Day Sixteen: Flood

The door clangs shut behind me and I am howling through my tears, barely able to see the orderly who is walking just ahead of me, carrying my two bags and leading the way to the place where I will be until....who knows when? The drive here and saying goodbye to Gray have taken all the fight out of me and now I am just a heartbroken shell. I cannot think of anything. All I can do is cry and I cry continuously as we get on the elevator, ride upstairs, and walk down the hall of the ward toward the nurse's station. I am bawling like a baby who is starving, cold, tired, and in pain. It is less cry and more wail and by all rights, I ought to be completely humiliated but I just don't care anymore. The pain of what I am feeling is so great that I am beyond caring about anything except leaving this place and being reunited with Gray and my children.

 We reach the nurse's station and the orderly puts my bags on the counter. I stand there crying and waiting for whatever comes next. The orderly gives my papers to a woman behind the desk and tells her who I am and that I am checking in. I cannot stop crying and whimpering.  How can this be happening? How can I be here? I want Gray! I want my children! Oh my babies! Oh God, what will Gray tell the girls? I want to go home! Oh God, please don't make me stay in this place. I can't do this...I can't do this...please, God, please. Please....

The woman behind the desk looks at me but I barely hear what she says to me. Suddenly, her words penetrate into my hearing. "Therese? Therese? You need to stop crying now." Stop crying? How can I stop crying? How can she ask me to stop crying? Can't seh see how much this hurts? My world is ending! Oh God, where are You?

I look at her and manage to say through my tears, "I....I....I....c-can't stop..crying....." and just in those four words another ocean within me crashes out of my eyes and pours down my face and I sob into my hands. These words are no mere dramatics. I am so heartbroken that I literally cannot stop crying no matter how much they may want me to stop. For the moment, they allow me to cry despite the desk woman's request that I stop.

As I stand there and cry, they begin opening up my bags and rifling through my belongings. The desk lady makes notes of various things and she takes my purse, slides a little blue band on one of the handles, and after telling me what she's doing with it, she locks it up in a cupboard behind the desk. My soft-sided makeup bag that contains my basic toiletries gets an identical blue band and is popped into a different cupboard behind the desk. Through my tears, I watch the books in my backpack and my Bible turned upside down and their pages rifled roughly. My pictures of my precious girls fall out of the Bible and flutter down to the desk. My heart catches in my throat at the sight of their smiling faces and I let out another loud sob. The desk lady looks up at me and says again, "You gonna have to stop that crying now..."

"I want to go home," I state as firmly as I am able, though my voice quavers with tears. I reach up and defiantly wipe at my cheeks as though to prove to them that I am strong enough to leave. For a few moments, no one says anything, so I repeat myself with a bit more conviction, "I want to go home...."

Another lady walks up. She has a look of authority about her. She glances at the desk lady who nods at her. Then she turns to me. "You signed yourself in, didn't you?" I nod mutely. "Well, in that case, you could leave, but since you're already admitted and under the referral of the folks at Green Tree, you'd be leaving against medical advice," she says to me. "Look, I know that you don't want to be here, but the thing is that you wouldn't be here if you didn't need this help."

"I want to go home," I repeat again because I feel as though no one is really hearing me. Even as I say this, my tears start afresh and these tears are not only born of heartbreak, but anger.

"I understand, I understand, but you'd still be leaving against medical advice and while you can do that, I wouldn't advise it. Most insurance companies won't cover a hospital stay if you leave without being properly discharged by a doctor," she says.

"I don't care. I want to go home," I reply, getting angrier by the moment. "I'll sign whatever papers I have to sign. I just want to go home," I add and my voice breaks with emotion, signaling my tear ducts to release another flood. I take a fierce swipe at the tears.

"You may wind up paying the full amount for your stay here though. I can get the papers for you, but I think you'd be better off to stay and let the doctor discharge you," she says and glances down at the papers the orderly handed to the desk lady. "You won't probably be here but a few days. It won't be so bad and then you'll feel better about it. I notice you're not on any medication. I have a feeling once you get some medication in your system, you'll be glad you stayed and got things a bit more stable.." she adds and I have to resist the urge to come across the counter and deck her one. I am still crying at this point, but some of the emotion that was clouding my mind when I first arrived downstairs seems to have dissipated a little with the anger. It is still there, just under the surface, but my anger has helped rein it in just a little bit. I just want to go home.

I sniffle and take a swipe at my copiously running nose with the back of my hand. "So if I sign the papers to leave, then I can leave?" I ask, my voice quivering.

She nods. "Yes, but not by yourself. You'll have to have someone come and pick you up. We can't just let you walk out the door alone." I realise at this point that Gray is likely halfway or completely back at Sif's place to pick up the girls.

"I'll call my husband to come get me.." I say, indicating a phone.

She shakes her head. "You can't use that one, but there's a phone in the dayroom through there that you can use once you get settled in," she answers. My heart sinks. I realize that by the time I am allowed to use the phone, Gray will have picked up the girls and gotten them in bed at the rate this is going. She turns her back for a moment and leans over to speak to yet a third lady behind the desk who is tapping away at a computer screen. That lady takes my papers from her and walks over to me and smiles.

"Hi Therese, I'm Linda. I'm the social worker assigned to your case and it looks like you've got, let's see here..." she looks down at the papers, "...hmmm...Dr. Hastings..but you won't see him tonight as he's already gone for today," she looks up at me and I am dumbstruck at how nonchalant she seems about all of this. "Why don't we go in here and talk for a minute?" she says and walks out from behind the desk and across the hall to a little room. I follow her in there, still wiping at my tears and sniffling and sit down in the chair she points to. I fold my arms across my chest. I don't want to talk to you about anything. "So, why are you here?"

Since Green Tree obviously sent over notes about me, I know that she already knows why I'm here. I don't want to repeat it for her. I just look at her for a long moment. She tries several different things to get me to talk to her about it and eventually I wind up telling her is that I don't want to be here, that I didn't want to come here, that yes, I've been depressed and even struggled with suicidal thoughts but that I don't need to be here. I tell her that I am planning to sign myself out and get my husband to come pick me up and after that, I refuse to tell her any more. She seems to accept this and says that if I want to talk while I'm here, just look for her. I say nothing. She tells me to stay there and then comes back with a nurse who takes my vital signs and pronounces that they're normal enough, although my blood pressure is slightly elevated probably due to crying. They speak to each other about me as if I am not in the room even though I am sitting in a chair less than three feet away.

After this, Linda tells me that Shawna, whoever that is, is going to take me to my room. Shawna is waiting for me in the hall with my backpack and overnight bag which are both now sporting a blue band like the others. Before we go down the hall, Linda stops by the desk and grabs something. It is another blue band but a bit larger than the others. She tells me she needs to put it on my wrist. Although I don't want to, I hold out my left arm and let her put the damned thing on my wrist. Still crying, I follow Shawna down the hallway. As I do, I finally really start to look around. The hall is painted a stark white over cement cinder block walls and the floor is a similar coloured durable standard issue hospital sort of flooring. The patient rooms on either side of the hall are mostly wide open but I do see some of them that look partially closed and curiously have what appear to be towels over the top of the door. The doors are as white as the walls and there is no colour anywhere.

We get to the end of the hall, stop, and Shawna enters a room. There are two beds, one of which is obviously taken already. The walls inside the room are painted a garishly bright mustard yellow and there are a pair of matching wooden bookshelves, the same yellow that are on opposite sides of the room beside their respective beds. Shawn sets my bags down on the bed and opens one up. She pulls out my clean underwear and shakes it so it unfolds and then unceremoniously tosses it on the bed. She does the same with each pair of underwear, my nightgown, my blue jeans (she checks the pockets of those too), my one pair of socks, my shirts, and Gray's t-shirt. She pulls out GB's baby blanket and looks at me, "What's this?" I almost immediately begin to sob at the sight of it.

"That's my baby girl's blanket...I wanted to hold it since I can't....hold..her..." I answer and sink down onto the bed, my legs suddenly feeling unable to support me.

"Well, you can't keep this. It'll have to be stored," Shawna says and puts it to one side. At this pronouncement, I sob all the harder. She ignores this, folds my overnight bag over and sits it to the side, turning her attention to my backpack. She removes all my books and turns each one upside down and shakes it so the pages quiver in their bindings. Again, my photos of my family fall out and land on the floor. She bends down, picks them up and hands them to me. "You can keep these," she says and puts the last book in the stack on the end of the bed. She reaches in the side pouch of my backpack and pulls out my little rosary pouch and the rosary that's inside it, tells me that I can't keep it and then puts it on top of GB's blanket. Finally, she pulls out my copy of Christian Prayer in its black, leatherette zippered cover. She looks at it carefully and unzips it. The rainbow coloured ribbons fall out of one end. She looks at the tiny gold cross shaped zipper pull that is smaller than my thumbnail. "I'm going to have to take this too. You can't keep this."

I look at her in surprise. It's just a book. Suddenly the anger returns and in desperation, I beg of her, "Please....please don't take that. It's just a prayer book. It's not anything bad. Please...."

I don't know if it is my pleas, the tears streaming down my face, or if she has second thoughts about how dangerous an item it really is, but she zips it back up and hands it back to me. "Okay. But don't tell anyone I let you keep that..." I nod my assent and thank her, clutching the book to my chest. "Okay you gonna have to put that down a minute because I gotta search you," she says matter-of-factly.

Me? She has to search me? She instructs me to stand up and stand with my arms raised out to the sides and my legs spread apart slightly. Then she pats me up and down. When she stands back up, I am relieved that it wasn't so bad and I am almost about to sit back down when she says, "Okay, now raise your shirt, pull your bra away from your body, lean forward a little bit and shake your bra." I am a thespian and have never been one to be terribly modest, especially around my own gender, but something about this causes the bile to raise up into my throat. I swallow hard several times and feel a fresh wave of tears pricking at my eyes. My hands shake, but I manage to comply with what she asks and when she says I can, I stand up straight again, resettle my bra and pull my shirt down. I am wholly unprepared for what comes next. "Okay, now stand with your legs apart, pull down your pants, grab the crotch of your panties and pull it away from your body and shake it for me," she says. My mouth goes dry and despite the fact that everything in me doesn't want to do this, I comply. When she gives me the okay and I have redressed, she proclaims that we are finished, takes my now empty backpack and bag, and exits the room without so much as a "see ya" or a backward glance.

I ignore the pile of clothes and books she has left on the end of the bed and lay down on it, burying my face in the thin pillow. I am trembling all over as I howl and wail and bawl into the pillow. I feel violated, betrayed, heartbroken, defeated, and totally abandoned. I am utterly and totally alone.