Stanzi—Sunday Morning—Mental Health Profile

Last night they shoved me into a giant doughnut called a CAT scanner and took some other tests. I heard them all talking. The EKG tech was nice and actually talked to me. The chest X-ray people talked about a concert they wanted to go to—as if I was a cat on the dissection table. As if I was a frog. At least the nurse who catheterized me was nice.

Then I was officially admitted. They dressed me in paper clothing. They called this a voluntary admission. I can’t volunteer for anything. I’m a paper doll who pees into a plastic bag. I’m a Mental Health Profile with a needle that feeds saline into my blood. Saline. Seawater. Tears. No one here knows they are filling me with helicopter fuel.

Gustav, China, Lansdale, and Shane are hiding under my bed right now. The nurse is here to check my IV and the first doctor of the day is the psychiatrist who looks like Sidney from M*A*S*H.

He says my parents will be here soon and I’ll get my own room after that.

“Would you mind asking your friends to leave?”

I’m inside a television. I can’t tell my friends anything. All I can do is drool.

“That’s a cool coat. You trying to fit in around here?” he asks.

I try to move my arm to feel the sleeve of my lab coat, but I can’t move anything. I’m inside a television and it’s all clear now. Gustav was wrong about everything. There are no insects. My dreams were wrong. I know how to waltz.

We are babies being born.

I can’t feel my lab coat, but I know China and Lansdale dressed me—flopped me forward to get it over my back, lifted each arm and slid them into the sleeves, smoothed it out under my butt. They knew not to button it. They knew to put a pen in the chest pocket, but pens aren’t allowed here, so they pretended.

“We’ll see you later,” China says to my television screen.

“I’ll bring you a cake,” Lansdale says.

“Get better,” Gustav says.

Shane doesn’t say anything. He’s cute. You can see his damage all the way down to his toes. China will never save him completely. That’s what my television brain says. It says: China will never save that boy.

Mama and Pop are here. They tell the doctor I was fine all this time. They tell him about my good grades and my group of friends. They tell him about how we spend a lot of time together.

“We go on vacations several times a year,” Pop says. “Once we went to Scotland.”

The doctor looks at me. “That sounds nice,” he says.

“We went to Colorado twice last year,” Mama adds.

The doctor looks at Mama. “That does sound nice. However, I think the problem here is not lack of vacation time. There’s something deeper.”

“Ask her if she misses her cat,” Mama says. “She raised it since it was a kitten.”

Inside my television head, I’m laughing. I laugh so hard, I think I accidentally spit a little and a snot bubble forms at my nose. Mama, Pop, and the doctor look at me then, waiting for a breakthrough. As if the breakthrough is inside me, not them.

The doctor tells them this is a matter of flipping the switch inside my brain. I want to ask Which switch? There are more switches in here than there are on Gustav’s cockpit control panel.

“I want to recommend family counseling,” the doctor says. This is the third time he’s said it in twenty-four hours. Pop hangs his head. Mama follows suit.

If I could speak, I’d say: Gone to bed. TV dinner in freezer. Make sure you turn out the lights.

They move me to a room that has a plastic window. Mama and Pop have told me this is the psychiatric ward.

I am in the looney tunes.

Mama looks mortified that of my friends, I landed here first. She says it right in front of me, as if I really am a television. “What about her friend who built the helicopter no one could see? Why isn’t he in here?”

Pop says, “It’s not his turn. It’s ____________’s turn.”

“This isn’t a game,” Mama answers.

“I didn’t say it was,” he says.

She walks up to my screen and yells at it. “This isn’t a game!”

They both keep looking at their watches. They must have somewhere to go. Anywhere but the looney tunes. When they finally leave, I’m alone in my room.

I say, “Her name was Ruth.

“I called her Ruthie.

“Sometimes I called her Ruthless if she was on my nerves.

“I taught her how to braid yarn. I taught her how to pull a splinter from her own finger. I taught her about the antibiotic properties of dog spit. She taught me everything. She taught me everything about life and how to have real fun.”