Call Me Crazy

Chapter 2-2

As I roll to my side and curl up in a ball, I begin to shake as if the temperature has suddenly dropped, and a raging blizzard is swirling around me. It’s then that I realize I’m not broken. Broken implies that I might be able to be fixed. No, I’m not broken. I’m shattered beyond repair, beyond hope. I let myself sink into the darkness and welcome the familiar comfort of knowing I won’t live forever. Someday, I will die and this torment will be over.

“I’m not going!” A shrill, familiar voice pierces my ears as I walk by Candy’s room. The old woman runs through her usual morning routine, screaming the same thing over and over again, as orderlies coerce her out the door and into the medicine line. Though the screaming can become quite painful to the ears, I find it strangely comforting. In a world where things seem to be unreliable, unpredictable, and chaotic, Candy’s morning tantrums remain as constant as the sun rising. Therefore, I treasure them—weird, I know.

I hear patients, or “clients” as the good doctor likes to call us, begin to stir. Most are not in a hurry, after all, where do they have to be? The med line, the cafeteria, group therapy; none of those things are going anywhere, so very few of them bother to rush. No, those of us here at Mercy Psychiatric Facility are just trying to make it to the next minute, and sometimes even that feels like too much.

“Morning Ms. T.” Zeke, one of the orderlies, smiles at me. Zeke is another reliable part of my messed-up life at Mercy. Every morning, without fail, he’s waiting by the med window to say “morning.” He stopped prefacing it with the word good after the first greeting when I sort of screamed at him. “What the hell could be so good about another day?!” I admit it was rude. And any person in their right mind probably wouldn’t yell at a muscular man who stood over six feet tall with hands big enough to crush a human skull. But then, when I arrived at Mercy, I wasn’t in my right mind. Since then, I have learned that, though Zeke is massive, he is a big teddy bear. His skin is so dark that when he smiles, his teeth nearly glow, and his eyes are warm and soulful. He has a Mississippi accent that reminds me of blues and muddy water.

Despite my outburst, Zeke was unfazed. He just grinned at me with his kind eyes and nodded his head, as if he understands so much more of the world than I ever could. I haven’t yelled at him since, even on the worst of days. It’s hard to believe over two months have passed since that day.

“Morning, Zeke.” I actually felt like smiling this morning and, as instructed, I try to grab that tiny victory. Dr. Stacey was continually harping on me to claim the tiny victories. I’m still wearing long sleeves, but then Rome didn’t fall in a day. I know the saying is Rome wasn’t built in a day, but surely it didn’t also fall in a day either. And I feel like Rome’s fall much more fittingly describes my current mindset.

“The tiny victories are the ones that really matter,” she says over and over again. And deep down, I know she’s right. Those victories over the everyday challenges that we face, things that a normal person wouldn’t even bat an eye at, those are vital to someone like me; someone just trying to keep breathing.

I walk up to the med window and stare down at the nurse sitting behind the glass. Her out of the bottle red hair is piled up on top of her head like a basketful of bird nests, and one too many layers of makeup coat her face. Sheila has been the med nurse at Mercy for ten years, or so Candy tells me. Candy also tells me that Sheila has been known to help herself to the occasional anti-anxiety pill from an inattentive patient’s pill cup. And thanks to the impeccably high standards of MPF (cough, cough), Sheila isn’t challenged when she feeds her habit. She smiles up at me as she hands me the little white paper cup that holds the key to my sanity. I take the cup and stare into it, counting the pills, not only to ensure myself that they are all present and accounted for but also to verify that the pills are indeed the ones that the doctor says I am supposed to be taking. I have the colors of the pills memorized. If one of the colors is missing from the rainbow of drugs, Shelia and I will have a nice talk about how dumb it is to mess with a crazy person’s meds.

Five pills. They’re all there, staring silently back at me. I hold the cup to my lips and tip my head back, pouring all of them into my mouth. I chase the pills with a swig from the cup of water sitting on the counter and wash them down. I take one more sip before I open my mouth and allow Sheila to see that I had indeed swallowed the pills. She nods and waves me on, already gathering the next patient’s medications. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her hand quickly dart forward. I turn my head just in time to see her snag one of the little blue pills from one of the cups. I don’t think. I rarely do, I’m kind of impulsive like that. I slam my hands down on the counter right in front of her and begin yelling, “STRANGER DANGER, STRANGER DANGER!” Why those particular words popped into my head, we may never know. All I know is that you shouldn’t jack with medication a person relies upon to keep themselves sane. They are a lifeline to those of us holding on by a thin thread of sanity, and while some of us are still waiting for them to do their job, others of us are finally stable, and we don’t need the likes of Sheila and her incompetence screwing that up. Shelia jumps, and the pill falls from her hand. Her eyes shoot up to mine, and I give a subtle shake of my head. The commotion behind me is keeping Zeke busy. Just a side note, if you ever need a distraction in a mental hospital, just scream. For some reason, it’s like a howl to a pack of wolves and the crazies all feel the need to join in. I lean forward close to the opening of the window and hold her gaze. “If I ever see you doing that again, I’ll cut off your thumbs so you have no way to pluck one of those little pills from the cups.” Her face pales, and I try to feel bad that I’ve sort of come across as a little psycho, but then I remember that I’m in a mental hospital, so, psycho is sort of expected.

After I fill my tray with my standard breakfast of peanut butter and buttered toast, I take my usual seat in the far back corner of the cafeteria. I’m sitting for less than a minute when the chair across from me is pulled out from the table. Candy plops down across from me with a wicked grin on her wrinkled face. Her light blue eyes dance with humor and childlike delight.

“You got out of it again, didn’t you?” I ask with a smile of my own.

Candy nods at me victoriously. “I told them from the beginning I’m not doing group therapy. I have no desire to pour out the ugly details of my crazy life to a bunch of strangers so they can all foam and slobber at the taste of my wretchedness.”

“Gee, tell us how you really feel.”

She gives me a confused frown, “I just did. I would use more colorful language, but I’ve been warned by the doc that if I don’t tone down my potty mouth, then I will lose privileges.” She lets out a humorless snort. “I pointed out that there are a few things wrong with their way of thinking. First off, who the hell uses the term potty mouth to refer to cussing, and what privileges do they honestly think we have in this nuthouse?”

I have to laugh. Only Candy could get away with talking like that to the doctors and nurses and whoever else came into the line of fire. You see, she is a permanent fixture at MPF; she’s been deemed by the courts as unfit for society.

I’d asked her how that happened and she told me that she might have had some bouts of paranoia regarding the government, and may or may not have called in a few bomb threats to some major government offices. Apparently, after an investigation into her background, the courts decided she wasn’t necessarily dangerous like say, a serial killer, but that didn’t mean they felt as though she should be living in such a way that she had access to the materials needed for said bombs. I, personally, after spending a month in lockdown with her, had come to the conclusion that Candy didn’t want to live as a member of society. Oh, I definitely believe she has some marbles rolling around upstairs that are impairing her ability to function rationally, but I don’t think she is near as crazy as she plays at. So, being who she is and being capable of manipulating on a level that is truly a work of art and worthy of some sort of award, she gets away with a lot more than the others do. It’s not like they have a whole lot of options as to where they can send her—no other facility will likely take her.

“What was the good doctor’s response to your inquiry?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Who knows? I was already closing the door behind me when she started talking.”

As I swallow down the last of my orange juice, I see the familiar glint in Candy’s eyes. That glint was the one that usually meant there was mischief brewing in her whacked-out mind.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” she asks me as she rubs her hands together.

“Well, unlike some people, I have to go to group therapy, and then I have a session with Dr. Stacey.”

Candy groans. “Ahh, come on, ditch group today.”

I shake my head at her. “Can’t. I only have a month until school starts, and I need to get my walking papers by then.”

“But it’s sooooo boring when you aren’t around,” she whines.

I can’t help but laugh at her. Candy, a sixty-year-old woman, whining like a ten-year-old, shouldn’t be funny, but it was.

“So, let me get this straight,” I give her my best are you freaking serious face. “You want me to skip group therapy and risk having my sentence extended because you get bored without me?”

“Just when I think you might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, you go and surprise me with your shocking astuteness.”

“Glad to know that I can still shock you, you crazy old bat,” I tell her as I roll my eyes.

Candy lets out a loud cackle. “What’s it going to be, Pinky?”

I wish I could tell you her nickname for me annoyed me, but I found it endearing. She had started calling me Pinky the minute she met me because of the pink highlights in my hair. Candy was known for her nicknames. She said it was the only way for her to remember people. I think she just uses them to annoy everyone around her.

I groan. “Fine, I’ll play hooky with you, but this is the last time.” I’m such a sucker for a crazy old lady with the inability to entertain herself. I do have to remind her because she likes to conveniently forget, that when we play hooky, we can’t just walk down the hall like it isn’t our group time. I’m constantly telling her to keep her voice down as I sneak around corners and tiptoe past nurses’ stations, all the while pushing Candy on the back to hurry up.

Two hours later, I find myself hiding out with Candy in one of the quiet rooms. Really, it’s an isolation room for the patients who get a little violent…or a lot violent. The “administration” seems to think that if they call it the quiet room, then it won’t seem so sinister. It amazes me how often the staff mistake crazy for stupid. I can tell you for a fact, some of the most intelligent people I have ever met are off their rocker, bat-mess crazy.

Candy has swiped some racquets and a racquetball from the exercise room. We are playing, and I use the term playing very loosely, considering Candy has planted her butt on the floor and is sitting cross-legged. Really, I’m running around hitting the ball while she simply reaches out every now and then when the ball is in her reach and gives it a good whack.

“Did you hear we’re getting a new inmate?” she asks me.

“Oh yeah? What are they in for?”

“Schizo.”

“Nice.”

“Apparently, she tried to off herself and her son found her.”

“Damn,” I mutter. “That had to be tough. How old is the kid?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call him a kid. He’s eighteen.” Candy grunts as she reaches for the incoming ball. She smacks it hard and I have to dive out of the way to keep from getting hit in the head. Of course, she finds this funny as all get out.

I give up chasing the stupid ball and take a seat on the floor across from her.

“Candy, how do you find out so much about other patients?”

“The walls have ears,” she tells me in the creepy voice she likes to use on the more paranoid patients.

“That’s just freaky, don’t say crap like that.”

She chuckles at me as she shakes her head. “You scare too easy.”

“That or you just do demented-possessed-old-lady a little too well,” I counter.

“Hello, Clarice…,” she growls in response, grinning all the while.

I lie back on the ground and look up at the stark white ceiling. The clinical fluorescent lights cause me to squint my eyes, and the white walls and white floor don’t help. I don’t understand how they could expect a person to be calmed by a room so uninviting, where you felt more likely to be probed and dissected rather than be soothed. But then I’m just an inmate, as Candy likes to call us, what do I know?

“So, when does said Schizo arrive?” I ask her.

Candy looks at her wrist. She doesn’t wear a watch, yet she has an uncanny knack for knowing what time of day it is.

“Any minute now. Want to go be nosy?” The familiar gleam is back again, dancing in her pale blue eyes, which are surrounded by aged skin and drooping eyelids.

“Nosy is your middle name, not mine,” I remind her.

Candy clucks her tongue at me. “Your middle name is smartass, seems to me you have me beat.”

I stand and hold my hand out to help pull her to her feet.

“That may be, my old friend, but your maiden name is Bush. I don’t think it gets much worse than Candy Bush.” I laugh just as hard as I did the first time she had told me her name.

She swats my backside with the racket as she walks past me and mutters. “Ungrateful brat.”

“Oh, make no mistake, Ms. Bush, I am very grateful my name is not Ca…,”

“Not another word, Pinky,” she cuts me off with a snap of her fingers.

I laugh again as I follow her out the door and down the hall toward the new–patient exam rooms.