It Happened To Me: In The Psych Ward, My Roommate Was The Story
Being assigned to share a room with someone you have never met is often awkward, and in a psych hospital, particularly so. Let me tell you about my roommate in the NYC ward where I was a patient.
Hi Spicies,
Big excitement: I am finally finally proceeding with installment #2 of our AJPT Controversial-Books-Only Book Club!
Amanda (June, as opposed to Amanda Jane, another lovable character here) has been scouting for books and diligently sending me suggestions, reviews, intros for weeks and then what has been happening is that I nitpick each selection to death because I am nitpickily (nitpickingly? nitpickedly? I think I got it right the first time) sticking to my bossy Big Daddy Editor-In-Chief guns that each book we consider has to fit the criteria of being controversial. The idea is to read books that likely wouldn’t make it onto other Book Group lists, generally because the author or the book itself has been deemed unfit in some way. (Because… Unfit Is Us™️)
So below is one potential Book Club pick that the lovely and resilient Amanda suggested the other day. (Though it is not technically controversial, it might be when I read it and think that everything in it is portrayed highly inaccurately, but we will see - I will keep an open mind - For Now):
It is called Workhorse, and is written by Caroline Palmer. This description is from Amanda for you:
Goodreads Says It Is: A richly drawn, unsettling, and wickedly funny story of envy and ambition set against the glamor and privilege of media and high society in New York City at its height.
At the turn of the millennium, editorial assistant Clodagh “Clo” Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. There’s just one problem: She doesn’t have the right pedigree. Instead, Clo is a “workhorse” surrounded by beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected “show horses” who get ahead without effort, including her beguiling cubicle-mate, Davis Lawrence, the daughter of a beloved but fading Broadway actress. Harry Wood, Davis’s boarding school classmate and a reporter with visions of his own media empire, might be Clo’s ally in gaming the system—or he might be the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top.
Why I Texted Jane about it on a Saturday: It’s dead set in magazine world in a post 9-11 world, when Vogue and other magazines set the conversation and dictated the trends. Sure it’s Devil Wears Prada coded, but from a grittier needier narrator than that of the plucky Ann Hathaway character. Clo is relentless in her pursuit of the social ladder, one she makes clear could not support her non-sample size frame. She steals from the richies, in all the ways. Again, I’m rooting for her because she’s so very honest about her desires. Also, I want to shake her out of endless chasing, as it only pulls the rest of us into the pursuit. And to be honest, I want to know what it felt like to resist that way of being a women’s magazine in the early aughts straight from Jane.
If you have any ideas for books you would like us all together to consider, leave them in the comments below today’s piece and I’ll get this thing organized. Feel free to self-promote with your suggestions too, since I know that many of you are not just readers but also Auetheours (you have to say that with a deep voice and a British accent and even then I don’t know what my joke is, but let’s move along here).
I will round up the choices and after a vote, will make an announcement with all the information, including your reading deadlines. And once again like last time, I will host an AJPT Book Club discussion and party at my apartment. It will be virtual for those of you who prefer to watch the in-person members eating up my free and delicious food, soiling my carpets, peeking in my medicine cabinet, and whatever else we all naturally do in each others’ homes. We can add alcohol to the mix if you want this time, especially since it hopefully won’t be held at the ungodly hour of 9:30 AM again (we will all schedule it and set the menu together, but it’s on me).
If this turns out to be anything like our last one, I’m peeing with excitement already.
I am also really interested to talk to you about today’s gorgeous piece that Caitlin wrote for us. I met her in the AJPT comments (correct me if we met in chat, Caitlin, but I think it was the comments). I loved what she said and immediately asked her if she wanted to write something for AJPT. She sent me a couple of story ideas, all riveting, and also told me in her letter that she grew up on Sassy, so I will say that it is not surprising that we vibed so instantly. And seriously, is it narcissistic of me that many of my favorite writers were Sassy and Jane readers?? Who also happen to look just like ME!! (Just kidding about that second part.)
I asked Caitlin to start with this concept but I hope for much more from her, because I love the way she writes and I love that she shows again here how It Happened To Me stories can take on so many different formats. Let all of that be a nudge to send me your stories at Jane@AnotherJanePrattThing.com if you want. It’s an easy process. (Not necessarily the writing, but you know that.)
Well, that’s it for today because the other personal story I was writing for this intro was, like a lot of “confessional writing,” veering lengthily into who-cares territory. So I just put it in the CMS under the voluminous category of “Jane’s Unused Drafts” to finish editing and get it to you tomorrow. You’re welcome for the precious time I just saved you reading it as is, and thanks for letting me off the hook with only this much for today. See you in the comments, where I will be comfortably camped out and reachable 24/7, as usual. And writing lengthy comments of my own that will invariably land in who-cares territory. I hope you do the same!
I love you all so much,
Jane
By Caitlin O’Toole
In the spring of 2017, I checked myself into a New York City psych ward because I didn’t feel safe inside my own head. I had lived with bipolar for 28 years and I was in one of my “mixed states:” madly in love with myself while simultaneously wanting to die, torn only because that would mean missing my own funeral.
Monday afternoon was an ideal time to go to the E.R. Most of the weekend’s shooting victims were either dead or had been treated and released, so there was only a short wait to get to the intake coordinator. As I sat in the waiting room, it occurred to me that I could get up and leave. I could blow this whole fucking thing off. Who the fuck checks themselves into hell voluntarily? Answer: me.
The intake coordinator was totally non-empathetic. A robot.
“Why are you here?” she asked, looking down, her pen perched right above her clipboard, ready to write.
“I don’t feel safe.”
“Do you think someone wants to hurt you?”
“No.”
“Do you feel like you want to hurt yourself?”
“Yes.”
That’s all I needed to say to get checked in. The technical term is “acute suicidal ideation,” or something. Or that’s probably what she put on the form.
A woman came out from behind a little door, slapped a name tag on my hand, and directed me to a wheelchair.
“We’re taking you to psych triage,” she said.
“I may be suicidal, but I can walk,” I said.
“It’s hospital protocol. You have to go in a wheelchair.”
A middle-aged Black man with a kind smile introduced himself and we got on an elevator and went down to hell. He then wheeled me around for what seemed like miles: around curves, up and down ramps, backwards, forwards. I was completely disoriented and had absolutely no idea where I was. I suspected it was a different building entirely. We went “up” in the elevator to a packed, frenzied triage.
In the waiting room, a woman was losing her mind in Cantonese, looking up at the ceiling and crying and praying and pointing. English-only-speaking staff were trying to communicate with a patient who spoke only Spanish and wasn’t even coherent in his own language. I wondered how it was that a hospital in the middle of New York City couldn’t summon up any translators to help.
I traded in my clothes and my phone for a pair of scrubs without a tie around the waist, should I decide to hang myself.
I’m told to wait with a small group of people until they figure out what the fuck to do with us (are we staying? Going? What kind of insurance do we have, and will it cover our stay?) There are no windows or clocks – it’s like a casino – and I begin to completely lose track of time. After a while, I figured it could be 3:00pm or it could be midnight.
Howard, the man who wheeled me in, seemed to be the man in charge: the one with the keys, who distributed the trays of food, checked people in, got them scrubs, housed their belongings, and ran the place. Luckily, he took a liking to me. Probably because I had given him no trouble.
I arrived on the ward what seemed like a long time later. Mary, the Australian night nurse, was my escort and made sure I had a bucket from the utility closet with a tiny little deodorant (for my teeny, tiny little sweat glands), face wash, shampoo, and soap. She also gave me two scratchy, yellowed towels, a face cloth, a “fresh” blanket, and sheets for my mattress — which basically looked like a royal blue air mattress, but one that someone had pooed on at one time or another.
There was a small bed in each corner of the room and someone sleeping in each one. Mary helped me make my bed by the light of a flashlight, sat on it with me with her clipboard, and asked me a string of pretty routine psych ward questions. (Except they seemed nicer than the routine because they were asked with an Australian accent.)
What kind of insurance do you have? Are you suicidal? Do you live alone? Do you have a support system? Do you smoke? Take drugs? Have you ever tried to kill yourself or cut yourself or hurt yourself? When was your last period? When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?
I didn’t know the answer to the last question.
A flying bug hit the off-white blanket and Mary squashed it, then wiped her hand on her scrubs. With that, she said, “I’ll leave you to sleep.”
It was pretty dark, but there was a sliver of a window on the upper part of one of the walls that let some of the city light in, so I could see some things in the room. Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” hung above the bed in a thick frame with rounded corners. Who thought it was a good idea to hang a painting by a man who had famously lost his mind in a room full of people who had misplaced theirs? Either someone’s kind of sick joke, or someone who looked at it and thought, “what a nice painting of yellow flowers!”
As I lay down and clutched the bug-splattered blanket, I could see that someone had drawn a small, lopsided smiley face on the wall in ballpoint pen. I wanted my mom like never before.
I don’t know how long it took for me to go to sleep, or how much time elapsed before the door creaked open and a doctor came in to introduce himself. All I knew was it was the middle of the night, and for some reason, he said he needed to feel my ankles.
“What’s this tattoo from?” he said, lifting my scrubs and pointing at the topless pin-up girl that occupies my entire left shin.
“Bipolar battlescar ,” I said. “I have several. They’re like memories of a bad time healed over but never really gone.”
He nodded, but wasn’t really listening.
“Why are you feeling my ankles? Are they particularly sexy?”
“Ankles can tell us a lot about blood pressure and cardiovascular health,” he said.
“Sorry, but is this not the psych ward? Am I in the cardiac unit?”
“We like to cover all bases.”
I resented him waking me at 4:00am to manhandle my ankles when one of the reasons I checked in was severe exhaustion. It seems to me they should have put me in a room and let me sleep for three days. He finally left, but I never went back to sleep. I stared at the smiley face until I heard shuffling in the hall sometime later.
I went out to investigate and to look for some water. I overheard two patients whispering about me as they walked by.
“Guy?”
“Girl?”
“Neither?”
I stopped by the nurse’s station and asked for a pen. Not allowed, I’m told, so I’m given stubby pencils instead. I had brought my notebook, which they almost confiscated because it was bound together with string. No strings were allowed on the ward. That meant no tampax (death by tampon), and no way to keep your scrubs up. Suffice it to say I saw a lot of buttcracks that week.
I headed back to my room and tucked my journal in between the poo mattress and the bedframe for safekeeping. Trust no one on the ward. That’s psych ward rule number one, along with keep to yourself and don’t befriend anyone.
My three roommates had risen and I summed them up quickly: Sad, Mad, and Odd. I couldn’t officially diagnose them, but I could smell depression a mile away, and Sad was clinically depressed. Mad I pegged as edgy and unglued; one to stay far away from. And Odd, who had a short, boyish, haircut, unsettled me in a way I just couldn’t place. With me in my exhausted, mixed state, we were quite the team.
We were told it was time for breakfast so we all assembled in the dayroom-cum-café down the hall. Odd was in front of me in line. She kept her head down as watery scrambled eggs were scooped onto her plate and went to sit in a corner by herself.
The room was getting more crowded so I grabbed a seat and prayed to god no one would sit with me.
A woman sat down and introduced herself as Mara. She was staying in the room next door to mine. Mara glommed onto me almost immediately. At first I pegged her as a free-lovin’, anything goes, earthy crunchy, kumbaya lesbian. Then I decided she was asexual and just trying to be my friend.
She told me she was admitted for severe, chronic, treatment-resistant depression and suicidal ideation. In short, she was a fucking bummer to have breakfast with. Not that I was in the hospital to be entertained or to make friends. But I certainly didn’t need to be dragged down any further. I just needed to stay glued together.
Mara talked incessantly and I started drowning her out as I became more aware of Odd with her buzz cut, sitting in the corner. She was giggling to herself. Or to someone I couldn’t see yet. Her giggles got louder and soon became chortles. Everyone looked at her.
“It’s getting to be about that time,” I heard one nurse say to another.
What time? I had no idea what she meant.
“This will be the third one today, and it’s not even lunch,” the other nurse said.
A doctor and a nurse came in to whisk Odd out of the dayroom. She thrashed as they escorted her away.
Odd screamed at the mustachioed doctor, “Get the fuck off of me, you ugly bitch!” I laughed.
We are told not to return to our room until further notice. I could only imagine what must be happening. I’d read Ken Kesey. This was far worse.
There was a commotion, then an eerie calm. About five minutes later, the doctor and nurse emerged from my room. Odd was in her bed, asleep.
I went back to the dayroom and tried to write in my journal with my stubby pencils.
I hope you’re writing this down, my dad always used to say.
I couldn’t really summon up any words, so I drew a picture of Rosie, my dog, which I found strangely comforting, and these strange, repetitive face drawings that I do when my mind is not at ease.
Time passed, but again, it could have been any time of day, really.
I went back to my room and was surprised to see Odd’s bed empty, and made.
