Introductions Are Hard

At ten years old I had already experienced much more of hospitals than most eighty-year-olds had. I had been in the medical part of Hackensack hospital in New Jersey for about two weeks. After being transferred to Long Island Jewish Hospital the paramedic rolled me past big words painted on a wall. The words read, “Child Behavioral Health Services”. When I saw those words a feeling of foreboding came over me.1

At that point in my life I had not yet experienced a psychiatric unit. In fact I didn’t even know for sure that that was where I was going, I didn’t yet even completely understand the concept of what one was. All the same, as I rolled by on that stretcher I had a feeling in my gut that something was about to be very, very wrong.2

On that particular day the stretcher kept rolling past the children’s psychiatric unit and into an elevator. The elevator took me up to the adolescent inpatient medical floor. There was no room for me on the children’s floor, which was where I should have gone, considering the fact that I was only ten. I was used being treated like I was older though, and didn’t complain about the fact that I was the only child on a floor filled with teenagers.3

Long Island Jewish Hospital was a lot like Hackensack Hospital. It has a bed with rails that had a controller to make it go up or down. It had those hospital scented sheets, and a TV planted in the upper corner of the room so that I had to bend my neck at an awkward angle to watch it. I was clothed in a child’s version of the hospital gown, the kind with clowns on it, and my IV was still in. The paramedics detached me from their heart monitor and hooked me up to the one belonging to the hospital.4

Just like at Hackensack the nurses paraded in and out, my mother arrived and sat down next to my bed and turned on my favorite music for me. It didn’t’ bother me that my roommate was five years older then me and in an entirely different stage of development. It only bothered me a little that she’d been in a car accident and couldn’t walk or speak normally anymore. It was my mother that was woken up in the middle of the night to my roommate’s shouts and insistence that she still had her legs and could walk to the bathroom. It was my mother who realized that this poor girl had been left with the mental capacities of a small child. I was fine about it all.5

Despite the physical pain and initial fear, I was even fine when the small Chinese doctor fed a tube through my nose and into my stomach to feed the body that I consistently refused to nourish.6

I was even bordering on enjoying myself when a few hours later a nurse came by, helped me into a wheelchair and brought me down to the activity room where a man was showing all the children in the hospital some animals. 7

The snake’s skin felt funny, and I like the chinchillas 8

best.9

There were some children in the front row that I couldn’t help staring at. They looked physically fine to me. They had no IV’s or medical equipment and the only thing that tipped me off to the fact that they were patients not visitors were the hospital ID bracelets that encircled their wrists. I kept trying to focus on the animals, but my gaze kept running back to the children in the front row. 10

Later that day another doctor stopped by.11

“Hi, I’m Dr. Sampone,” he introduced himself.12

I raised my weak skinny arm and shook his hand.13

“I came to ask you about what program at the hospital you would like to participate in. We have a program for girls who have eating disorders like you, but all of the girls are at least twelve or older. With that program all of the girls eat their meals together and have some therapy groups together. Some of the girls who aren’t medically stable stay on this unit in the hospital. The other girls go home at night and come here during the day.”14

“What’s the other program?” I asked.15

“We have another program for children your age downstairs. They don’t specialize in eating disorders, but we do send kids with eating disorders down there. They deal with children with all different emotional problems.”16

“I want to go to the program with kids my own age,” I decided. I didn’t want to be in a place where they would try to take my eating disorder away from me. I liked starving myself. I liked feeling pure and empty like an angel. I liked being so skinny that I looked like I was dying. I liked not growing. 17

"Okay, that seemed like the best idea to me to.” The doctor smiled at me. “You get to wear your own clothes downstairs, you don’t have to wear hospital gowns.” He said it like I was supposed to be happy about it. I wasn’t.18

Threads of worry were starting to surface inside of me. What kind of hospital place was it if I had to wear my own clothes. I liked the hospital clothes, I like that the clothes told everyone who looked at me that I was sick and needed to be taken care of. I didn’t want to wear my own clothes.19

I knew that no one would understand if I gave words to my concerns, so I stayed silent.20

The next day a nurse came to tell my mom and I that they were taking me downstairs. She took out my IV and disconnected me from the heart monitor. That worried me even more. I liked being sick. People were nice to me and took care of me because I was sick. Did it mean I was getting better if they were taking away some of the medical equipment.21

“You must be glad you get to lose the IV and wires,” commented the nurse.22

Once again I was silent. Once again I knew no one would understand me.23

The nurse lifted my forty-pound body into the wheelchair and began to push me. She pulled along the IV stand, with the bag of yellowish nutritional supplements that was dripping into to the tube in my nose, behind her. My mom walked alongside. We were quite the procession.24

When we got out of the elevator and went past the sign the said “Child Behavioral Health,” the bad feelings and fear in my gut intensified.25

We finally stopped at a big thick door with a Plexiglas window. There was a buzzer next to the door and a sign that read “Caution, bolt risk, open door slowly”. My heart was pounding in fear as the nurse pressed the buzzer. 26

Another nurse came to the door and let us in. When the door clicked shut behind us, I thought it was just closing. I hadn’t yet discovered that it had just locked me in.27

“We can’t have wheelchairs on this unit.” This nurse’s voice was too loud and scratchy. She was older, with grayish white hair and a large thick body.28

“I can’t walk though,” I tried to explain to the nurse.29

“You can too.” Snapped the nurse back. “Stand up.”30

She whipped the wheelchair out from under me and I fell in a pile on the floor.31

“She hasn’t walked on her own for weeks,” my mom told the gray-haired nurse, as the nicer nurse from the medical floor was buzzed back out into the free world. 32

“Is she physically not able?” demanded the mean nurse.33

“Well the doctor said that she’s probably too scared to walk. She physically is strong enough, but I guess not emotionally,” my mom answered.34

I was starting to get angry because I knew I couldn’t walk, I was too sick, I was too weak.35

“Well she’ll have to walk on this unit.” The nurse proclaimed as she pulled me to my feet and started walking with me dragging along behind her. I was literally dragging. I had fallen over and she was pulling me. 36

It was all too much. I started to cry. They were asking me to do things I wasn’t capable of. They were treating me like I wasn’t sick when I was, and maybe soon they would hurt me just like Jasper had hurt me before. 37

The nurse stopped walking and I fell down all the way.38

“You’re obviously strong enough to walk, I can feel you trying to pull me over.” She snapped.39

This was completely ridiculous because not only was I not trying to pull her over, but she was at least one hundred and sixty pounds, I was forty, there was no way I would be able to budge her even if I tried.40

I was panicking wondering what kind of place this was where the nurses were so mean. How could they expect me to stay here? She seemed like she didn’t care about me at all and just wanted to punish me. She seemed like Jasper. She seemed like the kind of grown up who would try to hurt me.41

My sobs were pouring out louder and faster now, I could barely catch my breath between them.42

The nurse just stood there staring at me and then finally pulled a teal plastic chair over, put me in the chair and began to push me down the hall.43

“You’re going to need to start walking soon,” she growled at me. “Let’s get you to your room.”44

I was relieved to hear that I was going to my room. I wanted to just lie down and watch TV or talk with my mom a little bit, but when we got to the room there was no TV in it.45

“You have to put on some regular clothes.” Huffed the nurse as she dug through the plastic bag with my clothes in it.46

I wanted to make her stop, I didn’t want her touching my personal stuff, but I was crying to hard to talk.47

The nasty nurse pulled out my least favorite pair of pants, and a t-shirt, and a pair of underwear. When she knelt down in front of me and proceeded to pull hospital pajama pants and underwear off of me I could feel my whole body tense and freeze up. I knew it, she was going to touch me with the kind of bad touch that Jasper used. For a second my crying completely ceased, and I swear my heart stopped along with it, then everything inside me started to explode with an overdose of fear and panic.48

My sobs were shrieking and ear piercing and terrified. I thought that getting myself sick enough to need the hospital would protect me from more torture and hurt, but apparently nothing could. Apparently I would never be protected from getting hurt, I was just open and vulnerable and waiting to get violated and abused. 49

This realization was so painful and intense that at that moment I literally found myself wishing I were dead. My sobs were now pouring out so fast I found myself unable to even breathe correctly, what made it worse was the fact that I was trying to talk through them50

Desperately I tried to convince the nurse that I needed the medical unit.51

“I’m not medically stable,” I cried, using the terms that I had learned while in the hospital, “I’m really physically sick, terribly sick.” I cried and screamed and carried on at the top of my lungs in a last desperate attempt to save myself.52

I turned to my mother and begged her to take me back to the medical unit.53

“I think it would be best if you left now, Mrs. Graden,” the nurse advised my mom with her obnoxiously superior tone.54

My mom leaned down to kiss me and told me she would visit later.55

Things just kept getting more and more frightening. My mom always stayed with me in the hospital, where was she going? Did she not care if I got hurt here? Maybe she even knew about Jasper hurting me and hadn’t said anything or tried to stop it because she didn’t care. Did she think I was bad and deserved it?56

My whole world was crashing to a halt and disintegrating, pieces of it were raining down on my head. I was possibly the most scared I’d ever been in my life.57

When the nurse didn’t touch me funny, but just pulled my least favorite pair of pants on to my terrified and shaking body, the sobs lightened slightly in their intensity for a moment. 58

“Stop crying, there are other children on this unit and your bothering them,” snapped the monster nurse from hell.59

Her tone shook me up inside and made me feel like the 60

whole world hated me, I cried louder again.61

All the sudden I felt the chair I was sitting in start moving again, where was I going? I wanted to stay in the room. What was happening? I was crying too hard and fast to give words to make questions.62

The nurse brought me out into the hall and left me there. 63

I could hear a male nurse yelling at some boys to go take a shower. Why did everyone here have to yell? This place was like a fiery pit of anger.64

When the boys that the male nurse had been yelling at filed by, I recognized them from the animal show. So this was where the children were from. That was good news, that meant there was a way from here to the other unit. That meant that as soon as I was healthy enough I could just walk back to the other unit and explain to the nurses that I didn’t want to be here anymore. 65

Between panting sobs I told the lady nurse that I was leaving as soon as I could walk.66

“No you’re not,” the nurse informed me. “This unit is locked, the staff are the ones who control who can and can’t leave, and you’re not leaving until you start behaving appropriately.”67

I tried to explain to her that I was only there because I had an eating disorder, not my behavior, but I couldn’t speak through the cries and screams spewing out of me.68

I shut my eyes and then opened them again, I could have sworn that I saw my dad and my brother, but that didn’t make sense. I called out to them anyway, and begged them to come save me. I screamed over and over again that I was medically unstable, I was so agitated and frightened, and screaming so loud, that my head started to spin, and I was seeing black spots and tears in the fabric of reality.69

“I’m medically unstable, take me back to the other unit!” I screamed again. It had become my mantra.70

I felt like I’d been dropped down from outer space into completely alien territory.71

“I’m medically unstable, take me back! I need medical treatment!”72

“All right, I give you medical treatment, I give you medical treatment,” a nurse with a heavy accent, who I would later learn was named Efrom, said to me. He sat down next to me, pulled me into his lap, and before I could figure out what was going on and protest, he pulled down my pants and planted a syringe of sedative straight into my anorexic, bony butt.73

I screamed one big loud scream and then slowly my screaming and crying slowed to whimpers, it felt like my blood had turned to motor oil. Everything around me slowed down. I thought I saw my dad and brother again and tried to raise my arm to reach out for them, but my arm was too heavy, and my eyelids refused to stay up. My world was getting dark and swirly. I was being pulled toward the blackness of unconsciousness. I fought the exhaustion raining down on me, but soon my eyes closed all the way and I couldn’t peel them back open.74

When they finally opened again I was back in my room, lying in bed, with a different nurse at the doorway. My mom was still gone, there was a dull ache inside me and I was still confused and frightened,75

That was my introduction to psychiatric units that would soon become all to familiar to me, and I realized I’d been right that day I’d first rolled by the sign for the unit, something had gone very, very wrong.76