue clearly shows her collarbones and every bone of her upper spine.

One by one, our group finishes lunch and heads to the exit doors to wait for the attendant with the key.

I turn back and watch as the dining room supervisor approaches Beth. The supervisor stops across the table, splays her hands on the tabletop, leans so that her face looms over Beth’s tray. “If you don’t eat something, we will have to force feed you again.” Beth stares down at her food. I have a brief thought about saving her. Save her how? “You cannot stay in here past one o’clock. Go line up. We’ll give Dr. Cho an update on your lunch.” The supervisor yanks away the tray.

I’m learning the routine. Every day, patients go to the dayroom after lunch for soap operas. Today, I sit next to Beth in our little circle near the windows.

Before I have a chance to duck, the attendants are on Beth, their elbows jabbing everywhere. One on each side, they boost her up out of her chair. She screams, digs in her heels, but she’s no match for them. Her tennis shoes squeal across the floor as they drag her from the room. In a matter of two minutes, the dayroom returns to quiet. The chronics, not realizing anything has happened, stare up at the television.

“Beth came to Hall 5 two days before you did.” Estee turns toward me. “The Lobster told her if she didn’t eat, she’d never leave this hall. They’re probably putting a tube down her nose right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“She won’t eat, she’s losing weight. She told me yesterday she weighs seventy-two pounds.”

Patient Name: Estee R. Weisman


DOB: 2/27/1945


Age: 23


Date of Admission: 9/29/68


Diagnosis: Schizophrenia: Undifferentiated Type. In partial remission.Date: 11/24/08


Notes: Continues to respond to treatment. Thorazine 700m. Postpone ECT.


“I don’t know how many times she’s been to the infirmary to be force fed,” Isabel says quietly. “She told me what happens. They hold her down, stick this brown rubber tube through her nose, into her stomach. Then they pour some kind of nutritional crap down the tube. They keep her there until they’re pretty sure she won’t puke it up.”

“Man.”

“When she comes back, her hair is all matted, face all blotchy and red like she’s been bobbing for French fries. They expect her to eat when her throat is so raw she can’t talk. Hell, I’m no doctor, but there must be another way to get the kid to eat.” She reaches into her pocket, takes out four cigarettes, passes them to Heidi, Autumn, Estee and me. We sit smoking, staring at the TV set. But nobody watches the Soap.

I look down at my hands. They are becoming my mother’s hands, fingers boney, crepe paper skin crinkling across the faint blue patterns beneath. I’m fading, just like Beth. Fading away to nothing. My breasts ache for Alexander. When I sit back and run my fingers over my tummy, I think about my pregnancy. For the first time, I felt like a woman. When I close my eyes, I feel Jeff’s hands gently caress my belly. His voice cooing his admiration. He said I never looked so beautiful and, for the first time, I believed him. I felt full then, expectant. Now I’m empty.

We sit around the dayroom after dinner watching TV when Beth comes in. She wobbles slowly across the floor, hands out in front of her to fend off spinning patients.

She sits down next to Isabel.

“Hi, kid.” Isabel puts her arm around the back of Beth’s chair. “How you doin’?”

“Okay.” Her voice is raspy—obviously not okay. Her face is so pale, I can see the veins running under her skin, branching out as they disappear into her hairline. Her thinning hair hangs in greasy strings along the sides of her face, and the back is snarled up in a giant rat’s nest. Beth clears her throat and swallows, her eyes on the TV. “Is that
The Brady Bunch?”