THE BIN
ELIZABETH BODINE
Part IV
It’s by far time you meet the people. At least those I remember. Sadly, many came and went unnoticed by me.
Upon admission I found I’d be sharing my sleeping cubicle with Ilsa, a 78-year-old Hungarian woman who spoke almost no understandable English. And who drove me insane with the constant following of me, asking did I like her, did I know her family, would I stay with her, and could I please stand next to her at all times and so forth.
Ilsa posed questions I of course could not understand. At night, she whistled what I imagine were folk tunes. Snored. Repeated and repeated stories of her childhood, her homeland and long-gone loved ones. Only late at night was her English understandable.
And the desperate clutching of me when she was afraid or confused. I know, I know. Don’t judge me — you’d be astonished how quickly you lose patience, compassion and humanity when locked in an uncomfortable room with a crazy lady. (Not that I’m anyone to judge.) I was nice to her but incredibly relieved when she transferred out. I don’t know where she went.
Thereafter arrived my next roomie, a somewhat fashionable middle-aged woman who was, according to her version of life, in the bin for absolutely no reason. Her name eludes me.
I liked her even though I don’t remember her much. She defiantly wore flip-flops and loved terrible ‘80’s and early 90s music. Journey, Foreigner, John Bon Jovi, and so forth. She was okay.
Her story, as much as I can recall, was that in the midst of a nightmare divorce she one night had way too much to drink, forgetting she’d already taken some tranquilizers, and fell off her second-story balcony. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense but who cared? She was just inside with the rest of us.
And there was 40-ish Danish woman from California. She actually was from Denmark but was living in Southern Cali doing God knows what. Again, little or no English.
We got “Dani” as her name. Dani arrived in the company of many many police. Acting under the impression that she had an appointment to meet with President Trump, Dani had flown to Florida from California. Zero Dark Thirty was 11 p.m.
She took an Uber to Mara Lago and was discovered wandering the grounds by Secret Service Agents. She explained to them about her appointment, but instead of being brought to see the President, she was turned over to Palm Beach County Sheriffs who quietly dumped her with us.
To the day she was sent to a longer-term facility, Dani found nothing wrong or odd about expecting to meet President Trump. “This is America..anybody can talk to anybody.” Good luck with that.
The nurses, once outside the formica counter, stopped being cold and mean. In fact, they were charming and thoughtful and genuinely concerned for us. They were mostly Haitian, and often funny and playful.
One nurse, not Haitian, spoke in a different — perfect — accent every day. British, Caribbean, French, Hispanic, you name it. Her only weakness was Asian. Tough to pull off a Japanese accent without sounding vaguely racist. We all liked her. She was a true favorite.
I was cheerfully surrounded by a small clique. The group was in motion before my arrival, but I was welcomed in, really for no reason other than that I sat down in the midst of them on my second day.
We numbered I think six, including me. And we got along, laughing a lot, hating the food, criticizing the hospital and trashing the doctors. This comradery helped us all; as we each suffered from depression we’d all been isolating ourselves. Company can be incredibly therapeutic.
One of us was a 19-year-old woman who had been committed by her mother after refusing to leave the boyfriend who was beating, restraining, torturing, kidnapping and making disorganized efforts to kill her. Beautiful girl. Cried for the guy every night.
Also a severely unhappy older woman, clearly suffering from, I guess, badly treated depression (well, she nver seemed to get any better. Also she was desperately in love with the 19-year-old mentioned above).
And a youthful mother suffering post-partum depression that threatened the welfare of her newborn.
And a lovely Southern woman, a tattoo artist who had formulated an elegant and meticulous but ultimately not feasible plan to murder her husband and her mother-in-law.
Our token male was a delusional 20-something who believed he was the target of a dangerous drug-dealing street gang. He was not. Sweet kid.
Get elizabeth bodine’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
And me. I think that’s six.
My story isn’t very entertaining. I’m a retired criminal lawyer. I worked as a prosecutor for 15 years. Before that I was a probation officer and before that I was a newspaper reporter. I have a Masters’ Degree in Professional Counseling which would make me a therapist (I know, irony). I’m divorced, I grew up in New York City. I like dogs and my best friend just died of lung cancer.
The social workers, businesslike but pleasant, never left their little cubes. We had to go see them. (Whether we wanted to or not.) Other unidentifiable staff persons wandered about, doing their various things, and were uniformly polite and helpful.
But the doctors! Loathed! Loathed!!
I’m not entirely sure why. They wielded so much power over us. Desperate for release, we curried favor, which leaves a dreadful loss of dignity.
We accordingly and I guess inevitably blamed them. The main guy, the boss, in particular. He would routinely threaten patients who argued with or disputed him with enacting a second Baker Act for them. Never did it, that I know of, but what a way to make oneself hated.
After most of my small circle had been released, I became friendly with a late-comer, Margaret, a quietly charming and intelligent paralegal, who, when asked why she was there (we were all pretty blunt), would only say “I did something stupid.”
I never discovered what that stupid thing was and I admired her hard-shell wall of privacy. She’s the only one of my fellow-inmates with whom I stay — sort of — in touch, even though upon departures, each of us exchanged phone numbers, emails, etc. That seems to be a consistent element in all small-ish, sheltered groups.
Unfortunately, Margaret, the laid-back and eminently likeable woman she was had somehow managed to acquire the worst possible roommate in the joint.
Ann. Ann. Ann. I invoke her name with dread and prayer. First of all, it was she who (as I earlier recounted), demanded that I abandon the “TV room” because I was reading and not watching. “I want you out of this room!” I don’t think she wanted to watch television. She just wanted me gone. “Go to your room. That’s for reading. This is called the tv room for a reason.”
I responded with something like “Drop dead.”
Since I’d been there, Ann had alternately claimed to be a doctor, a missionary, a pastor, a staff nurse, a staff therapist, and a waitress. But then we were all pretty nutty.
Unbeknownst to me, our confrontation had apparently been simmering for a while. I had earlier suggested to her that if, as she claimed, hoped to find a cheap ticket to Ireland, she might muck about the cheap fare sites and standby rules to do so. Some many years ago, I’d snagged a one-way for $300.00.
But on this day, Ann walked out of the television room, stood against the far wall and shouted, “$300 to Ireland?” And you’re telling everyone you’re a lawyer? You lie. I don’t like people who lie.” I DO NOT!” I looked up from whatever I was reading and said “I don’t give a shit what you like.” She went to the formica counter to complain about me, but it was all over. This is how it is when everybody’s crazy.
You may recall the big bellowing guy from Part I of this series. Turned out he’d lost a leg to diabetes, which he claimed to have lost in Viet Nam, and furiously demanded respect for his service and sacrifice.
But the guy was 44. Making the Viet Nam thing so implausible. We all wondered, aloud or in private, how come he didn’t pick the Persian Gulf or Afghanistan, Iraq. And he was impervious to any effort attempting to explain the impossibilty of fighting in a war that ended in 1975 since he was born in 1974.
Anyway, whatever. He never quit hollering, arguing, name-calling and publicly depositing bodily fluids wherever he lay or sat. We all thought he’d be transferred out, but no. He stayed. Drove everybody nuts.
Another guy, older man, so disturbed, spent an entire day demanding to be returned to his room. Me, I never got why they didn’t just let him go back, but they would not. He laid down on the floor in front of the formica counter pleading and, crying, and begging. Finally remanded to the Quiet Room.
One evening, wailing, was a Haitian woman, who remained standing. Her wailing style added an unusual yodel-like ululation. She had arrived clothesless and was wearing the itchy tunic as she stood, yodeling-wailing. Spoke no English, but the Haitian nurses mostly spoke French and were able to calm her. For a while. She was transferred quickly.
I have not by any imagining, done justice to the many persons passing through my general ambit in this place. But I just don’t recall the non-dramatic. As much as I disliked the experience, I think fondly of a many of the people I met. However, they’re slipping away into crevices of my brain where the unremembered dwell.
Our ward was probably equipped to manage between 30 and 35 patients. When I was admitted there were — I’m approximating — about 25 of us damaged souls. The census went up and down pretty fast; at my discharge there were only about 10.
Although some of us — me — went home upon release, not everyone was set free. Some went on to more serious, longer-term care. Others just seemed to stay there eternally. One woman couldn’t leave because she only had a sister to live with, who had refused to take her in. Some, I think, went to various types of shelters.
One old guy was driven to a bus stop and given a ticket. Prior to his arrival, he said he had been living in the woods and begging for change or food. I hate to think where he ended up this time.
MORE
