I turned up the volume on the TV to cloud out the nurse’s tiresome sniffling as I sipped on the fluids I was given by my doctor. This was my third cup already and it didn’t taste any better than the first or second, but my doctors kept insisting that I rehydrate my body. It’s been through hell, they said, and I needed to rest, but I was beginning to regret walking myself into the psychiatric emergency room earlier that snowy morning. I told them I just couldn’t be alone anymore, but they immediately stripped me of everything I brought with me. I lost my privileges to own belongings; they took my phone, my clothes, and even my watch and hair ties.
I mean really, what could I possibly do to myself with scrunchies?
I was alone in the psychiatric ER with a 70 something-year old nurse, and he kept shifting in his seat, smelling up our room like the scene of a dirty nursery. At one point, he even commented to me how bad it smelled, like it was a mystery to him how the stench found its way to the room as if there were more than two people who could have committed the crime. I played along and said it must have been the draft.
The fucking draft, you believe this shit? How did you get into medical school? Did you even go?
We sat in together in silence and stench, waiting for the doctors to come ask me why I cut my wrists that morning. The boredom hit after 2 or so hours, so I braided my curly hair into six, seven, eight small braids, and then took them out again and again. After 4 hours, I questioned the very state of my own sanity.
Am I really even here?
It was surreal, filling the patient role in a hospital when I felt physically fine, and it struck a sense guilt into me with such intense force that I suddenly decided I wasn’t sick enough to be there. Others, those with more serious mental illnesses and ailments deserved and needed this bed, not me, someone who just needs to eat a bit more.
Just a little sad, that’s all. Everyone's sad sometimes.
I had made a terrible mistake coming here; this hospital couldn’t fix me, this nurse couldn’t cheer me up even if I was on whatever sedative the doctor gave me, and it seemed like these quacks were going to leave me waiting here for hours.
I didn’t even know what I wanted to happen in that hospital room. I didn’t want to be forced to eat or told to stop working out, but I knew I couldn’t be alone that forsaken morning. Plus, the doctors had probably notified my parents after I walked in here in shambles, covered in my own blood, still the going out clothes that invited me to drink and binge eat all night, barely able to make out the words, “I am not okay alone right now.”
Just wait for the doctor. Do what the geriatric told you to do and drink your fluids. Don’t say anything rude. Just drink your fluids. Wait for your doctor. He’ll be here soon. Oh my god, that fucking smells, is he fucking serious right now, he won’t even look me in the eye? Can I request a different nurse?
Hours passed without seeing a doctor to calm my nerves. I was confined to my tiny hospital room with the nurse from my nightmares, who was now softly snoring with his hand against his cheek. Left alone with my scars and my thoughts, I tried to peer into the hallway to see if I could wave down a doctor who could let me go. There was no point in waiting at the hospital anymore; I had calmed down from earlier and posed no more danger to myself, so I could finally go home. I looked through the tiny window in the door, revealing my bare backside as I reached, but saw no medical staff to free me.
Another hour and 2 more cups of fluids later, the door to my room swung open so hard I looked for an indentation on the pale yellow walls where the knob hit. I was surprised to see not a doctor, but my mother and father standing on the opposing sides of the hospital room. My senile nurse and I, who I found out was stationed to “keep watch” over me, faced my divorced parents who I had not seen stand shoulder-to-shoulder in over a decade.
Tears were already streaming down my mom’s face- I inherited my dramatics from her-while my dad rushed over to kiss my forehead with a pain in his eyes that only an aching father can know. They’d been told by the doctors that I'd voluntarily came in, but they weren’t given any other details besides that. After that, they both left work, got into a car together for the first time since their divorce when I was 5 years old, and drove up to my campus.
What could they possibly have talked about on the 45-minute long drive to the hospital? The weather?
When I saw their faces, the guilt of my selfish actions seeped into my skin, scolding into a pit in my stomach filled with shame. I longed to reach out to them, to tell them how sorry, stupid, and selfish I had been, but I was still so fragile and my arms only created so much space between the bed. They both rushed to my side, hugging and weeping over me, while my nurse was waking up from his deep slumber. I wanted to leave the hospital, to go home to my moms or my dads- it didn't matter which for the first time in my life- to escape the admission of defeat of a hospital gown. I signaled to my mom about my discomfort and dissatisfaction with the treatment from the past few hours with a look of dismay at the beeping machines around me. She shook her head- I got myself here, and leaving the ER wasn't a cake walk. It was going to be a long, night.
I hope you're happy now, Dani.