The nurse escorted me down the hall to a small room with three chairs and a small, low table, all of which were fastened to the floor with strands of steel cable. Except for those items of furniture, and a small surveillance camera in the ceiling, the room was bare.
I sat in one of the chairs and looked around. There was absolutely nothing to see. The walls were painted a very pleasant creamy yellow, just a few shades paler than the center of a Cadbury Easter Cream Egg, I thought, but the pleasantness of the hue would serve to amuse my wandering attention for maybe three seconds at best.
As I pondered the strangeness of my environment, it occurred to my why it was so spare. This was an area where they dealt with psychologically troubled individuals, and they probably wanted to minimize the possibility of anyone injuring themselves. I supposed that if I wanted to, I could stand up on one of the chairs and allow myself to crash to the floor, but I imagined that whoever was monitoring the surveillance camera would likely put a kibosh on any such efforts.
I quickly ran out of things to look at in the room, so my mind turned inwards once again. I didn't want to rehash the events of the last twenty-four hours, so I decided to ruminate about the strange woman in the long retro coat. So far I had seen her twice, and I still had absolutely no idea who she was or what she wanted. She'd been in my room, looking through the supply cabinet, and then she'd been at one of the nurse's stations outside my room, staring intently at me.
If it weren't for the fact that I'd just tried to kill myself, I probably would have found this disturbing.
The thing that had struck me most about the woman was the way she managed to look completely incongruous. There was nothing about her that fit into the hospital environment. She looked like she ought to be stepping off a trolley car in 1940s San Francisco, not skulking around a hospital in Halifax in 2009.
It was puzzling. But at least it gave me something to think about.
Well, for about ten minutes, anyway.
I was soon reduced to looking at the pattern on the ceiling and wondering if it held any deeper meaning. Losing patience with that, I tried to figure out how many strands were in the steel cables the held the chairs and table to the floor. Then I imagined what it must look like in the control room where all the images from all the little surveillance cameras appeared on a bank of little security monitors.
For some odd reason, this made me start thinking about the X-Files and how I only needed to buy seasons 8 and 9 to complete the series. I was in no hurry, though. The last two seasons were weird, what with David Duchovny leaving the show and Robert Patrick coming on board as agent Doggett. I could wait.
By the time I began to consider scraping a bit of paint off the wall and tasting it, the door opened and a young woman entered.
"Mister Richmond?" she said. The tentative tone of her voice must have been a reaction to my facial expression, which was itself a reaction to the fact that I'd nearly forgotten that other humans existed.
"Yes. At least I was when I was brought in here."
Her mouth wavered in some kind of half-smile that was aborted in its second trimester. She took one of the remaining chairs and crossed her legs. She had the standard-issue clipboard.
"I'm Doctor Taggart, one of the residents here in the Psychiatric Emergency Department."
"Nice to meet you. I guess what I did would be considered a psychiatric emergency."
She nodded and killed yet another half-smile before its birth. "It's good to see you still have your sense of humor," she said. "Not everyone in your situation manages that."
"Well, not everyone is the kind of ascerbic asshole that I've recently been told I am."
She frowned and puckered her lips slightly, looking at me askance with her head slightly cocked. "I'm not sure that kind of self-reference is going to prove very helpful to you, Mister Richmond."
I shrugged. "Well, it beats moaning and whining by a country mile," I said.
She jotted a couple things down on her clipboard. I suddenly imagined a clipboard factory in India exploding, leaving the medical profession in tatters.
"Doctor Fingle is our staff psychiatrist. He'll be in to speak with you in a few minutes."
"I see. You're just here to prep me, are you? Make sure I'm well basted before he comes in to turn the skewer?"
She drew her mouth into a tight line. "I understand this has been a difficult time for you, Mister Richmond. But I really don't think this constant sarcasm is going to help either you or us. We want to help you, but we can't if you won't let us."
I sighed. "I already had the solution. I think I just miscalculated the dosage."
She nodded. "Yes. Well, I'd hoped you would think better of that now."
"Putting me in a small yellow room is not exactly the best way to convince me to go on living."
She stood. "Doctor Fingle will be in a few minutes."
I nodded. She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.
I pursed my lips, nodded to myself, and began to hum "Another One Bites the Dust."
——————–
Doctor Fingle was a pasty-faced, mealy-mouthed man with about as much charm as bowl of cold, congealing oatmeal. He entered the room, shook my hand limply, sat down in the chair opposite me, crossed his long, gangly legs, and rubbed his stubbly chin.
"So, Mister Richmond," he said, his voice low and quiet, his syllables long and stretched. "Doctor Taggart tells me you're not adjusting well to your situation."
"Which situation is that, now?" I said.
He stared at me a moment, blinking slowly. He reminded me of a frog waiting for a fly to pass by. "I mean," he said at last, "Finding yourself in the hospital, alive."
"Oh," I said. "That."
Fingle blinked at me a few more times. "Yes," he said. "You're not coping well with it."
"Well," I said. "I'm breathing okay. That part's been no problem. The blinking, that's working pretty well, too, though I must say I don't do it with quite the style that you do. The legs are a bit off, but I'm sure that's just the drugs. Hearing, smelling, tasting, all pretty much in working order. All in all, I'd say I'm coping pretty well."
He looked at me again. His eyelids seemed to move even more slowly this time. I felt like I was watching a scene on a DVD and playing it frame by frame. Again, I thought of the X-Files.
"I think," Fingle said after a moment, "that admission to the Short Stay unit is a good idea. I'd like to have Doctor DiNarrio evaluate your case. We need to break through some of these barriers you're putting up."
I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees. This would have looked very undignified to anyone standing behind me, because of the opening in the back of the johnny shirt, but fortunately it was just him and me.
"I just want to say…" I tried to lean closer to him. "…that I don't like you very much at all. I think you're insincere, and that you actually hate your job. You come off as someone who regards patients like little products coming along the conveyor belt. And I don't want to be a part of your little brain cell factory. Am I making myself clear?"
He blinked again, but this time he frowned as well. I wondered if anyone had ever spoken to him like that before. He'd probably dealt with violent patients, drugged out patients, hysterical patients, and, well, flat-out crazy patients, but I doubted he'd ever come across anyone quite like me.
But then, delusions of uniqueness had always been one of my defining qualities.
"I'm glad you're able to express yourself so honestly, Mister Richmond."
I slumped back into my chair. Score one for the cold oatmeal.
Damn.
——————–
A security guard brought me a brown bag lunch from the cafeteria while I waited for my bed up in Short Stay to become available. The meal consisted of an egg salad sandwich on a croissant, a small packet of cheese, an apple juice, and a yogurt. I thought the croissant was a nice touch. It was soggy, but still, at least they'd tried for that international flavor.
"It shouldn't be too long now," the guard said. He was tall and angular with a long face and short gray hair. He had a kind face, but his posture and body language spoke of long weariness.
"I think I've seen enough of these yellow walls to last me well into my dotage," I said.
He smiled and nodded. "A lot of waiting goes on in here."
I took a bite of the soggy croissant and nodded back at him. "Yup. I reckon."
I glanced out into the hallway, which was revealed to me because the guard was standing in the doorway, holding the door open. The colors outside the room were different, but the effect was the same. It was a place of sickness, disease, and death. It was just painted with nice pastel colors.
Amidst the fairly rhythmic passage of staff and patients in the corridor, I caught sight of an unfamiliar movement. It was more of a ripple than anything. It wasn't a shadow, but it wasn't quite a figure either. It was more of a… change. The walls and occupants of the corridor seemed to ripple and darken for a moment.
"Are you okay, Mister Richmond?" the guard asked.
I shook my head. "Yeah. Fine. Just thought I saw something."
He turned to look out into the corridor. "What did you see?"
"Not sure. Probably just my eyes playing tricks on me."
Or my brain, I thought.
——————–
A nurse brought down a wheelchair and took me up to the third floor, where, I was told, the Short Stay Unit was housed. I didn't know anything about the place, had never even heard of it before now, but then, I reasoned, I'd never been in a mental health crisis before. So, it was a whole new world, and I would soon be educated about it.
The elevator doors opened with a sickening ping that only a very aged chime could emit, and the nurse wheeled me down the hall to a security door. She waved her ID badge over a small black unit on the door frame, and the lock opened with a definitive click. She opened the door, wheeled me through, and took me down another hall.
The Short Stay Unit was a large room with a nurse's station and five curtained alcoves, each containing a bed, a bedside table, a wheeled tray table, and a chair. I was taken to the last one on the right, nearest the nurse's station, and swiftly abandoned by my chauffeur. I sat down on the bed and was immediately joined by a rather corpulent woman in tan slacks, a pale green blouse, and a white cardigan.
"Mister Richmond?" she intoned cheerily.
I nodded. I was so sick of meeting new staff members that I couldn't even muster a wry retort.
"My name's Norma," she said. "I'm one of the nurses here at short stay. This will be your room for the next few days. Do you have any belongings with you?"
I shook my head. I'd asked for nothing, and Lydia had offered to bring me nothing. I didn't care. I just wanted to lie down.
"Well, there's phone over by the lounge area if you need to call anyone to bring you anything."
I nodded.
"For starters, you'll only be able to leave the unit for a half hour at a time, and only if you're accompanied by someone. Once we're sure you're not going to try and harm yourself again, you'll be able to go out by yourself, and for a bit longer than half an hour. Any questions about that?"
I shook my head. "No. That sounds fine."
"There's a shower over by the bathroom, and there are newspapers and magazines on the table in the lounge area. There are also a few games and puzzles on the shelf over there."
I nodded again.
"Dinner's coming up in about a half an hour. Do you have any special dietary needs?"
I looked up at her. "I just require food," I said.
She smiled. "Well, we have that. Tea or coffee?"
"Coffee," I said. "Black. Strong."
"I'll see what I can do."
With that, she turned and exited, closing the curtain behind her with a swish. I lay down on the bed, put my hands behind my head, and stared at the ceiling. The pattern was the same as the ceiling down in the little yellow room.
I blinked. For some reason the pattern was looking blurry now. I blinked again, and then understood. It was not some unknown rippling phenomenon this time. I put a hand to my eyes, and it came away wet.
I was crying.
