It's Kind of a Funny Story

seventeen

The emergency room is nearly abandoned at five-thirty in the morning—I don’t know how I caught that lucky break. There’s a long black metal bench sprinkled with people. A Hispanic couple walks around, the woman howling about her knee. An old white lady and her gigantic son fill out forms next to each other. A black guy with glasses sits at the end of the bench, opening peanuts and putting the shells in his left vest pocket, the peanuts in his right. It could be a plain-old doctor’s office, really. Except for the peanut guy.

I walk up to the main desk: REGISTRATION. There are two registrators, one sitting, and one standing behind. The one behind looks about my age—she’s probably getting school credit.

“I need to be, uh, admitted. Registered,” I say.

“Fill out a form and the nurse will see you shortly,” the sitting one says. The standing one stuffs envelopes, eyes me. Do I know her from somewhere? I sniff my armpit to hide my face.

I take the Xeroxed form that’s handed to me. It asks my birthdate and address, my parents’ names and phone numbers, my health insurance. I don’t know much about health insurance, but I know that my Social Security number is my ID number, so I put that down. I feel kind of good filling out the form, like I’m applying to a special academy.

I put the form, completed, in a small black tray hanging off the side of the registration desk. There’s only one piece of paper in front of mine; I sit back down next to Peanut Man. I stare at the floor; it’s made up of foot-long tiles in red and white, like a chessboard, and I imagine how a knight would move across it. I’m so crazy. I’ve lost it. This isn’t going to help. I should leave. Is it too late? My bike is back at home in my hallway. I can do it. I’m strong enough.

“Craig?” a woman pops her head out from a door at the end of Registration.

I stand up. The Hispanic couple howls that they were here first and someone comes out to talk to them in Spanish. Sorry, people.

“Come,” she beckons. “I’m the nurse.”

I shake her hand.

“Have a seat.” I enter her long, thin chamber, which has a computer and two chairs and an array of tubes and robes on hooks on the wall. The sun is rising through a window at the end of the room. Across from me is a poster about domestic violence: If your man beats you, forces you to have sex, controls your money, or threatens you about immigration papers, you are a victim!

The nurse—short with curly hair and a clownish face—reaches to the hooks behind her and unfurls a blood pressure gauge. I always liked these. Not that they’re pleasant, but they always feel like they could be so much worse. She attaches it to some readout device and pumps me up.

“So what’s wrong, ishkabibbles?” she asks.

Ishkabibbles? I give her the rap.

“Did you do anything to yourself? Did you try and cut yourself; did you try and hurt yourself; did you actually go anywhere?”

“No. I called 1-800-SUICIDE and they sent me here.”

“Good. Wonderful. You did the right thing. They’re so great.”

She unwraps me, turns, and types information into the computer. She reads off my sheet in a tray to the right of the monitor, where I wrote “want to kill myself” as my reason for admission.

“Now, were you on medicine?”

“Zoloft. I stopped taking it.”

“You stopped?” She opens her eyes wide. “We get that a lot.” She types. “You really can’t do that.”

“I know.” I’m glad I have a concrete thing to blame this on, something everyone can point a finger at.

“You really have to stop, right now, and think about how you feel. I want you to remember how you feel the next time you decide to stop taking your medicine.”

“Okay.” I commit it to memory; I feel dead, wasted, awful, broken, and useless. It’s not the kind of feeling you forget.

“You’re going to be fine, ishkabibbles,” she says.

I look at what she’s typing on the screen. Under “reason for admission,” she puts SUICIDAL IDEATION.

That would be a good band name, I think.

“Come on,” she says, getting up from the computer. Behind it, a printer is producing something, whining and clicking. She reaches back and pulls two stickers out, puts them on plastic bracelets that she has attached to her belt, which is like a nurse utility belt, and affixes them to my right wrist.

I look down. They both say Craig Gilner, and have my Social Security number and a bar code on them.

“Why do I get two?” I ask.

“Because you’re too special.”

She leads me out of the room into the ER proper, past curtains that are alternately drawn and undrawn to show the cast of characters here on an early Saturday morning. The vast majority are old people—specifically, old white women with tubes in them, yelling and moaning. What they’re yelling for is water—“Waaa-taaa, waaa-taa”—and what they’re getting is totally ignored. Doctors—I think the doctors are in white coats and the nurses are in blue, right?—stride by holding clipboards. One has a young scruffy blond beard that I would never expect to see on a doctor—his name is Dr. Kepler. It says RESIDENT, so he’s a college guy. That’s one of the things I could be someday if I hadn’t messed up and gotten myself in here.

“This way,” the nurse says.

Beeping serenades us. It’s coming from everywhere, a dozen different kind of beeps—loud ones, scary ones, ding-y ones, random ones. I wonder if they ever sync up as we pass by two giant metal racks on wheels—inside are pale yellow trays wrapped in plastic. Hospital breakfast. A nurse pushes them through a door marked FOOD PREP.

We move by a group of Hispanic guys lounging on stretchers who all look like they were in the same bar fight. One has a bandage on his face, one is pointing to his chest for a doctor, and one is rolling up his pants to show off what looks like a shark bite. The doctor hisses at him in Spanish, and he rolls his pants back down. We go by a bank of computers and there the nurse tells me to wait—she flags down an Indian doctor, and he takes a stretcher, which up close looks like a very complicated and expensive piece of machinery, with red and black levers sticking out everywhere, into a side room marked “22.”

Room 22 is just big enough to accommodate the stretcher. It doesn’t have a door, just a doorway. The walls are yellow. The nurse leads me in there.

“A doctor will be with you shortly,” she says.

It’s bright. Bright as hell. And I haven’t slept. I sit on the stretcher. What am I supposed to do in here? There’s nothing to do. There aren’t even any hooks.

Outside of 22, a black guy with long dreads is on a stretcher next to a curtain. He’s well dressed in dark brown—with black shoes like mine—and he’s holding his hip and writhing in pain. It’s something I’ve never seen except in movies—a man clutching himself and grimacing and swaying and breathing in little huffs and bearing his teeth and going “Nurse, nurse, please.” It looks like he’s dislocated his hip. He rolls over on his side and then back on his back, but nothing seems to help.

Who’s worse, soldier, you or him?

Dunno, sir!

It’s a trick question, soldier.

Well, him, obviously. I mean I’m sitting here lounging; he’s practically dying out there.

I expected more from you, son.

How?

You’re a smart kid. You should be able to see when somebody’s faking. And soldier—

Yes.

—Good job out there. I’m glad you’re still on board.

I don’t feel any better.

Life’s not about feeling better; it’s about getting the job done.

I look again at the black guy; as I do, a big police officer with closely cropped hair and those weird little fat bumps on the back of his neck saunters onto the scene with a newspaper and a cup of coffee. He takes an orange plastic seat and sits down right outside from me, between Room 22 and Room 21, another open-style, closet-sized space.

“Hey, how ya doin’,” he says. He speaks slowly and calmly. “I’m Chris. If you need anything, let me know.” He sits down and opens up his paper.

The black guy is really moaning now, bugging out his eyes at every nurse that passes by. He grabs his hip with both hands. Maybe he’s a heroin addict. They come to the hospital and pretend they’re hurt to get morphine. I watch him for minutes, trying to figure out if he’s real or fake. There aren’t any clocks. There are only beeps.

Chris shakes his paper. Page two is “86 Stories Down: Man Plunges from Empire State.”

“Jeez,” I say. I can’t believe it. “Is that about a guy jumping off the Empire State Building?”

“No.” Chris smiles, glancing at me over his shoulder. “Not at all.” He flips the paper back over. “You’re not supposed to be looking at this.”

I chuckle. “That is too much.”

“He lived!” Chris says.

“Yeah, right.”

“He did! And you will too.”

Did someone tell this guy what I was in for? Or do all people with mental difficulties get shuttled to room 22?

“What’d he do? Hit a tree?”

But Chris has moved on to page four. “Not supposed to be looking at this.”

Someone must have told him. He’s a cop in charge of making sure things are okay in the ER and someone must have told him they had a depressed kid in 22, and now he’s trying to be helpful.

I lie down on my stretcher, take my hoodie off, and throw it over my face. It’s not dark enough. I’m not going to be able to sleep. I’m sweating. I want to do push-ups, but I can’t on the stretcher, and it’s probably a bad idea to do them on the tiled floor, which doesn’t look recently mopped. I don’t need to go into Argenon Hospital for depression and come out with diphtheria.

“Nurse! Nurse! Please!” the black man groans.

“Waaa-taaa. Waaa-taaa,” a woman croaks.

“Hey, what’s up?” Chris answers his phone. “No, I’m on.”

Beep, something beeps.

These are the sounds of the hospital, the hospital, the hospital.

“Hello, Craig?”

A doctor comes into 22. She has long, dark hair and a pudgy face and bright green eyes.

“Hey.”

“I’m Dr. Data.”

“Dr. Data?”

“Yes.”

Huh. I want to ask her if she’s an android, but that wouldn’t be very respectful; and besides, I’m not up to it.

“What’s going on?”

I give her the rap. It gets shorter every time. I wanted to kill myself; I called the number; I came here. Blah blah blah.

“You did the right thing,” she says, “A lot of people get off their medication and get into big trouble.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Now, besides wanting to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, have you had anything else going on? Have you been seeing things? Hearing things?”

“Nope.” I’m not talking about the army guy. Same rules as with Dr. Barney.

“Do your parents know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, let me tell you what we can do for you, Craig.” She takes out her stethoscope, holds it in her hands, and folds her short arms. She’s pretty. Her eyes are serious and beautiful. “It’s Saturday, and on Saturday our best psychologists are here, the really good ones. I’m going to recommend that you see Dr. Mahmoud. He’ll be in soon, and he’ll be able to give you the help you need.”

I have a sudden vision of Dr. Mahmoud taking me into his office, a special shrink’s office within Argenon Hospital. It must be very pleasant and bare. There’s probably a black couch and a wide window and some Picassos. He’ll take me up there; we’ll have some emergency therapy; he’ll give me the kind of trick that Dr. Minerva has been unable to give me, effect the Shift, re-prescribe me Zoloft (maybe that fast-acting Zoloft!), and I’ll be on my way.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Now, you have to inform your parents about where you are, because when Dr. Mahmoud comes down, he’s going to need them to sign for you.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“No. I can do it.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Like two blocks away.”

“They’re together? They’re supportive?”

“Yeah.”

“Are they going to be okay that you’re in here?”

I sigh. “Yes. I’m the one who’s . . . not.”

“Don’t worry, it happens to a lot of people. It tends to be related to stress. Breathe for me, Craig.” She puts her stethoscope by my back and has me take deep breaths, cough, the whole deal. She doesn’t have to hold my balls, which is cool, because there’s no door.

I look out as she’s examining me. The black guy has a nurse leaning over him.

“Dr. Mahmoud will be down soon. Call your parents, please, and make sure they’re here within two hours.”

Two hours. Jeez. I’ve got to wait two more hours? “Gotcha.”

Dr. Data nods at me. “We will help you.”

“Okay.” I try to smile.

She heads out. I figure that, with the parents, I should get it over with as soon as possible. I flip open my cell phone. No service in the emergency room. I walk out of Room 22 to find a pay phone.

Chris rises from his chair.

“Buddy, hey, I told ya, ya gotta ask me for things. What do you need?”

I turn and look at him, eye his badge and nightstick. I realize what he is now. He’s not there in general or for the ER; he’s there for my protection. When you come into the hospital with a mental disability, they put a cop next to you so you don’t hurt yourself. I’m on like, suicide watch. You want to commit suicide, you call 1-800-SUICIDE; you get suicide watch.

“Ahm, I have to call my mom.”

“Not a problem. Phones are right there. Dial nine.” He nods.

The phones are like, three feet away. But Chris puts his hands on his hips and keeps close watch as I pick up a receiver.

eighteen

Hi, Mom, I’m in the hospital? No.

Hey, mom, are you sitting down? Eh.

Mom, you’re not going to believe where I’m calling you from! Nah.

“Hey, Mom,” I say when I hear her groaned hello. “How are you?”

“Craig! Where are you?! I just—you just woke me up and you aren’t in bed! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you at Aaron’s?”

“Uh . . .” I suck air through my teeth. “No, Mom. I’m not at Aaron’s.”

“Where are you?”

“I, uh . . . I really freaked out last night, and I was feeling really bad, and I, um, I checked myself into Argenon Hospital.”

“Oh, my goodness.” She stops, hitches her breath. I hear her sit down, exhale. “You . . . are you okay?”

“Well, I mean—I wanted to kill myself.”

“Oh, Craig.” There’s no crying, but I hear her put her face in her hands.

“I’m sorry.”

“No. No! I’m sorry. I was sleeping! I didn’t know!”

“Please, Mom, how could you know?”

“I knew you were bad, but I didn’t realize. What did you do? How did you get there?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t do anything. I used your book.”

“What, the Bible?”

“No, your How to Deal with the Loss of a Love book.”

“Survive. How to Survive the Loss of a Love. Wonderful book.”

“It recommended calling the suicide hotline number in there, and I did.”

“Is that this sheet of paper by the phone?”

“Yeah, you can throw that away. They said, you know . . . if I was feeling like I was in an emergency, I should come to the emergency room, and I put on my shoes and came here.”

“Oh, Craig, so you didn’t do anything to yourself?” She pauses.

“No, I checked myself in.”

I hear her breath catch and I think, in my house a few blocks away, her hand is on her chest. “I am so proud of you.”

“You are?”

“This is the bravest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I . . . thank you.”

“This is the most life-affirming thing you’ve ever done. You made the right decision. I love you. You’re my only son and I love you. Please remember.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“I thought I was a bad mother, but I’m a good mother if I taught you how to handle yourself. You had the tools to know what to do. That is so important. And they’re going to be great over there; it’s an excellent hospital. I’m coming right down—you want me to bring your dad?”

“I don’t know. It might be good to just have as few people as possible, if possible.”

“Where are you now?”

“In the emergency room. They want you to sign some forms.”

“Where are they taking you?”

“To talk with this doctor, Dr. Mahmoud.”

“And how are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Like the whole thing is unreal. I didn’t really get any sleep last night.”

“Oh, Craig—if I had known . . . I didn’t know . . .”

I smile. “I love you, Mom. I have to go.” Chris is looking at me.

“I love you. I’m so proud of you.”

I hang up. My mom seems happier about me getting into the hospital than she was about me getting into high school.

I turn to Chris and notice that the room next to him, Room 21, is now occupied. A black guy is in there, sitting up on a stretcher. He’s bald, but not shaved-head bald—old bald with thin white hairs in a halo around him. His face is unshaven; his arms lie on his legs at cross-purposes. He’s skinny, in sweatpants and a white T-shirt covered, from the neck down, with an unidentifiable dark stain. He turns his head toward the wall and I see a scar running from his ear down to his neck. Then he turns back to me. The only thing you can say for him is that he has all his teeth, and they’re white, and he’s smiling.

I slink back into Room 22 and return to watching the guy with the dreads. He’s not writhing anymore; apparently the nurse gave him what he needed, because he’s sitting up, eyes closed, pants rolled up to his knee, scratching everything—his lower leg, chest, face—mumbling and swaying. His scratches are light and don’t seem intended to actually relieve any sort of itch. He rocks back and forth at a slow rhythm that fits in with the beeps, and opens his eyes about a quarter of the way every minute.

Maybe that should be me. If I were on drugs that good, maybe I wouldn’t have time to get depressed. It’s heroin, right? That’s what I need: some heroin.

But I reconsider. First of all, it’d be pretty tough to ask my friends: Hey, who knows where I can get heroin? They’d think it was a joke. Plus it has the worst nicknames: “horse,” right? How could I ask for “horse” with a straight face? And, if I were doing heroin, then I’d be a depressed teenager on heroin. I didn’t need to be that cliché.

“Want some breakfast?” Chris asks, and before I can say no, one of the sad yellow trays is pushed in at me. The tray has a half pint of what appears to be oatmeal, a hardboiled egg squished into a lidded Styrofoam container, a coffee (I can tell, because the lid is stained with coffee), a foil-topped cuplet of orange juice, and a piece of wheat bread individually sealed from the elements. Also a fork, spoon, knife, salt, pepper, sugar. It disgusts me. I have no interest in any of it. But they might be monitoring me, so I open the bread and force myself to eat it strip by strip, chasing it with orange juice. I ask one of the nurses for a tea and she brings me another coffee. I sniff the coffee but it smells pretty dangerous, so, just to annoy him, I offer some to Chris.

“Got my own,” he says, and holds up a popular worldwide brand of coffee. It’s strange to see brand names in the hospital.

As Chris yaks on his cell phone (I’d like to know what company gives you service in here; they could like, use it on a commercial: a guy behind padded walls, “Can you hear me now?"), Dr. Data comes back with forms for me to sign about my age and residence. She also brings forms to the older man next to me, the one in Room 21.

“How’re you doing, Jimmy?” she asks in there. She has to talk very loud.

“I toldja: it come to ya!” he yells back in a succinct Southern voice.

She makes a tsk tsk noise. “How’d you get back in here, Jimmy? We didn’t think we would see you for a long time.”

“I, I, I woke up, and the bed was on fire.”

It’s pretty clear at this point that Mom is going to be late. She’s probably trying to pack me an activity bag. I should really get some sleep. I crash on the stretcher with my hoodie draped dejectedly over my head, but there are way too many thoughts in my brain. What am I going to do? It’s starting to hit me under there. I’m in the hospital. I’m supposed to do stuff tonight. There’s a party—a big one—at Aaron’s house. Am I going to be able to go? And if I don’t go, what will I say? And what’s the alternative? Will I stay home and try to work but not be able to and end up with another sleepless night? I can’t have another sleepless night.

How do you know when you’ve hit bottom? Real bottom involves being on the street, I think, not in a hospital. But the Cycling is starting and I can’t deal with it and it feels like bottom. I sit up, throw the hoodie off.

“Can I use the bathroom?” I ask Chris.

He leads me past the chatty Hispanic patients to a chrome-and-tile bathroom that’s probably seen some bad action. He stays outside. I look around and muse at how I would kill myself in here if I really needed to—I’d have to crush my head in the toilet seat. Ouch. I haven’t even seen that in a horror movie. I look at the toilet and decide to stand. I’m not going to sit down like the world’s beaten pup anymore. I stand, push hard, wash my hands, and step out.

“Wow, that was quick,” says Chris.

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.

“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.

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.