The good news is I’m not pregnant. The bad news is I’m still here.
There’s a short nurse named Mandy, and she’s my favorite. She calls me “sweetie,” and when she asks me how I’m feeling it’s like she actually wants to know. I thought maybe I was her favorite, maybe I was her pet or something because of all the attention she was giving me, but then I noticed her name next to mine on the white board by the nurse’s office, so I guess it’s just her job to pay special attention to me.
She wraps the blood-pressure belt around my arm, squeezes the ball until it holds on tight. Then it deflates and she looks like she’s concentrating, and she could either be counting my heartbeats under her breath or whispering a magical incantation. I’ve never known how these things work, what the numbers mean, “something over something,” then a nod, like I’m expected to know how to speak medicine.
She asks me if I have a boyfriend. I tell her no, but I’m thinking of you. I try the words out in my head. “Connor. Boyfriend.” And then I look around at the white walls, see Jerry the psychotic shuffling around in his pajamas, watch Mandy write something down on my charts, my life reduced to doctors’ scribbles in a file, and I say the words under my breath, my own incantation. “Connor. Boyfriend.” And then my heart splits open and I’m tearing at the blood-pressure thing, I’m ripping apart the Velcro, my hospital socks go flying, I want everything off, everything they’ve put on me. And I’m tugging at the bracelet, the plastic paper that doesn’t break, the thing with the secret code that brands me as belonging to them. But it won’t come off, and I start running and the floor is cold without the socks, and they catch me, of course they catch me, I don’t even get halfway down the hall, and Jerry’s just standing there looking at me like I’m crazy.
This is normal behavior in here. All that happens is the doctor asks me how I’m feeling. He’s always asking me how I’m feeling. I keep telling him I feel better, but I don’t think he believes me. It’s like I’m giving him the wrong answer, like he wants me to tell him I’m falling apart, I’m hearing voices, I think I have wings and plan to fly out of here at four-thirty. No one believes me that I don’t want to die. They can’t believe it could be that simple, that it was all just a big mistake, that someone can want to die for a few days, make a half-assed attempt, then change their mind. Or maybe I’m just lying to myself that it’s that easy. Maybe I’m forgetting. Maybe I’m not as well as I think I am. Is it even possible for me to know?
The doctor wonders why I don’t talk in group, so I tell him. It’s not because I’m depressed. It’s not because I’m manic. It’s not because I’m up or down—it’s because I’m no place at all. Medicine has erased all that, and now I’m left with this fuzzy mildew in its place. I don’t want to die and I don’t want to run around in circles, but I also can’t think straight and I’m exhausted all the time. Is this a fair trade? Am I okay with the fact that my thoughts and feelings seem so far away and out of focus?
The doctor says it sounds like the medication is working. I ask him if this is how I’m supposed to feel. He says, “Let us try a lower dosage.” I want to tell him there is no “us” here. There is just me and my hijacked brain and the wreckage I’ve left behind. There is just me trapped in this place with no art and no you, while he gets to leave every night to go home to his family and wake up sane.