The Hospital Adventures

Getting Admitted

The events leading up to this point don't matter. Not really. Basically, I was feeling just about the worst I had ever felt before. The past few weeks I was majorly depressed. It didn't go away, it progressively just got worse. I literally couldn't see any way out of it besides death. This was the only option, because I was afraid of what I would do if I wasn't somewhere where I wouldn't be able to hurt myself. My mom, however, didn't believe me. Her reason was simply that I was at my best friends the day before, and I had a good time. As if because I had one nice day, all my depression previous to that was invalidated. After an hour, I convinced her that this was serious and that I was planning to kill myself. She couldn't leave the kids there alone, so she called my grandma. I said goodbye to my dog one last time. Once my grandma got there, I told her I loved her and I walked out the door. I couldn't even face her because I didn't want her to see me like this.
So there we were. It was 9:00 at night, my mom and I driving to the emergency room. I felt awful because it wasn't exactly an emergency, so we didn't really need to go to the emergency room. But then again where else are you supposed to go? So we finally arrived there, got the last parking place and walked inside. For some reason I got extremely self conscious about the sweatpants I was wearing. As if any of the other emergency room people would care. We entered the room. There was a long line which we had to stand in to tell them what exactly was wrong. I got nervous. I begged my mom to take me home. I felt guilty for wasting her time. She refused and we stood in that line. It only took 10 minutes. The old lady looked up and asked us in an annoyed voice what our emergency was. My mom started crying and I felt awful. Way worse than I had before that. After around a minute of tears, she managed to tell the woman that I was gonna kill myself. She raised her eyebrows slightly.
"Well you definitely did the right thing by taking her here." She said, in a monotonous voice. I didn't mind because she most likely had to deal with this all the time. This was usual for her. They printed me a bracelet with all my information on it. I smiled forcefully after seeing they printed my middle name as mar instead of Maria. We sat down in the waiting room. I still had my phone at this point. I couldn't bring myself to text any more than one of my friends about where I was. We sat there for 1 hour before I got thirsty. We had comfortable seats so my mom didn't want to get up. I got up to get the drinks instead. They were all the way in another hallway. I started to walk back to the vending machine. The old lady yelled at me.
"HEY!! YOU CANT GO BACK THERE ALONE!!" I backed up slowly and returned to my mom. I told her that I needed her to come with me. She was reluctant to do this because she didn't want anyone stealing our seats. She went with me anyways and once we returned our seats were miraculously still there. After I chugged my water, I laid down on my mom who was also trying to sleep. We waited about another hour and a half, which mostly consisted of crying babies, angry mothers talking loudly on the phone. Once our long wait was over and we finally heard them call out the miracle which was my name, we sprang up. We followed the brown haired man who was leaning out the door. He led us to a hospital room. Once more I was asked what was the problem. As they took my blood pressure, I explained once more what was wrong with me. He responded by telling us the exact same things the old woman had said.
"You definitely did the right thing by coming here." He continued to type notes into his computer. He then asked my mom to step out as he was going to ask me some personal question. The normal kind you get asked at a hospital. Do you do drugs? Smoke? Drink? Sexually active? I shook my head to all of those. He then asked me how I planned to actually kill myself. I told him all of the plans which I had made in my head. I'll spare you the details. He typed it all into the computer and I regretted it instantly, my mom came back in and he asked me more questions. A few of these included: Are you going to try to run away? Are you violent? I told him no, once more and he told me all the places which I could go. He handed me hospital gowns and told me to change into them. He then left the room to call the different places. It was nearly 1 am at this point. As I took off all my clothes besides my bra and underwear my mom asked me if she should go to work tomorrow or not. She had 5 hours to sleep if she went to bed right now. I told her no but she wouldn't listen. I put on the hospital gown. I looked awful. The man came back in and gave us a bag for my clothes. He told me to take off my bracelets. The only two I was wearing were from my best friend. One was a rainbow loom one with both our schools colors on it and the other was a super tight plastic one meant for little kids which we called "the Derek bracelet." We both had one and wore it all the time. I took off the school colors one. I tried my best to get the Derek bracelet off but I couldn't. Eventually the guy told me that it was fine to just leave it. Two police officers entered the room and scanned me with a metal detector. It beeped. The brown haired guy looked at me.
"Oh, are you wearing a bra?" I nodded. "Yeah you have to take that off." My life was over. How could I live without a bra? I took it off anyways and handed it to my mom. They scanned me again and decided I was ok. The guy told me it was time to switch rooms, I nodded and followed him to a room which was two doors down. He left. I was so bored I began asking my nurse mom what everything on the wall was for, she explained it all to me. Once we were done I tried to sleep. The guy came in a few minutes later and told me I was going to a place called the Linder Center. He said it was for people who are non violent, and it was probably the best out of the three. Thank god. I thought to myself. He told us then that it'll be an hour until an ambulance is available. I didn't really see why an ambulance was necessary but oh well. He then continued to move us to yet another room. This room was a lot nicer than the ones before. A woman sat outside of it, watching me every single time I moved. She wrote down everything I did. It was kinda annoying. A blonde nurse came in and asked me if I needed anything. It was super cold there, so I asked for a warm blanket. I'm always thirsty, so I also asked for a drink. She returned a few minutes later with a thin sheet which had been heated up and a styrofoam cup filled with water. I drank a lol the water and then tried again to sleep. Around 4 am, they finally arrived and we're ready to take me away. By now I had convinced my mom to call off work. I waved goodbye to her and told her I loved her. They moved me onto a stretcher. Blankets and all. They then strapped me down like I was a psycho who would get up and attack everyone. They then raised the stretcher up super high and I felt like a giraffe. I waved by to my mom one last time as they pulled me out the door. I felt the outside air for the first time in 7 hours. I had forgotten what it felt like. They loaded me into the ambulance and clicked it in so it won't roll around. One ambulance man climbed into the back with me and the other got into the drivers seat. The doors closed and we began to drive away. I felt awful at this point. I regretted it so much. I didn't want to go anymore. The guy in the back saw my worried face and started to talk to me. He looked like someone who would be named Nick, so we can call him that.
"Have you ever been in an ambulance before?" Nick asked. I shook my head.
"It's my first time." He nodded and shrugged.
"That's good." I didn't say anything back.
The ambulance took a sharp turn and Nick flew onto the wall of the ambulance. "Ow" he rubbed his shoulder which hit the side. He stared off for a while too. After of few minutes of the very bumpy ride he turned back to me.
"So do you even know where you're going?" Nick asked.
"I don't know, like the Linder center or something?" He shook my head because I didn't know.
"It's in mason. It's by kings island." He smiled. "It's a long drive."
"Hmmm" I said. I really didn't want to have a conversation with him. But he kept trying.
"So do you do well in school?" He asked.
"What?" I questioned, I couldn't hear because of how bumpy it was.
"Do you do well in school?" He asked again, this time slightly louder.
"Oh, yeah I do ok."
"That's great!" He said happily. I knew he was only trying to make me happy but I seriously just wanted to sit in silence. I looked around the ambulance and looked at all the medical stuff around in it. The road continued to be bumpy. I looked out the window on the back of the ambulance. I saw another ambulance out there, I continued to stare at it. Nick looked out the window.
"Oh man, where do you think they're going? How weird would that be if they were going to the same hospital?" He sounded genuinely excited about it.
"Pretty weird" I said back blankly.
"Ok, so what's your favorite school subject?" He asked, full of energy, despite the late hour.
"I don't know, probably history." I replied, blandly.
"Ok, that's cool. Mines math." I made a face. Nick laughed. "Ok so you don't like math....." He trailed off. About a minute later he asked another question.
"If you could eat dinner with 3 historical people, who would it be, and why?" He asked making faces at me like I was a 2 year old.
"I don't know.......I'll get back to you on that" I said. I stared back out the window for about 10 minutes, Nick was staring too. The other ambulance turned off an exit. Nick made an excited face to me. I smiled back. He then remembered that he was supposed to take my vitals and he didn't. He tried to take my blood pressure but it was far too bumpy on the road and he had to take it around 4 times before he got accurate numbers. Once we finally arrived to the Linder center. He pulled out a radio and tried to make a call. It was broken, so he smacked it against the seat. It started working then and he notified the hospital that we had arrived. The two ambulance guys pulled the stretcher out of the ambulance and wheeled me into the place. I looked around at the scenery. There was art which the patients had made. Overall, I guess it looked nice. They brought me to the adolescents section of the hospital. This is where they dropped me off.
"Did you think of those 3 people yet?" Nick asked like he genuinely cared.
"Nope." I said back.
I got up, and the two left. One woman came over towards me and brought me into an office. She handed me a pencil which had a sticker with "Kimberly" written on it. She also handed me a yellow folder and a menu. She told me to pick out food. I had no idea what I wanted to eat. I circled random things. The lady asked me a ton of questions. One of these included what medicines I was taking. I told her about the Zolaft which I was taking at the time.
"How much are you taking?" She asked rudely.
"50 milligrams." I replied. This is a very low dose of Zolaft, and only double the starting dose.
She laughed. "There's no way that you're on 50 milligrams." She looked at me and made a face to show she thought she was better than me. "You're probably just taking 5."
"No, I'm taking 50." I responded. I knew what I was taking.
She laughed once again. 'Whatever, bitch.' I thought to myself. She obviously shouldn't be working there if she doesn't even know that literally almost no medicines are taken at 5 milligrams. She clicked around on her computer for a few minutes.
"Oh." She said still rudely. "Fine, I guess you are taking 50 milligrams."
She finished typing up other things, before getting up and motioning for me to follow her. She led me to my room. She brought light blue scrubs and light blue large socks with her. We walked into my room. The first thing I noticed was the bed. The blanked looked like towels. The pillow was horrible. I don't even think you could call it a pillow. It was more like if you cut a pillow in half and put it under a 400000 pound weight for 10 years. It was so flat. I couldn't imagine sleeping on it. The next thing I noticed was my desk. It had no chair but it was nailed to the floor and had no sharp edges. There was a wardrobe looking thing but I don't know what it was supposed to be used for. The last thing in my room was a cushioned mech for guests to sit on. They told me to go into the bathroom and take off everything but my underwear. I went into the bathroom which had no door, but instead a curtain which didn't reach all the way to the floor. I reluctantly took off my hospital gowns, and then came out. They inspected my skin and wrote down a ton of stuff. Once they were done they told me to go back into the bathroom and do something I never thought k would have to do. Something I had only seen on Orange is the new black. Ladies and gentlemen, I had to squat and cough, fully naked. I squatted down and the lady looked under the curtain at me. "Cough" She said. I coughed awkwardly, very uncomfortable with the situation.
"Ok you're good, put on your scrubs and go to bed."
"Ok"
Slowly I started to put all my clothes back on. I stared around at the bathroom. The sink was automatic. So was the toilet. The shower didn't look nice. It only had two buttons. What they were for, I had no idea. Next to the toilet was a help button. Just incase you had an emergency while you were peeing. I took a minute to realize that this was going to be my life for the next few days. This is where I would be. This was my room. I had no phone. And there was no clock in my room. I had no idea what time it was. I laid down in bed and closed my eyes. I sighed and took a deep breath. I hoped this would be worth it. Slowly, I drifted to sleep, ready for the next day.