The following is another chapter of my manuscript of my novel Speak Up, that is still in development. Please feel free to read along and offer feedback if you wish. Please know that there is a paywall on these chapters because I value my art and if you want to read please give some support. Thank you!
The stripped and barren hospital room didn’t offer too much salvation for Mike. It wasn’t helped by the fact that every fifteen minutes a staff member opened his door to look at him and then leave as abruptly as they had shown up. At one point he tried curling up in his bed to sleep but with the daylight from his window he couldn’t doze off. Then his door was opened again but this time more than one person stepped in. The middle-aged man that TJ had welcomed walked in wearing just a gown and blue hospital pants with TJ following him.
“Alright then Daryl. I will talk with the doctor about those medications we discussed. This is your room and that’s Michael, your roommate.” Mike looked up as Daryl shuffled in and sat on the parallel bed, he didn’t give much attention to Mike and instead just looked down at the floor. TJ stayed by the doorway and said out loud,
“If you need anything than come up to the desk.” And then the door was shut and the two were in the room, alone but together. Mike didn’t know what to say as his new roommate looked around the room and let out a long sigh that said,
“Back again. I can’t believe it.” Then his smoky eyes took notice of Mike, and they seemed to twinkle as he spoke,
“Hey there, young man. I’m sorry I didn’t say hello before. I’ve not been feeling my best self,” He gestured at his attire, “hence why I’m here in B1. Michael, was it?”
“Just Mike.” Daryl sat forward and turned his ear to him while saying,
“I didn’t get that, must be my old age.” Mike sat up and found the marble notebook that TJ had given him. He wrote down what he tried to say in purple crayon and Daryl read it over,
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Just Mike.” A grin carved into Daryl’s face, and he asked Mike what brought him in. Mike wrote it down and he was getting sick of repeating his story to random people. Daryl read over the notebook carefully and followed up with,
“Tried to jump, did you?” Mike paused before shaking his head. Daryl just sighed and looked out the window before speaking,
“I’ve been there. I’ve had three suicide attempts since I was about twenty-one. Been in and out of places like this for most of my life. Still, better than some other places or the jails. At least here you get some decent food and people try to make you feel better. Is this your first time?” With a nod from Mike the grin on Daryl’s face turned into a warm smile.
“Well then there’s hope for you. You seem young and you write well enough so that tells me you’re smart. Do your best to stay out of this life, Just Mike. It’s not a good way to be, going in and out of psych units and getting your body filled with all sorts of medications.” Mike wrote down a question on his notebook and Daryl read it, then answered,
“I’ve been in and out of psych units because I can’t get my shit together on the outside. I guess I’m at my comfort zone when I get admitted. Outside is too…too…unpredictable. I get a few months, hell I once went for two and a half years without getting readmitted or arrested. But I just haven’t found a way to make my life work out on my own. I get depressed and either want to die or I turn to drugs. Lately I’ve been smoking that synthetic they got around this town, K2. It doesn’t show up on a pee test, so I can hold a job, but sometimes a bad batch of that K2 makes me trip balls and then I come out of its days later and get told how psychotic I was. I mean, pissing my pants and screaming nonsense in the streets and even trying to throw down with hospital staff. Me of all people, I’ve got not one violent bone in my body. Now I’m almost fifty-five and I’m still getting put in B1 or Rocky Shore’s CPEP again.” Mike asked what that was and Daryl told him,
“CPEP is like if an emergency department and a psych unit had a bastard baby. It’s just a step off from a holding pen in the jails. I would know, I’ve been in a few out here. But the worst you get in CPEP is shot up with meds or tied down to a bed if you act like an animal. Like all of these places they have strict rules. You follow them and you get out pretty quick. You fight with them, and you will have to get used to the walls around you. If the docs say that you aren’t ready to go then you don’t go. But it ain’t that bad. Don’t look too afraid there, Just Mike. The staff are good people, well most of them. Some people don’t treat their jobs with compassion, and they can be nasty. But it ain’t like twenty or thirty years ago when I was first getting admitted. Back in the eighties and the nineties it was much more of a rough atmosphere from staff. But even then, I knew some old timers from the days of the state hospitals; them asylums. Those places were horror houses. People getting beat up and tortured by staff and patients, being locked up for months and years. Now it’s not like that. They kick you out before you know it and throw a bunch of stitched together plans to try and keep you out of the hospital. But the system is not perfect. Hell! It’s barely functioning for most folks like me. But I see good people at the desk or out in the community, trying to make it work.” Daryl chuckled and sucked his teeth before saying to the window,
“They say it takes a village to raise a child. If that’s true, then what does it take to fix a broken adult?” Mike just looked at him and his mind was oversaturated with so much of what had been told to him. He had many questions but then Daryl got to his feet and went to the bathroom. Mike thought about what both Daryl and Asha had told him: To work with the staff to get out of here sooner. When the toilet flushed, and Daryl returned Mike wrote down in his notebook:
I’m going to the living room.
He gestured with his head for Daryl to join but his roommate shook his head and said,
“I need a few minutes to wait for some meds before I’m ready to mingle with the crowd.”