Chickenshit
This story was written in February and March of 2023. I hope you enjoy.
My father calls you chickenshit.
“You are so cute; you look like a little baby,” the nurse says to me, gently ripping a needle through the thin skin at the crease of my elbow—I cannot watch because it makes me feel woozy, but then I feel the blood escape my arm and I get woozy anyway—you really think I could do this to myself?
I wait a day to see a doctor. I wait two days to see a doctor. I wait three days and on the third day a quiet bear of a man takes me into his office and asks me to sit six feet away.”For safety,” he says. “Lithium,” he says. “Your parents were alcoholics,” he says, “and that comes with some baggage.” He sighs. “Yes, lithium, yes, yes. It is natural,” he says, “it’s on the periodic table of elements.” I imagine him prescribing me helium next. I imagine myself floating away. I am overwhelmed with joy.
The hospital spans a city block and I am in room A235 which sits at the intersection of California and Winona, which means I can take the bus south and then east to my house or west to “this is too much,” which I understand to mean “you are too much,” which, for the record, is right on the money. And I can’t take the bus, after all. Not yet.
“You have a phone call,” I hear at nine a.m. “You have a phone call,” I hear at ten. “You have a phone call,” I hear at lunch time. It is my father every time, persistent, convinced that his calls are keeping me alive (and, in a way, they are). He tells me “you are loved,” he tells me “you are missed,” he asks me “do you need me to come visit?” And I say “No, no, no.” Sometimes when the phone rings it is a friend instead; “how’s it going?” they all say before catching themselves with embarrassment, only realizing what they’ve asked after I laugh at the question. How’s it going, indeed. Ha, ha, ha.
For my job I work with hospitals, helping them find and purchase art—the really boring shit you see in hallways and waiting rooms. Landscapes, rivers, fields of flowers, waterfalls, realistic, traditional. “Please, please,” screams a woman down the hallway. I stare at a painting of magnolias. “It hurts, please!” The painter’s technique is terrible.
By the end of the third day I am exhausted with the entire routine: wake up, vitals, “do you have thoughts of hurting yourself?” breakfast, TV time (cop show 1, cop show 2, Family Guy, cop show 3), the screaming, a phone call, lunch, vitals, “do you have any thoughts of hurting anyone else?” tv time (Discovery network, the Fast and the Furious movies on TNT, Family Guy, cop show 4), the crying, quiet time, nap, phone call, dinner, vitals, “do you have any thoughts at all?” TV time (this time a movie—Save the Last Dance, followed by Family Guy) the screaming and crying, a phone call, quiet time, sleep. I am the most rested I have ever been, and I am exhausted.
On the fourth day I wake up crying and the nurses bring me my favorite breakfast: french toast and scrambled eggs. The lump in my throat makes eating too difficult and I leave the plate untouched. I cry harder; another failure I could notch on my belt (if I were allowed to have one). I am afraid that my crying will keep me here longer, despite this being the perfect time and place to cry. I want to lie in bed and cry and sleep all day long and I think of how much you would hate that. I imagine myself with a big red stamp across my forehead that says “PROBLEM” and I crave desperately to be solved. My nurse tells me how very lucky I am to be allowed to use a pencil. “It’s usually only crayons,” she tells me through a smile she must reserve for children, the elderly, the ill, the most pitiful among us. “It’s usually just crayons.”
Later on the fourth day my father, fifteen hours away, arranges the delivery of a blanket and six pairs of fresh underwear. The blanket is small, but soft and pink, and I wrap myself in it tight like a child. The thought occurs to me that my father may be the only man who will ever love me. I slam the door of my mind on the sentiment—perhaps I will someday have to accept this, but for now I grab a copy of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe that I checked out from the psych ward library (which is just a single bookshelf in a locked closet) and I scrawl inside the front cover “we must believe this place is a doorway.”
On the night of the second day, a phone call: what little of me is left, you kill. I hang the phone up and collapse, crumpling to the floor like a paper cup. At least one of us gets the job done.
On the fifth day I wake up because the woman down the hallway is screaming again and it fills me with rage so hot that I must take my shirt off just to breathe. I hate her, I hate her so, so much. Then I realize that everyone else hates her, too—perhaps that is why she screams. I am wrought with guilt. I begin to sob. When the crying breaks I daydream about vengeance: waiting until the screaming woman is sleeping, then bursting into her room wearing a mask and screaming “ooga booga booga!” to terrorize her awake, the way she has done the rest of us, holding our fragile psyches hostage. I will not do it, of course, but the thought alone makes me laugh so hard I feel feral. When the nurse comes to take my vitals, a single tear betrays me. “Did I make you cry?” she asks. I tell her no, though I’m not entirely sure. “Life is like the sharpening of a knife,” she says to me. “Every challenge makes you sharper.”
That morning I request the chaplain and in the afternoon a short, stout, busy woman comes barrelling into our hospital wing. “Where is 235?” she asks, leaving out pleasantries or introduction. I raise my hand slowly then lead her to my room. When I called for the chaplain I expected gentleness, patience, a glimmer of empathy—this woman is less one of God’s messengers and more one of His bureaucrats. She serves me question after question: are they medicating you? How long have you been here? What do you want from me? I tell her “I am lost,” to which she responds “Therapy helps.” She says a quick prayer for my doctors to figure out my medication, then leaves faster than she arrived. I sit in shock for a few moments before it occurs to me that God must be regular therapy and a precise pharmaceutical regimen. I pray to Lithium, to Abilify, to Wellbutrin, and I slump down in my bed. From my window I see light dance off the stained glass windows of the hospital chapel. The woman down the hallway screams. If God can love me, if God can forgive me, why can’t you?
On the fifth night the nurse gives me goldfish crackers to snack on. The first bite sends me through time and place to the first couch your parents ever bought. To everyone’s confusion, the memory makes me cry so hard I vomit.
Day six. After a sleepless night, I get up before breakfast. One of the other patients, a twenty-four year old kid, six feet tall and bulletproof, tells me it is my fault I’m here. “Maybe you should think about that.” I was 24 once, too, but I wasn’t so fucking mean.
The doctor gently leads me into his office and asks me to sit, again, six feet away. “What are you thinking about?” the bear whispers. “I want to go home,” I whisper back. He nods his head and pauses, then stares through me for years. “Wednesday.” Today is Monday, and I could dance.
One week ago. I am thousands of miles from here, somewhere warm, explaining that I feel important when we hold hands, when you kiss me. “Am I being too needy?” “Yes.” And like magic, a year of my life evaporates into thin air. “Yes.” Every mistake I have ever made flashes in front of my eyes at once. “Yes.” My heart sinks through my stomach, falls out my ass, lands on the concrete with a wet squish. “Yes.” We are floating in space and drifting miles apart. “Yes.” The word is a dagger. “Yes.” I clock out, this time for good. “Yes.” I am the worst person in the world, and I must be punished.
I go home the next night. I reach my bed and all at once I am rapt with pain and desperation. When I was eight years old my mother took a broken bottle to her wrists; I stumble through the darkness to my bathroom where I see her staring back at me from the mirror. I throw open the shower stall curtain and there she sits, limp on the tile. I close my eyes tightly. “No.” I open my eyes and I am sitting in the shower, limp and fading, running down the drain with the water. I am eight years old, I am hiding in the laundry room under piles of dirty clothes; I am twenty-nine years old, I am lying in my bed on top of piles of dirty clothes. “Yes.” I am ready. It is time. I am my mother’s child. Then, against my better judgment, I pick up the phone. “I am so proud of you,” the operator says in a soft and comforting voice. “You made the right choice calling us.”
The seventh day is your birthday and it takes all of my strength to think of anything else. I read this story to my therapist and she calmly wipes away a tear. “This is not your fault. It’s not,” she sniffles, “it’s not your fault.” The woman in the hallway screams. It’s not her fault, either.
I spend the day drawing portraits of the nurses and other patients. Once I finish the crayon drawings I silently hand them to their respective subjects. “Oh, my little one, my dear! You have made my day,” one of the nurses sings. She takes my hand. “You are so strong, so brave, and so, so talented,” she urges. “Remember to love yourself first.”
When the seventh night comes, I stretch my time as long as I am allowed, staying up a half hour past curfew. In the morning I will leave and I feel a distant sense of fear and sadness towards the prospect. I will not miss cold food and cold showers, I will not miss the screaming, I will not miss the cop shows—but in this place, I am cared for and made to feel important (even if the people doing that are paid to do so). And in this place, I am frozen in between a time with you and a time without, and I am terrified. I lie down in my bed for the last time. I try to cry but nothing comes. “You made the right choice,” the operator says. I close my eyes and go to sleep.
