I sat slumped in the chair in the ER next to Joey. My legs were stretched out, arms crossed over my chest. This just sucked. I could smell the hospital smell that made me feel so bad. It brought back all this shit. My mom dying. My dad. The first time I ended up in the hospital for this. This. I bit the inside of my cheek. This was never going away.
Joey would look at me from time to time, the patented Joey encouraging look. I wasn't thinking right, I knew it. I could feel it. The thoughts coming in these loose associations. That was the bipolar. The sick need for some coke, that was being a drug addict. I couldn't help blaming Ellie, although it wasn't her fault. She didn't make me do any of it. So she cared enough to call Joey, that was her crime? It was. I sat there in the harsh lights of the ER waiting room and wished she'd just left me alone.
"Craig Manning?" the secretary called after like hours. I stood up to go and talk to the guy, the mental health tech guy. I'd done this before, and now I knew what to expect. I'd done it twice before. There was the first time, that time I beat up Joey and didn't know what the hell was going on. I didn't really know anything was wrong with me then. I thought I'd just kind of lost it, just snapped. I mean, when Joey grabbed me like that that day because he didn't want me to leave, it just brought all that shit with my dad back to me and I couldn't take it. The second time was after I ran away and ended up in that shelter/soup kitchen. I kind of knew what was going on then, despite all that was going on. I knew I'd dumped my meds into the trash, I knew that I was feeling manic then. Acting manic. Whatever. And I guess I know now. Shit. But now I have drug addiction thrown into the stupid mix. Dual diagnosis, that's what they call it. I hate them.
It was a littler office and I sat in the chair that was up against the wall near the door. Joey stood in the doorway. The guy was behind his desk.
"Hi, I'm Doug," he said, shaking our hands, gesturing toward an empty chair for Joey. Joey sat down, and he had that serious look, that crumbling in concern look that I'd gotten so used to over the years.
"So, Craig, what's going on?" he said, and I felt the back of my teeth with my tongue. This was only going one place. I'd be locked up in the psych ward. I might as well get it over with.
"I haven't been taking my meds, well, I've been taking them once in a while, I guess. I mean, I haven't been taking them right, and uh, I'm kind of manic. Kind of. Yeah. And um, uh, I've been doing coke,"
That didn't feel good to admit. It felt like such a loser kind of thing. I mean, it was fine to do it in the bathroom stalls at some nightclub or on the coffee table in some record exec's loft, or in the spare bedroom at Ellie and Marco's house or backstage, but to just sit here and admit it? It sucked.
The guy, Doug, he was writing stuff down. Fine. They needed all of it for the files.
"You're on meds? So you've been diagnosed bipolar?" he said, and I kind of slumped back in the seat.
"Yeah," I said, and then Joey jumped in.
"He was diagnosed when he was 16, two years ago. We were in Toronto,"
Doug was writing down notes, nodding.
"Okay. I'll get on the phone to the Toronto hospital, which one?" Joey told him, and he nodded again, "I'll get on the phone to them and get his records, fax them up to the floor, see if they have a bed, so…okay,"
And that was it. More waiting. Then I'd have to go to the psych ward, and I sighed. I didn't want to go. I couldn't believe it. Shows and nightclubs and girls and music and things were so great and now here I was, under these florescent lights waiting to be shot up with all the drugs I was supposed to take and waiting to kick the ones I shouldn't have taken.