It's Kind of a Funny Story

We pass Jimmy in Room 21 on my way back. His hands are still crossed in his lap as Dr. Data tries to ask him questions.

“I tell you once: it the truth. You play that number, that number will come to you!”

The guy with the dreads is still tripping out.

I lie down. A nurse comes with a cart that threatens to have more food on it. She knocks—as if there were a door—and says she has to take my heart rate. This involves the placement, all over my body, of sticky tabs attached to wires. They don’t hurt; I have a feeling they will when they come off, though. I turn to the cart as she puts them on, and a metal arm like a record needle is reading out my pulses. I watch it: a spike, then a flatter spike, then a dip and a repeat. That’s you. That’s your heart.

“All right,” the nurse says. She pulls the tabs off my skin. They don’t hurt—the adhesive is kind and soft. My tabs hang off the cart like a tangle of roots as it rolls away. I lie doing nothing for a second, then put my shirt back on, then my hoodie. How long have I been here? I open my phone. Two-and-a-half hours.

“Mr. Gilner?”

A man in a dark suit and a gray tie stands at the entrance to my room. He almost completely occupies it; he’s large and barrel-shaped with a stately, pockmarked face, gray hair, big eyebrows, and a firm handshake.

“I am Dr. Mahmoud, yes? You are feeling how? Why are you here?”

I give him the rap.

“Are your parents here?”

“Urn, I called them but . . .”

“Here, okay, thanks!” I hear Mom’s voice out in the ER. I put my head in my hands.

“He’s here? Twenty-two?”

Dr. Mahmoud steps aside, and there’s Mom, trailed by the nurse who let me in, with an overstuffed tote bag on her left arm and Jordan in her right.

“Miss!” the nurse is yelling. “You really can’t have dogs in here!”

“What dog?” Mom asks, slipping Jordan into the tote bag. He pokes his head up at me and barks, then dips down.

Everyone in the ER is silent all of a sudden. Even the cracked-out guy with dreads looks at my mom. Chris approaches her; the nurse who let me in points to me—

“Wait a second,” says Dr. Mahmoud. “Mrs. Gilner?”

“Yes? Craig! Oh my gosh!”

Everyone lets her into Room 22. They fan out in a three-person semicircle as she hugs me tight, the kind of hug she used to give me when I was a five-year-old, complete with swaying. Jordan grrrs at me.

“He had to come; he was making a fuss. I love you so much,” Mom whispers into my ear, hot and full of spittle.

“I know.” I hold her back.

“Mrs. Gilner—”

“She really needs to leave with the dog,” the nurse says.

“She has a dog? Dogs are against policy,” Chris says.

“Just one second,” Dr. Mahmoud says.

We all look at him.

“All right, Mrs. Gilner, since you’re here, your son has checked himself in due to suicidal ideation and acute depression, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“He was on his Zoloft but he stopped taking it.”

“You did?” Mom turns to me.

“I thought I was better.” I shrug.

“Stubborn like your father. Yes, Doctor?”

“Well, the next question is for Craig. Craig, would you like to be admitted?”

Admitted. That probably means to the special room where I get to talk with Dr. Mahmoud. A quick visit and then I’m gone. It’ll give me the feeling that I’ve accomplished something, that I haven’t just languished in the ER.

“Yes,” I say.

“Good decision,” Mom says.

“Mrs. Gilner, you have to sign off for Craig on that decision,” the doctor says. He swivels his clip-board, which he had been holding in front of me, toward her. There’s a terrible amount of very small writing on the top half of the page and even more on the bottom half; in the middle, an equator of sorts marks where you’re supposed to sign.

“There is one thing,” the doctor says. “Right now the hospital is undergoing renovations and we’re very tight for space, so your son will be admitted with the adults.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“He will be admitted along with our adult patients, not with the teenagers alone.”

Oh, so I’ll be waiting with old people to see Dr. Mahmoud? “That isn’t a problem,” I say.

“Good.” The doctor smiles.

“Will he be safe?” Mom asks.

“Absolutely. We have the best care in Brooklyn here, Mrs. Gilner. The renovations are only a temporary situation.”

“All right. Craig, you’re okay with that?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Mom puts her loopy indecipherable signature on the sheet.

“Great. We’ll get everything ready for you, Craig,” Dr. Mahmoud says. “You’re going to feel a lot better.”

“Okay,” I shake his hand. He turns and heads out, a large suit greeting patients left and right in the ER.

The nurse touches Mom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, you really have to go with the dog, ma’am.”

“Can I give my son a bag of clothes?”

“What am I going to need clothes for?” I ask. I look in the bag: not only are there clothes, and not only are they the clothes I hate, but Jordan is sitting on them.

“If you want to bring him items, you can bring them to the hospital later in the day,” the nurse answers.

“Where is he going to be?” Mom asks, like I’m not there.