Authors: Tabitha Freeman
“I guess you’ve never heard of involuntary commitment, have you, Ava?” Julianne cut me off.
“You have to go through a trial to do that!” I spat, not fully knowledgeable, really, of how involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital worked.
“Oh no
,
I don’t,” she replied, in a very
matter-of-fact tone. “Normally
someone, say
,
your
mother, would have to petition to the court for you to be admitted involuntarily. But you’re an emergency case, Ava. You are in such critical danger to yourself that we had twenty-four hours to evaluate you and decide if we could release you, even to court.”
“So it was
your
decision to imprison me in this place?” I moaned.
“You’re here for sixty days,
minimum
,” she went on, ignoring me. “And that’s only if you improve. If you don’t pass your evaluation after sixty days, you’re looking at anywhere from ninety days to a year in Craneville.”
“A year? No!” I screeched. “No! I won’t stay here! I won’t
—
”
“You have no right to whine about it,” Julianne told m
e flatly. “You’re screwing up
your life, Ava. Something’s got to be done so you’ll get better.”
“But I don’t want to get better,” I whispered, tearfully. “Pleas
e, Julianne, I just want to die.
”
“Stop it!” she said firmly. “Do
not
speak that way! Yes, someone you loved very much is…dead. But that is something that you cannot wallow in anymore. You must accept it and move on
.
”
“I DON’T WANT TO MOVE ON!” I shouted at her, my voice quivering under the weight of tears. “Why can’t you understand? I can’t live without him! I just
can’t
!!!”
“Well, you were doing just fine
before
you met him!” Julianne pointed out, slightly raising her voice. “You had a life before him…and so help me God, I’m going to do all I can to make sure you have a life
after
him as well.” I just stared at her, dumbfounded, and at the same time, deeply touched by her words.
“I’m sorry,” I finally whispered. “I’m so sorry…” She reached over and gently squeezed my hand.
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” she told me softly. “I’ll go get your mother. She’s taking a nap in my office.”
It was hard to look my mom in the eye when she came in the room. I’d let her down so horribly. She’d begged me to be unselfish…to let her keep the only daughter she had. And in my crazy state of mind, I’d betrayed her trust and tried to take my life yet again. I told her I was sorry, over and over, and she surprised me when she actually cried. I’d only ever seen her cry once, and that’d been at my dad’s funeral. She was breaking and I was the cause of it.
Two days later, I was released from my hospital room and ready to move into the room I’d be residing in for the next two months at Craneville. It was an insane asylum. I was going to be living with people that were bonkers. But then again,
I
was bonkers, wasn’t I?
Before I could even leave my hospital room, I had to be checked for possibly “dangerous” items. I stood in disbelief as I had to give up my watch, my earrings, and my belt. When the nurse tried to take my engagement ring, I threw a fit. Julianne came in the room and told the nurse it was okay if I kept that one thing. I was grateful for that.
As my mother and I followed Julianne from my hospital room to where I would be living, I felt a little scared. Actually, a lot scared.
“Julianne, my room’s on the same floor as your office?” I asked, surprised, and somewhat relieved that she’d be close by.
“Yes, Ava,” she replied, glancing back at me. “If you’ll notice, to the left, across from my office is the nurse’s station, where a nurse will be 24-7. I’ll introduce you to the nurses after
you’re
settled, Ava.”
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the large, open room next to the nurse’s station, which included a few sofas, a table with some chairs, and a TV. There were about four people sitting in the room. Two men were at the table, playing checkers and two girls were sitting on one of the sofas, watching the television.
“That’s the patients’ lobby,” Julianne answered. “It’s a place for the patients and sometimes their visitors to relax and socialize with the other patients.”
Socialize wit
h the other patients?
Yeah, right. Why in the hell would I want to hang out with a bunch of psychos
?
“And to the right, next to my office, are two very important rooms,” Julianne spoke up. She pointed to the room right next to her office. “That’s the group therapy room where you will be participating with other patients in group therapy, Ava.”
I made a
face behind Julianne’s back. My mother saw it and elbowed me in the ribs, hard.
“That’s the activities room, in which we have birthday and Christmas parties, and small dances,” Julianne said, gesturing to the room next to the group therapy room.
“Yeah, fun,” I mumbled under my breath. Despite my less than enthusiastic attitude, I was curious to see what was behind both of the rooms’ presently closed doors.
I’d never been past Julianne’s office, so the reality of the fact that I was in a psychiatric hospital didn’t set in until that moment when we walked up to the high-security metal doors leading into my ward.
“This is Ward 4,” Julianne said, as she typed a code into the electronic keypad on the wall next
to
the doors. The doors slid open and I found myself looking down a long, dimly-lit hallway with at least five doors on each side. I was surprised when we didn’t walk down that hallway, but instead, stopped at the first door on the left.
“Ava, this will be your room,” Julianne said, opening the heavy wooden door. I noticed there was a small, square window at the top of the door, made of what app
eared to be very, very thick,
glazed glass. When I stopped into the room, my heart fell. I’d expected, or at least hoped, for something like a college dorm room. This reminded me more of a damned prison cell
I’d seen in a movie
. The ten foot by twelve foot room was painted entirely white. The bed was in the right corner of the room, with a dark green comforter draped over it. To the left of the bed was a small, wooden nightstand and above it, very high up on the wall, was a diamond-shaped window. Behind the already thick glass were four horizontal bars. Extra precaution. On the left wall of the room was a six-foot, rectangular chest
—
only, it didn’t have a lid. Another extra precaution so I couldn’t close myself in it and suffocate to death. The rest of the room was completely barren; not that there would’ve been much room to put anything else anyway.
“I’ve seen boxes bigger than this room,” I whined, looking at Julianne. “Is this for real?”
“It’s very real,” Julianne responded in a somber voice.
“It needs some decorating,” I sighed. “Mom, you could
bring over some stuff.
”
“No, she can’t, Ava,” Julianne said. “I’m sorry, but there are limited things you’re allowed in this room. No picture frames, no TV, no CDs, no money…there’s quite a long list that I’ll be more than happy to go over with you after we get you settled in.”
“I can’t have
anything
of my own here?” I asked, feeling utterly lost at this point.
“A lot of things you’d normally have in your room, you can’t have here, Ava,” she told me. “But something like a journal, or other things of that nature your mom can run by me and I can tell you if it’s permitted.”
I just shook my head, not believing any of this could be real.
“Can I at least have my Tyson Box and my sketchpad?” I asked, in a voice barely audible. I saw a flash of sadness in Julianne’s eyes.
“Your mother can bring them by my office so that I can check them,” she replied. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine for you to have those things in your room, Ava.”
I didn’t reply as I walked over to the bed, sitting down on the hard mattress.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I whispered aloud. I saw my mother and Julianne exchange glances.
“C’mon, Ava,” Julianne said. “There’s more to show you before we get you settled into your room.” I sighed, getting up from the bed and following Julianne and my mother out of the room.
“Now, this is a co-ed ward,” Julianne explained to us. “On the right side of the hall are the males’ rooms, and on the left are the females’ rooms.”
“Is that wise?” I asked, surprised.
“We haven’t had a problem with it yet,” she answered. “There’s an attendant on duty twenty-four hours, every day, so late night rendezvous between a male and female patient are near impossible.”
“I didn’t see any attendant when we came in here
—
” I began to say, but stopped myself when I saw a woman in a white uniform sitting at a chair at the end of the hallway.
“Hello, Rita,” Julianne regarded her, pleasantly. “This is Ava. She’s a new patient. She’ll be in room 316.”
“Hi, Ava,” Rita said, smiling and extending her hand. I shook it.
“Hey,” I nodded.
“Rita is one of the many attendants that guard the Ward 4 dormitories,” Julianne told us. She then walked past Rita into an open doorway, with a sign hanging above it, reading, “Patient Lavatory.” To the left was a door that had your typical women’s bathroom logo on it and to the right was a door with the men’s version. We went in the left door.
“This will be your bathroom and shower area,” Julianne said, as we walked in. On the right wall in the bathroom, there were five sinks in a row with mirrors above them. I walked over to one of the sinks and immediately noticed that the mirror was covered by a clear, plastic case. I knocked on it lightly.
“Is this for real?” I turned to Julianne.
“We can’t have any glass accidentally breaking, now can we?” was her simple reply. Another precaution. I also took notice that the sinks were abnormally shallow and didn’t have plugs for the drains. No room to stick your head in and drown yourself. Good call on the hospital’s part. They really had thought of everything.
“Over here is where you’ll take your showers,” Julianne pointed to the left wall where there were five showers in a row. I was surprised there were actually shower curtains. I’d expected even that to be too big of a risk to a suicidal patient’s life.
I walked over and inspected a shower. Wait a minute, they
had
thought of this. The rod holding up the cheap shower curtain was plastic and so were the rings. They would
easily break under any extra weigh
t.
“How many times have you had to replace these shower curtains?” I asked her. Julianne smiled.
“Not too often,” she said. “Though when we get new patients in, we tend to replace them a lot more. The patients that have been here longer actually realize
—
”
“
—
how easily they tear,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
I pulled the shower curtain open and peered inside. There wasn’t even so much as a towel hook or a soap dish. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d hoped for as much.
The shower head had no cord;
instead, it was firmly mounted into the wall.
“Can you adjust or move the showerhead?” I asked Julianne. She just shook her head no. I looked at my mom, who just gave me a helpless shrug.
“Let’s go on to the park, shall we?” Julianne suggested. And we followed her out of the bathroom. We walked back down the hallway and Julianne typed in her code to open the doors.
“Am I not allowed to ever get in and out these doors myself?” I asked Julianne, frowning.
“No, Ava,” Julianne replied. “This is a locked ward. If you ever want to leave or get back in, you’ll have to ask a nurse or an attendant to type in the code for you.”
It was official. I was in prison.
“It’s smaller than I thought it’d be,” my mom spoke up for the first time since the “tour.”
“Yes, this is the smallest ward in the hospital,” Julianne said. “The other three wards have twenty individual rooms, and other additional rooms that Ward 4 does not have.”
We followed her over to the nurse’s station where a very tall, African-American woman in bright pink scrubs stood behind the desk.
“Josephine, I’d like you to meet a new patient,” Julianne said, brightly. I cringed. I hated how Julianne kept referring to me as “the new patient.”
Josephine looked up from some paperwork she was doing and flashed me a smile. My God, I’d never seen a smile so big. It was sort of contagious and I find myself returning her larger than life smile with a tiny smile of my own.
“How ya doin, baby?” she said in a cheerful tone. “What a pretty name!”