Agorafabulous! (18 page)

That night, I tried to go to sleep. I had the ne plus ultra of college dwelling-places, a dorm with its own private bathroom. I’d decorated the place with swaths of brightly printed fabric, art prints I’d salvaged from the recycling bin, and loads of books. It was a peaceful little sanctuary, and I loved it. Yet I couldn’t fall asleep.

I miss Carl,
I thought.
I really, really miss Carl
. I meant it. But why did it hurt so much? After all, he and I had gotten on each other’s nerves a lot. Karen, Chauncey, and Dylan thought we were awful for one another. And quite frankly, they had a point.

Still, I couldn’t stop thinking it.
I miss Carl. I miss Carl. I miss Carl.
I miss Carl and I want to die.

Whoa! I sat bolt-upright in bed. Where had
that
old thought come from? I didn’t want to die! I had a nice life. I had good friends. I loved my school. My family was healthy and reasonably happy.

I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.
There it was, over and over again. I turned on music to block it out. I’d gotten into bluegrass since moving to Asheville, and if anything could cure this little funk, it was banjo.

I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.
It wouldn’t let up. I spent a solid four hours trying to get that bad old thought out of my head. I took a shower. I did jumping jacks. I cracked open a textbook for once. Nothing helped. If I’d been a drinker, I might have drunk the pain away. Maybe I would have passed out and woken up the next day with an awful headache and the strong conviction that liquor and Carl were both bad news. That might have been a tidier conclusion to this story. But that’s not what happened.

As time wore on, I felt as though my heart had been ripped out and pounded. I felt lonely and frightened. What if I’d made the wrong choice? What if nobody else would ever love me? What if Carl got together with another girl?
I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.

I guess I’d never felt real heartbreak before, or at least not since high school—and that had been over five years ago, more than enough time for a heart to un-learn how to deal with the end of a romantic relationship. Sure, I had done the dumping, but that somehow made it more confusing. Why did I feel so bad if I was the one who had ended things? I must be going crazy. Was I going crazy again? Oh, no. I couldn’t go crazy again. I just couldn’t. Things were working out so well.
I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.

Finally, at four
A.M
., I dug up the R.A. manual we’d all been given at training a couple of weeks before the school year started. I flipped to the part about mental health emergencies.

“If a student expresses a persistent desire to hurt him- or herself, or a desire to commit suicide, notify the Dean of Students and take the student to Mission Hospital’s St. Joseph Campus. Doctors there will be able to determine whether to admit the student to the Copestone mental health care unit. The Dean of Students will immediately notify the student’s parents or guardians.”

If I were my own R.A., what would I do? In this case, the student (me) didn’t express a desire to commit suicide, exactly. But some crazy voice in her brain sure was expressing a strong desire to die. Was it worth splitting hairs over terminology, considering the student’s history of mental health crises? I decided it wasn’t, and called Karen.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded sleepy and muffled.

“Hey, Karen, it’s Sara. I think I need to go to the emergency room. I think I’m going crazy again. I can’t stop thinking about dying.”

“Okay,” Karen said simply. “I’ll be up in a sec.” She knew about my history and why I’d dropped out of my old college, but I think she would have reacted the same way if anyone had called her with that announcement. Karen just had that kind of cool head under pressure. You could tell her that a giant carnivorous dinosaur was eating all the cattle down on the farm, and she would’ve casually picked up the phone to call Animal Control. And she would’ve already had the phone number memorized, too, just in case something like this ever came up. She was always prepared. Today she has two master’s degrees and a sweet job as some kind of grand social work queen. Back then, she already displayed the right attitude for that kind of high-stress job.

She got to my room and said, “So you want to go to the ER now?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You should probably pack some stuff.”

“Like what? Clothes?”

“I mean, bring a change of underwear in case they put you in a gown. Your toothbrush, a wallet, any prescriptions you have. Bring the phone numbers of the people you’ll need to contact, like your shrink.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. I threw a few things in a bag, and then she drove me to the ER in her lipstick-red, biodiesel-fueled pickup truck.

We put my name on the list and sat down. Even the hospital waiting rooms in this town had comfy rocking chairs, apparently. Karen read a
Southern Living
magazine. After I filled out and handed in my medical history chart, I found the inevitable
Highlights
issue hiding beneath the grown-up periodicals. It turned out Goofus and Gallant had been up to pretty much the same shtick since I’d last made their acquaintance. I was partway through a pretty awesome maze when the intake nurse called my name.

She was a thin middle-aged woman with big, curly, dyed-blond hair, a thick mountain accent, and those permanent lines chain-smokers get around their lips from all the years of pursing, sucking, and blowing. Her nametag read
MAYBELLE S
., I assume to distinguish her from the other Maybelles wandering round the place.

“Okay, Sara,” Nurse Maybelle S. said. “You been taking your Prozac on schedule?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Two years of living in the South had taught me that “ma’am” wasn’t just for female police officers and complaint-line staffers.

“You feeling good physically? No cold, no nausea, no fever, no nothing?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your period’s normal. You don’t think you’re pregnant. You have a history of depression, panic attacks, and suicidal thoughts.”

“That’s right, ma’am.” She made a few notes and then looked me square in the eye.

“Now baby, what’s going on this morning?” she asked. “You just tell me how you’re feeling, and we’ll do our best to sort it right out.”

I told her everything, starting with the breakup (“Well, you can’t be with a man who just isn’t right for you. Believe me, I been to that rodeo about as many times as they’d let me go”) and ending with the whole wanting-to-die thing.

When I finished, she took a big bag of gummy bears out from her desk. Then she shook several out into a tissue and gave it to me.

“We’ll have you see the doctor, just in case,” she said. “But honey, brokenhearted and crazy are two different things. I’ve been both, and if we had more time I’d tell you tales to make your toes curl. And I’m glad you came in to be safe, but I’m thinking what we have here is a heart that needs mending.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. Nurse Maybelle S. nodded emphatically and popped a gummy bear into her mouth. Then she told me about her third divorce, which in her opinion bore certain resemblances to my situation with Carl. We had a real nice time sharing her gummy bears and talking about guys until the next sick person showed up and she had to excuse herself to do her job.

I sat back down with Karen until Nurse Maybelle S. came over and told us we could go back to wait for the doctor in an exam room. We were met at the door by a social worker, who walked us into a little private room that I guess they kept for potential psych patients. She said apologetically that she’d be by in a few minutes, but had to complete an evaluation with another patient next door.

Karen and I sat and talked shit about some of our teenage residents for about thirty minutes. Our foxy, tattooed friend Talia showed up to join the party, with food she’d smuggled from the school cafeteria. Karen left to start her shift at her day job, and Talia and I had a fine time reading old magazines and listening to the other potential psych patients freak out.

My next-door neighbor, the one who was taking up the social worker’s time, was a girl around my age. I saw her briefly when she ran out of her little waiting room and past the open door of mine. She was a brunette like me, and short, but her hair was messy and her clothes were rumpled. The social worker went after her and then gently walked her back to her little room.

“They’re trying to kill me!” the girl shouted.

“You’re safe here,” the social worker said reassuringly.

“That girl is seriously nuts,” Talia whispered. “I think that’s why they’re taking so long to get to you. She’s higher on their list of priorities.”

“I guess the squeaky wheel gets the lithium around here,” I said. We giggled.

“Do you want to die anymore?” Talia asked.

I paused. I actually hadn’t thought about dying for at least an hour.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I think I have to stay now and, like, explain that to them.”

Being friendly types, Talia and I commenced getting to know the nurses and orderlies on the floor. Apparently Talia frequented the same bar as two of the male nurses, and they got into a long discussion about whether or not the bartender was actually on the run from the mob. I gave one of the female nurses the Cosmo Sex Quiz of the Month and we cackled at how stupid it was.

The dean of students, my psychiatrist, and my psychologist called to check on me. I spoke to each of them in turn, assuring them that I was going to be okay, and apologizing for waking them up. Then came the call I’d been dreading.

“Hey, Sara,” said one of the nurses. “It’s your mom and dad.”

“Are they freaking out?” I asked.

“They sound fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

I got on the phone, more nervous than I’d been in forever.

“Heeeey, guys,” I said uneasily. “I guess school called you.”

“We think you should come home today,” Mom said. “We’ll get you a ticket. Can your friend drive you to the airport?” She didn’t sound fake-happy. She sounded sort of normal, with a tinge of worry. I started to cry.

“Are you mad?” I asked, sniffling.

“Why would we be mad?” my dad asked.

“I don’t know. I just feel like I’m backsliding.”

“Honey,” my mom said. “Breakups suck.”

“But they shouldn’t land you in the hospital. I just feel like a crazy person, or a loser, or something. I shouldn’t even be here. I just got scared when I couldn’t stop thinking those bad thoughts again.”

“We’re glad you went to the hospital,” my dad said. “Hey, it was the middle of the night. If it was during the day, you would’ve just gone to your doctor or your therapist. But you were scared and you didn’t want something bad to happen, so you went. That’s a good thing. That’s smart.”

I started crying harder.

“Sweetie, why are you crying?” my mom asked.

“Because you’re being so nice to me,” I sobbed, gulping down air.

“We can be assholes if you want,” my dad said.

“No, thank you,” I said.

I blubbered some more before getting off the phone.

Talia was having such a good time that she decided to skip class and stay.

“I mean I’m here to support you, but also this is kind of fun,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

The social worker finally got to me after I’d been at the hospital for about three hours. She was joined by a tall, strikingly handsome doctor with a square jaw and an odd resemblance to a generic Disney prince
.
Except, you know, not a cartoon.

“Hello, Sara,” he said in a deep, manly, superhero voice. “I want to thank you for coming in. You did the right thing. Have you made a plan to do yourself any harm?”

I looked at Talia, who was stifling a snort and miming a blow job behind his back.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said. “Marla here will put together a plan for self-care with you. We’ll have you sign it, and then you’ll be released.”

“Totally awesome,” I said, and Talia made a sound somewhere between a cough and a squeak.

“Good luck,” he said, and swept out of the room to save some other damsel in distress.

Marla the social worker and I worked out an agreement that I handwrote and signed. I found it in an old shoe-box last year.

I agree to call a friend, a family member, or a mental health professional if I have a future mental health crisis. My plan of care is as follows:

1. Continue to take Prozac as directed.

2. Continue to take Xanax as directed on an as-needed basis.

3. Go home to New Jersey today to see my family.

4. Drink chicken soup.

We added the last one when Nurse Maybelle S. stopped by to see how I was doing.

“Baby, you need to go home and let your mama take care of you,” she said. “And get you some chicken soup. Just take care of yourself the same way you would if you had the flu. Lots of liquids, lots of rest.” Marla and Talia both nodded emphatically.

“That sounds good to me,” I said.

“Don’t you forget the chicken soup, now,” Nurse Maybelle S. said before she returned to her post.

“I won’t.”

It took us awhile to get out of there, because we had so many new friends to alert that we were leaving. Talia told the guys she’d see them at the bar. On the way out, we passed my neighbor’s waiting room. The door was slightly ajar. She was still inside, crumpled up in a heap beneath a blue blanket. I wondered what she’d think if she knew I used to pee in bowls. I imagined she probably would’ve thought I was a real freak.

An orderly buzzed Talia and me out, and the doors opened with a great
whoosh
as we stepped into the Carolina sunshine.

“You wanna go to Waffle House before I drop you at the airport?” Talia asked.

“They got chicken soup? I never tried to order it there.”

“Yup, they do. Plus waffles.”

“Shut the fuck up. Waffle House has waffles?”

“Come on, my little rejected mental patient,” Talia said, opening the car door for me. “We’re gonna have us a fancy celebration lunch.”