Chapter 1
How did I get here?
The large corner office
boasted an enormous ceiling to floor, wall to wall window. The panoramic view
held the Hudson River and the beauty that
surrounded it. To the left of the water were mountains and valleys painted in
three different shades of majestic green. The trees swayed back and forth to
the pull of the wind and seemed to be dancing. Her eyes gazed at the water. The
river beckoned her to join it on its journey, to experience the freedom of an
adventure full of twists and turns to its natural end.
She found herself
daydreaming about where else she could be at that moment, but instead she was
sitting numb at the south end of the enormous cherry wood desk while this
insufferable psychiatrist asked her in a condescending tone of voice, "So…
when do you think your troubles with men began, Ms. Hood?"
She smirked and thought
back. Her eyes followed the smooth curves of the carving alongside the polished
table top until they came to a stop at the puffed up, balding man who was
sweating so profusely that his bifocals kept sliding down the bridge of his
nose. He held the keys to her freedom from this god-forsaken institution so she
must not say what she wants to say. She must say all the right things.
“My
troubles with men began with my feelings of abandonment. My father was unable
to be active in my upbringing because he was a drug addict. I am, however,
aware that I am responsible for my actions and /or reactions toward men.” She
knew he had to hear the sarcasm in her voice.
His eyes darted back and forth. They reminded
her of a slot machine. Her words were feeding him, like shiny new quarters into
a machine.
He mulled over her response to his question and
smiled. “Very good." He snorted,
barely able to get the words out from between those swollen tight jowls and
pursed lips. She could tell the machine was about to pay off.
“Ms. Hood, I think you are ready to be released.
You have consistently demonstrated your ability to understand the root of your
problems while taking responsibility for your own actions." He said this
smugly as if he had taken her down the path to enlightenment.
"Thank you, Doctor” she said and quickly
left the room.
She had to lean on the wall outside of his
office in order to repress her desire to jump on his desk and bash his brains
in with that gigantic phallus-looking paperweight he always caressed during
their sessions. She stood pressed against the wall, shaking so hard that she
could feel her teeth chatter while her brains bounced from side to side inside
her skull.
The sanitized, unyielding hallway seemed to
warp, bend and wave. It looked doughy.
The patient walking toward her moved with an
unnatural slowness. The tight, burning, tingly sensation in her lungs reminded
her that she had forgotten to take a breath.
Through a slight opening of the door, as if
someone had slowly turned up the volume on a radio, she heard the doctor’s
voice and the familiar clicking sound of his trusty tape recorder.
"Ms. Katrina Hood, a thirty-two year old
black female, arrived at the Southern Gardens Institution approximately two
years ago after being found in a catatonic state in the Kings County Jail. She
was there pending charges of Attempted Murder of her boyfriend, Mr. Ronald
Adams."
Her stomach began to wobble.
“She is now deemed competent and should be
released."
Her mouth flooded with a salty liquid.
The voice continued. "I will make the
necessary arrangements, including follow-up appointments, and ensure the proper
prescriptions are written. Ms. Hood will be discharged into the care of her
sister, Ms. Evelyn Hood. Sign, Doctor Wyatt Tate."
She ran
to her room, praying she would make it in time. She was moving, but her feet
felt as though they were melting into the floor and every step was hard to take.
She had to pull her melted gummy flesh away from the rubbery floor. She
reminded herself not to look at her feet. It was easy to get lost in her head
but she needed to concentrate now on what she was doing.
The morning medications had kicked in and were
messing with her mind. When she finally made it to her room she dashed into the
bathroom and stuck her head over the toilet bowl. She was barely able to get
her mouth open before the storm of vomit spewed out. Each violent spasm in her
gut delivered more food and bile. She tried to calm down and breathe. The
escaping fluids were coming through her nose.
Finally, after every morsel of her breakfast had
regurgitated and she was wringing wet with perspiration, she sat back and
leaned against the cool wall. She wanted to return to her feet, but the way her
legs were shaking she knew she could not stand up yet.
She could not believe that she had been reduced
to a footnote in some shrink’s record as an insane attempted murderess. Ronald,
the idiot – what happened to him? He got off by playing the victim. When the
police arrived at the bloody mess in her apartment, he had kept saying, “I
don’t understand Katrina, why would you hurt me?”
The police handcuffed her and shoved her toward
the front door. That whining little sissy had cried and screamed, “Why! Why?”
He knew why – and was too much of a coward to say.
She spit on him as she passed by him on the way
out. It gave her such pleasure to finally have the last say.
She was hauled off to this Dante's Inferno.
Sure, they dressed it up and called it Southern Gardens, but she knew hell when
she saw it. During the two years with Ronald she had been in hell, too, but she
would be free soon enough. There would be no more medication and no more bad
times.
She had almost forgotten what normal felt like.
The medication made her feel like a zombie. The pills made her pace
uncontrollably up and down the hallway and her mind would race so fast she
couldn’t complete a thought. One day she caught her roommate, Greta, sticking
her medication into a small crack in her mattress. Soon Katrina began
discarding her pills the same way, when she could get away with it, which was
not often enough.
She rose to her feet slowly, walked over to her
bed and sat down. A loud bell rang the signal to patients that lunch was ready.
That bell reminded her of Pavlov's dog. The poor dog was conditioned to believe
that every time a bell rang, his food would be waiting for him. Sometimes just
for kicks Pavlov would ring the bell and his goofy dog would begin to salivate
and come running for his daily feeding and BAM! – no food was waiting for him.
She got up from her bed and began the long walk
to the cafeteria. Along the way she amused herself with wondering what would
happen if Pavlov conducted his experiment here. BONG! would go the bell, and all the patients would come shuffling
down the hallway, but this time, no food or meds would be waiting for them. All
hell would break loose. Mutiny and Chaos!
She could see it all unfolding so clearly in her
mind that she giggled aloud. If she had been caught laughing out loud to
herself any place else she would have been stared at, but not here at good ole
Southern Gardens. At Southern Gardens, it was acceptable to be crazy and no one
gave you a second look.
She got what they considered food, found an
empty seat and began eating her mush. Forty-eight hours from now, she could
reassemble her life. She could imagine it all going well. An intelligent woman
with four years of military service under her belt would be an asset to any
employer. They made assumptions about a person with military experiences. Her associate
degree in Liberal Arts would be the icing on the cake. If none of that were
enough, she would use her charming personality and wit to win over the
prospective employer. The tricky part would be explaining the two-year gap in
her employment history.
She ate what she could of the rubbery brown meat
with strange ridges and a gritty orange mush they called mashed potatoes and
went back to her room. She had two hours before group therapy so she lay across
her bed and stared dreamily at the ceiling.
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