my life in a psychiatric ward, pt. 1

I wrote this while I was still a patient in the hospital. I would be the last one up, sitting in the lounge, scribbling my story in a notepad a nurse had given me. I was afraid I would forget things, but more than that, I was compelled to write, as I always have been. This is the true account of my time in a psychiatric ward. Names have been changed for privacy reasons. 

I like to think about the imagery of a phoenix rising from the ashes. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. It’s full of hope and an ancient sort of power. It’s the stuff stories are made of.

I would like to apply this image to my own life, but truthfully I am simply myself, sitting in ash, charred and burnt.

I’m writing this with a pen that I am not sure I’m technically allowed to have. Where did I get it? I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of things lately. Things have been slipping through cracks in my head. I know I’m supposed to be making some lists, but I don’t remember what is supposed to go on them.

Like I don’t remember where I got this pen.

Is a pen considered a sharp? I don’t know. Can you hurt yourself with a pen? I would by lying if I said I hadn’t entertained that question, if I said I hadn’t slowly pulled the pen apart, examining the pieces like a grave scientist would pour over the innards of some poor long dead thing.

I’m not allowed to have sharps.

It all started when I walked through the wide yawning doors of the Emergency Room at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon on a Monday. I was wearing pink shorts I had purchased on my honeymoon six years ago, a thin grey tank top, and a tattered turquoise zip-up hoodie with grey paint splattered on the sleeves. I was clutching a bright blue water bottle I had brought from home.

Why did I bring the water bottle? I don’t know. I guess now that I’m thinking about it, I was thirsty. I was so thirsty it was hard to swallow. My mouth was bone dry.

It was 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

This would explain the thirst and the water bottle, but not the sweater. The sweater was too much, too warm. I remember being warm, in a sort of strange removed way.

I wore the sweater because I couldn’t let anyone see the dozens of angry red cuts covering my left wrist.

I had to ask a security guard where to go. The woman on the phone had given me directions to the door, but lost in the frantic swarm of the Emergency Room, I had no idea where to go next.

“Where is the Crisis Intervention Center?” I asked in a voice I barely recognized as my own.

He seemed confused. “You mean the Acute Psychiatric Services?”

Those words frightened me. I clutched my water bottle tighter. “I don’t know.” I finally said, hysteria flirting on the edge of my voice. “They just said the Crisis Intervention Center.”

He looked alarmed. He nodded and pointed and then I was walking numbly through a door with those terrifying words printed neatly on the glass. “Acute Psychiatric Services.”

The receptionist wanted to know why I was there. I stared blankly at her.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I would need to explain.

“I talked with someone on the phone.” I finally said, not helpfully. It was the only thing I could say.

She wanted to know who. I couldn’t remember because the cracks were already swallowing things like names. I finally got it out that the National Suicide Hotline had given me the number, and that’s when her whole face changed.

She had me come behind the desk to sit next to her. She asked me in a low voice if I was feeling suicidal, which seemed like a pretty obvious answer to me, but I whispered yes nonetheless. She started asking me other questions, easier questions, taking my information, which I parroted off. Or at least I think I did. I must have. I don’t remember much of it. I do remember that she took my blood pressure and that she asked to look at my wrist, which I slowly, reluctantly revealed.

The cuts were deemed superficial. No medical attention necessary. I wondered how I could ever explain that they were far from superficial to me. To me, that blade had cut me into a thousand little pieces.

Or maybe I had picked up that blade because I was already in a thousand little pieces.

She asked if I felt safe waiting in the waiting room for the doctor. I looked out at where a scarecrow of a man was pacing around, trying to tell anyone who walked by the beginning of a sad story.

“...I got kicked outta my house, man. I got nowhere to go. I need some meds…”

She answered for me. The answer was no. I was relieved. It wasn’t until later that I realized she put me in the back because it was obvious that I wasn’t safe. I would have sat for maybe two minutes. Maybe five. But then I would have walked right back out.

Because the small part of me that was still functioning was insisting that I was fine. It’d been insisting that for a long time. As I had sliced into my wrist over and over, it told me that this was perfectly normal.

There was a shift change, a flurry of faces all smiling, then concerned. Names I don’t remember. But every single one was so kind. It surprised me. I don’t know why. I suppose it would make sense that nurses would be kind. Maybe it was simply because I couldn’t find the strength to give a fuck what happened to me, and I had somehow convinced myself that no one else cared either.

I was escorted back by at least three nurses and a burly security guard who assured me several times it was simply protocol. Just protocol. Nothing more. Did I even respond? I don’t know. I walked. I clutched my water bottle. I popped the lid open and shut and open and shut and open and shut.

A middle-aged woman stopped us, beaming. Before I could respond, she was hugging me. “You talked to me on the phone. I’m so glad you’re here.” She said tearfully.

I think I mumbled something like “thanks.” Was that the right response? Was I glad? I don’t know. I didn’t feel much of anything. She said her name was Anna. Anna. That’s right. I repeated it in my head. Anna. I’d talked to Anna on the phone. I’d told her I was way too old for this shit, and she’d laughed.

They took me through a locked door and sat me on a bench. A bench like you would find in a diner booth. Except there was no table. Just a long, unending bench.

“We need your purse and belongings.” They said.

“Protocol.” The burly security officer repeated.

Removed of my belongings, I sat, and my escorts dissipated. To my right a woman flipped through a magazine. She was wearing scrubs, a blanket draped around her shoulders. To my left, a man in a wheelchair sat silently. I stared at the floor, twisting the tattered sleeves of my sweatshirt into knots, then untying them, then knotting, untying, knotting, untying. I tried really hard not to think about anything at all.

Eventually I was given my own set of scrubs, a turquoise top and rust red bottoms, and a room. The room was about the size of a large walk-in closet and contained a couch that wasn’t quite a couch but not a bed either, a chair that was actually a chair, and a small round table. The blinds were closed. And behind glass. Glass, then blinds, then glass. 

It made sense, I thought numbly. They wouldn't want me to make it all the way here only to hang myself in the Emergency Room.

I changed into my scrubs. The pants were too big, so I took a handful of the loose fabric at my waist and tied it with the hair-tie I’d had around my wrist to keep the pants from falling off my hips.

I don’t know why I didn't simply ask for smaller pants. The thought didn't even occur to me.

I handed over my clothes, the last remaining pieces of my identity. Then I retreated to my closet room where I sat on the not-quite-a-couch and tried to make myself as small as physically possible. I wished I could disappear.

And after a while, it almost seemed like I did. Disappear, I mean. I couldn't see out the window. There was no clock. Was the sun still shining? Had darkness fallen? How long had I been sitting? Two minutes? Three hours? A whole day?

People came eventually. A nurse, round and soft and kind. The type of person you find yourself wishing was your grandmother. She told me the time. It was four o’clock. I rationalized that I still had a little bit of time before I had to call the Mr. He got off work at five. He didn't know where I was.

Unless he came home early because he was worried about me.

Then he would find me gone.

An empty house.

Would he notice the scissors on my desk?

I mumbled out my story to the floor. The nurse told me gently that I did not have to be embarrassed. Was I embarrassed? I don’t know. I didn’t feel much of anything.

“I see you keep looking down.” She said. “You don’t have to be ashamed. Lots of people go through this. People get sick. Yours is just here.”

She brought her hands up to frame her head, her eyes on me were so kind.

“I need to call my husband.” I mumbled.

They gave me a cordless phone. No blinds. No cords. They had to call the Mr. with the desk phone because his cell phone number was long distance. A male nurse dialed the number, asked if he was speaking to the Mr., then transferred the call to the wireless phone I was holding. I had a brief, panicked moment where I wondered how to go about telling the person you love most that you’re in the hospital because you tried to kill yourself.

I answered the phone. His voice came through, confused, but polite. He didn’t know it was me.

“Hey.” I said.

“Hey...” He said back, and it sounded like a question.

So I told him.





There was one bathroom and six or seven little rooms like mine. The bathroom was located in the “lounge,” which consisted of the unending bench, two chairs, and a tv. The bathroom door didn’t quite reach the floor or the ceiling and had a terribly frustrating trick in latching. A trick I could not figure out. The toilet paper roll was placed inside a perfectly toilet paper roll shaped enclave. No roll dispenser. There was a sink, but no soap. You had to push a button to turn the water on. There was another button to flush the toilet, which when pushed, roared to life with echoing thunder and enough strength to suck down a small lap dog.

Most people didn’t flush, and I couldn’t find it in me to blame them.

If you wanted to wash your hands with soap, you had to make the trek down the hall, past the staff who sat safe behind a wall of glass. I kept my head down, hiding behind my wall of long dark hair. I could feel their eyes follow me though, like you might watch a pacing tiger at the zoo. Curious, but wary.

There was a mirror too. In the bathroom. If you could call it a mirror. My reflection looked back at me, my pale face dim and vaguely distorted like in a funhouse at the carnival. It was this way because the mirror wasn’t glass.

Because glass is sharp.

I was in the bathroom when the Mr. arrived, trying to re-secure my overly large pants with the hair-tie. He was sitting in the chair that was actually a chair, still dressed in his work clothes since he’d come straight to the hospital. I looked at his shoes first, shiny black patent leather. Then up his slim dark jeans to the blue button down shirt tucked in.

By the time I looked at his face, he was standing. His eyes were wet. His mouth was pressed into a line that was breaking, but that was ok because I broke first.

He enfolded me into his arms, and I was crying onto his nice shirt and he was crying into my hair and neither of us had any brilliant words, but that was ok too. Because our whole world had flipped inside out, and there was no carefully composed script for us to follow.

I tried to tell him I was sorry, but he didn’t even let me finish. He didn’t care, not about the worry I had caused, not about the fact that I was in the hospital with no health insurance to cover it. He was just so fervently glad I was ok, that I was here, that I was alive. “I love you.” He told me over and over and again and all I could do was nod. Because I knew. It was that love that gave me the strength to lay down those scissors, the sharp ones I used to cut his hair, and pick up the phone.

We sat together on the not-quite-a-couch. Sometimes talking. Sometimes silent. And I didn’t care so much anymore that I had no idea if the sun or the moon was in the sky.

The doctor finally came, and I tried to focus on what he said, but his words came at me like shrapnel. The prognosis: admitted. To the hospital. Just a few days. Starting anti-depressants. Meeting with psychiatrists. Psychologists. Group therapy.

Admitted.

The doctor left. The Mr. and I sat curled into each other in a silent daze.

Dinner was delivered. Lasagna, steamed broccoli, a cup of fruit from a can, a dinner roll. I ate the broccoli slowly. Slower than molasses, my great-grandmother would have said. The Mr. watched me, and I could see the doctor’s words still rattling around in his head. I blew bubbles in my milk to make him laugh. My stomach churned.

The nurse returned to take my mostly untouched tray without a word. I wondered how long I could get away with it.

I eventually made the Mr. leave to get some dinner for himself. And magazines for me. He fidgeted. Stalled. “You’ll be here when I get back right?” He finally whispered, fear in his eyes. Guilt broke my heart.

"I promise." I whispered.

One of the magazines he brought screamed the headline, “Miley finally admits: ‘I’m a TOTAL MESS!’” Outside my room, a woman demanded furiously that she be released. “I’m a German Citizen! I have a very important dentist appointment! You cannot keep me here!”

They gave her a toothbrush, and that seemed to satisfy her. I crept out of my room and asked timidly for a toothbrush too. The toothpaste tasted like thinly disguised baking soda. I brushed my teeth meticulously once. Then I brushed them again.

The Mr. reluctantly went home as visiting hours came to an end. “You’ll be here when I come back, right?” He whispered again, and again I promised that I would be. I closed the heavy metal door behind him and watched him leave through the glass window. The glass window that allowed the staff to watch me at all times. I curled up on the not-quite-a-bed and read about Miley being a total mess until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.





The knock startled me. I bolted upright, tangled in blankets, my contacts sticking to my dry eyes. A young male nurse was wheeling a machine into my room, regarding me as warily as I was regarding him. “I need to check your vitals.”

I brushed my tangled hair out of my face and obediently stuck out an arm. My skin was clammy. The blood pressure cuff stuck to my skin. He peeled it off and left me trying to peer between the cracks in the blinds. Was it midnight? Was it six in the morning? I was shivering, my skin damp with sweat.

What time is it? What time is it? When is it?

Eventually I couldn’t take not knowing anymore. I crawled out of the blankets, venturing out of my room to peer at the clock hanging behind the staff behind the glass. The little hand was on the eleven. The big hand was on the six. I retreated to my room and blearily tried to remember how to read a clock. Eleven thirty right? That’s what those things meant? Eleven thirty?

I fell asleep before I was sure. I woke up again, startled awake by the tv in the lounge turning on. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton. I stumbled out of my room again to see a small, roughly ten year old boy staring at me from where he was eating lasagna in a chair. I looked at the clock. Four thirty in the morning. I asked the nurse behind the glass for some water. She asked if I was ok, and I said through chattering teeth that I was cold. Another nurse got up, leaving the safety of the glass to fetch me another blanket. This one was warm, straight from the dryer. I went back to my room, and tried to stop shivering.

I woke up a third time, listening to a nurse questioning a patient about getting in a fight with another patient. I couldn’t make out the man’s wild mumbled reply. I heard the clomp of boots, the firm voice of security guards. They took him away. Where, I don’t know. I lay there, shaking, until I fell asleep again. 

I was awake this time, when another nurse came in to take my morning vitals. He told me breakfast would be here soon and asked if I was hungry. I said no. I asked if there was coffee, and he shook his head. “We have tea, though.” He said.

Relief coursed through me. “Could I please have some tea?” I whispered. He smiled again and nodded.

Breakfast was french toast, bacon, a banana, milk, and orange juice. The nurse brought me a cup of tea. I drank it black, grateful for the warmth. I tried a tiny bit of banana and my stomach rebelled. I put the lid back on the plate and sat back, sipping my tea. The same nurse came and took my tray, frowning. “You don’t want your orange juice?” He asked. I shook my head. He frowned at me again, but left.

And I waited.

I waited for twenty-nine hours.

That’s how long I waited in that little room.

A nice nurse opened the blinds for me in the morning. She asked if I wanted to talk. I mumbled that I wasn’t very good at talking. She told me she’d be here if I changed my mind.

The Mr. was able to be with me most of the time. We read magazines and books and inbetween that I slowly told him the truth. It did not come easy. I hadn’t lied to that nurse. I’d spent my entire life telling lies, and now the truth caught in my throat. I found myself thinking that perhaps I could just tell him part of it. Maybe I could pick and choose truths like cheese from an assorted cheese tray. But the problem with both truth and cheese trays is that everything eventually gets so mixed together that you end up accidentally eating swiss.

So it all came out, everything that I had been so afraid to tell. Everything that I had spent so much energy hiding. And you know what he did? He held me tighter. He whispered that he was so sorry. He told me he loved me.

And I was left trying to remember why I had kept any of this secret at all.

He left a few times to make more phone calls, to take care of everything. He told me over and over that I didn't have to worry about anything. He would let our family and friends know. He would call my boss. He would take care of it. Of everything.

I spent a lot of time looking out the window. Outside people laughed and talked and walked and biked and made angry gestures in their cars and kissed and smoked and were free to come and go as they pleased. I promised myself I would never take that freedom for granted ever again.

At eight o’clock, they finally brought me upstairs. To be admitted, officially. “I’ll be your chauffeur tonight.” The nurse joked, pulling up a cherry red wheelchair. “Here is your limousine.”

I don’t think I laughed.

I felt so small as he wheeled me through the hospital, past curious stares of everyday people and nurses and doctors. I wondered what they saw. I caught a glimpse of myself in the polished metal of the elevator doors and I saw a girl, frightened, dressed in turquoise scrubs with unwashed hair, clinging to a toothbrush.

The nurse pushing me did not take the bumps gently. My teeth rattled around with my fragmented thoughts.

The further we went, the farther away I retreated into my own head. By the time we went through the double locked doors of Orange 8, I was a shell of a scared girl clutching a toothbrush.

That shell got out of the wheelchair and sat obediently to have her vitals taken. Normal blood pressure. Normal temperature. I weighed in at 116.8 lbs, which both surprised me and secretly made me glad. Somewhere between home and here, I’d lost a pound.

In the background a young woman was screaming at a nurse in broken English. “You not my mother!” The nurse continued to calmly request that she take her pills. Other people milled around the room, looking at me with varying degrees of curiosity and disinterest.

“...evil in the world. Evil men killin evil men…” A muttering wanderer passed by.

The screaming girl did not take her pills. She went in her room instead, slamming the door. A nurse was arguing with another nurse about where I needed to go. I stood there, vacant, as they tried to sort it out. The Mr. had followed us up and was standing in my peripheral. Every time I glanced at him he mouthed, it’s ok. I tried to rearrange my face into something that looked slightly less terrified.

The confusion was finally sorted out. I was returned to the lounge where the Mr. waited with patients and nurses. There were about a dozen strangely square vinyl chairs arranged around a flat screen tv where someone was speaking very urgently about Syria. No one in the room seemed to be paying attention except one patient with shockingly white hair. She’d pulled a chair all the way up to the television, where she was watching intently.

Visiting hours were ending, so the nurse gave me a few minutes to say goodbye to the Mr. I tried to be brave. I promised I’d be here when he got back. He was trying to be brave too. He promised to come back as soon as he could.

Then he was gone, and the double doors locked behind him.

A nurse gave me a tour, and I tried hard to keep my shit together. There was the laundry room where we could do laundry. It was also the showers. The door was locked. You had to ask a nurse to get in. There was the closet with extra blankets and clean scrubs. There was the snack room if you wanted graham crackers, saltines, bread, jelly, peanut butter, or fruit. The fridge was full of individual milk cartons. There was juice and tea, but best of all there was coffee.

Honestly though, I am telling you these things having lived here a couple days. That night, I didn’t really remember anything from that tour. All of that information just poured down the cracks. Every ounce of my energy was going towards holding myself together.

The irony of it is not lost on me. That there I was, getting a tour of the psychiatric ward I’d been admitted to, and I was worried about was holding myself together.

My roommate was a whisper thin creature, a middle aged woman also being admitted that night. She said hello, introduced herself very politely, and then curled up on her bed, facing the wall. She remained there, still as a statue, for the rest of the night.

A nurse named Kevin brought me into a room and asked me a few questions. Mostly questions I’d already answered downstairs, but I suppose they wanted their own records. What happened? Why are you here? He had thick rimmed glasses and pure white hair. When he smiled he looked like a jolly elf. It didn’t help that I was almost taller than him. When he sat in his office chair, his feet didn’t touch the ground.

After my interview with Kevin, I was taken back for a physical with my nurse, Cindy, and a doctor whose name I've forgotten. They took me into a room that the doctor unlocked with a key. From the outside, I could have sworn it was just a closet, but it turned out to be a miniature doctor’s office, complete with the paper covered chair. I sat and laid down and she listened to my heart, my lungs, felt my stomach for lumps, and checked my reflexes. She asked me to show her the cuts on my wrist and the cuts on my thighs. I did all of this obediently vacant.

She asked about medications I was taking. About my sleeping habits and appetite. I told her the same thing I’d told Kevin, that I’d told the ER nurse, that I’d told the ER psychiatrist. I’m a night owl. I often stay up too late, but I don’t usually have trouble sleeping. I don’t eat much. That’s normal. Yes, I’d recently lost a lot of weight, but that was on purpose. To be healthier. Yes, I exercised a lot. That was also to be healthier.

They brought me back to my ward. I stood sort of uncertainly by as they discussed things. A young guy was flirting with one of the nurses. He had two black eyes and a fat lip. He looked at me and smiled.

“It’s not so bad.” He said.

"What?" I asked numbly.

"It's not so bad here." He repeated patiently.

Finally they turned me loose, and I found myself idly sort of moving in no general direction with no purpose. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, so going to bed seemed strange. But I had no idea what to do with myself either. So I just floated between the chairs as the pressure built up in my chest. Panic. Fear. Anxiety. What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I doing here?

“Hey, what’s your story?”

The muttering wanderer from earlier stopped me, interrupting my wild thoughts. He was chewing on something, a weird white canister, which I later learned was the hospital’s version of an e-cigarette. I shrank away from him.

“Come on, let’s go sit and talk.” He urged me.

I had no idea if I should be frightened or not. The nurses weren’t reacting at all. I was nervous about his muttering from earlier, but I was about ten seconds away from a massive public meltdown. So I sat.

“So why are you here?” He asked, folding his hands on the table across from me, his brown eyes intently on me.

I stared at him. All I could think about was that pilot episode of Orange is the New Black that I’d watched weeks ago. Weren’t you not supposed to ask other people why they were locked in a psych ward? Wasn’t that some unspoken rule?

“I tried to kill myself.” I finally mumbled.

“Now why would you do that?” He exclaimed. “Life is so beautiful!”

I shrugged. Wasn’t that the question of the hour. Of the year. Of my life.

“Come here, I wanna show you something.” He got up from the table and moved gracefully over to where a laptop sat on a rolling stand. He pulled up a second chair for me. I sat.

“This is what I look at when I feel down.” He said and then typed in www.sacred-texts.com. A poorly designed website appeared with a long list of links. The Bible. The Quran. The Apocrypha. Every sacred text from every religion was on this website. He started going to different ones, pulling up his favorite passages.

“This one. This one right here. Read this, starting here. Out loud. Read it out loud.” He looked at me expectantly.

I knew that normally this sort of thing would annoy the shit out of me. Normally I would have said, no thanks, I’m going to bed. Normally I would not sit at a computer with a stranger and allow him to command me to read the Quran out loud.

But I was five seconds away from a massive public meltdown, so I read.

I read passages listing all the things you should never do if you’re a Hindu. Things you should not eat if you were Islamic. I read about the Raven God of the Native American’s. I read about Adam and Eve going to the Cave of Treasures after they were banished from the Garden of Eden. He pulled up passages and I read them. I don’t remember much of what I read, but in a strange way, it helped. Words. I understood words. I knew how to read them. And so I read quietly, vacantly, and focused on the words.

He pulled up some images from various religions. Diagrams about different spirits and crystals that existed inside you. How to balance them, how to meditate.

“Now I’m going to give you a gift.” He said suddenly, standing up.

 I looked at him warily. “A gift?” I repeated, standing up as well.

He led me to the snack room. He took a cup and filled it with ice. Then he filled it with hot water from the coffee maker. He handed it to me. “This is pure water.” He said. “If you don’t drink enough pure water, you get depressed.”

We went back to the computer and read about a sermon that baby Jesus preached from the cradle. I drank my pure water and ignored the part of me that was rolling my eyes. A nurse brought me another warm blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders.

“What is your name? Sorry if you’ve already told me, I’m having trouble remembering names.” I suddenly asked.

“Peter.” He answered calmly. “And that’s alright. That happens.”

He pulled up a new passage, something about Adam and Eve. “I’ll leave you with this.” He said. “I’m being discharged tomorrow. I wish you the best.” And then he was gone.

I sat at the computer and stared at the passage. I couldn’t read it. Now that he wasn’t there, gently instructing me to read out loud, my brain went right back down that panicky spiral.

What am I doing here? What am I doing here?

I wished I was dead.

I got up and went to my room. My roommate hadn’t moved from where she was curled up on her bed. I looked at my bed, but instead went to the window. There was a small nook next to the window created by the bathroom wall and my dresser. I sat in it. I looked out the window. And then I started crying.

And once I started crying, I couldn’t stop.

I’ve always been really good at crying without making any noise. That’s a skill you quickly develop when you devote your life to making everyone else think you’re ok.

A nurse came in with a paper bag. She looked around, saw me on the floor, and dropped the bag on my bed, hurrying to my side.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” She asked in a thick Asian accent, worried.

I tried to say I was fine, but it was such a ridiculous lie that I couldn’t even get the words out. I just sobbed harder. She left and came back with a box of kleenex. Then she sat on the floor next to me as I tried so very hard to get some control. She brushed my hair out of my face and asked me again what was wrong.

“It’s just a lot.” Was what I finally managed to choke out. Then I started crying harder. I realized I was going to wake up my roommate, if I hadn’t already. But I couldn’t stop.

She sat with me on the floor for a long time. She started talking, low and gentle. I don’t remember what all she said, but she encouraged me to be strong. She told me I was going to be ok, that I was safe. She told me that I would get help. She brushed my hair back. She rubbed my arm. She handed me more kleenex. Eventually she asked me if I wanted something to help me calm down or go to sleep. I asked for something to help me sleep because I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly fall asleep in here.

She left and I got up off the floor and crawled into my bed. A few minutes later another nurse showed up with a pill and a strange handheld device like a scanner. Which was exactly what it was. She scanned my armband and gave me the pill. She told me what it was, but I didn’t really care.

I curled up and faced the wall, and eventually I realized that my sobs and quieted to hiccupy sniffs. And then before I realized it, I was asleep.

To be continued...