2

Brad and I rode the ancient elevator up to the third floor in silence. He clasped his hands behind his back as we both looked up, watching the floor numbers tick higher.

“This is it,” he said and pulled open the final door to the detox unit. The door slammed shut behind us. Shit, I thought. I’m really on a locked-down floor of a mental hospital. What just happened? I’m a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey who belongs to MoMA and reads The Economist.

The unit looked like a typical hospital floor lined with patient rooms, but it smelled like a combination of antiseptic, piss, and vomit. I became dizzy as we started down the hall and my stomach scrambled as if I might barf.

There was a loud commotion directly in front of us. Two haggard-looking women were screaming at each other. “Fucking cunt! I’ll kill you!” It was impossible to tell what they were fighting about because their exchange was nothing but screamed threats and name-calling. They looked middle-aged with their pasty white skin and long, frizzy hair, but something told me that they may very well have been in their twenties. They wore grubby sweatpants and t-shirts, both of which hung off their bodies the way clothes seem to want to escape long-term heroin users and war-weary refugees.

“Keep moving,” Brad said as he veered me away from the chaos. Raw fear jolted through my fingers and toes. There would be no need for the lingerie Devon packed.

Seconds later, a tall, angry man stormed toward us. He had what looked like several days of stubble on his face and tattoos on every bit of exposed skin. He looked strong enough and pissed off enough to take down the two battling women with a single swing. But he was staring at me.

I fell behind Brad and looked at the floor, but it didn’t help. As soon as we were within twenty feet, the man bellowed, “HEY!” I pretended not to notice.

When I didn’t respond, he repeated himself. “HEY!” I couldn’t help looking up. He came closer pointed his finger at me, and scowled, “YOU, GIRL. I’M GONNA FUCK YOU UP!”

I looked around, hoping that he’d mistaken me for someone else he intended to fuck up. And that scary freak must have read my mind because as he passed us, he turned back and shouted, “YEAH, YOU.”

I looked at Brad in a panic. “That’s it,” I said. “No fucking way. I’m out of—”

“No, no, no, no,” Brad interrupted. “It’s going to be fine. I know it looks scary, but really, it’s going to be fine.” He had his arm around my shoulder and was guiding me forward quickly.

“Did you hear that? That guy said he’s going to fuck me up. You have to let me go.” I stopped walking and stomped my foot.

“Lisa, take it easy. No one is going to hurt you. You signed yourself in. You’re here for 72 hours, and we’re legally required to keep you here. It’s OK; he’s just talking. He’s here for the same reason as you, just here to get help.” Did Brad believe what he was saying? I didn’t trust him. I felt like I had to run away, fast. Was this what they meant by “fight or flight” on those animal shows I watched on the National Geographic Channel at 3:00 a.m., coked out of my head? Was this what a gazelle felt right before a lion’s teeth sank into her hindquarters?

“No,” I said to Brad. He continued walking, so I had to follow. “No way I’m sleeping here with no locks on the doors and these lunatics running around. No fucking way.” The words didn’t seem to be coming out fast enough. Brad just kept walking.

We arrived at the examination room where the night physician was waiting to complete my intake process. By now I was near hyperventilating. “Lisa, this is Dr. Maxwell,” Brad said.

With his slick black hair, Dr. Maxwell looked a little like my former pediatrician and seemed to have the same cold manner. No one introduced the nurse next to him. Brad turned to the doctor and said, “She’s scared. A few people acting up out there.” Acting up? I thought. Acting up is a baby tossing Cheerios off his high chair. This was a credible, physical threat and they needed to do something about it.

I fell into the first chair I saw and started bawling. “I want to leave!” I screamed. My fists were clenched into balls.

Dr. Maxwell looked unfazed. “Lisa, calm down,” he said. “We’re just going to take some blood and then we can give you some Librium. It will help you relax and you’ll feel much better. It’s okay.” I saw him arranging his bloodletting instruments, no longer looking at me.

“NO!” I shrieked, as if they were threatening to pull out a fingernail with a pair of pliers. “I am not letting anyone stick any needles into my arm. I am not taking any Librium or any drug in this place. And I am not staying.”

Another argument occurred to me and I tried to sound calm and reasonable. “The conditions here are unacceptable. I am a lawyer. I know my rights.” This was a lie. I had no idea what my rights were in this situation. “You cannot keep me here against my will. I do not feel safe.” I had heard somewhere that “I do not feel safe,” was an effective buzz phrase for when you needed help, but that might have been in a Vanity Fair article I read about a dominatrix. “If you don’t let me leave, I’m going to call the police!”

As I rocked back and forth sobbing, Brad and Dr. Maxwell stepped out of the examination room.

They returned a few minutes later. “OK, Lisa,” said Brad. “We’re going to work with you here, but you’re going to have to work with us. We understand that you feel uncomfortable, but we cannot let you go tonight. You can write a request to be released, but it can’t be reviewed until the psychiatrist arrives in the morning. And then it will be up to him. You’re going to have to spend the night here, but we think we can make it a little easier on you. We can put you on the Asian floor.”

“The Asian floor?” I asked, still choking back tears. “What do you mean the Asian floor?”

“We have a floor upstairs that’s all Asian,” Brad said. “Patients, doctors, and nurses. These aren’t detox patients. They’re patients with other mental illnesses, such as dementia, paranoia, and schizophrenia. They come here because their families want a more comfortable, familiar atmosphere for them. You’re still going to see lots of people roaming the halls, talking to themselves, acting in ways you’re not used to seeing. But it can be quieter up there.” This couldn’t be happening. Was I really locked in a mental institution and negotiating which was the most desirable floor? I wanted a drink.

“What do you say?” Brad continued. “You would be right outside the nurses’ station. Just give it a try for tonight and we’ll get your request for discharge evaluated in the morning.”

There was clearly no going home that night. If I got out of reach of the dangerous lunatics on the detox floor and was outside a nurses’ station, I thought, I could probably make it until morning. To survive the night, I could sit in a ball on the floor next to the doorway of my room so that if anyone came by to attack me they would see an empty bed and move on to another victim. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go up there tonight, but just for tonight. Then I’m out.”

“Great,” Dr. Maxwell said. “Now if you’ll just roll your sleeve up, we’ll draw that blood and get you started on the Librium.”

“No fucking way,” I said. “No blood. No drugs. Please give me a piece of paper to write out my request to leave.” Brad handed me a pad and pen. I scribbled a short note requesting my immediate discharge and handed it to Brad. “Let’s go upstairs,” I said.

Just two floors above the detox, looking the same but smelling better, the Asian floor felt like another world. In some ways it was. As described, everyone on the floor was Asian, with the exception of Brad and me. He walked me to the nurses’ station. “This is Vivian,” he said, as a short, plump Asian woman with a sympathetic smile shook my hand. “She’ll help you get settled for the night.” I nodded at him and shook the nurse’s hand. Then she took my bag from Brad.

“So, you’ll be OK here tonight?” Brad asked.

Vivian was setting my bag down on the bed in a small room directly across from the nurses’ desk. “Yeah, I can do this,” I said. Brad looked relieved.

“Great,” he said. “Dr. Landry, the psychiatrist, will come see you tomorrow to discuss your situation and your request to leave.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate what you did.”

He shrugged. “It’s OK. But remember that people don’t usually land in this hospital unless there’s a good reason. See how you feel in the morning.” As he walked away, I laughed to myself. See how I feel in the morning? I could tell him how I’d feel in the morning: desperate to get out of this place to have a fat cocktail and a smoke.

Vivian had begun to dig into the contents of my bag like a power-drunk TSA agent. What was the worst thing she could find? A bag of drugs I might have forgotten in the lining? Maybe they’d kick me out.

Meanwhile I took a good look at my Spartan accommodations. The room was about twelve feet long and seven feet wide with a cold, speckled linoleum floor. A twin-size mattress half as thin as a telephone directory sat on top of a low, wire frame and was pushed along the side of the wall. No headboard, no box spring. The bed was made up with some scratchy sheets and a stained, thin, white cotton blanket. I was going to need that heavy sweater that Devon had packed.

A wooden chair sat at the foot of the bed, and directly across from it was a small sink with a piece of shiny metal over it meant to function as a mirror. Looking into it, I could make out my image generally, but the details of my face were unclear. When I moved my head, I morphed into another form.

The small window near the head of the bed was embedded with wiring, blocking any view outside. There was no telephone, television, or clock, and I thought of a good question for Jeopardy: “In these two places, it’s impossible to tell if it’s night or day.”

“What are a casino and a mental hospital, Alex?”

Vivian looked amused as she picked at my bag, smirking when she came across the negligees, push-up bras, and pair of spiky heels. She let me keep the clothes but removed anything that, in a spy movie or an episode of MacGyver, might have facilitated my escape or suicide. She shook her head as she filled a black plastic tray with items that were to be returned to me at the end of my stay: my cell phone, cigarettes, money, credit cards, driver’s license, MetroCard, tweezers, razors, and a small glass pot of lip gloss.

“You can get ready for bed now,” she said, relinquishing what remained in the bag. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your blood pressure.”

The only thing I had resembling pajamas were the negligees Devon had packed. I didn’t even own pajamas. Having something normal to sleep in was just another thing that my alcoholic lifestyle had rendered unimportant to me, like doing laundry and opening mail.

Piles of unopened envelopes would sit on my kitchen counter for months. Although there was plenty of money in my bank account, I almost never paid my bills on time. It was sheer laziness, although I told myself I was just “too busy” to get to it. When I got around to calling the credit card companies, weeks after bills were due, I would pay over the phone, hefty penalties included. The renter’s insurance on my apartment was cancelled for nonpayment. I skipped sending in rent checks and made it up the next month. I was a top-bracket taxpayer living like a broke drug addict.

I pulled on a pair of leggings, circa 1988, and took off my bra, leaving on the heavy cotton sweater I had worn all day. The room was cold, so I added thick wool socks.

The bathroom had a thin wood door. No locks, not even on the bathroom doors. I flipped the thick black switch on the metal plate. The fluorescent light that flickered on was dim, and that was fine with me. Out of fear, I never fully assessed the toilet and made a decision never to sit on it; I would squat. In the corner, there was a narrow stall shower with a decrepit white plastic shower curtain hanging from a semicircle shaped rod. Won’t be touching anything in there either, I thought.

Vivian wheeled in a blood pressure contraption that sat atop a long rod with three wheels at the bottom. The bed creaked as I wrestled my arm out of my sweater, like the first move in a pathetic strip tease. She choked the band around my arm and looked at her watch as she took the reading. She didn’t mention that she would do this every three hours of the next twenty-four.

“You know, it’s not so bad here,” she said. “You’ll be OK. You look tough.” Tough? I thought. Rough, maybe. Strung out and ancient, sure. But tough? It must have been Vivian’s way of psyching me up for what was going to happen the next morning.

“I’m not going to be staying. I already submitted my request to leave. As soon as I see the psychiatrist tomorrow, I’m going.”

As she pumped the little rubber bulb, I hoped that my hysteria and anxiety had catapulted my blood pressure to a level that would get me transferred to the cardiac unit at Lenox Hill. There I could relax, safe among bankers, lawyers, and other overachievers who had worked their way into a cardiac vacation. It didn’t happen.

She unwrapped the band from my arm, looped the thick, black cord around it, and raised her eyebrows. “Right,” she said. “You should think about staying.” Then she rolled her machine out of the room.

I sat on the bed looking around and feeling twitchy. Trembling and sweating, I badly needed a stiff drink and a cigarette. I pulled the stuffed tiger out of my bag and slid under the crappy sheet and blanket. The light stayed on and my eyes sat wide open until they finally dropped shut from exhaustion.

It was unclear when morning arrived because no sunlight streamed through the wire-covered window. When the morning nurse, Jane, stormed into my room, she barked, “Eight o’clock! Everybody up for breakfast right now. Time to eat!” Her urgency seemed unnecessary. It wasn’t as if anyone here had to rush off to work.

As I lifted my head from the pillow, a more intense, disorienting sickness than I had ever felt came over me. It was as if I had been taken to the rooftop of a skyscraper, turned upside down, and shaken by my feet. I would have sworn that I was throbbing from my bones outward. My head felt split, my palms were thick with sweat, and my gut convulsed as if I were vomiting again.

Remembering that there was no wine next to me to slug and calm everything down, I tried to sit up anyway. It was a bad idea. Oh, shit, I thought. This is withdrawal.

I slid back down and closed my eyes. The morning routine was underway and I could hear people scurrying around. Maybe it was finally safe to get some sleep. I pulled the sheet over my head.

“Come on, Lisa. Rise and shine. Time to eat breakfast!” Jane said.

“You know what?” I said, working hard to form the words. “I really didn’t sleep last night and I’m not hungry. I think I’m just going to stay in bed until the psychiatrist comes to see me.” Facing the wall, I curled up into the fetal position.

“No, Lisa. Time to get up. Everybody has to get up and eat breakfast. That means you, too. Let’s go.” She wasn’t kidding, and she wasn’t leaving. Fuck. I managed to pull myself back up and lower my feet to the floor. There was a good chance I’d throw up, so I dropped my head between my knees. My hair swept the floor. Jane stood silently next to the sink.

“OK, OK,” I muttered. I bent into a crouch and then stood up slowly. Jane stepped aside as I approached the sink. I brushed my teeth with my right hand and gripped the sink with my left. At that point, washing my face or changing my clothes seemed as feasible as mountain climbing, so I just slipped my feet into my sneakers, still holding the sink. Then I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and looked dully at Jane. She chirped, “Let’s go!”

As I followed her down the hall, I realized that I was about to eat breakfast in a room full of mental patients. My eyes didn’t focus well, and it felt as if there were little needles behind them trying to poke their way out. Every inch of me ached. Maybe I could eat in my room? I knew the answer.

When we arrived for breakfast, the other patients were already seated and eating. About twenty faces looked up at me, as if to say, “What’s with the white girl?” Jane hustled me to a free seat at one of the round tables. There were mumbles mixing in with the sporadic moaning and shrieking around the room. The patients’ ages appeared to range from young adult to very old. It definitely smelled better here than in detox and people seemed to be clean and groomed. I was thankful the three other patients at my table were more interested in their eggs than in me.

A tall metal cart with rows of plastic trays was wheeled into the dining area with each tray labeled for an individual patient. I wasn’t sure if this reflected dietary concerns or just quality of insurance coverage. It couldn’t have been the latter because my insurance was great and my breakfast sucked.

My plate featured a pile of gray, soggy eggs that at best had been reconstituted from some sort of powder and at worst were real but weeks old. Pass. Orange juice sounded like a good idea because that’s what normal people drink in the morning and my mouth felt like it was wrapped in sandpaper. I peeled back the tin foil on the top of the squat, clear plastic container and took a gulp. It could have used some vodka. Vodka. How wonderful it would be right now to be standing naked in front of my freezer drinking vodka out of the bottle! I shuddered as if someone were holding that frosty bottle against the back of my neck. I would have paid just about anything for that vodka.

As I picked at the top of a mini blueberry muffin, I watched the nurses trying to cajole other patients who weren’t even pretending to eat. These patients found more compelling uses for cooked eggs, like finger painting and having conversations with them.

Before long, Jane came looking for me. I wasn’t hard to spot. “Lisa, Dr. Landry is ready to see you. First we need to look at you,” she said.

Happy to have mealtime cut short, I followed her into a small room off the dining area, where she took my blood pressure, temperature, and weight. This once-over seemed meant to confirm that I was the same person who had been left in the room the night before.

Reviewing my file, Jane asked, “Why didn’t you give blood or take medicine last night? Don’t you want to get better?” Was this the conclusion she drew just because I didn’t want to risk physical assault on the detox floor? I felt too sick to talk about it, so I shrugged, grateful to be allowed to return to my room and collapse onto the cot.

A short while later, the doctor appeared. He looked just like an uptown psychiatrist, from his carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and beard to his corduroy pants and sensible, brown walking shoes. “Hi Lisa, I’m Dr. Landry.” He was looking at papers in a manila folder, presumably my file. “I understand there was quite a commotion here last night,” he said, taking off his glasses as he finally looked at me.

I tried to sit up, but my head felt like a bowling ball on a lollipop stick neck. Get up, I told myself. Get up or he won’t let you out of here. He’s the only one who can.

I grabbed the side of the metal cot, the heel of my hand digging into the thin mattress. I pushed up from there, and my body slouched into a letter “C.” “Yes, I need to be discharged right away,” I said, my voice cracking.

He sat on the wooden chair at the end of my bed. “Mmm. Your file says you checked yourself in last night on a 72-hour psych hold on account of alcohol abuse. Is that correct?”

“Yes. But I made a mistake. I want to leave.” My voice sounded so small. He didn’t respond and continued to flip the papers. “Did they tell you about that man threatening to fuck me up on the detox floor?” I asked.

“They did,” he said. “Let’s talk a little about your drinking. Signing yourself into a locked down detox is pretty serious business. I find it hard to believe you would do that if you don’t need help.” I was quiet. “How much do you drink? How often?”

I had to lie or he wouldn’t let me out. With a shaking hand, I pushed back my mop of knotted hair and looked Dr. Landry in the eye. “I drink a lot. Every day. I start as soon as I wake up and I can’t stop. I can’t stop.” Wait, what? What did I just say? I began sobbing, and it felt surreal that I was the one ratting myself out to this guy. And why did I suddenly feel as if a backpack loaded with lead was being lifted from my shoulders? It was as if some healthy part of my consciousness had taken charge.

Dr. Landry looked like a cop relieved to have gotten a confession without having to beat it out of the suspect. Tears streamed down my face and burned my cracked lips. Were they from relief? Sadness? Fear? I didn’t know and didn’t care, maybe because by now I was feeling horribly, horribly sick from withdrawal. It was as if someone was trying to pull my head and stomach inside out with their bare hands. A silent scream ripped through my head.

“OK,” Dr. Landry said. “Let me be straight. You need a medical detox. If you don’t do this, you might die. You can even stay on this floor to be more comfortable. That’s all we need to talk about right now. Will you stay and do that?”

I thought about the night before—the strung-out women fighting in the hallway, the screaming from random rooms, no locks on the doors, the guy threatening to fuck me up. I pictured the scratchy sheets and blood pressure readings every three hours. There were the smells of vomit and antiseptic and no communication with the outside world.

“I’ll stay,” I said, collapsing back onto the smelly cot.

“Great. Let’s just get you started on Librium and we can talk more when you feel a little bit better.”

My old life was gone. I could never go back to the time when no one knew about my sickness. Every important person in my life now knew me as an addict. I had taken the first step toward staying alive, but all I wanted was that icy cold bottle in my shaking hand.