Chapter 6

Two seconds before the train struck him, Alvin stepped off the rail. He felt the rush of air as it barely missed striking him. He was sure he gave the poor conductor a heart attack, but at the time he was totally calm.

Truth is, though, he wasn't thinking about the conductor or how it would have made him feel if he had hit Alvin. He was hurting not just from the abuse at Dubnoff Center, but Dave's comment at his pain as well. He wanted out. He didn't want to live through any more abuse. He was ready to leave.

But at the last second something made him move. He couldn't even explain what it was. Because at the time he was happy to end his life, but he guessed God must've been watching out for him and had something more planned for his life. He just got back on his bike, went home, and went to bed.

Metrolink was always one of Alvin's favorite trains to ride down in the LA area. He liked to watch trains and airplanes so living in North Hollywood, going to the Burbank airport/train station was his favorite spot because he would get to see both airplanes and trains.

Later on the comment about the knife came up in therapy at the next session and the therapist walked Alvin out and chewed out Dave for his knife comment. Dave made a comment saying, "Just had to tell your therapist about that, didn't you?" Not that it did much good. Alvin didn't mention the train, though. He wasn't looking for yet another stay in Van Nuys Psychiatric. Enough damage was done already.

Because of the rough home life in addition to the abuse at school, Alvin often spent a lot of time away from home riding around on his bicycle. His thinking was if he wasn't home he couldn't do anything to get sent back to the hospital or anything else. He would go out on his bike as soon as he got home from school and wouldn't be back home until five minutes before the bedtime Dave had for him, which was nine pm.

Alvin's bike was one of those ten speeds. He often felt at home at parks and in nature. There were many close to where he was living in Glendale, but his favorite place to go was Griffith Park. The park was huge. Some of the attractions there were a horse riding trail, observatory, zoo, and Travel Town (in which children rode on 1/7th scale trains) just to name a few.

One of Alvin's favorite places to go in the park was Travel Town. The place had full scale train cars he could go inside of, a model railroad inside the building, and out back was a 1/7th scale ride on train that only cost fifty cents a ride, plus much, much more. He would go with five dollars and get hours of rides out of it.

He was one of very few sixteen year olds riding it, but he really didn't care what anyone thought. There, he could forget his life and just be like every other kid there, just having a good time.

There was the car accident while on the Dubnoff school bus. Bobby, who was Alvin's bus driver while going to Dubnoff and also one of the time out room staff, picked up the last kid that morning. The bus got to the corner of the street and after stopping at the stop sign proceeded to make his left turn.

That's when a car didn't stop and slammed into the left front side of the bus, causing the bus to tip onto the two right side tires as they drove along the car's bumper and then landed back on its wheels. The bus driver pulled over to the side of the street.

As expected, the kids were shaken up, and the boy they'd just picked up wanted to walk back to his house, but the driver didn't let any of the kids off the bus. Another bus was called and they were transferred to another bus and taken to school. They didn't even talk to Alvin about it, nor did they contact Dave to tell him Alvin had been involved in an accident. And because there was no call home, when Alvin tried to tell Dave, he was told he was lying. Dave told him had he been in an accident, he would have been called.

Alvin was being threatened of being sent back to the hospital by the time out room staff. He was in the classroom trying to do his math assignment. He was having some problems understanding the work and asked the teacher for some help. He was told to be quiet. He tried to ask for the help and was again told to be quiet and do his work. Without the help to understand the work he couldn't do it, so he quietly closed his math book and placed his head down on the table.

Because he wasn't doing his work, the teacher phoned the time out room staff to "come deal with Alvin." The staff came in and one of them knelt down next to Alvin's desk and told him, "You need to do your work." Alvin tried to explain the situation, but he cut Alvin off saying, "Do we need to call the people?"

Confused, Alvin asked, "What are you talking about?"

He told Alvin, "The psych ward people."

Alvin's heart began to pound in his chest. He jumped from his seat in panic and ran out of the classroom door as fast as he could. He was terrified of being sent back there. They didn't find him for over three hours. A teacher found him hiding behind a big bush. He was crying and couldn't stop shaking. He was so terrified of going back to Van Nuys Psych and being injured again. They had to call Dave to come and get him because he couldn't calm down.

Two days later, Alvin was back at school. The staff were told never to threaten him with the psych ward again and they didn't. Apparently, the psych ward punishment was reserved only for Dave's use.

A teacher asked Alvin to grade some work assignments. The teacher set him up on a chair outside the gym/lunch area, right across from the school's solitary room. Another bully at the school came out of the gym. He used the bathroom and then came over and tried to talk to Alvin, who ignored him. Alvin didn't want any trouble. When Alvin wouldn't talk to him, he became angry. He then turned around and went into the solitary room that was located next to the gym and closed the door.

The kid then began throwing himself against the walls while yelling, "Alvin, let me out! Why did you lock me in here?!" Several times Alvin told him to just open the door, that he wasn't holding it. Finally, Alvin stopped talking to him and just ignored him and continued grading the papers for the teacher.

A staff that was above them on the staff break patio heard him yelling and came down. The staff member looked at Alvin while he walked over to the time out room. Alvin was ignoring the kid and grading the work. The staff member opened the door to the solitary room and the kid came out with a bloody nose. The staff asked him how it happened and the bully told him Alvin hit him and locked him in the solitary room. The staff member looked at Alvin and said, "You're in big trouble," and walked off to the nurse's office. Alvin was driven home by Marshall, the vice principal. Marshall also was one of the other staff who worked as one of the time out room staff with Bobby. Marshall was a white male about in his late forties during this time.

Alvin went into the house to make some lunch. He was home just long enough to make some mac and cheese and sit down to watch some music videos when he saw the American Medical Response ambulance pull into the driveway. Because the ambulance use to take him to the psych ward during his childhood, he suffered from flashbacks and panic attacks whenever he saw them. Living in California, American Medical Response was a common ambulance company, so they weren't exactly avoidable.

Dave walked out to the ambulance and pointed to the alley. He had the ambulance leave and park in the alley until the mobile psych team arrived, as if Alvin wouldn't see them there. There was almost two feet of the top of the ambulance, including the light bar sticking up on the other side of the brick wall. Yeah, totally out of sight, Dave, Alvin thought, rolling his eyes. Before he had even gotten home, Dave had called the psych ward and told them Alvin was suicidal again, on top of other false things.

Alvin went into a panic attack seeing the ambulance. He quickly put on his shoes and went into the bathroom and tried to go out the window, but there were too many nails in the window sill from past guests using the room. He couldn't make it out without getting his clothes repeatedly caught on the nails, so he walked out the front door and began walking to the back of the building, saying, "I have to get something from the back."

Dave sent one of the guys he knew from next door to see what Alvin was doing. The second Alvin turned the corner, he began to run as fast as he could down the back side of the building, out the gate, and up the street. The guy ran after him and tackled him after they'd run past eight apartment buildings and brought him back.

From there, Alvin was taken inside and sat at the kitchen table and the guy stood right next to him until the psych team arrived. Every time he tried to close the kitchen door for some privacy, the guy would open the door again. He put on his headphones and listened to his music.

So the woman from the psych team arrived and asked Alvin why he wanted to kill himself. Alvin told her, "I'm not going to bother trying to explain anything since you're not going to listen to me. You're going to take me no matter what I say anyway."

"Could you walk out to the ambulance for me?" she asked.

Alvin refused to go.

The woman sighed and said, "If you don't get in the ambulance willingly, I'll call the police. They'll put you in cuffs and take you to the psych hospital that way."

Not wanting to be handcuffed, Alvin walked out to the ambulance. When he got out to the ambulance, he was told to lay down. The EMT then put on and tightened the light brown leather restraints. They stopped the ambulance just as they began to drive off when Alvin said he wasn't sure if he had insurance, but Dave cleared that up real fast and they took him back to the psych ward in Van Nuys.

Alvin was hospitalized for two weeks this time again at Van Nuys Psychiatric. A whole fourteen days. Not only was he sent for the kid's bloody nose that he didn't even do, but Dave talked to the woman upstairs. She said she saw Alvin and his brothers throwing knives at a wooden board out back, which was typical guy stuff. She told Dave that Alvin was throwing knives at his brothers, which never happened. Instead of Dave going to Alvin and asking him about what happened, or even asking Simon or Theodore about what happened, he called the hospital and told them Alvin was throwing knives at his brothers.

It was a weekend. Dave and his girlfriend were at work as telemarketers. Alvin and his brothers were home alone and bored, so they got six of the steak knives, two each, and they drew a target on a wooden board and they took turns throwing their knives at the board to see who could get closest to the center mark and win. No knives were thrown by either one of them until they were all three clear and out of the way. No one threw knives at anyone, and had Dave bothered to ask either one of them, he would have found that out. Why the woman next door would say such a thing, Alvin didn't know.

Alvin was under the impression that he had been sent there for the bloody nose incident. It wasn't until he got to the hospital that he found out why he was there. They asked the typical "Do you know why you're here?" Alvin never know. He always had to tell them what Dave told him to tell them.

When he found out, he was pissed off. Not only had he been sent there for the kid getting the bloody nose in the school's time out room, which he didn't do, but Dave had lumped on the knife throwing incident that actually happened more than two weeks prior, putting them both together. On the report, it was all made out that it happened on the same day. It basically said that Alvin gave a kid a bloody nose at school, then went home and threw knives at his brothers. Anyone reading such a report would think that Alvin was some kind of dangerous, psychotic bully. Both things happened at two different times, and neither one of the incidents had the true information, so things got bad for Alvin real fast.

After being checked in and assigned his room, Alvin went to the payphone and called Dave up to find out why he'd made the false report. He explained to Dave what really happened. All Dave had to tell him was, "If your brothers get taken away, I will never forgive you." Then he hung up.

It seemed that child services was investigating him for leaving Alvin and his brothers alone without supervision. They had the same report that said Alvin gave the kid a bloody nose and then threw knives at his brothers and they were looking into placing Alvin's brothers into foster care. Dave could've cared less what the hospital was going to do to Alvin over his false information. All he cared about were Simon and Theodore and if they went into foster care. Maybe he should have thought about that before he once again called the psych ward to get me admitted again, Alvin thought angrily. Going off of this information, child services felt Alvin was a threat and a danger to his brothers and were considering putting them in foster care. Alvin, on the other hand, was not allowed to return home . . . ever. Child services said due to the report, he was not to return home or anywhere near his brothers for any reason, that he was to remain in the psychiatric hospital until a suitable group home could be found. If one could not be found by the end of two weeks, Alvin would be transported to the California State Hospital in Napa, California and held there until a group home could be found.

As expected, Alvin freaked. Things were getting out of control fast, and all over things he didn't do. After Dave's comment about not forgiving him if his brothers got taken by child services, Alvin just lost it. He hung up the phone and began walking down the hall to leave. As one can imagine, he wasn't thinking clearly. He was crying and all he was thinking about was getting home and trying to fix things, even if that meant walking all the way home in his socks. Had he stopped to think, he would have realized a few things, the first being that he was in a locked psych ward. He wasn't going anywhere. Even if he did somehow make it out the two locked doors, he couldn't possibly walk over five miles in socks, shorts, and a T-shirt. It would tear up his feet. He couldn't take the bus without shoes, nor did he have the money anyway. Even if he got home, what could he possibly do? Not much before the police and ambulance would be there to take him back to the psych ward. His idea to go home and fix things was set to fail from the start, but he wasn't thinking straight. All he wanted was to be home and everything be all right. That wasn't going to happen, not now.

Halfway down the hall a male staff came up next to Alvin and asked him, "Where are you going?"

While crying, Alvin tried to say, "Home, to fix things."

Suddenly the staff member stopped walking.

Just as Alvin turned to see why, he was grabbed from behind and thrown onto the floor face-down. Then the staff member placed his right knee on Alvin's spine about midway down Alvin's back and applied his full body weight until he was lifting himself off the floor. There was a series of very loud cracks and then extreme severe pain that Alvin couldn't even describe. The staff member, doing what he just did had just caused a severe spinal injury. Alvin let out a huge scream from the pain. Other staff members assumed Alvin was just simply "going off" and came to help their buddy.

Alvin was unable to move. They picked him up off the floor and he was carried to a solitary room, placed face-down on the mattress, and injected him with some Thorazine. He was then turned over onto his back and placed in five restraints, not like they needed them. He was unable to move. The good thing about it was, with being knocked out by the Thorazine, he wasn't awake to feel the pain in his back.

Alvin didn't find out for another six years how bad the spinal injury was. He knew he hurt his back from the staff member, but he didn't know how bad. Not only did it cause the bed wetting to become more severe, but the pain got worse over the years. When he first got out of the psych ward, Alvin was taking Tylenol every four to six hours like clockwork for the pain in his back. He could have taken stock in the darn company.

Over the years he needed something more. When the injury was fully discovered by a doctor in New York he put Alvin on Vicodin. It was the first time that a good amount of the pain was taken away. Tylenol was okay, but the Vicodin allowed Alvin to actually have most of his movement back.

As the years went on, more medication needed to be added to manage the pain in his back. The back pain caused him a lot of discomfort. Even with the medication there was breakthrough pain, but at least with the pain medication the pain was tolerable. To top it off, any stabs of pain in that area directly triggered flashbacks of the event when his back injury occurred, forced to replay being thrown to the floor, the knee in his back, and then placed in restraints, over and over again.

It would be about twelve hours or so before Alvin would wake up. Sometime over the twelve hours, the staff came in and carried him to his room. He still wasn't able to move much, so he closed his eyes and stayed in bed for a while more. Then he tried to get up.

He was still in pain, but not as much as when the incident first occurred. Perhaps the sixteen or so hours of bed rest helped when the back swelled. He was no doctor, so he had no idea, but in that time, no one thought to do an x-ray or even a simple check up to check for damage. Nothing.

He managed to sit up and then stand using the foot board of the bed for balance, then he walked to the door of the room. He realized that during the time in solitary, they had assigned him to a different room, one room down from the nurse's station. By what happened earlier, he could understand why. They probably wanted to keep a better eye on him or something. Who knew?

At this time one of the staff members saw him up and told him to go to the medication window. He figured it was for some Tylenol or something due to the injury. When he got to the window the nurse handed him a cup with a pink liquid with the consistency of syrup. He said, "This doesn't look like Tylenol. What is it?"

"It's not Tylenol," the nurse replied. "It's liquid Thorazine."

He put the cup down and asked, "Could I have some Tylenol for my back pain?"

The nurse replied, "No," and again handed him the cup and told him to drink it.

He politely said, "No, thank you," and walked back to his room and laid down.

Ten minutes later, three staff members rushed in and grabbed him. Such violent grabbing and swift movement hurt his back. He screamed in pain. He was dragged to the solitary room and held against the wall. The nurse pulled down his pants and injected the Thorazine into his leg. He was then again laid on the bed on his back and put back in restraints. Again, he was glad to get the shot so he would be knocked out and not feeling the severe pain he was in by being dragged around by the staff.

Later that week, for the sake of his back, Alvin just took their medication. He figured at least on the Thorazine all the time he wouldn't be in pain, and he figured it was a good idea since they still wouldn't give him any Tylenol. He slept a lot of the time. In fact Dave, his girlfriend, and his brothers came to visit. It was the one and only time they came, probably because of what happened during their visit.

About midway through the first week there they came to visit. It was about six pm. A staff member came to tell Alvin he had a visitor. He was escorted to the visiting room just outside the locked ward. He felt very dizzy standing and trying to walk. He made it to the room and sat down. Dave asked him how he was doing. All that came out of his mouth was, "I'm doing ––" before his head hit the table. He imagined it looked like he had died or something. He had passed out from the high dose of Thorazine they had him on. They were unable to wake him up. He woke up about ten hours later back in his room with no memory of how he got back there. The only thing he remembered was sitting down at the visiting table. That's it. He was told what happened in the visiting room later. No one ever came to visit him there again.

During much of his stay, he slept due to the constant dose of Thorazine. Every time he woke up they would give him another dose to knock him back out, which was probably why his back pain wasn't as bad. With all the constant sleep no stress was being put on his back.

About four or five days later, it was almost two weeks. Alvin found that time went by fast when he slept all the time. They were finally lowering the doses and he was able to stay awake for a while. He was still medicated to the point where he was still weak and tired. It just wasn't enough to actually fully knock him out.

He met with the social worker who informed him again that he wouldn't be going back home. No group home or foster home could be found for him. He informed Alvin that if one couldn't be found by that Friday, on the following Monday Alvin would be transported to Napa State Hospital for holding until a foster or group home could be found.

Alvin wanted to make some phone calls right away, but he had to go to a group therapy meeting first. Not wanting to be put in any more pain, he just went. What he found disturbed me. The group had a man teaching all the kids on the boys' unit, some kids as young as six and seven years old about condoms. He asked for a volunteer. A boy about ten years old stood up and went to the front. The man had a banana and handed the kid a banana and a condom and taught the kid how to apply it to the banana and roll it down the banana. Alvin saw no reason why a child younger than fifteen had to know anything about condoms. He failed to see how teaching kids about condoms had anything to do with their mental health. This and other sexual education teachings is something the child's parents need to be doing, or a sex education class at the child's school, not a psychiatric hospital, Alvin thought. Thinking of it being inappropriate made itself clear later that afternoon because a kid was punished. After the sex ed group meeting, the staff found a towel that was rolled up into a makeshift vagina and the kid was pouring shampoo into it to act as a lubricant. Alvin imagined the kid was pretty embarrassed. He just felt it was wrong for such young kids to be learning about sex, masturbation, and condoms. That's how he feel about it anyway.

After the group, Alvin took what energy he had and made some calls. He was told if he could find a family member who would let him live with them, he could be placed with them. He figured that way he would be able to work on fixing this huge mess if he could get placed with one of the family. Unfortunately, he remembered that he wasn't liked like his brothers. It was hopeless from the start. Either he was told, "No!" and hung up on, or just straight hung up on. By now Dave's false story had made it to all the family and no one wanted anything to do with him. He got upset. He didn't want to be in one of these state hospital places till he was eighteen years old, and that was only if they held him until he was eighteen. He'd heard some held people till they were twenty-one, and he wouldn't be twenty-one for another five years.

He hung up the phone and pretty much ran to his room as best as he could with his hurt back, feeling very upset. He just wanted the whole world to open up and swallow him, but because he was upset again, two staff members came in and told him he had to go to solitary, or "time out" as they called it, and cool off. He asked, "Could I just be left alone please?"

They then approached him and told him to again go to solitary. When he didn't move, they grabbed him and took him to the solitary room to "cool off" because he was angry, upset, and crying in frustration. Apparently he wasn't allowed to be angry or upset.

It was almost eight PM. They injected him with more Thorazine, locked the door, and turned off the lights in the solitary room. He wasn't in restraints this time. The Thorazine didn't work. He got tired, but he didn't pass out. Instead, he was getting scared. The room was very dark, seeing as it was after eight pm and they had turned most of ward lights down. The only light coming in was from the nurse's station and it barely lit one foot into the room in front of the door through the little window. The only other light coming into the room was from the grate-covered window on the other side of the room. The hospital sat next to a big white building, but moonlight was still able to shine down and bounce in off the white painted wall of the building next door. It was enough to light the corner of the room by the grate-covered window. He was left in the room overnight until morning when the sun came up some time around eight or nine am.

No bathroom and no food. He sat in the corner of the room by the grate-covered window all night. It was very cold, perhaps sixty-six degrees or so, but there were no blankets, just the blue hospital mattress covered with a white fitted hospital sheet and restraints hanging off of it. He had on socks, shorts, and a T-shirt. He sat down and pulled his shirt over his legs and pulled his arms in to keep warm.

He couldn't take it anymore and began to cry, begging to God or whoever was out there to please let him die. He wanted his life to end. Then his thoughts turned on him. He began telling himself he was a bad person, that he must have been bad to get treated like this. He went through a lot that night. The staff at the psych ward had succeeded. They had broke him. He no longer cared anymore. He didn't care what happened to him anymore. /pre