Ignorant and Inpatient

“We’re going to need you to strip down to your underwear and bra so that we can examine you for administration,” one of the two female nurses said, cramming into the examination room behind me. “After we record our observations, we’re going to have to take away your jeans because of the metal zipper.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” the older one cooed. “We got all kinds of sweatpants in all different kinds of colors!”

My toes were so cold that they burned, and it felt like the soles of my feet were frozen to the pale yellow tiles. They took my shoes at the front desk on account of an accident they encountered a few weeks ago with shoelaces, so my toes were freezing to the floor as they walked me through the endless maze of locked doors and tinted windows. I stared blankly at the “Balance: Know Your Brain Chemistry” poster that took up not even a fourth of the eerie white space on the wall in front of me. I twisted my fingers around the ears of my teddy bear. I waited to see if they were going to give me some privacy, but they just kept chiming in with their rehearsed calming tones.

“That teddy bear is too cute,” the younger woman said. “Did you boyfriend give it to you?”

I nodded.

The poster on the wall was the only source of color in the room of muted grays, so I couldn’t stop staring at it. I reread the section about serotonin for the tenth time. Medications I was no stranger to filled the bright neon blurbs: Celexa in pink, Lexapro in green, Prozac in orange; presentation is often more valuable than results when it comes to treating mental illness.

“That is just so sweet,” the older nurse said with a thick Southern accent. “He even has the little Marine outfit on. We’ll keep him safe and sound with your belongings up front.”

“Wait, what?” I choked out weakly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go in without him.”

“I know, but unfortunately you don’t have a choice,” the younger nurse said. “You are a danger to yourself and others. Stuffed animals over five inches long can be used to suffocate yourself or another patient.”

I handed the bear over, and the older nurse smoothed down his woodland camo hat and laid him on the metal table behind her.

“If there’s wire in your bra, we’re going to have to take that, too,” she said. “Matter of fact, are you wearing a thong?”

I nodded, again.

“Just go ahead and take everything off. Put on these sweatpants, and this T-shirt. Your mom called before you arrived, and we briefed her on the stuff she can bring you. I’m sure she brought you some sort of undergarments.”

***

The doctor walking me to the girls’ wing was talking about scheduling, or counseling; I couldn’t be sure. All I could think about was the navy-blue sweatpants knotted around my waist mysteriously coming undone—exposing the fact that I didn’t bring the right underwear. I wish they’d at least given me solid colors, but I was sporting a lime green T-shirt that clung to my exposed chest underneath.

“A lot of the girls will be around your age,” the doctor said as she slid her ID card through the massive lock on the door. “But we also have a few girls between the ages of nine and thirteen. Most of them come from adoption centers who are inept in dealing with their mental illnesses.”

We walked into a bright hallway with various doors leading to different rooms. I saw three beds in a room, and a girl with bright pink hair asleep on one.

Roommates.

A small girl with the longest hair I’d ever seen, and a melodic Spanish accent, started squealing “Doctor Brown!” and running at us. She grabbed my arm and inspected it, far too close for my comfort. I yanked it away from her. She jumped back and pouted. She looked like she could’ve been as young as seven or eight.

“Young lady!” Doctor Brown scolded, “You know we are working on boundaries. This is a great time to practice your breathing exercises so you can welcome our newest patient properly. This will be Andy and Leah’s newest roommate, Mikaela.”

“You are so pretty,” the little girl said, disregarding the previous scolding and reaching out to grab a handful of my hair.

A couple of girls hung their heads out of their doorway to see the newest addition to their group therapy sessions. Most avoided eye-contact, staring down at their yellow socks; some sat on the floor picking off the small rubber circles from their heels.

“All right, ladies, it’s almost 5:30 p.m.” Dr. Brown said. “Someone go wake Andy so we can get in line to walk to the cafeteria.”

I hadn’t stood in a single-file line since middle school. Dr. Brown and a few other nurses peaked through the rooms to make sure no one was attempting to stay behind.

“Noticed your outfit is pretty shit,” whispered the girl behind me. “Don’t worry about it. We all have them. I bet they took your underwear, too, right?”

I pretended I didn’t hear her, but she persisted. I turned around, and my face softened a little. The mess of bright pink clumps on her head reminded me of my younger sister, and her never-ending obsession with semi-permanent hair dye.

“Don’t act so embarrassed; they took all of our underwear,” she chuckled, “I mean, unless you came in here wearing granny panties. Then we all know you deserve to be in here anyways.”

“What’s so bad about our underwear?” I said.

“I heard someone used their thong to hang themselves while lying in bed,” she said. “All they had to do was give themselves a wedgie, pull one of the loops over their head, and then boom. Dead. I’m Andy, by the way.”

“I’m Mikaela,” I said, “but did they really die from that?”

“They talk about her like she did,” she said, “but they have night nurses that check our rooms every ten minutes, so I don’t know how she could’ve gotten away with it.”

I hadn’t made peace with having an audience of two in my room to badger me about how loud I snore through the night, and I contemplated trying insomnia as a coping mechanism.

“You missed the only fun group-therapy session we’ll have this month,” Andy chimed in, interrupting my anxious thoughts. “We had puppy therapy literally yesterday.”

I didn’t think that was an actual thing. I wanted to hear more but we weren’t allowed to talk while walking through the halls, so I imagined a bunch of tiny puppies in vests walking beside us, closely following Dr. Brown’s lead.

I expected the food to be bad—the same stuff they’d given us in high school, and in my small-town’s case, the same slightly plastic-tasting food they’d serve to inmates in jail—but they gave us options, second plates, and even a cereal bar. I expected to be more miserable on my first day, but I smiled as I lifted my gaze from my plate of chicken with rice and saw Andy waving me over to her table.

Between dinner and showers, we were allowed to play the Wii in the common room and get coloring pages printed out before the night-shift nurses came in. My mother had dropped off some clothes and other belongings with the receptionist at the front office (since she had to wait until visitation days to see me now). We had to shower one at a time, which I assume was the fault of another past patient. How someone could drown themselves in the gentle water pressure, which had to be restarted by the push of a button every 30 seconds, was beyond me. I cried when they walked me to my room to pick out clothes before my turn. On my bed, two miniature stuffed animals were perched against a pile of coloring books, colored pencils, and a journal.

***

We weren’t granted a lot of free time. Our entire day was structured the same way: from waking up before the sun—5 a.m. on the dot thanks to the night nurses’ stopwatch—to eat breakfast, to taking our pills before bed. The only time I took my prescribed medication outside of the hospital resulted in a stomach pump and a three-hour-long-while-handcuffed-in-the-back-of-a-cop-car ride to the looney bin. I tried to hide the Lexapro under my tongue like they did in the movies, but I could never fool the night nurses. They watched us like hawks.

I remember the first night they called my name to get in line behind the dispensary room; the only door in our wing that was locked. When one of the nurses finally found me, crying in one of the empty rooms with the lights off, she told me to try and hold it back until I get in the shower next time.

“But I don’t belong in here,” I whispered, “and now I’m taking pills, which means they’re never going to let me leave. I’m officially crazy!”

I used to watch psychological thrillers, so she couldn’t convince me otherwise.

“Honey,” one of the only nice night nurses said, “they give them to the older girls no matter what. You have nothing to worry about. Your paperwork says that they tried a couple different antidepressants on you, so we just want to see if mood stabilizers would do better for your suicidal thoughts.”

They didn’t. They did, however, successfully force me into silence—unless I was with Dr. Brown. I made sure she saw a positive change in my attitude.

Every second I could, I was writing letters to my boyfriend that I knew he wouldn’t read. I wrote letters, and long-winded poems, apologizing for someone else’s actions. I even apologized for not being able to remember anything. But, to him, passing out in my hot tub after too many shots of fireball was only my first mistake; letting my friend rape me was the second.

I blame him for making apologies sting like stomach acid in my throat.

“Can I read that?” the young Spanish girl from earlier said.

“It’s not a book.” I said.

“I know,” she said, “but I want to see what you’re writing. Can I? Please?”

“I’m writing stuff to my boyfriend,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “You wouldn’t understand, so I don’t know why you’d want to read it.”

Instead of going to play Just Dance with one of the other girls, she sat across from me at the table trying to decipher my writing from her point of view—upside down and backwards.

“Fine, here,” I said. “Just don’t show anyone else.”

In the days that followed, both of my roommates and a handful of younger patients were huddled in a semi-circle around my side of the table during breakfast, lunch, and dinner to get a glimpse of my journal. In just a week, even the most reserved and standoffish patients were asking if they could trade me a pair of sweatpants, or coloring pages from their parents, just to read my journal for the evening.

In my last week there, I let a girl only a few months younger than me box-braid my hair. While she sectioned off tiny boxes, and picked at my scalp, she talked to me about my writing. I roughly remember how touched she was by my experience.

“I never read nothing that made me feel like that,” she said.

“Honestly,” I said, “I don’t even understand why y’all want to read a bunch of letters, but I am glad you like it.”

“I do,” she said, “and the stuff you got to deal with is relatable. I mean, I never dated no Marine, but my daddy ain’t the nicest, and I got a step family that sucks, too. So I feel you.”

I was writing poetry before I was admitted to Brynn Marr, but it was there that I became a nonfiction writer.