Hotel California

Where the Sunbeams End: Chapter 11

Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash

I was escorted to Winchester Medical Center and then transferred to a mental health facility in Staunton, Virginia known as Crossroads. It was early morning when I arrived. Two female nurses went through the intake procedures. I was wearing an old gray sweater and a ragged pair of jeans. The nurses asked me to undress and put on a dark green hospital gown. I began undressing, but quickly realized I had no boxers beneath my jeans. 

“Hold on now,” said one nurse. 

The two of them held a blanket up for a bit of privacy as I stripped down, and then proceeded to help me into my gown. I was then handed a pair of hospital socks; the ones with the little rubber bumps on the bottom to prevent any slips. Once dressed, I was shown to my room down the hallway. 

My roommate was awake as I entered. A bearded man in his mid-thirties. I was on my way in, while he was waiting to be released that day. 

The rooms were small. Two beds, a window where I could see the sun breaking across the tree littered skyline, and a bathroom in the corner of the room. A doctor in his white coat arrived promptly, first discussing my roommate's imminent release, before turning his attention to me. He didn’t say much, but simply stated that I was bipolar before handing me a small turquoise pill. I hadn’t the slightest idea about what it meant to be bipolar, in my mind I was on a sort of religious or spiritual quest. I popped the pill and chased it down with water from the small white paper cup. 

“That hit quick,” I muttered. 

Breakfast was brought to me sometime later. I poked around at my food alone in my room until a nurse came. It was time for group, she explained. 

The facility was relatively petite. Bedrooms on one side and offices on the other. In the center was the nurses station along with other rooms for group meetings and a carpeted pathway went around this island of sorts. The nurse led me from my room to a doorway off of this center island. She turned the metal handle and ushered me in. The room was full of unknown faces, some in gowns like my own, while others wore street clothes. The counselor welcomed me and pointed to a chair to the right of the doorway as the nurse retreated and closed the door behind her. 

As I took my chair I glanced to my right, catching the brown eyes of another patient who quickly looked away. She was in her own clothes, a t-shirt and jeans, her dark hair cut short above her shoulders. 

I’ll always remember that first glance that Judith threw at me. It may have been the same way my mother first looked at my father. That knowing in a woman’s eyes. 

We hit it off, a kind of innate understanding between us. We’d set up chairs outside one of our rooms and sit and just talk and joke. Imagining that we were somewhere else. 

I spent more than a month at Crossroads. I was a textbook case according to the doctors. Bipolar I with psychosis is my official diagnosis. New drugs were tried each day it seemed, just in an effort to bring me back down from my manic psychosis. Some days it felt like I was literally carrying the cross around that carpeted pathway. My athletic body weak and tired, barely able to take each step, yet unable to sit still. 

My parents came to visit once and I had what I imagine was a panic attack. There was a patient who wore a mask. The kind we would all be wearing in ten years time as Covid-19 spread throughout the world. I touched this man with the mask on the shoulder and felt as if something had been transferred unto me. Not a sickness, but all of his worry, anxiety, and fear. I suddenly had a difficult time breathing, so retreated to my room. My parents were alarmed as I was visibly distraught. I stripped off my clothes and turned on a cold shower. My breathing slowly returned to normal, but still I pulled the emergency cord which hung near the faucet. The doctor and my parents stood outside the bathroom asking questions I can’t recall. I then walked out naked and embraced my mother. 

I watched the snow come and go as the days slowly drifted by. Judith was released and that’s when I really understood that I was locked up, with no idea about how to get out. I started to question what I had even done to be stripped of all rights and kept caged like a bird. I hadn’t hurt anyone or broken any law. And then I thought of what I had done, those years ago. My first love and the lie that I still lived with. 

Somehow through all of my delusions and psychosis I remembered my old girlfriend’s phone number. I called and confessed. It seems silly now. To have worried so much about teenage angst and love triangles, but I felt a weight truly lifted from my shoulders as I hung up the phone with Meredith. I could finally move on.