Things were just crumbling around me. Sitting in this waiting room, looking at the gray walls. I'd been here before. My dad used to work here. So the looks I was getting from some of the staff? Maybe they remembered me. That nurse, the one with the spaced teeth and the nice smile and the gray and blond hair? She's the one I talked to that day I met my dad at the hospital and she talked about boarding school. So he'd told them I was at boarding school. What was he supposed to say?
"Look, Joey, can we just go home? I just-I don't want to be here,"
He gave me that sad look, that 'this is for your own good' look and I knew he wouldn't take me home. I could feel the dirt on me from days of being outside, of sleeping in these clothes. I wanted to go home and take a shower and sleep in my bed. I didn't want to get locked up in a psych ward.
"Please, Joey? Okay? I'll be good, I promise. I'll-I'll stay on my meds, okay?"
I licked my lips and waited for him to say no in whatever wordy convoluted way he would say it. I kept looking up whenever people walked in. I kept hearing all the other conversations. I kept thinking of Ashley. Thinking of Skinny hitting me and kicking me. Thinking of Joey and Caitlin fighting and maybe it wasn't exactly about me but I didn't help.
"Craig, listen. I want you to get help. You need help that I can't give you. It won't be for long, probably not as long as the first time, but you need to see the doctors. You need to…get help,"
I knew he wouldn't give in. So I sat there waiting, both of my legs bouncing up and down. I couldn't sit still. I wanted to get up but didn't think Joey would let me. He was keeping an eye on me, ready to grab me if I moved. My thoughts were going so fast, some of them I could only catch the tail end of, like a comet streaking by. My dad used to work here. That was weird. My mom died here. I was crazy here. Jesus, was that fucked up or what? I wondered about Ashley, what she was doing. Maybe she was meeting some other guy, the one with the English accent.
I thought about the song for the Kevin Smith movie and how it had seemed to be going okay, until Spinner screwed it up. He said he wouldn't call Joey. I was supposed to do that song with Ash, but she took off. I almost wanted to cry, remembering standing at her house as she drove away and said, 'see you in September,'
"Joey, please can we just go home-"
"Craig. No," It was like he was yelling but he wasn't. He said it very quietly and very pissed off. I hung my head. I was pissing him off. I'd try not to ask him again but I didn't want to be here, couldn't stand it here. I didn't want to be back in the psych ward and didn't see why I couldn't just take the stupid medicine at home. What was the difference?
"Craig?" Someone called my name, and Joey nudged me like I didn't even know. I stood up and went through the door by the receptionist's desk, left Joey there in the waiting room.
I'd sort of been through this before, when I first got diagnosed as bipolar. I blinked, thinking how similar it was. Except this nurse was different. She had a stethoscope around her neck and she wore little white leather sneakers.
"What happened?" she said softly, and indicated that I should sit on the examining table. So I hopped up on it, sitting on the white sheet made of paper. Swung my legs and kind of kicked the bottom of the thing with my heels. Rocked back and forth a little. I had so much energy, I couldn't help it. I had to move.
"Craig?" she said again, and I looked up at her.
"What happened?"
"What?" I said.
"Your lip was bleeding, your eye is swollen…what happened?"
I touched my lip where Skinny hit me, it was sore. Touched my eye. It felt all puffy and watery. My dad never hit me in the face, he didn't. He kicked me though, and punched me but not in the face. It was worse with my dad, though. It wasn't like I could fight back. I was younger. And he was my dad. I mean, c'mon, I couldn't hit him or anything. The closest I ever came was shoving him outside that restaurant the night he died. Shit. He died that night. I could have taken Skinny, I was sure I could have. Except I didn't. He sort of won that fight.
"It was a fight," I said, looking down.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?" she said, and I shrugged. I didn't like to admit being hurt, getting hurt. It was embarrassing, like so many things were. Like Ashley asking me if I took my medication in front of everyone.
"I don't know," I mumbled, kicked the back of the exam table. I wanted to go home. I wasn't in the mood for this. I was hungry, dirty, I felt like shit.
She listened to my lungs and I jerked away a bit when she put the stethoscope thing near where Skinny kicked me. Then she took vital signs. I sighed. This was just the nurse. Then I'd have to talk to the doctor and then the psych guy and maybe they wouldn't admit me. Maybe they'd say just go home with Joey like I wanted to. I'd have to try and act really normal. Nothing was wrong. So I ran away, no big deal. So some homeless idiot beat me up. So what?
I wouldn't like ramble on to any of them about anything, that manic shit. No. I'd just be quiet and good and whatever so I could go home. Now the doctor came to see me and he was talking about getting x-rays since Skinny kicked my ribs and maybe he broke them. I rolled my eyes. The doctor was this kind of young guy with wavy hair and a wide smile. He looked sort of tired. He looked like maybe he had been sleeping in an empty exam room and they had to wake him up to come and see me, like they did on "ER".
"Look, I'm fine. I really am. I just want to go home," I said, and he looked at me like that might not happen.
"Craig, you ran away, right?" he said, glancing at some papers in his hand.
"Yeah,"
"And you got in a fight, and you're bipolar and haven't been on your medication in some time, right?"
"Yeah," I felt all defeated. It sounded bad. It sounded like I'd never go home.
"So just get the x-ray and talk to the mental health guy and we'll go from there," he said, and I saw the dark circles under his eyes and wondered how many hours a week he worked, wondered how many fucked up mental patients like me he saw. I'd heard once that ER s are filled with people with heart problems and mentally ill people.
I had to wait around a while for the x-ray. They left me alone, so I laid back on the crinkly paper sheet and swung my legs and thought about Joey being out in the waiting room. Who was with Ang? Maybe Caitlin. Maybe Emma. I didn't know. I remembered that Joey had Emma stay with Ang when him and Sean came looking for me when I ran away that time in ninth grade.
I'd been sort of avoiding thinking about Ashley. I'd think of her a little bit but then think of other shit. Ashley. I thought things were going so well, I mean I really thought that it was going well, and that things were okay. I had no idea she was getting like, that she had to get away. Always worrying about me and the meds and my moods and all of that. She couldn't handle this bipolar shit, and she didn't even have it. In the hospital the first time she said we weren't over, and I believed her. But it was basically over right then. It changed. Everything changed. I stopped being her normal boyfriend and went to being the psycho boyfriend she always had to save or something.
