Processing
Photography: Elīna Arāja
“Give me the blanket,” the nurse demands. The room is small and dark except for a brightly lit white stall.
“But I don’t have any clothes.”
“That will just make this easier. Give me the blanket and step into the stall.”
“Naked?”
“Yes, naked. I have to check for contraband.” Amelia shrugs out of the bloody wrap and stands nude in the middle of the stall. The nurse stuffs the blanket into a large plastic bag and sets it to the side. “Face me.” She puts on a pair of latex gloves and steps into the stall with Amelia. “Arms up.” Amelia raises her arms. The nurse checks her underarms and the underside of each breast. “Arms down.” Amelia complies. “Now squat.”
“What?”
“Squat. Some people hide things in their private parts.” Humiliated, Amelia squats. The nurse shines a flashlight between her legs. “Okay, stand back up and turn around.” Tears well in Amelia’s eyes. “Squat.” She squats again and the nurse, businesslike, runs a finger down the crack of Amelia’s ass. A tear runs down her face. “Alright, you’re safe,” the nurse says, taking off the gloves. “Step on the scale, please.” She writes down Amelia’s weight, then measures her height. “Now give me your ring.”
“My engagement ring?”
“Yes. No jewelry allowed. We’ll keep it with your other belongings here in the processing room, tagged with your information, and you can have it back when you’re released.” Amelia pulls the ring off her finger and hands it to the nurse. She drops it into the bag with the blood-stained blanket, then copies information from her clipboard onto the bag with a black Sharpie. ::silence:: There is a tanline on Amelia’s ring finger. Chris. The nurse shoves the bag into a cubbyhole.
Amelia shivers. “Are you going to give me scrubs to wear or something?”
“Scrubs? No, you can hang yourself with scrubs. You get a safety gown and a pair of socks.” The woman rifles through a stack of neatly folded cotton. “What size are you?”
“Four.”
“Four… four…” she mumbles to herself as she goes through the clothing. “Here we are.” She puts it on Amelia and gives her a once-over. “Good enough.”
“Do you have any underwear?”
“You don’t get underwear.”
“What do you mean I don’t get underwear? That’s not sanitary.”
“It’s not safe,” the nurse replies. “You hurt yourself, this is what you get: no bra, no underwear, no sleeves, no strings.” Amelia wipes the tears from her face. “We’re done here. I’ll take you to your interview and I’ll see you again when you’re discharged. Put on your socks. Let’s go.”
4th of July
Photography: Nataliya Vaitkevich
Amelia, wearing a threadbare hospital gown fastened with Velcro, sits facing a two-way mirror. The bright white room is freezing cold, buzzing with fluorescent lights. Soundgarden's dark, distorted metal is loud in her head. I could easily throw the chair through the mirror, she thinks. Not ‘4th of July’ anymore. No freedom eagle shotgun noose. The irony grates her nerves like Chris Cornell’s voice. Stripping paint off a baseboard – Bubbling – Blistering – Suffocating. Amelia is staring at Mirror Amelia. Mirror Amelia is beckoning with false promises. Smash it and use the shards to slit your throat. They glare at each other.
The music dims when two nurses enter the room. They’re wearing identical red scrub pants and have brought their own chairs. The younger nurse is shaped like a potato; the second has greying hair. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The Jabberwock paints a grimace on the back of her teeth.
“So…” Tweedledee checks her chart. “Amelia. Why are you here?”
“Why did you try to kill yourself?” clarifies Tweedledum.
The twins’ song from Alice in Wonderland starts playing in her head and the nurses’ movements take on a dancing quality.
“I think about killing myself every second of every day. I masturbate to thoughts of killing myself or being murdered. I’m having all kinds of impulse control problems from spending too much money, to injuring myself, to eating more than a thousand calories a day, to angry outbursts in class. I get inconsolably upset for no reason and often find myself standing in the hallway weeping without knowing why. The other day I seriously considered killing myself just because of a ticking clock.” The nurses stare at her. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Wait for what?” honks Tweedledee from her bright red nose.
To shoot off half my face and set myself on fire to get the plastic skin – The folded magazine-gloss Saran Wrap. It always sticks to itself. To bake my feet into shoes and my breasts into armor.
“Death.”
Tweedledee clicks her pen. “Please answer these questions truthfully. Have you intentionally hurt yourself before?”
This is the least comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in. Let it be known that this day, in room 204 at St. Thomas Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, I, Amelia Adams, experienced the world’s least comfortable chair.
“Yes. I used to burn myself to prove to God that I was worthy of redemption.”
A chair of broken glass and sticks would be better.
“Turns out I wasn’t.”
The cartoon on the left scribbles. “Ever used any drugs?”
“Alcohol and marijuana; that’s it.”
On fire, even.
“Tell us about that.”
“I drink on weekends and started smoking weed about two years ago.”
“You didn’t start at a young age?”
“No. My dad is a cop and I wasn’t the rebellious type.”
“Father is a police officer,” she says under her breath while writing the note. “Do you have a history of physical abuse?”
“No.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“Never.”
“Did you have a plan for your suicide or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?”
“I’ve dreamed about it for close to a decade. I decided on it over a year ago. I’ve planned it for about six months. Then I just… couldn’t wait any longer.”
Tweedledee scribbles. Amelia listens to the song.
“Have you ever been told you have a mental condition?”
“Does being told I’m possessed count?”
Bloody cross. GUILTY! You fucking sadist! You fucking death cult god-head—
“How have you been sleeping?” asks Tweedledum.
“I get up at five a.m., work six to nine, class ten to four, then rehearsal six to ten. Then homework after the train ride back. Usually three to five hours. But I’m not tired; I just naturally don’t need a lot of sleep.”
“Any disordered eating?”
“I thought I could starve myself to death but it was taking too long.” Tweedledee frowns and makes notes. Aulus Cremutius Cordus starved himself to death. A Gregorian chant begins, dissonant against the background of Soundgarden. The vocal cords – See the vocal cords. Enter – Get inside, see the inside. Would the heart be warm? slipstinkslickshit Would her eyes roll into whites and reds, soft and terrified behind CoverGirl lashes?
Tweedledum pipes up, “Did you only restrict or did you binge and purge as well?”
“Restriction only. I think bulimics are hypocrites.”
The nurse circles something on her paper. “What about invasive thoughts or racing thoughts?”
“Yes.”
“When? What about?”
“Right now. All the time. Mostly music. And cutting my eyes out of my face; the sound of popping them in my hands makes me cringe, but I obsess over it.” She mimes the motion with her fingers. Take out the eyes! “Cutting up the face. Something shattering into my face and doing the equivalent.” Exploding windshield. “It’s compulsive, now. I see an iron and I think about burning myself. I see a lamp cord and I think about hanging. Every object I encounter, I scan for its potential to harm me. Also, I hear and see things sometimes that are not really there. And sometimes think things that are… not true.”
“Do you ever hear voices?” asks Tweedledum.
“I can’t really describe them as ‘voices.’ They’re more like very specific, unique perspectives that appear as loud thoughts, but they all seem to be Me. So I have all these perspectives; some agree with some, some disagree with everyone, and some are cowards who can never make a decision. They hate my favoritism, so a lot of decisions I put into the hands of chance. Like the other day I was walking to a pottery museum and one part said, ‘You’re tired, you should take the shortcut,’ but then another was like, ‘Shortcut? You’re a fucking fatass. There’s no way we’re taking a shortcut,’ so my main perspective decided to walk in the opposite direction of the old lady in front of us and that settled the matter.” You’re still a lazy piece of shit. “It is NOT as if I am thinking over the problem or considering other options. It’s as if I’m in a room full of people arguing.”
Amelia pauses.
“I can almost always tell the difference between the voices in my head and the real world. But some are malicious. Sometimes I hear whispers and curses when walking down the aisle at the grocery store, and figures hulk in the corners of my mind, telling me to tear out the eyes.” DESTROY THE EYES! “Plus things like hearing the doorbell ring, even though we don’t have a doorbell. Telephones. Seeing bats flying at my face, mailboxes that move, reflections that don’t. There’s this crow that follows me around. I can’t taste my food and I spent three months convinced I was pregnant with a dead fetus. Everything looks two-dimensional and the constant music can be very distracting.”
“You’ve mentioned music twice. What music?” honks Tweedledee.
“You know, the music you can hear in your head. Sometimes mine gets too loud and everything else gets drowned out. The worst part is the earworms.” It's instant.
He’s got the whole wo-rld / in His hands /
“Fuck! I’ve gotten one stuck in my head just by thinking about it!” Amelia puts her fingers in her ears and hums the I Dream of Jeannie theme song.
Duh DAH / in His hands / Duh DAH / in His dat-dat duh / Duh DAH, DAT da dat-dat da DA! / bum-bum bum bum / Bum, bum-bum
She opens her eyes with a look of relief.
The Tweedle Twins are baffled.
“Any major life changes recently?” asks Tweedledee, turning to the second page.
“No. Well, I’m getting married soon, but we’ve been dating since ninth grade so that’s not really ‘recent.’” Chris. Eight years of memories flood her brain. Sew the mouth shut.
“Any absenteeism from work or school?”
“Yeah. I failed out of most of my classes this semester because I couldn’t sit still long enough. Lost my scholarship. And I quit my job by throwing a glass at someone who demanded a no-foam cappuccino.”
Tweedledee makes a mark on the paper. “Any reckless behavior?”
“I guess.”
“Like what?”
“Like…”—the images flicker into Amelia’s mind in a rush—“speeding down the highway at night with my headlights off; driving behind trucks with poorly secured ladders for miles just in case one falls off and crashes through my windshield; walking around bad neighborhoods at one in the morning when I can’t sleep; plugging in appliances soaking wet.” She smiles, humorless. “Flying AirTran.”
Tweedledee scribbles. Amelia imagines using the pen to stab herself in the neck.
“When was the last time you felt happy?”
“I guess about nine years ago? I had a wonderful childhood but when puberty hit, everything changed.” Repent! Repent! Beg God’s forgiveness for your nasty thoughts and wickedness! “Everything in here,” she taps her temple.
“Are there times you feel like you have more energy? Are more creative? Have a higher sex drive?”
“Yes, but I don’t feel happy. I feel dangerous and out of control.” Tango on the dance floor. Guns – So many guns – Shoulda got a gun.
Tweedledee keeps up the line of questioning. “And how long do those feelings usually last?”
“Months.”
Tweedledum nods and writes. “Are there periods of neutrality between these episodes?”
“If feeling like a robot counts as neutral, then yes. If you mean not wanting to die, then no.”
Eeeevvvvvvveee… hisses the serpent.
“Tell me about your hygiene.”
“Sometimes I shower once a week and go for days without brushing my teeth. Sometimes I shower three times a day and brush my teeth til my gums bleed. It all depends on my mood.”
“And your sex drive?”
“That varies, too. But I still have sex with my fiancé even when I don’t want to because it’s not fair for me to take my feelings out on him.” Tweedledee makes a sound of disapproval.
“Last question, then we’ll get you a room. How are you spending your spare time?”
Amelia stares at her bandages. “Reading, running, skateboarding, playing with my dog, playing the piano, writing, listening to music, sitting on the floor of the shower until the water gets cold, watching faces move in the marble… Anything to take my mind off it.”
“Interesting. That’s a wide range of leisure activities.” They take turns signing the bottom of the clipboard. “Thank you for talking with us, Amelia. Please excuse us for a minute.”
The twins bounce out of the room on big rubber bottoms.
‘In His Hands’ plays in Amelia’s head again. She considers the importance of the Jack-in-the-box when vomiting. Coulrophobia. Everybody’s clown.
He’s got the whole wo-rld /
The loneliness that comes when you’re in a room full of people
in His hands /
and you are so mentally devastated that you can’t entertain anyone
He’s got the whole wo-rld /
or even find the volition to ask for a glass of water
in His hands /
so certain you are that you will get a glass of milk, instead.
He’s got the whole wo-rld /
Everyone else has the gift of speech but they only stare at you in your incapacity
in His hands /
and wait for the punchline.
He’s got the whole world in His hands
‘Do something interesting, Amelia!’ ‘Say something interesting, Amelia!’
Everybody’s clown.
Only Tweedledum returns. “We’ll get you set up in the secure ward. There’s a group movement session going on right now, then dinner, two hours of free time, then lights out. You’ll see the doctor in three days.”
“Three days? That’s when I’m supposed to be discharged!”
The nurse pauses with her hand on the door. “You’re a high-risk case and you will stay here for at least two weeks.” She opens the door so Amelia can step into the hallway with her, then locks it behind them.
Music References:
He's Got the Whole World in His Hands - Laurie London (public domain)
Perhaps you survive to write thing like this for others. It's obvious, from the comments, that some find comfort in your (excellent) writing. There are worse reasons to live than helping others.
And that's only those who comment. You never know how many are listening in silence.
Wow, helluva read