Songbird

Chapter 1: Jolene

"Is there a bed?" I asked, peering doubtfully into the dark hallway of the psychiatric ward.

The man looked at me but didn't see me.

"Not yet," was his noncommittal reply, and I felt panic rising like bile in my throat. They had said there would be a bed.

"Is the doctor here?" I croaked.

"Not until tomorrow," said the man as he leafed through my paperwork, nodding to the paramedic dismissively.

My heart hit the ground. I knew what it meant for the doctor not to be here. I had been here before; I had never seen the illusive doctor.

A wracking grief came over me like a tsunami, and as I began to sob, the man turned on his heel and walked away, clicking his pen. I took one last desperate, ugly inhale of fresh air and watched as the paramedic closed the doors separating me from the outside world.

There, alone, I sunk to my knees and broke down on the cold floor.

---

An indiscernible period of time passed before I found myself in a room-of-sorts akin to the set of Girl, Interrupted.

I shivered in the cold and uneasy quiet of the small, boxed space, which had no windows, and a door that could only be opened from the opposite side. Inside there was a white plastic table, with legs drilled into the white concrete floor so that it could not be moved. The white walls were decaying.

The whiteness was suffocating; what worse, it wasn't all entirely white.

I was at once reminded of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

I wandered out into the dank hallway, peering down an endless wall of doors to rooms of endless white. A snicker snaked its way through an open door down the hall and I retracted in fear back to my own holding space like a dog to its crate. There I paced in my chaotic sadness, whispering feverishly to myself.

I could feel the blood pumping through my ears. I could hear Dolly Parton in the background of all my wildness, singing, "I cannot compete with you, Jolene."

The man from before emerged from an office that I could not see nor access. He told me that I could make a phone call, and handed me an old yellowish telephone, on which I immediately dialed my sister. I watched as the man strolled away with nonchalance.

I waited anxiously as the line rang.

I had been listening to Dolly's hit song Jolene that night – over and over and over, like a mantra. In my grief, I had reached for my prescription pills and swallowed a few. Then, on reevaluation, popped a few more. I had just wanted to sleep that night. I had just wanted to sleep the pain away.

My sister didn't answer. I set the phone down and in my defeat I sobbed.

I remembered how, just a few days prior, policemen had entered our home. The paramedics had evaluated me with strange instruments and then whisked me away into the night.

I remembered then being in the ER, answering a strange woman's questions. She had been jotting down my statement, which I slurred in the stupor of my overdose. Her brow furrowed with genuine concern.

"Were you trying to kill yourself?" I had heard her ask in my periphery.

I couldn't remember how I'd answered that.

My consciousness snapped to the present as a tall man clutching a food tray stepped into my holding area, announcing his presence with a grunt.

I had been pacing like an injured animal in its cage, but I came to an abrupt stop. I met eyes with the man and at once felt a rush of relief.