1983

A Forgotten Line:

Emergence

Trapped.  Double-crossed.  I sat scrunched up on this hard bed, in this emergency room at Putnam Memorial Hospital, Bennington, Vermont, feeling those watchful eyes of my roommate upon me.  She sat in a chair in the corner of the room.  Footsteps moved outside the thin curtain that separated my cubicle from the rest of the emergency department at Putnam Memorial Hospital, and from the world.  Simple questions--impossible: what is your name? where do you live? what insurance do you have? Mental trouble, they said, something amiss; they had hush-hushed me into the corner cubicle, here with Irene pretending to be perplexed, and the curly-haired, stethoscoped nurse. I just took what hit me.  The nurse talked at me gleefully, and suddenly I was in another cubicle.  Irene talked at me as well; they both chattered but I couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand the words, that bubbled and broke before I could grasp them.

An alcohol-tainted breeze brushed across my face as the nurse exited the cubicle, ruffling the curtain.  Irene leaned toward me and whispered, “Julie, you have to talk.  Tell them about the bingeing.  Tell them about the anxiety and the insomnia and everything.  And the Martians.  Everything.  Tell them.”  She wore cheap, girlish perfume.  She tiptoed around the room, peeking in cabinets.  “Any good drugs, do you think?  Shit, there’s gotta be something.  Do they let people smoke here?  They have a nice unit upstairs, Julie.  You’ll like it.  Don’t worry--me and my boyfriend will take excellent care of your car while you’re in.”  Irene stole a glance at the clock.  “What the--they sure take their sweet time.  Where’s my lighter?  Did you remember yours?  Lemme see.  Where’s your pocketbook?  What the--”  Irene’s eyes narrowed, spelling mistrust.

The curtain ruffled.  “Don’t worry, just me, girls,” said the nurse, as she suddenly appeared back in the room.  “What’s so funny, Julie--what’s the matter, anyway?” she asked.  She blurred in and out of focus.  “Why won’t you talk?”

“Yeah, Julie.  Talk.”  Irene tapped her glazed nail on a metal chair.

“Maybe Julie will talk to me alone,” said the nurse.

“Julie needs me to interpret,” said Irene.  She pronounced “interpret” as though she had just learned the word from watching Oprah. 

“Hello?  Everyone decent in there?”  A man’s voice.

“Doctor’s here,” said the nurse, as if she were announcing the arrival of the daily mail.  “Come on, Miss Parker.  Time to come with me and let Julie and the doctor meet alone.”

“Julie will feel better if I’m here, won’t you, Julie.  Julie?”

“Miss Parker, time to go.”  The nurse had her hand on her hip like an elementary school teacher.  “Miss Parker, Julie must meet with the doctor now.  You must wait in the waiting room.  Okay?”

Irene’s heels thudded on the linoleum floor as she was escorted out to the chilly area beyond the curtains, out of sight.  I could breathe now.

“So,” said the doctor, his hands in his pockets.

I didn’t even want to look at him.  He had snake’s eyes, and a man’s smell.  His blue tie shone like a knife in the center of his chest; it cut through his shirt and flashed about the room.

“Julie, we’ve called your mommy and daddy and they’re coming to get you.  Do you understand?  You have no insurance.  You have no job.  What do you think you’re doing, showing up here?”

Hate.

You bastard you called my parents you violated my confidentiality I have no insurance I have no money but I know my rights you fucking liar.  My breath came in short bursts.  If I could talk I knew I’d be screaming obscenities.  I pulled away from the doctor.

            “Not so fast.  Do you know where you are?  Do you know you’re in a hospital?”

Hate.

I nodded.

His voice was so loud that I thought I’d break apart from the sound of it.  “Do you know who I am?”

Hate.  Cocksucker.

“I’m Dr Beck.  I’m the attending physician at the emergency room tonight.  Turn around.  Let me listen to your back.”  I still hadn’t removed my clothes.  I hadn’t been asked to.  The doctor--I immediately forgot his name--lifted my sweater gently.  I gasped at the cold feel of the stethoscope.  I wasn’t wearing a bra, but that didn’t matter.

“I’m going to listen to your heart now.”  The doctor placed his stethoscope between my breasts briefly, more a token gesture than diagnostic.  I was there for psych, not my heart.  Mutual understanding.

“Let me feel your neck.”  I was afraid of his touch; I was afraid of everything--his booming voice, everything about him, but his hands were gentle, though moist and cold.  “Now your reflexes.”

The nurse peeked in, interrupting us.  “Doctor, the Greenes want to talk to Scully again.  Should I call him?  It’s late--”

“They’ll have to wait.”

“Yes, doctor.”  She disappeared.

He took my wrist.  He held my hand for a long while, turned it this way and that, examined my fingers, and then my thumb.   Did I want him to look further?  He inched toward my wrist.  I felt his fingers creep downward.  Then I allowed myself to tremble, just barely perceptively. 

“Wait just a minute,” he said.  “What’s here?”  I let my arm go limp.  It was useless to put up a fight, and so far, I hadn’t done so at all.  I was a puppet without strings.  He tugged at my sleeve.  “Hey, what’s this?”  My cuts.  Shit.  No, no doctor.  This is private.  This is mine.  I made this exquisite mess.  I toiled over these arms, composed them as I had composed my music.  Leave me alone, asshole.  He brought my sleeve down further, revealing more.  Razor cuts, maybe thirty of them.  I’d used several razor blades--when one had become dull, I’d switched to another.  Picking at skin, tugging on hairs, deeper, swifter, bloodier--a sting, then an ache.  Some were deep.  These arrow-shaped cuts pointed toward my hands.  Blood oozed from the newer cuts.  Those that had been there a while had already turned blue and ugly.

“So how long have you been doing this?  How old are these cuts?  A week ago?  A month ago?”

They had someone watching me from then on, and as time passed I realized the switch had been flipped, that I was now being sent “upstairs,” mainly because the inevitable had occurred: someone--it might have been anyone--had seen my cuts. 

Irene had never seen the cuts--no, not even she, my roommate--except once, a few weeks ago, and that in a fleeting moment, a sleeve pulled back the slightest bit; I hastily tugged it back--but she saw.  She said, sardonically, “Julie, that’s self-mutilation.  They put people in the hawspital for that.”

It was hard to believe that only hours earlier, I had been free, sitting with Irene in our drafty apartment, sharing coffee in cracked mugs.  “Julie, you need medicine,” she had said.  “Pills.  The hospital is the way to get them.  Scully didn’t pan out.  Think about it.  You’re a nervous wreck, like I was, before I got my Ativan.  I need my Ativan.  You need drugs, Julie.  Bad.”

I ran my fingers along the lines of corduroy in the couch and said nothing.

“Look at you.  Your hair a mess.  You’re all shaky and scared.  Me and Daniel can take care of the dog.  We’ll take good care of your car.  Come on, give me your car keys--I’ll drive you to the hospital.”  She opened a compact mirror, examined her eyes, shut it, and then placed it in her purse.  “Come on,” she said.  “Bring your cigarettes.  There you go.  And your lighter, too.  Don’t forget the lighter.”

As Irene started the engine, she turned to me and said, “You’re in no shape to drive, you know.  I nodded.  She adjusted the rearview mirror.  “And I want to know every med they put you on, understand?  It’s time, Julie--enough is enough.  The worst of it is that none of those jackasses over at United Counseling Services believe you’re sick.  Like Megan.  And that Scully.”

Irene was right.  I had been fighting an eating disorder, depression, and psychosis, and losing the battle, and the worst of it was that nobody believed me.  The bingeing was such a disruption in my life that I was completely unable to go on.  I felt as though it was caused by some outer force--not myself, but extraterrestrials that had somehow infiltrated me--and I wanted to die because of all of it.  Going to the hospital would be the last stop.  This was the lowest of the low.  I had tried, in every way I knew how, to get help, and all these methods had failed me.  I had gone into therapy.  I had tried day treatment in Boston for nine months.  I had sought out a psychiatrist--a certain Dr. Scully, through my therapist, Megan.  I had shown up for my therapy appointment with Megan, a month ago, who had told me, with barely an apology, “Scully doesn’t want to see you this week.  Next week.”

I could feel my face falling.  “But that’s what he said last week.”

I slumped into my chair, defeated.  “This is the--let’s see…seventh time he’s put me off!  Seventh!”

“He’s a busy man.”  Megan lit a cigarette.

I glanced at my hands, wondering if I should light up, too.  “What does Scully look like?”

“And why should you care?”

I said, “The bingeing is getting worse.”

Megan took a long drag on her cigarette.  “You didn’t answer my question.  And you know what I think?  I think you worry about yourself too much.”

“Megan, I think I really need help,” I said quietly.  “At night, I do this thing.  With razor blades.  My wrists and arms--”

Megan interrupted.  “You can do that all you want.  Just don’t kill yourself, okay?  That could get messy for me.”

Somehow, I knew that what Megan was saying, and how Megan was handling my care was very, very wrong, but I had nowhere to turn, no one to confide in except Irene.  Scully, who supervised Megan, continued to postpone appointments with me, until it became evident that he wasn’t going to meet with me at all, and my hopes were dashed of getting on medications that would help me anytime soon.  In December, Megan told me, as she lit her cigarette, “This is our last appointment.”

“You’re going on vacation for Christmas?”  I was relieved not to have to see Megan for a week or so.

“No.  Scully and I feel that you don’t need therapy anymore.  Therapy is making you worse.  I don’t know what else to do with you, so I’m just going to let you go.”

And as Irene, driving me to the hospital, had pulled into the handicapped parking space, I felt speech leave me altogether.  Its very absence felt like an object to me, a possession: lack of speech--my silence.  I could give and take and deal it as I chose, and I found this strangely comforting.  It seemed, also, as if something was blocking my throat from making a speech sound; I tried to swallow the blockage, but it surfaced, again and again.

Now, as the attendant wheeled me out of the cubicle, and “upstairs,” I recalled Irene’s words, “Maybe, if you show up at the hospital, in the shape you’re in,” she had said, “they’ll see that Scully made a bad mistake and they’ll get what I think is proper care for you.”

**************

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