Lithium, Chptr. 22 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.
Mel found himself in a small room connected to a corridor, both haunted by the wayward energy of the mad and delusional. The walls glistened with whitewash, but Mel knew what lay beneath that thin coat was the lives and work of prophets and shaman, cloaked in paperwork and diagnoses to hide truths that could bring the happy-go-lucky world to its knees. And now he was one of them. It was his turn to make his mark, to add a layer to the walls that would be so potent, so profound that they would have to call the cleaners to cancel his thought.
A bulbous, heavy woman read a magazine behind Plexiglas, three sets of concentric holes separating her from him, and he knew that nothing of value would get through those holes. Mel stood there in front of the window and felt the surge of flame from his soul glow orange to blue, sparks of white and red kicked up by his tempest. He launched it at her as if but for the briefest moment he could enlighten her heart and align it to his own.
She turned the page and blew a pink bubble without an upward glance. He stilled his mind, putting his focus between his eyes and formed a baby cosmos and watched it grow, galaxies passing between neurons, iron-rich, earth-killing asteroids coursing through arteries and leaving craters in capillaries. He fashioned a black hole in his stomach and swallowed interstellar gas. When it was done and he saw that it was good, he opened his mouth and let out a cry that spoke of all the life in his cosmos, one word.
“Hey.”
The woman behind the Plexiglas tore her eyes from the paper and rolled them. Another bubble. Another pop.
“You need something?”
“I need my son. I need my wife,” he said. “I need my brush.”
“Sir, the people who dropped you off can’t come in here. Only patients can come in here. And I have no idea where your brush is, but if I did, I couldn’t give it to you nohow.”
“With my brush, I could open up the walls. Anywhere you want to go, you can step out of your glass and walk there. A mountain. Paris. Third planet of the seventh sun in the Andromeda galaxy – anywhere.”
“Sir, I know this will be hard for you, but please sit down. The doctor will see you soon enough. Just watch TV or read a magazine.”
Mel grabbed a seat and tried to sit still, but he didn’t have it in him. What he did have was octane that he needed to burn off. He decided to walk the corridor down and back, his eyes on the Plexiglas, his mind on his jailer. Her eyes were back on her magazine. He wondered from what stock she came that she could see the bounty and mind magic that permeated the structure and have it all pass her by, she none the wiser. Who could sleep to a stereo at full crank playing experimental jazz? She could.
Mel’s mouth was dry, but he couldn’t ask for water. Water was control. Water was an admission of frailty. He had barely eaten in days, and had drunk from faucets outside, and then only ravenous gulps. His eyes burned. If he did get water, he might very well splash it in his eyes to extinguish them. It was control that they didn’t put a water fountain in the corridor. The soda machine was a diamond dealer to a pauper.
Mel ended his pacing where it began.
“Can I have water?”
She pointed to the corridor. “There’s a soda machine right there.”
“Is it free?”
“Nope.”
Mel turned his pockets inside out and realized that, in that room, for the first time, he hadn’t a cent to his name.
“Hold on, give me a minute. I’ll get you some water.”
Mel went back to the corridor, wishing he had a watch, or that there was a clock on the wall, the absence of which was even more control. Mel walked and ruminated on the fact that the room he was in was designed to make anyone on his side of the glass helpless. Unless, of course, they had money to grease the soda machine.
Mel guessed a minute and went back to the Plexiglas. She looked up at him.
“It’s been a minute. I gave you one. Will you give me water?”
“It’s going to be a minute.”
“It’s been a minute.”
She got up from her chair and set the magazine down. “If I get you water, will you be quiet?”
“Are there conditions for water?” Mel said. “What are the conditions for bread?”
“I don’t have to get you water, you know.”
“I don’t need a brush to beautify the walls.”
“I don’t respond very well to threats,” she said.
Mel placed his hands on the counter. “You don’t respond very well to anything.”
She sat back down and picked up her magazine. “It’s going to be a minute.”
Mel continued to pace the corridor, trying each of the three doors it contained. They were all locked, but he tried them each time he walked by them. If she wanted to treat him like he didn’t exist, he’d become a poltergeist. He’d try doors and tear apart the magazines and turn the TV to a static channel. And he started to, but as he was halfway through his haunt, a tall, thick man with plastic, clear-frame glasses and a stethoscope around his neck called out, “Melville Miller?”
Mel walked up to him like he was Jesus in a lab coat.
“Come on in, we’ll talk,” he said.
Mel walked into an examination room with a paper-lined clinic bed with four cuffs, top and bottom on each side. Mel knew they were restraints.
“I’m Doctor Weiss,” he said as he shut the door. “Let’s find out what’s going on with you today, get you feeling better.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Mel said.
“Sure.”
Mel hopped on the bed, pressed his palms into the paper.
“Can I get some water?”
***
The man staring back in the bathroom mirror was unrecognizable. Mel knew it was him, knew it on the same level that he knew it was early in the morning and that there was a hallway beyond the bedroom door. But he couldn’t recognize himself. He was above, below and beyond himself. The figure in the mirror was only the center point, an anchor around which his many forms orbited. He struggled to pull those forms together, which needed to happen for him to move.
There was a shit in the toilet that he couldn’t flush. It wasn’t too big, but he knew if he flushed it, it would go down the pipes and into the sewer, and eventually into the nearest river, where it would pollute that body and unleash a plague upon the people of L.A, He couldn’t do that, couldn’t be the bringer of death and pain to the people of Skid Row who always lived among death and pain.
It was five a.m.; Mel knew it in his bones. But he was groggy still from the boop last night. That’s what they called it in Albany the last time he was in the hospital and got one. The shot that makes the energy melt away. Last night they forced him to sit in a chair in front of the nurse’s station when he was first brought upstairs. They dispossessed him of his shoelaces and his belt, cuffed his arm and checked his heart every fifteen minutes. He knew it was fifteen minutes, because this world ran on fifteen minutes. Then the boop.
He woke up groggy, but the fire still burned in him. He had to keep moving. He had to keep dodging the void. And if he walked enough, if he paced enough, he could earn Andy’s freedom. He could earn Hope’s release. The void would give him what he wanted; it was the rules of creation.
Mel held it together enough to leave the bathroom for the bedroom. A lump in the bed next to him told him he had a cellmate. His cellmate came with a tribute; the dresser was piled high with clothes. Red clothes. Brilliant red clothes. Mel thanked him and said a blessing for him on behalf of the dimension he presided over right then. The void wouldn’t get his cellmate, and this would be a start of his prep to get his life back. Then he started trying on the shirts, marveling at each one, admiring the fit. His cellmate had to know he appreciated the gift.
“What the hell are you doing in my clothes, man?” He said with sleep and anger in his voice.
“I’m trying on your gifts,” Mel said. “I love them.”
“They’re my clothes. They’re not your gifts. Get ‘em off before I beat your ass.”
Mel took the shirt he had on off, folding it carefully to appease the gods displeased at his transgression.
“But I made you a blessing,” Mel said. “I’ll have to take it back now, and I haven’t had to do that yet.”
“Just shut the fuck up,” his cellmate said. “It’s too early.”
“Five o’clock is the best time,” Mel said. “Everything starts anew. No matter what you do the night before, once five o’clock rolls around, you get a fresh start, and the wall you painted on the day before gets whitewashed. You really need to try this morning with me. I can teach you so many things.”
His cellmate threw the blankets and got up, letting out a grunt as he opened the door and went for the hall. The light poured in, the light that was never extinguished, the light that had shone on madness and epiphany over the years and brought the tortured to reason. It burned Mel’s eyes that had only hours before felt heavy lids and REM.
A beautiful young woman came in, curly, flowing blond hair and black wireframe glasses. Large eyes, light in color, though he couldn’t make the color out in the shadow of the doorway.
“Mel, Bill said he’s unable to sleep. Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you need something?”
“I need breakfast,” Mel said. “I haven’t eaten in days.” Mel felt odd saying it, but it was mostly true. Soup was drink, not food.
“Breakfast isn’t until seven o’clock. Can you wait until then?”
“Can y’all talk about this outside the room? I’m tired.” Bill said as he found his bed, got in, and threw the blanket over him.
“How about we go out to the nurse’s station and talk.”
Mel followed her out into the hallway. Her nametag said Amanda. Mel tried to figure out the origin of the word Amanda so that he could talk to her spirit, but he couldn’t because he was, despite his inner flame, exhausted. The boop was no joke.
The nurse’s station was a chest-high version of the Pentagon with a side removed. It was that in look and in function, as the nurses were constantly in battle with the void and its sister, the chaos, which Mel had under control with sigils he’d long ago tattooed in his arm. There was no tattoo to subdue the void, for it was too vast. The only thing more plentiful than nurses and sphygmomanometers and stethoscopes was paperwork. Paperwork was the real war, and even at that hour, three nurses were engaged in combat.
Amanda held up his chart. “So you got a shot of haloperidol last night,” she said. “My, that should’ve kept you out till this afternoon.”
“I am tired, but I have things to do.”
“Okay, what things?”
“I have to save my son and my love,” Mel said. “I need to walk to do it.”
“You need to get better before you can do anything,” Amanda said. “Based on what I see, you go back out there now, you’ll just end up back here… if you’re lucky. Worse could happen.”
Amanda let him walk with her as she checked on the other rooms. She told him what the general schedule was and asked him about Andy and Hope. Mel tried to tell her, but he knew he wasn’t saying what he meant. She listened to him, though.
After rounds, she took him to the dining room and gave him a turkey sandwich that the staff had stashed away in a minifridge behind the counter.
“We give these to people who are hungry and really need something,” she said. “There’s pints of milk in the dining room fridge. We can’t give you sandwiches all the time, and you have to promise me that if you have this, you’ll go back in your room until seven, and you won’t talk to Bill or try on his clothes, okay?”
Mel tore into his sandwich. “Not talking is hard.”
“Try,” she said. “And the first step to getting better is admitting you have a problem, even a small one.”
***
There was something in the morning meds. In fact, there were many things in the morning meds, and Mel had no idea what any of them were. Amanda told him most of it was the meds he was taking before he went off, with a few extras. So it was in one of the extras that his wiring seized.
He was fine until lunch when he started to drift as he contemplated his mashed potatoes. He wanted to examine their molecular nature, and no sooner had he thought that than his head was heavy, and he nearly gave himself a gravy baptism. He woke up and turned his attention to the television, on which a meteorologist discussed a return of the spring temperatures. Mel tried to compare the average high in L.A. to what it might be in Albany, and he nearly passed out again.
As he got up and walked around, his attention was drawn to the paintings on the wall, and as his mind began to take off, it was grounded. He was filled with rage. He was scared. He asked the nurse on duty, not Amanda, what was shutting him down.
“You’re starting on so many meds right now,” she said. “It could be any of them.”
“I’ve been on the other meds before.” Mel wanted to say more, but his head felt heavy, and he didn’t want to hit the ground.
“Yes, but you’re starting them again,” she said. “When was the last time you started them?”
Mel thought about it and his mind spun out.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. It’ll just take time.” She checked his chart. “You have a meeting with Doctor Sellers at two o’clock, in a couple hours. He’s the psychiatrist. He can tell you more about your meds.”
“Okay.” Mel walked away, wanting to say more than “Okay,” but not being able to.
He spent his time walking up and down the corridors. They branched at right angles from the nurse’s station and were about a hundred yards long. Mel was guessing that, and it was draining to guess.
He went everywhere he was authorized to go, even taking a shower because he could, and because he hadn’t taken one since he dipped in the pond with Hope in Nashville. It was cold, and the pressure could’ve cleaned graffiti off concrete. When he was done, the clock above the nurse’s station read one forty-six.
There was a man waiting near Dr. Sellers’s door as Mel set upon the spot to wait himself. To call him a man was being generous; he likely had just graduated high school. He had a new growth mustache and jet-black hair, clean cut except for a long, braided tail jutting out from the bottom.
“What’s up, dude?” He said. “I’m Bill, but everyone calls me Critter.”
“My roommate’s name is Bill.”
“Then just call me Critter, Crit, whatever. Both work.”
Mel wanted to talk to him, tried to let him know of the void and the interdimensional portals painted over in every wall of the hospital, but every thought came at the cost of exhaustion.
“You going to see the doctor?” Mel finally spit out.
“Yeah. He’s a prick,” Critter said. “He’s not at all 420 friendly. I mean, I ain’t askin’ for any, but you even mention weed, or that you ever did it, automatically you’re a junkie. He’s even against coffee. Fucker brings a twenty-ounce cup in, says it’s decaf. The fuck it is. No one needs twenty ounces of decaf.”
“No they don’t.” Mel said, taking a deep breath to pass the wave as thoughts bubbled up.
“You came in last night, huh?” Critter said. Mel nodded.
“They gave you the Poke, didn’t they? The shot?”
“Yeah,” Mel said. “The Boop.”
“Never heard of the Boop. I can tell you ain’t from here. Gotta be New York.”
“Albany.”
“I spent time in Brooklyn.” The door opened and a very tidy, almost neurotically tidy man with a combover stepped in the doorway.
“Come on in, Bill,” he said. “And you,” he motioned to Mel. “Just go in the day room. We don’t want people hanging around this door. For safety.”
Mel walked into the day room thinking Critter was right. Fortunately, the room was empty. Mel found out that they were required to go to groups that occurred throughout the day. He didn’t have to because he was new. Or because he was, until that med kicked in, disruptive.
Mel fell asleep at a table and awoke to Dr. Sellers patting him on the shoulder. Mel followed the doc into the office, which was as tidy as he was. It was also bare of any decoration. Sellers started by asking the standard battery of questions. Did Mel feel like harming himself? Did he feel like harming others? Was he hearing voices? Mel could honestly answer no to all. Then he opened with, “So how do you feel today?”
“Can’t talk,” Mel said. “Can’t think.”
“According to the intake notes, you came in manic with delusions. Full psychotic break. We were able to get your records from Albany, and we are starting you on the same meds you were taking. Why did you stop taking them?”
“Couldn’t afford them.”
“Are you on Medicaid?”
“Yes-, but no,” he said. “Had a job before.”
“And you were on their insurance?”
“No, quit. Months ago.” Mel started to drift.
“Mel, I need you to pay attention,” Sellers said.
Mel got angry, frustration like a friction against his gears. “You did this… to me.”
“I’d say you did this to yourself.” Doctor Sellers flipped a page on his clipboard. “You’ve had bipolar for a long time, according to your records. And you had a manic episode in… 2006. And you went so long. So you stopped your meds and it came back.
“What are the odds that you take the steps to keep on your meds once you leave here?”
“I don’t know,” Mel said. “Homeless.”
“Yeah, that’s on here too. Do you have anyone at all that looks after you?”
Mel wanted to tell him that it was he that looked after his son, and Hope needed no one to take care of her. But they weren’t there and the thought of them threatened to drive him to dream right there in the chair.
“No,” he said.
“In that case,” Doctor Sellers said. “All we can do is patch and pray.”
More from Liam Sweeny…
