For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a loony bin?
The hospital shielded us from all sorts of things. We’d tell the staff to refuse phone calls or visits from anyone we didn’t want to talk to, including our parents.
“I’m too upset!” we’d wail, and we wouldn’t have to talk to whoever it was.
As long as we were willing to be upset, we didn’t have to get jobs or go to school. We could weasel out of anything except eating and taking our medication.
In a strange way we were free. We’d reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: All of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves.
Naked, we needed protection, and the hospital protected us. Of course, the hospital had stripped us naked in the first place—but that just underscored its obligation to shelter us.
And the hospital fulfilled its obligation. Somebody in our families had to pay a good deal of money for that: sixty dollars (1967 dollars) a day just for the room; therapy, drugs, and consultations were extra. Ninety days was the usual length of mental-hospital insurance coverage, but ninety days was barely enough to get started on a visit to McLean. My workup alone took ninety days. The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization.
If our families stopped paying, we stopped staying and were put naked into a world we didn’t know how to live in anymore. Writing a check, dialing a telephone, opening a window, locking a door—these were just a few of the things we all forgot how to do.
Our families. The prevailing wisdom was that they were the reason we were in there, yet they were utterly absent from our hospital lives. We wondered: Were we as absent from their lives outside?
Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling, that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family’s mental health.
Most families were proving the same proposition: We aren’t crazy; she is the crazy one. Those families kept paying.
But some families had to prove that nobody was crazy, and they were the ones who threatened to stop paying.
Torrey had that sort of a family.
We all liked Torrey, because she had a noble bearing. The only thing wrong with her was amphetamines. She’d spent two years shooting speed in Mexico, where her family lived. Amphetamines had made her face pale and her voice tired and drawling—or, rather, it was the lack of amphetamines that made her this way.
Torrey was the only person Lisa respected, probably because they had the needle in common.
Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl.
“Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ”
“Why do you see them?” Georgina asked.
“Oh,” said Torrey.
“It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her.
The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse.
Torrey was not confused. “I don’t mind this place,” she said. “It’s a break from Mexico.” In Torrey’s mouth, Mexico sounded like a curse.
“Mexico,” she’d say, and shake her head.
In Mexico there was a big house with porches back and front, there were servants, there was sun every day, and there were amphetamines for sale in the drugstore.
Lisa thought it sounded pretty good.
“It’s death,” said Torrey. “Being in Mexico means being dead and shooting speed to feel like you’re not quite dead. That’s all.”
Sometimes Valerie or another nurse tried explaining to Torrey that she could be in Mexico without going to the drugstore and buying amphetamines.
“You haven’t been there,” Torrey said.
In August Torrey’s parents called to announce that they were coming up to get her.
“Taking me home to die,” she said.
“We won’t let you go,” said Georgina.
“That’s right,” I said. “Right, Lisa?”
Lisa wasn’t making any promises. “What can we do about it?”
“Nothing,” said Torrey.
That afternoon I asked Valerie, “You wouldn’t let Torrey’s parents take her back to Mexico, would you?”
“We’re here to protect you,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I asked Lisa that evening.
“Doesn’t mean shit,” said Lisa.
For about a week there was no word from Torrey’s parents. Then they called to say they’d meet her at the Boston airport. They didn’t want to bother with coming out to the hospital to pick her up.
“You could hop out on the way to the airport,” said Lisa. “Somewhere downtown. Get right onto the subway.” She was an old hand at escape planning.
“I don’t have any money,” said Torrey.
We pooled our money. Georgina had twenty-two dollars; Polly had eighteen; Lisa had twelve; I had fifteen ninety-five.
“You could live for weeks on this,” Lisa told her.
“One, maybe,” said Torrey. But she looked less depressed. She took the money and put it in her bra. It made quite a lump. “Thanks,” she said.
“You’ve got to have a plan,” Lisa said. “Are you going to stay here or leave town? I think you ought to leave town right away.”
“And go where?”
“Don’t you have any friends in New York?” Georgina asked.
Torrey shook her head. “I know you people, and I know some junkies in Mexico. That’s it.”
“Lisa Cody,” said Lisa. “She’s a junkie. She’d put you up.”
“She’s not reliable,” said Georgina.
“She’d use all that money for junk anyhow,” I said.
“I might too,” Torrey pointed out.
“That’s different,” said Lisa. “We gave it to you.”
“Don’t,” said Polly. “You might as well go back to Mexico if you do that.”
“Yeah,” said Torrey. Now she looked depressed again.
“What’s up?” said Lisa.
“I don’t have the nerve,” said Torrey. “I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can,” said Lisa. “You just open the door at a red light and tear off. You just get the fuck away. You can do it.”
“You could do it,” said Torrey. “I can’t.”
“You’ve got to do it,” said Georgina.
“I know you can do it,” Polly said. She put her pink-and-white hand on Torrey’s thin shoulder.
I wondered if Torrey could do it.
In the morning, two nurses were waiting to take Torrey to the airport.
“That’s not going to work,” Lisa whispered to me. “She’ll never get away from two.”
She decided to create a diversion. The point was to occupy enough staff members so that only one nurse would be available to take Torrey to the airport.
“This fucking place!” Lisa yelled. She went down the hall slamming the doors to the rooms. “Eat shit!”
It worked. Valerie shut the top of the Dutch door to the nursing station and had a powwow with the rest of the staff while Lisa yelled and slammed. When they emerged, they fanned out in trouble-shooting formation.
“Calm down, Lisa,” said Valerie. “Where’s Torrey? It’s time to go. Let’s go.”
Lisa paused on her circuit. “Are you taking her?”
We all knew nobody could escape from Valerie.
Valerie shook her head. “No. Now calm down, Lisa.”
Lisa slammed another door.
“It’s not going to help,” Valerie said. “It’s not going to stop anything.”
“Valerie, you promised—” I began.
“Where’s Torrey?” Valerie interrupted me. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“I’m here,” said Torrey. She was holding a suitcase, and her arm was trembling, so the suitcase was bumping against her leg.
“Okay,” said Valerie. She reached into the nursing station and pulled out a full medication cup. “Take this,” she said.
“What the fuck is that?” yelled Lisa from halfway down the hall.
“It’ll just relax Torrey,” Valerie said. “Something to relax her.”
“I’m relaxed,” said Torrey. “Drink up,” said Valerie.
“Don’t take it!” Lisa yelled. “Don’t do it, Torrey!”
Torrey tipped her head back and drank.
“Thank God,” Valerie muttered. “Okay. All right. This is it.” She was shaking too. “Okay. Good-bye, Torrey dear, good-bye now.”
Torrey was actually leaving. She was going to get on the airplane and go back to Mexico.
Lisa quit banging and came up to stand with the rest of us. We stood around the nursing station looking at Torrey.
“Was that what I think it was?” Lisa asked Valerie. She put her face up to Valerie’s face. “Was that Thorazine? Is that what that was?”
Valerie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Torrey’s eyes were already glistening. She took a step away from us and lost her balance slightly. Valerie caught her elbow.
“It’s all right,” she told Torrey.
“I know,” said Torrey. She cleared her throat. “Sure.”
The nurse who was taking her to the airport picked up the suitcase and led Torrey down the hall to the double-locked double doors.
Then there wasn’t anything to do. An aide went into Torrey’s room and started stripping the sheets off the bed. Valerie went back inside the nursing station. Lisa slammed a door. The rest of us stood where we were for a while. Then we watched TV until the nurse came back from the airport. We fell silent, listening for agitation in the nursing station—the sort of agitation an escape provokes. But nothing happened.
The day got worse after that. It didn’t matter where we were, every place was the wrong place. The TV room was too hot; the living room was too weird; the floor in front of the nursing station was no good either. Georgina and I tried sitting in our room, and that was terrible as well. Every room was echoey and big and empty. And there was just nothing to do.
Lunch came: tuna melt. Who wanted it? We hated tuna melt.
After lunch Polly said, “Let’s just plan to spend one hour in the living room and then one hour in front of the nursing station and so on. At least it will be a schedule.”
Lisa wasn’t interested. But Georgina and I agreed to give it a whirl.
We started in the living room. Each of us plopped into a yellow vinyl chair. Two o’clock on a Saturday in August on a medium-security ward in Belmont. Old cigarette smoke, old magazines, green spotted rug, five yellow vinyl chairs, a broken-backed orange sofa: You couldn’t mistake that room for anything but a loony-bin living room.
I sat in my yellow vinyl chair not thinking about Torrey. Instead, I looked at my hand. It occurred to me that my palm looked like a monkey’s palm. The crinkle of the three lines running across it and the way my fingers curled in seemed simian to me. If I spread my fingers out, my hand looked more human, so I did that. But it was tiring holding my fingers apart. I let them relax, and then the monkey idea came back.
I turned my hand over quickly. The back of it wasn’t much better. My veins bulged—maybe because it was such a hot day—and the skin around my knuckles was wrinkly and loose. If I moved my hand I could see the three long bones that stretched out from the wrist to the first joints of my fingers. Or perhaps those weren’t bones but tendons? I poked one; it was resilient, so probably it was a tendon. Underneath, though, were bones. At least I hoped so.
I poked deeper, to feel the bones. They were hard to find. Knucklebones were easy, but I wanted to find the hand bones, the long ones going from my wrist to my fingers.
I started getting worried. Where were my bones? I put my hand in my mouth and bit it, to see if I crunched down on something hard. Everything slid away from me. There were nerves; there were blood vessels; there were tendons: All these things were slippery and elusive.
“Damn,” I said.
Georgina and Polly weren’t paying attention.
I began scratching at the back of my hand. My plan was to get hold of a flap of skin and peel it away, just to have a look. I wanted to see that my hand was a normal human hand, with bones. My hand got red and white—sort of like Polly’s hands—but I couldn’t get my skin to open up and let me in.
I put my hand in my mouth and chomped. Success! A bubble of blood came out near my last knuckle, where my incisor had pierced the skin.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Georgina asked.
“I’m trying to get to the bottom of this,” I said.
“Bottom of what?” Georgina looked angry.
“My hand,” I said, waving it around. A dribble of blood went down my wrist.
“Well, stop it,” she said.
“It’s my hand,” I said. I was angry too. And I was getting really nervous. Oh God, I thought, there aren’t any bones in there, there’s nothing in there.
“Do I have any bones?” I asked them. “Do I have any bones? Do you think I have any bones?” I couldn’t stop asking.
“Everybody has bones,” said Polly.
“But do I have any bones?”
“You’ve got them,” said Georgina. Then she ran out of the room. She came back in half a minute with Valerie.
“Look at her,” Georgina said, pointing at me.
Valerie looked at me and went away.
“I just want to see them,” I said. “I just have to be sure.”
“They’re in there—I promise you,” said Georgina.
“I’m not safe,” I said suddenly.
Valerie was back, with a full medication cup.
“Valerie, I’m not safe,” I said.
“You take this.” She gave me the cup.
I could tell it was Thorazine from the color. I’d never had it before. I tipped my head back and drank.
It was sticky and sour and it oozed into my stomach. The taste of it stayed in my throat. I swallowed a few times.
“Oh, Valerie,” I said, “you promised—” Then the Thorazine hit me. It was like a wall of water, strong but soft.
“Wow,” I said. I couldn’t hear my own voice very well. I decided to stand up, but when I did, I found myself on the floor.
Valerie and Georgina picked me up under the arms and steered me down the hall to our room. My legs and feet felt like mattresses, they were so huge and dense. Valerie and Georgina felt like mattresses too, big soft mattresses pressing on either side of me. It was comforting.
“It’ll be okay, won’t it?” I asked. My voice was far away from me and I hadn’t said what I meant. What I meant was that now I was safe, now I was really crazy, and nobody could take me out of there.