It's Kind of a Funny Story

“In Six North,” the nurse answers. “Just ask for him. Come on.”

“I love you, Craig.”

“Bye, Mom.”

A quick hug, and she’s on her way—Chris watches, with his hands on his hips. I’m really curious about his efficacy as a hospital security guard.

“What’s Six North?” I ask him.

“Ah, uh, we’re not supposed to be talking,” he says, and sits back down with his paper. I look out the door for some news, but it’s all the same. You know, this is a crappy place to be. I wish I wasn’t depressed so I didn’t have to be here.

“Mr. Gilner?” someone finally asks. A new guy walks up to the door, a thin, short-bearded, older hippie-looking guy—except without the long hair—with glasses. He’s not wearing a white robe or a blue robe or a cop uniform. He’s wearing jeans, a blue-collared shirt, and what appears to be a leather vest.

“I’m Smitty. We’re ready to take you up now.”

“There’re two!” a doctor says as she passes by. “Twenty-one and twenty-two.”

“Well, I don’t have papers for Mr. Twenty-One.” Smitty shakes his head. “So I’m going to be taking up Mr. Gilner, and I’ll be back down, all right? Hey, is that Jimmy!”

“He’s back,” the doctor moans.

“Hey, it’s Saturday, baby. Everything is going to be all right. Mr. Gilner?” He turns to me.

“Uh, yeah.”

“You ready to get out of this crazy place?”

“Am I going to see Dr. Mahmoud?”

“Sure. Later in the day.”

“You got this one, Smitty?” Chris asks.

“I don’t think you’re going to give me any trouble, are you, Mr. Gilner?”

“Um, no.”

“Okay, do you have your stuff?”

I check my bracelets, my keys, my phone, my wallet. “Yep!”

“Let’s walk.”

I hop off the stretcher, nod at Chris, and follow Smitty at his slow pace through the ER. We open a door near the bathroom and pierce a seal into an entirely different biome of the hospital—red brick, indoor trees, posters of notable doctors who practiced there. Smitty leads me through an atrium to a bank of elevators.

He hits the up button, stands by me, and nods. I notice a plaque between the two elevators, showing us what’s on each floor.

                                           4 - Pediatrics.

                                           5 - Delivery.

                                           6 - Adult Psychiatric.

Oh, he’ll be up in Six North.

“Going to adult psychiatric, huh?” I ask Smitty.

“Well”—he looks at me—“you’re not quite old enough for geriatric psychiatric.” And he smiles.

The elevator dings; we get in and turn around, each taking a corner. Smitty leads me left when we get to six. I pass a poster with a chubby Hispanic man in blue robes holding his hand over his mouth: SHHHHHHHH! HEALING IN PROGRESS. Then Smitty passes some kind of card in front of two double doors, and the doors open and we walk through them.

It’s an empty hallway, wide enough for a grown man to lie across with his arms stretched up. At the end are two big windows and a collection of couches. To the right is a small office with a glass window that has inch-wide squares of thin wire embedded in it; inside, nurses sit at computers. Just beyond the office, another hall branches off to the right. I follow Smitty forward, and when we come to the crossroads of the two halls, I glance down the one to my right.

A man stands there, leaning on the banisters that line the hall even though there are no steps. The man is short and stocky; he has bugged-out eyes and a squashed face and an almost-but-not-quite harelip. There’s fuzz coming out of his neck and a big swath of black hair on his little head. He looks at me with homeless-person eyes, like I just popped out of a manhole and offered him valuable paper clips from the moon.

Oh my God, it hits. I’m in the mental ward.

nineteen

“Come this way, we’re going to take your vitals,” Smitty says, seating me in the small office. He takes my blood pressure off a rolling cart and my pulse with delicate fingers. He writes down on a sheet in front of him: 120/80.

“One-twenty-over-eighty, that’s dead normal, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Smitty smiles. “But we prefer live normals.” He wraps up the blood pressure gauge. “Stay right here, we’ll send a nurse in to talk to you.”

“A nurse? What are you?”

“I’m one of the daytime directors on the floor.”

“And what is this floor, exactly . . . ?”

“It’s a short-term facility for adult psychiatric.”

“So like, a mental ward?”

“Not a ward, a hospital. Nurse’ll answer any questions.” He steps out of the office, leaving me with a form: name, address, Social Security number. Then—wait—I’ve seen this before! It’s the questions from Dr. Barney’s office:

Feeling that you are unable to cope with daily life. 1) Never, 2) Some days, 3) Nearly every day, 4) All the time.