It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Let’s do it,” I say, and with Smitty’s supervision, over by the phones, I sit down and have a small needle attached to what looks like a butterfly clip stuck in my arm. I stare forward as something yellow is pumped into me and then I stumble off into my room—stumble because I can feel it hitting me even as I get up from the chair. It’s some kind of powerful muscle relaxant, and loving hands pull me down as I crash into bed past Muqtada, but the last thought I have before I go to sleep is:

Great, soldier, now you’re depressed and in the hospital and a drug addict. And everyone knows.

twenty-nine

I’m awakened by a guy in light blue scrubs taking my blood. That’s an interesting way to wake up. The guy comes into the room with a cart—carts are very popular here—as light creeps through the blinds.

“I need your bloods. For downstairs.”

“Uh, okay.”

I present my arm. I’m too beat to ask any questions. He takes a little bit of blood expertly through the back of my hand under my middle-finger knuckle—doesn’t leave any kind of mark—and rolls along, leaving Muqtada asleep, or awake and paralyzed by life; it’s tough to tell. I want to get more sleep, but once you’ve been stuck you’re inclined to get up, so I move out of bed and take a shower with the hospital-provided towels and my parent-provided shampoo and the generic soap that I pump out of the wall. The shower is searing and wonderful, but I don’t want to stay too long—I have to break my habit of languishing in the bathroom—so I dry off and drop my stuff back at the nurses’ station. Smitty isn’t there; instead there’s a big guy who introduces himself as Harold and tells me to dump the towels in a hamper that looks just like a garbage can by the dining room, something that I know I’ve seen Humble and Bobby dump apple cores and banana peels into.

“Hey, buddy, you’re up!” Armelio calls out, bounding down the hall at me. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not good. I needed a shot.”

“That’s okay, buddy, we all need shots once in a while.”

“Heh.” I crack the day’s first smile. Armelio uncorks one of his own.

“It’s time to wake everyone up for vitals,” he says, treading down the hall. “All right, everybody! Vitals! Time to take your vitals!”

A caravan of my fellow bleary mental patients—or wait, I think we’re called in-patient psychiatric treatment recipients, technically—emerge from their compartments, rubbing their eyes and staggering as if they have a job to get to and they just need that first cup of coffee. Surprised by my good fortune, I put myself at the front of the line and become the first to get my blood pressure and pulse taken. 120/80. I continue to be the picture of health.

“Craig?” Harold, the big guy, asks when everyone is done.

“Yeah?”

“You haven’t been filling out your menus.”

“What are those?”

“Every day, you’re supposed to put down what sort of meals you want. On one of these.”

He holds up what looks like a placemat, with columns of food: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.

“You should have gotten this in your welcome packet the nurse gave you.”

Ah, the one I completely ignored. I nod.

“I just. . . didn’t. . .”

“It’s okay, but if you don’t mark up your menus, you’re going to get a meal we pick for you every time. So fill one out for lunch and dinner today. For breakfast you’re going to have to have one of the omelets.”

I put my elbows down on the desk and eye the menu choices: hamburger, fish nuggets, French-cut beans, turkey with stuffing, fresh fruit, pudding, oatmeal, orange juice, milk 4oz, milk 8oz, 2% milk, skim milk, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, split pea soup, minestrone soup, fruit salad, cottage cheese, bagel, cream cheese, butter, jelly . . . highly processed food. I’m not going to have a problem eating this. My eyes swim over the choices.

“Circle what you want,” Harold explains. I start circling.

“If you want two of anything, put two-x by it.” I start putting 2xs.

I wish the world were like this, if I just woke up and marked the food I’d be eating and it came to me later in the day. I suppose it is like that, except you have to pay for whatever you want to eat, so maybe what I’m asking for is communism, but I think it’s actually deeper than communism—I’m asking for simplicity, for purity and ease of choice and no pressure. I’m asking for something that no politics is going to provide, something that probably you only get in preschool. I’m asking for preschool.

“After breakfast, fill one out for tomorrow,” Harold says as I hand in my menu.

Breakfast comes to the dining room and the omelet is like a science experiment: is the lack of cheese explained by the mysterious holes that dot the alleged egg?

“Your first omelet,” Bobby says. Today, for a change, I sit with him instead of Humble. Johnny rounds out the table.

“It’s really gross.” I pick at it.