Am I dead?
Adam, help me.
Please contact my wife and tell her not to worry.
The police have it wrong. I was murdered.
Please help us.
I need you to reach my daughter Amelia.
Tell them to call off the search.
At some point, I can’t even tune them out with both pillows over my head. The voices keep coming and the room gets like a fucking freezer and I’m already up to three blankets and a top sheet even with the heat cranked up to 70. Don’t believe what you see on TV or in the movies. They will come out in the day time. It’s just worse at night.
The ones who probably scare the shit out of me the most are the ones who know my name and call out to me. “Adam, help me.” “Adam, please contact my family and tell them what really happened to me.” “Adam, do this, Adam, do that.” I was really beginning to resent them and when they won’t let you sleep any more, your empathy can only stretch so far.
“Shut the fuck up!” I finally screamed. “Just shut the fuck up and leave me alone!”
As usual, Mom, Dad and Laura came into my room and turned the light on and they saw me sitting up, rocking back and forth in bed, trying to tune out the voices and not succeeding. Most of them left when the lights went on, some of them stayed behind but most of them shut up like I told them to. It was obvious to my family that I needed help. My parents were thinking either the hospital or the synagogue. Laura was thinking of this Oliver Blood character. I didn’t know who to turn to, who I could trust. I just needed to make the voices stop. They all sat on my bed and Dad asked me, “Son, do you want to go to the hospital?” I didn’t see how that could do me any good. The fucking assholes follow me everywhere I go. I’d be back in the same situation only next time I wake up screaming, I’d get a shot. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. I unclenched my fist and saw that my palm was bleeding. I looked up at my Dad and nodded my head. Laura actually looked disappointed in me.
After sitting at Newton Wellesley’s triage waiting room for three hours while my Dad and I watched stupid infomercials for exercise machines and juicers, I was finally admitted to the Psych ward. I never stopped to consider that going back there would be a trip down memory lane. I immediately started thinking about all the memories I had of Clarissa and me being here two years ago. We were both here for roughly a month and just about every fuckin’ square inch of that place reminded me of her. The far corner of the activities room is where we hugged for the first time. The area front and center under the TV high above the floor is where we snuggled for the first time before they broke us up and told us not to get too intimate. The kitchen is where we first met when we were both poking around looking for chocolate milk, the first thing we discovered we had in common.
I was moved into a different room than either of us had before and there was a fat dude already sacked out. He snored so loud my bed almost vibrated but anything would be better than what kept me up all night at home. After the nursing staff situated me, Dad hugged me and quietly said everybody would be back the next day. Hopefully, he added, I’ll get to talk to the resident psychiatrist tomorrow. I think I was asleep before Dad was buzzed off the ward.
The Psychiatric Wing, Newton Wellesley Hospital, Nov. 10th
Dr. Rubin looked at me and waited for me to start and I did the same thing with her. I automatically knew from my last experience with these professional people that they automatically blew off anything I could tell them. They only deal in what they can actually analyze, what they were trained to categorize, compartmentalize, whatever the fuck they do. If you say you saw a ghost, they label you as delusional. If you say you’re someone else, it never occurs to them that you could be and they label you a schizoid.
Finally, Dr. Ellen Rubin, MD had had it up to the ceiling with my silence.
“So, Adam, according to your history, you see ghosts? Could you tell me about them?” You mean like how many were there right now? Just a few but rush hour wouldn’t be for another few hours. Instead, I said nothing. I was really beginning to regret letting my Dad drive me here. At least when I yelled at them at home to shut up, most of them did. This shrink wouldn’t be able to do dick for me and all she’d say was that I was resisting therapy or some happy horseshit. I wished I was back at the skateboard park on John LeRoy Drive with my friends. Hell, I even missed school. Although, those places, too had a bunch of memories waiting for me.
“You don’t trust me, don’t you? Well, that’s understandable. I’ve never had you for a patient. The last psychiatrist who was assigned to your case…”
“…didn’t do shit for me,” I said while giving her the stink eye. I realized she was just trying to do her job and to help me out but I suddenly felt very hostile toward her, the Psych ward and the whole Goddamned hospital. There wasn’t a single person there who could help me unless she or someone in the pharmacy had a fucking pill that drove ghosts away. But short of being put back into another coma, there was no other way that I knew of to deal with this ghost infestation.
I looked at the heavyset guy in the bathrobe near the window, the one who was snoring in my room last night and wondered if he was real. Sometimes, for brief periods of time, they can appear as real as you or me then they would just walk through a wall or simply dissolve. Dr. Rubin followed my line of vision and looked back to the window.
“What do you see, Adam?”
“What do you see?” She looked behind her again.
“I see a window.”
“Just a window?”
“Yes. What do you see?”
Well, that answered that question. Finally, the fat dude walked away from the window and through the bathroom door, not the doorway, the door itself, and never came back out.
“Just a window,” I finally answered.
Nov. 11th
Not all the ones I see are there to haunt me and ask me for favors. There are some that my sister once called “residual hauntings” or when the ghosts do the same shit over and over again and don’t even know you’re there. The fat dude in the bathrobe is one of them. My guess is he died there and didn’t know enough to move on so he just kept retracing his steps without anything changing. I know what that feels like, to get into a rut and feeling like there’s no way out. They’re the ones that don’t bother you and can never touch you because they don’t know you’re even there or even that there are other ghosts nearby. Sometimes I can hear them, sometimes I can’t. But they tend to be the most interesting ones to watch because sometimes they’ll relive their last moments on earth and I’m the only one who can see it ‘cuz for some fucked up reason I’m on their frequency.
“So, have you seen any… residual hauntings since you’ve been here, Adam?”
“Sure, Doc. There’s the fat guy in the bathrobe. He sleeps in my room and he snores so loud it’s like Cape Canaveral in there. He does the same thing every morning. He gets up, goes to that window then walks through the bathroom door and never comes out.”
Dr. Rubin looked at me with a curious expression like I just did an awesome magic trick and she wanted to ask how I did it. She turned around and looked right at him as he stood in front of the same window just like yesterday, obviously not seeing him.
“Is he there now?” I nodded. “Can you describe him?”
“He’s a big dude, over six feet. He must weigh about 250. I can’t tell how old he is. He’s an older guy, about 25 to 30, I’d guess. Brown hair, always mussed up. He’s wearin’ a white bathrobe with blue trim and it’s always open at the chest. The same time as yesterday, he went right to that window, stood there for about a half hour then walked right through the door. That’s the last I saw him until last night when he suddenly started snoring in bed.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Dr. Rubin knew who I was talking about. If that was the case, maybe she blew it off, assuming that I found out about this fat dude through the basket case grapevine.
Turns out later on, through one of the oldtimers on the wing, someone who’d been there since September, I found out I was talking about someone who was actually there until about a month ago. His name was Charles Bruley and was last seen looking out the same window for about a half hour then walked into the bathroom, took off the belt around his bathrobe and found a way to hang himself. He was one of Dr. Rubin’s patients.
Nov. 12th
“I’ll assume that you knew about Mr. Bruley through the news. As you can expect, it was a big, hairy deal here at the hospital. His family threatened to sue and… Bottom line, Adam, I’d rather you not talk about one of my former patients and incorporating him into your…”
“…delusions? That’s what you were gonna say, right? ‘Don’t use one of my patients in your delusional structure’? Fine, I won’t talk about him again. I thought you were here to help me, though.”
“I am, Adam. But talking about one of my patients is not…”
“Hey, you were the one who asked me what I saw and to describe him. Now you’re tweakin’ out on me when I did. What the fuck do you want from me, Doc?”
“Alright, that was a mistake on my part and I’m sorry.” She looked down at her notes about me that I did and didn’t want to read. “What do you see right now?”
“I see Bruley standing at the window again. He’s gonna go hang himself in a few minutes. You can set your fuckin’ watch by him.”
“Who or what else do you see that the rest of us can’t?”
Bruley started shuffling off into the bathroom and walked right through the door. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” I followed him in. A few minutes later I came back out. I was shaking like I just chugged a pot of coffee but I had to do it. I’d never seen anything like that before but I was getting sick and tired of Dr. Rubin and others telling me I was crazy.
“His suicide note was tucked in the waistline of his boxer shorts and read, ‘I’m sorry, Dr. Rubin. Don’t blame yourself. I hope you don’t get in trouble over this. Tell my family I love them. Charles.’ He misspelled your name and spelled it with an ‘e’.”
Dr. Rubin looked at me like I was sprouting lilies out of my ears. Bruley’s suicide note wasn’t published in the press and none of the other patients were allowed in the bathroom for hours after they found his body.
Nov. 13th
Whatever homing beacon I have in me started working again because as Dr. Rubin continued our therapy sessions, the wing got more and more crowded. In addition to Charles Bruley in between his suicides there were people who might and might not have been former patients. By the fourth day, there were more dead people on the ward than living. One old dude seemed to take a special interest in my shrink.
“You wanna know who else is here?”
“Who, Adam?”
“Your grandfather. He says his name is Oscar.”
“How did…? OK, Adam, this is very inappropriate. I’d rather you not mention my family any more, so let’s just keep this…”
“Don’t you wanna know what he wants, Doc? He’s standing right behind you.”
I could tell she was dying to turn around to look although she wouldn’t have seen him. He wore regular old man clothes with his pants almost up to his navel, was bald and looked about 80, real skinny.
“Alright, tell me.”
“He says he forgives you for going to medical school instead of Julliard. He would’ve rather you played violin in some orchestra but he now knows that he was wrong for spazzing out on you for going to Harvard. He wants you to forgive him.”
Dr. Rubin stood up so fast she knocked the plastic chair on its back.
“That’s enough, Adam! I don’t know how you found out this stuff about my family but I’m getting sick and tired of you using them and my patients in your, yes, I’ll say it, delusional structure.”
I stood up, too. I’d had it with her own bullshit.
“Hey, Doc, here’s the 411: I didn’t know that your grandfather existed until just now. In fact, I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago, so cut me some fucking slack, alright?!”
I heard the front door buzz then open and my Dad, Mom and Laura walked into the ward just in time to hear me yelling at my doctor. A couple of the nurses walked toward me and told me to chill out. I sat back down and watched Mr. Bruley go hang himself in the bathroom as usual before I started crying my eyes out. The only ghost I wanted to see was the only one in the spirit world, it seemed, who never showed up anymore. Where was Clarissa? God, I missed her.
Laura and my folks talked to the doctor but mostly Laura. I was discharged a little over an hour later.
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