The Finer Points of Becoming Machine (2 page)

Dr X looks at me with a frozen stare that leaves me genuinely afraid. There is an uncomfortable silence. I wish he’d just yell at me or something, not just stare at me. The haughty demeanour I walked in with fades under his icy gaze.

‘Perhaps you didn’t understand the directions Emma.’ I pick at nothing on my pants.

‘You said to write about my feelings. So that’s what I did.’

‘The directions were to write about your feelings, yes. These are complaints. Secondly, you are supposed to write at least a page a day, half a page in the morning and the evening at the minimum.’

Dr X drops the journal on the desk in front of him and distastefully pushes it
back towards me. ‘You’re not trying Emma. I suggest you start.’

His words thinly conceal an open-ended threat that I might find myself having to stay in this shit hole. I pick up the journal and leave. I go and sit back in the main room and listen to all the other patients talk about nothing important at all. I am growing more and more irritated. I’ve focused in on the sound and it grows louder in my head, like the buzzing of bees.

I am afraid I’m going to do something horrible, I can see myself screaming at all of them about their stupid, meaningless lives and I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m gasping for air when finally group therapy is called and everyone shuts the hell up. The buzzing stops. I can breathe again.

I cross my arms and scowl at every single person while they talk. I make goals for myself in here to keep myself entertained. Today I have decided to practise staring at people until they feel uncomfortable.

My game is interrupted by Dr X’s voice. ‘Is there a problem Emma?’

I flinch at the sound. Everyone stares at me. Now I feel uncomfortable. ‘No.’

He waits for a minute and then looks at the pretty Asian girl who accosted me when I first arrived here with her idiocy and her fingers. Apparently ‘Lucy’ is her name, and she goes back to talking about how she lives a life of luxury and her parents don’t pay attention to her, or something else retarded like that. Everyone nods and mutters words of encouragement. I roll my eyes.

It finally gets to be my turn to talk. ‘I don’t have anything to say,’ I state flatly.

Everyone stares at me again. I ignore their zombie eyes by concentrating on my fingernails. Dr X is staring at me too; I know it. I am frustrated. I really
don’t
know what to say.

Dr X speaks. ‘OK Emma, let’s talk about anything you want. Anything at all.’

I start to cry, I am so damned frustrated, and my showing of emotion upsets me more. I bite the inside of my mouth until I taste blood.

‘I don’t know what to say. I really don’t. I’m frustrated because I don’t know what to say.’

As if God somehow hears my thoughts, a bell sounds and Dr X sighs. Therapy is over. I say a silent prayer of gratitude.

Pills. Food. Colouring. I am irritated, and it’s swelling inside my chest and I can’t control it. The same rotten nurse who spoke to me like I was an idiot when I asked her what medication she was giving me, curtly tells me to clean up the crayons as I am putting them away in the plastic baby wipe box they are contained in.

‘I
am
putting them away.’ I respond angrily to her demand.

‘
What
was that?’ she snaps at me.

I don’t back down, not to this wretched, hateful woman. ‘I SAID, I AM PUTTING THEM AWAY.’ I cross my arms.

‘Put the damned crayons away, you psycho little bitch.’

I lose it. I pick up the fake plastic Christmas tree that has long since seen better days and throw it at her. ‘Shove it!’ I yell.

Her face turns beet red and the room goes silent. She walks out of the door quickly and about three seconds later I hear a code being called.

‘God
damn
it’ I say and drop the box of crayons on the table when I see four male orderlies who look like they double as linebackers for a football team head towards me. I put my hands up slightly and out to my sides as the nurse stands behind them, smirking.

They grab my arms and legs even though I am not resisting and they carry
me towards a room. I remember Ricky once telling me that this is the isolation room. This idea does not appeal to me and I begin trying to wiggle my way out of these ungentle hands that are holding me. It’s no use though, and I am put face down on this table while hands quickly begin to strap me down.

One of the orderlies is trying to rip off the hemp bracelet that I have on my right wrist. It was Donnie’s. ‘No. NO! I will take it off, don’t rip it!’

For some reason he listens and I take it off and hand it to him right before they grab my hands and strap those down too. A shot goes into my ass, and off to dreamland I go.

I open my eyes. They feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each, and it takes me a few tries to get them all the way open.

I am surprised to find that tears have collected in a tiny pool under my face on the plastic table. I am groggy and thirsty. My lips are like sand; they’re so dry they’ve cracked and I lick them in a vain attempt to moisten them, but my tongue is like sandpaper and I give up.

I begin the task of trying to get out of the leather straps on the table. I get my right hand free and about sixty seconds later I have gotten all of my bonds loose. I pick a corner where I can see everything in the room and huddle up in it. 

A sob threatens to break out of my chest. ‘No, you do not cry, you are metal; machines don’t cry,’ I chant to myself over and over, rocking back and forth. The sob is still there and it is spilling into my chant and pissing me off so I say the chant louder until I am practically screaming at myself.

A heavy metal clunking sound comes from the door and I look up as it opens. Dr X is in the doorway. He sighs when he sees me. ‘How did you get off the table Emma?’

I look at him with hurt in my eyes. I don’t answer. I am clutching myself and rocking, staring at him. He walks into the room and an orderly begins to follow him. He turns and stops the orderly and whispers something to him. The orderly looks at me and then steps back outside. I go back to staring at the floor.

Dr X is standing above me. ‘What happened, Emma?’

Years of lying, of not telling people anything about my life or what was going on in it kick in, and I refuse to tell him that
the nurse egged me on. He squats down in front of me when I don’t answer.

‘Emma…’

I look up at him and I can’t help myself; tears are spilling onto my white cheeks. ‘I am a machine. Machines don’t cry.’

His brow furrows slightly and he tilts his head. ‘You’re not a machine Emma. And you’re not violent. Angry yes, but you’re not violent. What happened?’

I repeat myself as I stare at the floor, rocking back and forth.

He sighs.

‘Emma… I have to keep you here longer now. You know that, right?’

I know. But I don’t respond. I just keep rocking.

Dr X pulls a tissue out of his pocket and hands it to me. He walks over to the door
and talks to the orderly standing guard outside, and a few moments later, he hands me a cup of water.

I guzzle it, my hands shaking and clutching the paper cup.

Dr X goes to the door. ‘Take a few minutes and compose yourself Emma. When you’re done, you can come out. It’s almost dinner time.’

He walks out of the door and I feel sad that he’s gone.

I wipe my cheeks and run my fingers through my choppy black hair. I steel myself, everyone is going to look at me like I’m a psycho when I leave this room, but it’s better than being in here. I walk past the tear-stained plastic table and ignore it. I squint at the light in the doorway, and I walk through it.

Pills. Food. Colouring. I pick up my journal. I begin to write.

I bite the insides of my cheek until I taste blood as Dr X reads my evening journal entry.

This is what being honest feels like
… goes through my head. I wait for him to finish reading.

That’s it, he’s going to label you crazy and you’re never getting out of here,
I tell
myself silently and sigh. I don’t care right now though; either I’m so damned raw that I have gone numb, or I’m still sedated, or maybe it’s both. I just simply don’t care.

Dr X looks up at me and I am startled by the expression on his face. He’s not angry with me. In fact, he almost looks sad.

So the bastard
does
feel something,
I tell myself again.

He looks down once more, at tear and blood stained admissions of being completely lost, hidden within sentences that don’t quite make sense. We lock eyes. For once, for the first time, I am not the first one to drop my gaze. He does.

‘No, Emma. You don’t have to write exactly a full page any more,’ he says softly. ‘You may go now.’

I freeze. Normally I bolt out of this session, which feels like a trial without a jury where I’ve already been declared guilty. But I feel nothing. He says nothing.

I move in near slow motion, expecting this to be some sort of trick. Like he’s going to reveal himself to be the unfeeling sadist that I have been imagining he really is; laughing at me while condemning me to a life sentence in this place. Condemning me to being a zombie.

Dr X notices my hesitation. ‘I’m not going to punish you, Emma.’

I am confused and just a little bit uncomfortable, but I take his words at face value and leave anyway.

Ricky is outside talking to Lucy. I silently wish her a more successful suicide attempt and walk on by. Ricky quickly ends his conversation with Lucy and comes to sit next to the chair furthest from everyone else in the room, which is where I’ve made my home.

‘Hi Emma,’ he says. It takes me a minute to look up at him. They’ve prescribed me about three more medications since
The Incident
and my brain feels like it consists
of nothing but fog any more. I look up at him blankly.

‘The meds are hitting ya pretty hard aren’t they? What are they giving you?’ he asks me.

I try to think. I can’t remember the long foreign machine names of all the
dones
and
zones
and
iums
they’ve prescribed me.

‘I… uh… don’t know.’

My mouth is unbearably dry. I feel like I’ve sunk into this chair though, and I can’t move. My stitches itch in my arms. I look down and realise that half the cuts don’t have stitches, and the thought mildly creeps me out before I look back up at Ricky.

‘Well…’ he looks around to make sure nobody is close by before he continues. ‘There is kind of a
black market
around here so to speak, and whatever you’re on must be good. So if you can find a way not to swallow it, ya know, you could probably trade it for other stuff if you wanted to.’

‘People want to buy something I’ve had to hide
in my mouth
for at least two minutes and then let dry out before I
sell
it to them?’ I ask incredulously.

‘Yeah. Like Lucy over there,
major
pill head. And I don’t know if you’ve met Frank yet, the little quiet skinny black kid. Him too.’

I stare at Ricky, inadvertently making him feel uncomfortable. My eyes have become razorblades without me even knowing it.

‘Hey, Emma, look, I’m just trying to help OK?’ he offers. ‘I mean, you haven’t really gone out of your way to make friends around here, and I just figured, ya know, you might want to know stuff around here. Stuff that the staff don’t tell you.’

I soften a bit at his awkward demeanour and his attempts to help me. I’ve been nothing but rude to everyone, he’s right. Maybe I misjudged him by lumping him into the same category as the worthless zombies that roam the halls.

‘Thank you Ricky. I’ll just… uh… keep that in mind.’

Ricky visibly relaxes. He smiles an awkward, unsure, too-kind smile.

I look down at the doodles in my journal. I want to be alone. He doesn’t pick up on this. Or maybe he does and ignores it, refusing to let me be alone for whatever reason.

‘I just… ya know… want you to know you have someone to talk to that isn’t a
narc
or a doctor, Emma. I feel kind of bad for you…’ he looks down and fidgets with his hands before he continues.

‘…you’re obviously hurting. Not like some of the
other
people in here,’ he says and looks distastefully at Lucy.

I smile. He smiles. I actually start to laugh at our mutual hatred of the
poseur
Lucy. Our short-lived laughter dies down. Silence.

‘What put you in here Ricky?’ I ask him, my voice as soft as falling snow. I am again
reminded that I am a ghost. I don’t seem to talk very loud any more.

He looks down and sighs before starting. I wait with the patience of Buddha.

‘My dad was a real jerk. Ya know, he hit my mom all the time. Then, when she finally left, he started hitting
me
. And I wasn’t big enough to fight him off, so it just kept going on ya know? One day I’ll be big enough.’

He nods, more to himself than to me, assuring himself that one day it will stop. I feel sick.

‘So, I tried to kill myself. I uh, tried to hang myself but my dad walked in. And uh, now I’m in here.’

I notice faint scars that crisscross his face, amongst the pockmarks from the bad acne. I don’t know why, but I put my hand on his. He grasps my tiny white hand tightly in his big ruddy one. We look at each other and say nothing. I feel uncomfortable with human touch though, and I let go.

‘Me too,’ I whisper. The words start to come as if I’m possessed.

‘My parents fought all the time until the divorce. They dragged that out for years.
Years.
Can you imagine that? Telling your kids over and over you’re getting a divorce and then not? It was pretty screwed up.’

I’m looking down at my fingers, not at him. But I find myself wanting to say more.

‘Except my dad didn’t just hit her, it was
all
of us. I used to be daddy’s little girl. Then I started to look like my mom when I started to grow up and it seemed, after that, that he hated me. He wouldn’t hug me any more. In fact, I remember trying to hug him once in a restaurant and him pushing me off in embarrassment, telling me that
People are going to think something is wrong
.’

I shudder briefly at this memory, but I continue to describe it.

‘When I looked at him in shock, that was the beginning of the end with us. Like
I said, things had been bad with him and mom for years.’

I pause. I lick my lips, trying to get some damned moisture on them since they won’t give us
ChapStick
here. I am on autopilot, talking and not really talking; some part of my mind is still not here, not associating these words with real events, with real people. I sigh, a sigh of exhaustion; it’s all I can do to get enough air to continue to whisper.

‘I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.’

My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.

‘I was too young, and we were always told that they’d put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises,
and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up.’

Ricky just listens. He isn’t shocked. He isn’t surprised. He listens to me because he knows. He knows the shame and the guilt and the sorrow and the rage. And he does not judge me. He just listens.

‘I know his childhood was bad, my father’s. I mean, he has said bits and pieces… his father left him and like, two of his siblings died… and the man his mother remarried was an abusive prick.’

I’ve always tried to justify my father. Because when he wasn’t angry and hurting us, he was the most wonderful man in the world to me. He was strong and handsome with beautiful blue eyes and an easy laugh. I smile a little as I bring to mind a good memory of my father, and feel it’s not fair if I don’t tell it. I’ve told bad stories, and now I feel like I have to defend him. Ricky waits for me to finish or continue. Just waits. He
isn’t impatient at my pauses, or horrified at my story. He just sits and waits and listens. I am comforted by this, and continue.

‘I remember one time, he found a little lizard on a glue trap, still alive. He sat at the kitchen table with a jar of flour for five hours, ever so gently prying this creature’s tiny little claws and body from the trap before letting him go. He wasn’t all bad. But when he
was
bad…’

I trail off and finally stop. I see no reason to keep talking. Ricky waits for a minute and gently touches my hand again, just briefly. He walks away. Moments later he brings me a glass of water, and I am stunned by this act of kindness.

‘Thank you, Ricky.’

‘You’re welcome, Emma.’

He says nothing more.

Suddenly, he’s not awkward and he gracefully bows out, leaving me alone to
contemplate the past. I look around and notice that the Christmas tree has been taken out of the room. Torn Christmas decorations are still hanging though, faded and God only knows how old.

It’s starting to look like I am going to spend my Christmas in this dingy, dirty, tomb.

The nurses come in with trays. It’s medication time. One by one, we file in line and we accept whatever is given to us. The snotty, wretched nurse is replaced by a thin, anaemic looking one who is quiet and not completely bitchy. She even smiles at some of the patients that have been here longer, ones she recognises.

I don’t fight it any more. I don’t have the strength to. I swallow the pills and silently walk back to my seat at the edge of the room to wait for the next wave of comfortable numbness to set in.

My journal sits loosely on my lap. All I can do is stare at the wall.