Cry Later, Laugh Now Pt 1

Suicide kills, unless you suck at it. Then it’s just embarrassing. I wish I could say I’m wiser since my attempt, but in reality I’m just older and twice as ornery.

If at all possible, though, I would like to at least tell other young women that I get it. I make no promises life will be rosy or summery or – God forbid – Real “House”-wifey, but it will be different. And when you’re in the hell that is suicide and suicidal ideation, any different is better.

Cry later, laugh now
By Brittni Hill

I stuck my tongue out at his back as he left the room. Go to Hell, I thought, rolling over. Nurses, doctors, and family had bustled in and out all morning, a fact I hated. I was stuck – pissed off at the whole world – and could do nothing about it. His annoying presence had just been the final straw, the piss in two day old Cheerios.

The question he asked repeated itself in my head. Disgusted, I grabbed the cup of ice (waste of a good background for whiskey, if you ask me) by my bed, whipped back over to face the door, and let it fly. The cup exploded as it hit the wood, and my anger dissolved a bit as the ice chips ran down the grain.

The legal representative came back in. Ignoring the mess at his feet, he walked into the room like a six year old cleaning up a broken lamp.

Guess who’s the lamp?

He had come in earlier, but I had no decision for him then, either. I don’t know what I had thought by asking him to let Kelton in, first. Perhaps I hoped he’d make me less crazy, or at least ease it for a while. That plan had backfired nicely, but so had a lot of plans I made of late.

The rep cleared his throat, summoning me back to the present. Oh, yeah. Apparently a very ominous ‘we’ was ‘seriously concerned’ with my mental stability.

Well, hell, so am I. I didn’t exactly get here by taxi, Watson.

Overdressed, underprepared, and clearly ill at ease, the man before me had stumbled through the legal consequences I faced for trying to off myself. He had also explained the hospital recommended my admittance to the psychiatric ward a floor above.  Now, he was back for the answer.

He walked around to the window to face me when I turned away.

“Have you made a decision?”

I cut my eyes toward him. “Yeah, I think it’s better this way. You know, his mother never liked me. Can’t imagine why.”

He shifted nervousely from one foot to the other, “That’s not what I-“

“I know what you meant.” I snapped.

He fell silent and began to grind his teeth. His chin, what there was of it, seemed in the middle of running away from his bottom lip, as though it had reached the jaw, seen his beakish nose and decided to call in permanently from a safer location.

I raised my gaze to his forehead. He closed his eyes, popped his neck and pretended to study his clipboard. Not even thirty, he already had a crop of doll hair planted shabbily in his scalp. Considering his lack of a distinguishable spine, it was obvious to me the hair decision had not been his. I bet the bottled tan was not, either.

A gold plated nametag on his white coat glinted under the light by my bed. I didn’t read it, didn’t care to know his name, because I knew him well enough without it. With squinty little eyes, he did not look at me but around me–like I obstructed his view of his safe, little world.

“Well, have you?” he asked, exasperated.

I rolled onto my back and remained silent. A psychiatric ward? Would the people be eating checkers and playing with shit? Banging their heads against the wall? Staring into space while some opportunistic lunatic drew a penis on their forehead? Actually, that last one sounds kind of fun.

He changed tactics, “On a scale of one to ten, how depressed would you say you are?”

I snickered. I had just tried to commit suicide. Richard Simmons, I am not.

“Listen, Brittni, you may go of your own volition or a judge will order it…”

“Wait, so I can volunteer, or I can be sent, correct? But I’m going no matter what, aren’t I?”

He nodded.

“Seems pointless, doesn’t it? Calling it voluntary?” I interlaced my fingers and slipped them behind my head.

The legal rep grinned like he was secretly passing gas and nodded, again.

There it was. I could admit myself or the system would do it for me. Damn, and that wasn’t part of my five year plan until after college.

Half of me wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. Get a court order, I don’t care! The more I thought about it, the more voluntary and involuntary become unbalanced on a scale in my imagination. On one side was me smiling as I flipped this man off, and on the other side was a potential employer sitting in front of me as I stammered, “Well, you see, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Back against the proverbial wall, I raised an eyebrow at him, “Can I smoke, at least?”

“Yes,” he cleared his throat and scanned the pages on his clipboard, “yes. Uh…smoking is allowed. Lighters and matches are not. They’ll be supplied.”

I sighed, “All right. Let’s get this over with.”

Given a thirty minute time limit to return under, I left with my mother and father. Since I lived a few blocks from the hospital, after packing I still had enough time to get a Whopper from Burger King on the way back. I ate the meal quickly in the hospital parking lot. With a defeated sigh, I tucked the wrapper and napkin back inside the sack and crumpled the entire thing into a ball.

On the way back into the hospital, I dropped the trash in a waste receptical, determined to move like molasses. The only thing which kept me from making a scene was the presence of my parents. I had made things hard enough for them as it was, and causing either to cry again would have been my breaking point.

So, the three of us rode up the insultingly normal elevators to the sixth floor psychiatric ward, each of us acutely aware of where I was going, but reluctant to voice the reality. My mother swayed from side to side as she stood next to me and patted my back, synchronizing the brief touch of her hand with the dinging of each floor we passed.

My father held his cowboy hat in one hand, thumb tucked into a pocket, and gripped the inside railing with his other. He looked everywhere but me, though I knew it wasn’t from shame. He simply was at a loss to confront my situation, as we all were.  I did not fault him for it.

As the sixth floor bell dinged, Mom stopped patting my back and smiled sadly. My father picked up my bag and started out into the small reception area.

I stopped him and tugged my bag from his rough, country-hardened hands and asked my parents to stay at the elevator and let me walk the rest of the way by myself. Luckily, I got no arguments, just a hug and a kiss from each.

Such a simple goodbye…way too simple and sincere for one of the ugliest situations I had ever put myself in. They really did love me, no matter what. And Jesu Christo had I abused the what in that statement.

I tried to smother the thought as I walked away, wondering if I should have let them accompany me. The ornery little bastard of a thought wouldn’t die, just kept bumping the back of my brain harder with each step I took, but the last thing I needed was for my parents to walk me into the ward like my first day in kindergarten.

Besides, the other patients might see, and then I’d have to find the biggest, meanest motha in the yard and take her out. Wait, that’s prison.

Wrong institution. Crazy people just eat paint chips and occasionally masturbate in public places, right?

Even at a distance, I could see the Authorized Personnel Only sign emblazoned across the entrance to the ward in blocky black lettering.

Heavy doors stood before me, doors that screamed No Entrance Sans Password!

Shoulder high on the right side wall was an enormous square button bearing the words ‘Push For Entrance’ written in red.  With a deep breath, I slapped my palm against it and waited to be admitted.

Password? Barkin’ looney
Access granted, me.

For a second as the doors swung inward, I considered running for the nearest emergency exit. Crossing the threshold would make me something different, something irrevocable.  I wasn’t like these people, but nobody would think so once I entered. One foot in the ward and I would no longer be myself; and I could already hear the gossip hounds-

You know what? Screw the gossip hounds. The flapping chatties ran their mouths when I grew breasts, ran their mouths when I was fourteen just to be assholes, and continued to do so until graduation.

The gossip hounds could get off my nipples.

I had a lot more juicy details about them than they had on me, anyways. Teachers, medical personnel, business owners, secretaries, neighbors…the truly funny thing is had I done what those individuals did and simply cheated on a spouse I could have lived it down in a matter of months.

Not so with crazy.

Infidelity is frowned upon in small towns, but never openly condemned. Half the time the ones frowning have been hitting the side skins, too.

Gossip was often just a reminder of the sins grapevine members all had in common, but struggled to hide. Each person fell off the grapevine when they were the subject and got back on when they were not.

Crazy, however, lingers like a scar. At any time, someone can bring it up decades after it actually happened as the go-to subject on the grapevine whenever gossip ran slow.

Well, hell, having been the subject so much, might as well make the Hall of Fame, right?

I stepped into the ward.

Welcome to the crazy side of the hospital. On the left we have the dining and entertainment area. We have quite a few guests at the moment.  You’ll notice they are all women, since women dial in crazy more often than men do. Just up ahead is the nurses’ station where you will meet the attendants for the duration of your stay. If you’ll just walk this way-

“Oh my goodness! You must be Brittni.” Such a cheerful voice could only belong to Satan himself, or a chubby woman named Debra who had a fetish for vintage 80’s stirrup pants.

Short, though still taller than me, Debra had a doughy, rectangular frame her keen fashion sense drew more attention to. A blue headband rested an inch behind her hairline, the back of her dark hair flipping out in a style reminiscent of Betty Rubble. She wore little makeup other than a nuclear pink shade of lipstick and a dull purple blush which clashed horribly with her floral patterned stirrup pants and red scrub top.

I struggled not to ask where she bought clothes or got her makeup. I mean, if the sales associates let her walk out of the store with this…who the hell were they being honest with?

Debra smiled and handed me a zip lock bag, saying, “Okay, Brittni, it’s nice to meet you. Now, you’re going to put all of your jewelry and anything you have in your pockets inside this baggy. You’ll get it all back when you leave. Now, you just scoot that hiney over to those chairs while I get you all set up, okay?”

I blinked, unmoving.

She pushed against my side with the back of her hand and repeated, “Scoot.”

The Debra must die. I absolutely hate to be told to scoot.

Realizing it was more of a command and less of a question, and Debra had big orderlies and I did not, I took the bag and stepped away and obediently took off all of my jewelry– while taking my sweet-ass time, of course.

Back behind the nurses’ station, Debra cleared her throat.

I smiled and gave her a crooked nod as I pretended to check for nipple rings.

She waddled from behind the nurses’ station and rested her arm along the top of the counter. Hand curled into a fist, she lightly punched her hip and her eyes narrowed above a wide, one-size-fits-all smile.

And they think I’m fuckin’ crazy?

In my head the theme song from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly began to play. I smirked.

I probably could have taken her, but I was pretty sure she had some hefty narcotics of the liquid kind in the nurses’ station; you know, not the sort you typically remember having had the next day, so it would be no fun getting stabbed in the butt with one.

Handing the bag back, I sat down a few feet away and dropped my things on the floor by my chair.

Satisfied, Debra trotted back around the counter. Pointedly ignoring me, she made a big show of rustling papers, twisting her mouth into various expressions I can only guess were meant to make it seem like she was thinking.

This Up the Anty game of ours was going to get really interesting before the week was over.

An hour later, she finally came out of the nurses’ lair with a clipboard and gestured for me to follow.

I grabbed my bag and followed her into a claustrophobia-inspiring room next to the nurse’s station holding a scale. Before my brain could say shut up, my mouth said, “You know, weighing suicidal whack jobs just seems like adding insult to instability.”

Debra wheeled on me with Chihuahua-like abandon, “Our patients are not whack jobs. They’re normal people, just like you or I. And they deserve to be treated as such.”

Whatever you say, lady, but one of us gets to go home at night, while the other has to stay behind locked doors that tell people on the other side to Keep Out. So, just which one of us does that make not ‘all right’?

Glancing down I caught sight of the hideous, floral-printed stirrup pants.

Oh, right. Stupid question.

The Debra set to her task, weighing me quickly and jotting down notes. How many notes you can take about my ass I do not know, but she filled out at least a page. Once done, she flashed another of her fake smiles and herded me out of the humility closet.

“Your room is on the left, three doors down. I need you to open your bag, so I can look through it all. You’ll meet everyone soon after, ‘cuz it’s almost dinner time and they’ll all be heading into the dining area shortly.”

“So, what’s next? You need to check my tampons to see if I soaked them in alcohol?” I asked as we walked to the resident’s rooms, which is my version of being conversational.

The Debra was not amused. Her narrowed eyes told me my bag was going to get the mother of all cavity searches. I mentally complimented myself for choosing one with so many pockets.

Search and seize to your heart’s content, heffa. Just don’t touch my faux-velour, bright red, lil’ devil pajamas. You really will see crazy, then.

Yeah… I don’t know why I brought them, either. It’s not like it’s a great place for potential romance. In fact, I cannot think of a worse place. Might as well walk up with your address handy and a letter of permission for the psycho to stab and kill you in your sleep. Then again, my mother had set me up with a suicidal pyromaniac the year before, so hey, there just might be an upgrade walking around in here.

Never know.

I mentally scanned over everything I had in the bag. I could remember nothing which might warrant removal, but who knew what was permissible to do or have in a psychiatric ward?

Debra made quick work of my belongings, setting aside my medicine, bobby pins (how the hell those get in there?) and razor. Damn, no sharp objects. Now, I’ll have to make a shiv out of a toothbrush.

Wait, that’s prison again.

“Here,” Debra said and handed me my cigarettes.

I had not even noticed her take the pack out of the baggy holding my jewelry.

“Everyone is about to have a smoke break before eating. The smoke room is just beyond the nurses’ station and elevator, straight down this hall. Feel free to go in with them. You might want this.” She told me in a dismissive tone, tossing a lighter towards me.

We can’t have razors, but we can have lighters. Yeah, that makes sense. Self-immolation is so last season.

Cigarettes in hand, I headed for the door. If she wanted to paw through my panties and jogging pants, she was welcome to it. It’d be the most action they’d gotten since…well, let’s not talk about that.

“Put the lighter and cigs in the basket at the nurses’ station when you’re done. You get fifteen minutes.” She called over her shoulder, her back to me as she held up a shirt and shook it. Finding no contraband or other illegal or inadvisable objects for a psych ward, the top crumpled as she dropped it onto the bed.

I left before she could touch the pajamas. It was just better for both of us that way.