To Thine Own Self Be True
Harrison Kim
My brother Martin visited me on my fifth day on the psychiatric ward. He brought mouthwash, some toothpaste with a brush, and a tube of Pex underarm deodorant. I caught whiffs of pot scent when he sat in my room and after he left the place stank of smoke outgassing. He must’ve puffed a couple of doobies before he came in. He’d been under stress, with me committed to hospital for thirty days.
I kneeled down, sniffed his chair. Marijuana scent poured from it. During the visit he sat in his socks and massaged his feet with his doobie hand. I sniffed the floor. He also hugged me and tried out the bed. I sniffed the sheets -- a definite pot odour.
Nurse Bob, the staff honcho with the withered cheeks and long arms, made it very clear in my initial interview, “Drugs strictly not allowed in the psychiatric ward,” he said, stroking his long grey motorcycle man beard. “I’m going to retire soon,” he told me. “Please make me do as little paperwork as possible.”
The penalty for drug transgression could be seclusion, or they’d put me back in pyjamas, or both. Bob had recently allowed me the keys to my clothes closet.
“You haven’t caused any disturbance,” he said, “so this is your reward.”
That nurse had a massive wide nose like a bloodhound’s. His eyes were diamond-shiny and sharp. “Bob might even be a telepath,” I thought.
I had to get rid of the drug smell. What if they brought in a dog? What if I got kicked out of the hospital? There were gangsters waiting. Before I was admitted to the hospital the gangsters rang my doorbell at all hours of the day and night. They shouted insults from the street, threatened to hold me in the basement of my house, torture me and extort all my funds unless I purchased a new heating system. A company calling itself Atmosphere AC had already come in a few times and tampered with my old furnace. It was winter and the house was freezing.
When Martin came over to the house to find out what was happening, he said I should go to the emergency ward.
“You’re sweating like crazy,” he said. “The heat is turned up to extreme.”
“It’s not working,” I told him, “I have a fever, bro, likely got pneumonia from the cold.”
“There’s no gangsters,” Martin said.
“This whole company is a front.” I showed him the phone number for Atmosphere AC. “I only wanted a tune-up. The first guy I called purposely damaged the furnace.” I leaned closer. “He had that hundred-yard-stare,” I said, “a psychopath.”
My neighbours were all in on it. I’d seen the Atmosphere AC truck outside their houses.
Martin’s visit attitude seemed overly nonchalant. Could it be that he purposely came in reeking of pot to get me into trouble? I had to fight back.
First, I needed to wash out the evidence.
I stripped off my clothes, threw them in a heap on the floor. I read the label on the tube of Pex underarm deodorant Martin left on the table.
Strong and lasting, it read, Women love the aroma of Pex!
I grabbed the tube and wrenched the top off, torqued up the stick.
“A generous supply,” I mused. “And it’s blue, my favourite colour.”
The odor wafted up, concentrated rose and pine. I began rubbing the stick on the visitor’s chair.
This will definitely nix the dope, I thought, as the smell of the forest rose all around me.
I rubbed some more, and then more. Got to press this Pex right into the material.
I moved to the floor, and the bed, rubbing down my T-shirt, my underwear, kept on pushing that deodorant stick with a heavy hand. I worked out my furnace gangster fear with this new purpose, used my limbs and muscles after almost a week spent mostly in the hospital bed. I worked faster and faster, pressing hard to erase Martin’s pot taint.
If women were in fact attracted by Pex, they’d be knocking on my room door soon.
I smelled my hands. They reeked of rose and pine. I sniffed the visitor chair again. A wicked perfume arose.
“What am I going to tell Bob? I have to get rid of this smell too.”
If I told them the true story, Martin framing me with the off-gassing to get me kicked out of the hospital and into the clutches of the gangsters, they’d think I was crazy.
I took all my clothes and soaked them in the room sink, then rubbed them on the chair and the floor where I’d put the Pex. I kneaded hard and frantic, washed my hands and sniffed. The minty forest aroma lingered.
I opened the room door, checked to see who occupied the hall. Hank, a huge slack- faced patient, lumbered up and down.
“Peace,” said Hank.
I nodded. “Staff having their afternoon meeting?” I asked.
“Yo, man,” he turned on his heel and started moving back the other way.
I lifted up my dope saturated clothing and blankets, darted out of the room and down the hall to the ward laundry area. I pushed all the clothes into the washer and squeezed a generous amount of the provided soap into the machine. I turned the wash to “heavy duty,” and let it roll.
I darted out and bumped into Nurse Bob.
“How’s it going today,” he asked. “You don’t have any clothes on.”
“I’m going really well,” I answered. “Going to utilize my P. J’s right now.”
I ran down the hall into my room with my eyes half closed, hoping that what Bob saw was only a blur, then threw on my pyjamas, wiped everything down again using my spare towels. My shoulders felt great with the exercise.
I pushed the used towels way back into the clothes cupboard and popped out into the hallway again. I paced, keeping my eye on Hank. I waved at the nurses each time I passed their plexiglass-walled office, just to seem normal. Bob kept staring. I returned to the washer and removed the clothes. The Pex scent lingered.
“This huge dryer can take it,” I said.
I shoved all the clothes and blankets into the big machine, flipped the switch, then began pacing again.
After about ten minutes, I became aware of an intense Pex waft floating from the laundry room. Each time I passed, it built up, the scent burned into my lungs.
I began to cough.
“I could poison everyone!” I thought.
I stepped into the laundry and opened the dryer door.
Do they have gas masks here? I wondered.
I imagined this making the local paper, “Patients asphyxiated due to release of toxic chemicals.”
How would they evacuate the patients? I recalled some of the older, wizened ones sitting zombielike in their rooms. There could be a panic. People might be trampled, and it would be my fault. I’d be responsible for many Pex suffocations and injuries. They’d have a T. V. report. “Mental Patient armed with toxins murders dozens on a psychiatric ward.”
I may as well come clean while the going is good. I don’t want to go to jail, flew through my mind.
I knocked on the staffroom door. Then I knocked again. Bob appeared.
“You don’t have to pound so loud,” he said. “Is this an emergency?”
“I think there’s something weird going on in the laundry room,” I told him.
“Really?” Bob stared, his head and beard turned to one side.
“You better come check it out,” I said.
He followed my beckoning hands.
“Can you smell that?” I asked, opening the dryer door.
“Um, what exactly?” Bob said.
“Well,” I said, “it’s underarm deodorant. I wore a lot of it on my clothes today, and it got mixed up in the dryer.”
Bob peered around the back of the machine. “Isn’t that normal?” he asked. “The deodorant washes off.”
“No!” I pulled out a few of my clothing items, held up a pair of green jogging pants.
“It’s not washing off, it’s there in the hot fumes. Those steaming fumes are dangerous!” I tapped my feet up and down, trying to explain. “There’s toxic ingredients in Pex. I don’t want anyone to get hurt here.”
“Well, it is a bit perfumed,” Bob said. “But it’s only scent.” He looked at me. “Remember, I don’t want to do any more paperwork than necessary.”
He grinned from the side of his mouth and walked away.
“The Pex is pouring out!” I yelled.
I grabbed all my clothes and jogged back to my room, threw the garments into the back of the closet. I flung open my door, and fanned it back and forth, to drive out residual fumes.
A few minutes later Julie, the psychiatrists’ assistant appeared, clutching a cup of coffee. Harriet, the head nurse on shift, stood beside her.
“Were you attracted by the Pex?” I asked.
“Are you having some issues, Jackson?” Harriet said.
“Don’t you smell it?” I said. “There’s a very strong odour of underarm deodorant.”
“Not much,” Julie answered. “But then, I have a cup of coffee here.”
“Yes, that’s it!” I exclaimed. “You can’t smell the Pex because of the coffee!”
“You seem very concerned,” Harriet told me.
“You bet I’m concerned. Breathe deep, check it out for yourselves.”
Harriet looked around. “The air’s a bit minty,” she said.
“This is the culprit.” I held out the tube of Pex. “I rubbed it on my clothes. That was a mistake.”
“It’s not harmful,” Julie said. “Millions of people wear deodorant every day.”
“The odours will fade,” Harriet added. “Perhaps you’re sensitive to smells right now.”
By this time, Bob and several other burly looking staff leaned in the doorway.
“Is everything okay?” Bob asked.
“Why don’t you lie down a while?” said Julie. “It’s almost snack time.”
I glanced at her wide, half-frowning face, then I looked at the tight lips and folded arms of the staff looming over me as I sat on the bed.
“I see you’ve got your pyjamas on,” Bob said. “I don’t want to see you running down the hall naked again.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I was concerned about the washing.”
I gave a big smile.
“Try and relax,” Julie repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “I feel way more relaxed already.”
Julie gave a goodbye wave and picked up her coffee cup.
“Keep relaxed,” Bob said.
As the staff stepped down the hall, I overheard Julie say “I think it’s olfactory delusions. I’ll do the charting.”
I’ve been committed here for thirty days, by two psychiatrists, I told myself. How did this happen?
Maybe I’d talked too much. I told the docs about the gangsters tampering with my house furnace and water systems, how they tried to intimidate me every day by walking their dogs by the house or tossing junk mail up on the porch. I stood in my front window and made thrusting motions with butcher knives as they stepped by. That didn’t seem to faze them, so I held up burning newspapers. I let the papers flame, dropping the pieces and stomping them out at the last minute. I may have screamed obscenities as well, but I had total control over the fire. I had so much faith in myself I’d even turned off the smoke alarms. When Martin came to the house, I told him about the gangsters while demonstrating my fire extinguishing techniques. Unfortunately, this time I burned my left hand. He called the ambulance. The police showed up too.
“The neighbours are very concerned,” they told my brother.
“You don’t have to go in the ambulance. I’ll drive you,” Martin said.
“Okay,” I told him. “anything to get away from these gangsters.”
I worried they’d burn the house down in my absence, but Martin assured me it was still there.
~ ~ ~
I tried to relax, but mostly lay on the bed jiggling my hands and feet. I kept the door open a tad and watched Hank pace by about a hundred times. Julie returned in the evening.
“Doctor Kim is going to increase your risperidone,” she said. “She thinks you need more for your delusions.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Double,” she said.
I sat up in the bed. I’d already been holding the meds under my tongue, then spitting them out.
“I’d be happier with the regular dose,” I told Julie.
She grinned, a grin which turned down again, like a frown. “You can talk to the doctor in a week.”
Late in the evening, Nurse Bob returned.
“We need to have a little talk,” he said. “Converse mano a mano.”
“Okay,” I said. “Would you like a chair? I think the fibres are odour free now.”
“Look,” Bob said, sitting down. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“You’re acting crazy,” he said. “And you’re giving us evidence that proves it, like with that whole deodorant schtick.”
“I don’t think it’s acting,” I said.
“That proves my point,” Bob nodded. “You’re in denial. You’re seeking attention, and when you get it, you up the ante. All that business about the gangsters, what a bizarre story.”
“It’s true,” I said. “They sabotaged my furnace.”
“You’ve convinced the doctors,” Bob said, “and you’ve convinced yourself, just by thinking over and over again 'it’s real.'” He looked at me. “I bet you’re cheeking your medications.”
I didn’t say anything, because if I said “Yes,” I’d get into trouble, and if I said “No,” I would be telling a lie that I knew was a lie and I couldn’t do that, not with Bob who seemed quite telepathic, and besides was retiring soon, and only trying to do his job.
“How certain are you,” Bob said, “that your neighbours were gangsters? I mean, no-one really knows their neighbours these days.”
He leaned forward, “and that whole thing about the deodorant. I think that was some kind of cover-up.”
“What would I be covering up?”
“You tell me,” said Bob.
“Alright,” I said, “if you promise not to write it down.”
“I can’t make promises,” he said, “and I hate writing reports.”
So I told him the marijuana and Pex story from the time that Martin came in the room.
Bob sat listening with his elbow crooked on his leg. He pulled his beard hairs with his fingers and nodded from time to time.
“You don’t have faulty brain chemistry,” Bob concluded. “You have a crazy imagination.”
It was true. My imagination was huge. My wife Sammi had died in our house a few months before, killed herself by hanging, pulled a rope over the rafters in the attic. Two days after the suicide, I did my laundry. We’d been together twenty years. I’d always done the laundry. When I got back with the clean clothes, I emptied her bath. I’d let the water stand two days. I always suggested she take a bath to relax. She’d drawn it, but never used it. She went to the attic instead. A week later, I picked up the death certificate, and a few days after that went to see her body in the funeral home. I placed a couple of our photos around the corpse. A month went by. I began to feel the emptiness, that whole house with nobody in the rooms but me, all those hours to pace and think. I thought about her, for sure, but then I imagined other things. I kept coming back to the neighbours. Those were the only people I saw after I quit my job. Sammi was always suspicious of the neighbours.
Dr. Kim kept me on the higher dose of medication for a couple of weeks.
“You’re showing great signs of improvement,” she said.
Can you reduce the meds?” I asked. “Maybe to half?”
“I’m hesitant to do this right now,” she said.
“I realize now it was all in my head,” I told her. “Pex isn’t toxic.”
“What do you think?” Dr. Kim asked Bob.
“We could give the lower meds a try,” Bob said. “Jackson’s been playing ping-pong and socializing well with the other patients.”
“What about the gangsters?” Dr. Kim asked. “Do you still believe they’re out to get you?”
“I can’t believe I almost burned my house down,” I told her.
Martin came to visit again that evening.
This time, he brought his dog Tip, a small shitzu.
“I’m going to get in trouble,” I told him. “Did you carry it in under your coat?”
“No,” he said. “I showed Tip to the staff. They love her. Do you ever feel,’ he asked, “that you want to join Sammi?”
“That’s probably what was at the bottom of all that gangster B. S,” I said.
After he left, I opened the closet door and opened up a folded towel, counted my twenty-five risperidone pills, saved from all my medication cheeking over the past few weeks. I wasn’t planning on taking them, but it was good to know that they were there. That whole closet still stank like Pex.
The only thing Martin left after this visit were some of TIp’s dog hairs.
I cleaned those up without incident, then paced up and down the halls with Hank and tried to perceive reality without imagination, and without my wife.
Harrison Kim
My brother Martin visited me on my fifth day on the psychiatric ward. He brought mouthwash, some toothpaste with a brush, and a tube of Pex underarm deodorant. I caught whiffs of pot scent when he sat in my room and after he left the place stank of smoke outgassing. He must’ve puffed a couple of doobies before he came in. He’d been under stress, with me committed to hospital for thirty days.
I kneeled down, sniffed his chair. Marijuana scent poured from it. During the visit he sat in his socks and massaged his feet with his doobie hand. I sniffed the floor. He also hugged me and tried out the bed. I sniffed the sheets -- a definite pot odour.
Nurse Bob, the staff honcho with the withered cheeks and long arms, made it very clear in my initial interview, “Drugs strictly not allowed in the psychiatric ward,” he said, stroking his long grey motorcycle man beard. “I’m going to retire soon,” he told me. “Please make me do as little paperwork as possible.”
The penalty for drug transgression could be seclusion, or they’d put me back in pyjamas, or both. Bob had recently allowed me the keys to my clothes closet.
“You haven’t caused any disturbance,” he said, “so this is your reward.”
That nurse had a massive wide nose like a bloodhound’s. His eyes were diamond-shiny and sharp. “Bob might even be a telepath,” I thought.
I had to get rid of the drug smell. What if they brought in a dog? What if I got kicked out of the hospital? There were gangsters waiting. Before I was admitted to the hospital the gangsters rang my doorbell at all hours of the day and night. They shouted insults from the street, threatened to hold me in the basement of my house, torture me and extort all my funds unless I purchased a new heating system. A company calling itself Atmosphere AC had already come in a few times and tampered with my old furnace. It was winter and the house was freezing.
When Martin came over to the house to find out what was happening, he said I should go to the emergency ward.
“You’re sweating like crazy,” he said. “The heat is turned up to extreme.”
“It’s not working,” I told him, “I have a fever, bro, likely got pneumonia from the cold.”
“There’s no gangsters,” Martin said.
“This whole company is a front.” I showed him the phone number for Atmosphere AC. “I only wanted a tune-up. The first guy I called purposely damaged the furnace.” I leaned closer. “He had that hundred-yard-stare,” I said, “a psychopath.”
My neighbours were all in on it. I’d seen the Atmosphere AC truck outside their houses.
Martin’s visit attitude seemed overly nonchalant. Could it be that he purposely came in reeking of pot to get me into trouble? I had to fight back.
First, I needed to wash out the evidence.
I stripped off my clothes, threw them in a heap on the floor. I read the label on the tube of Pex underarm deodorant Martin left on the table.
Strong and lasting, it read, Women love the aroma of Pex!
I grabbed the tube and wrenched the top off, torqued up the stick.
“A generous supply,” I mused. “And it’s blue, my favourite colour.”
The odor wafted up, concentrated rose and pine. I began rubbing the stick on the visitor’s chair.
This will definitely nix the dope, I thought, as the smell of the forest rose all around me.
I rubbed some more, and then more. Got to press this Pex right into the material.
I moved to the floor, and the bed, rubbing down my T-shirt, my underwear, kept on pushing that deodorant stick with a heavy hand. I worked out my furnace gangster fear with this new purpose, used my limbs and muscles after almost a week spent mostly in the hospital bed. I worked faster and faster, pressing hard to erase Martin’s pot taint.
If women were in fact attracted by Pex, they’d be knocking on my room door soon.
I smelled my hands. They reeked of rose and pine. I sniffed the visitor chair again. A wicked perfume arose.
“What am I going to tell Bob? I have to get rid of this smell too.”
If I told them the true story, Martin framing me with the off-gassing to get me kicked out of the hospital and into the clutches of the gangsters, they’d think I was crazy.
I took all my clothes and soaked them in the room sink, then rubbed them on the chair and the floor where I’d put the Pex. I kneaded hard and frantic, washed my hands and sniffed. The minty forest aroma lingered.
I opened the room door, checked to see who occupied the hall. Hank, a huge slack- faced patient, lumbered up and down.
“Peace,” said Hank.
I nodded. “Staff having their afternoon meeting?” I asked.
“Yo, man,” he turned on his heel and started moving back the other way.
I lifted up my dope saturated clothing and blankets, darted out of the room and down the hall to the ward laundry area. I pushed all the clothes into the washer and squeezed a generous amount of the provided soap into the machine. I turned the wash to “heavy duty,” and let it roll.
I darted out and bumped into Nurse Bob.
“How’s it going today,” he asked. “You don’t have any clothes on.”
“I’m going really well,” I answered. “Going to utilize my P. J’s right now.”
I ran down the hall into my room with my eyes half closed, hoping that what Bob saw was only a blur, then threw on my pyjamas, wiped everything down again using my spare towels. My shoulders felt great with the exercise.
I pushed the used towels way back into the clothes cupboard and popped out into the hallway again. I paced, keeping my eye on Hank. I waved at the nurses each time I passed their plexiglass-walled office, just to seem normal. Bob kept staring. I returned to the washer and removed the clothes. The Pex scent lingered.
“This huge dryer can take it,” I said.
I shoved all the clothes and blankets into the big machine, flipped the switch, then began pacing again.
After about ten minutes, I became aware of an intense Pex waft floating from the laundry room. Each time I passed, it built up, the scent burned into my lungs.
I began to cough.
“I could poison everyone!” I thought.
I stepped into the laundry and opened the dryer door.
Do they have gas masks here? I wondered.
I imagined this making the local paper, “Patients asphyxiated due to release of toxic chemicals.”
How would they evacuate the patients? I recalled some of the older, wizened ones sitting zombielike in their rooms. There could be a panic. People might be trampled, and it would be my fault. I’d be responsible for many Pex suffocations and injuries. They’d have a T. V. report. “Mental Patient armed with toxins murders dozens on a psychiatric ward.”
I may as well come clean while the going is good. I don’t want to go to jail, flew through my mind.
I knocked on the staffroom door. Then I knocked again. Bob appeared.
“You don’t have to pound so loud,” he said. “Is this an emergency?”
“I think there’s something weird going on in the laundry room,” I told him.
“Really?” Bob stared, his head and beard turned to one side.
“You better come check it out,” I said.
He followed my beckoning hands.
“Can you smell that?” I asked, opening the dryer door.
“Um, what exactly?” Bob said.
“Well,” I said, “it’s underarm deodorant. I wore a lot of it on my clothes today, and it got mixed up in the dryer.”
Bob peered around the back of the machine. “Isn’t that normal?” he asked. “The deodorant washes off.”
“No!” I pulled out a few of my clothing items, held up a pair of green jogging pants.
“It’s not washing off, it’s there in the hot fumes. Those steaming fumes are dangerous!” I tapped my feet up and down, trying to explain. “There’s toxic ingredients in Pex. I don’t want anyone to get hurt here.”
“Well, it is a bit perfumed,” Bob said. “But it’s only scent.” He looked at me. “Remember, I don’t want to do any more paperwork than necessary.”
He grinned from the side of his mouth and walked away.
“The Pex is pouring out!” I yelled.
I grabbed all my clothes and jogged back to my room, threw the garments into the back of the closet. I flung open my door, and fanned it back and forth, to drive out residual fumes.
A few minutes later Julie, the psychiatrists’ assistant appeared, clutching a cup of coffee. Harriet, the head nurse on shift, stood beside her.
“Were you attracted by the Pex?” I asked.
“Are you having some issues, Jackson?” Harriet said.
“Don’t you smell it?” I said. “There’s a very strong odour of underarm deodorant.”
“Not much,” Julie answered. “But then, I have a cup of coffee here.”
“Yes, that’s it!” I exclaimed. “You can’t smell the Pex because of the coffee!”
“You seem very concerned,” Harriet told me.
“You bet I’m concerned. Breathe deep, check it out for yourselves.”
Harriet looked around. “The air’s a bit minty,” she said.
“This is the culprit.” I held out the tube of Pex. “I rubbed it on my clothes. That was a mistake.”
“It’s not harmful,” Julie said. “Millions of people wear deodorant every day.”
“The odours will fade,” Harriet added. “Perhaps you’re sensitive to smells right now.”
By this time, Bob and several other burly looking staff leaned in the doorway.
“Is everything okay?” Bob asked.
“Why don’t you lie down a while?” said Julie. “It’s almost snack time.”
I glanced at her wide, half-frowning face, then I looked at the tight lips and folded arms of the staff looming over me as I sat on the bed.
“I see you’ve got your pyjamas on,” Bob said. “I don’t want to see you running down the hall naked again.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I was concerned about the washing.”
I gave a big smile.
“Try and relax,” Julie repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “I feel way more relaxed already.”
Julie gave a goodbye wave and picked up her coffee cup.
“Keep relaxed,” Bob said.
As the staff stepped down the hall, I overheard Julie say “I think it’s olfactory delusions. I’ll do the charting.”
I’ve been committed here for thirty days, by two psychiatrists, I told myself. How did this happen?
Maybe I’d talked too much. I told the docs about the gangsters tampering with my house furnace and water systems, how they tried to intimidate me every day by walking their dogs by the house or tossing junk mail up on the porch. I stood in my front window and made thrusting motions with butcher knives as they stepped by. That didn’t seem to faze them, so I held up burning newspapers. I let the papers flame, dropping the pieces and stomping them out at the last minute. I may have screamed obscenities as well, but I had total control over the fire. I had so much faith in myself I’d even turned off the smoke alarms. When Martin came to the house, I told him about the gangsters while demonstrating my fire extinguishing techniques. Unfortunately, this time I burned my left hand. He called the ambulance. The police showed up too.
“The neighbours are very concerned,” they told my brother.
“You don’t have to go in the ambulance. I’ll drive you,” Martin said.
“Okay,” I told him. “anything to get away from these gangsters.”
I worried they’d burn the house down in my absence, but Martin assured me it was still there.
~ ~ ~
I tried to relax, but mostly lay on the bed jiggling my hands and feet. I kept the door open a tad and watched Hank pace by about a hundred times. Julie returned in the evening.
“Doctor Kim is going to increase your risperidone,” she said. “She thinks you need more for your delusions.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Double,” she said.
I sat up in the bed. I’d already been holding the meds under my tongue, then spitting them out.
“I’d be happier with the regular dose,” I told Julie.
She grinned, a grin which turned down again, like a frown. “You can talk to the doctor in a week.”
Late in the evening, Nurse Bob returned.
“We need to have a little talk,” he said. “Converse mano a mano.”
“Okay,” I said. “Would you like a chair? I think the fibres are odour free now.”
“Look,” Bob said, sitting down. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“You’re acting crazy,” he said. “And you’re giving us evidence that proves it, like with that whole deodorant schtick.”
“I don’t think it’s acting,” I said.
“That proves my point,” Bob nodded. “You’re in denial. You’re seeking attention, and when you get it, you up the ante. All that business about the gangsters, what a bizarre story.”
“It’s true,” I said. “They sabotaged my furnace.”
“You’ve convinced the doctors,” Bob said, “and you’ve convinced yourself, just by thinking over and over again 'it’s real.'” He looked at me. “I bet you’re cheeking your medications.”
I didn’t say anything, because if I said “Yes,” I’d get into trouble, and if I said “No,” I would be telling a lie that I knew was a lie and I couldn’t do that, not with Bob who seemed quite telepathic, and besides was retiring soon, and only trying to do his job.
“How certain are you,” Bob said, “that your neighbours were gangsters? I mean, no-one really knows their neighbours these days.”
He leaned forward, “and that whole thing about the deodorant. I think that was some kind of cover-up.”
“What would I be covering up?”
“You tell me,” said Bob.
“Alright,” I said, “if you promise not to write it down.”
“I can’t make promises,” he said, “and I hate writing reports.”
So I told him the marijuana and Pex story from the time that Martin came in the room.
Bob sat listening with his elbow crooked on his leg. He pulled his beard hairs with his fingers and nodded from time to time.
“You don’t have faulty brain chemistry,” Bob concluded. “You have a crazy imagination.”
It was true. My imagination was huge. My wife Sammi had died in our house a few months before, killed herself by hanging, pulled a rope over the rafters in the attic. Two days after the suicide, I did my laundry. We’d been together twenty years. I’d always done the laundry. When I got back with the clean clothes, I emptied her bath. I’d let the water stand two days. I always suggested she take a bath to relax. She’d drawn it, but never used it. She went to the attic instead. A week later, I picked up the death certificate, and a few days after that went to see her body in the funeral home. I placed a couple of our photos around the corpse. A month went by. I began to feel the emptiness, that whole house with nobody in the rooms but me, all those hours to pace and think. I thought about her, for sure, but then I imagined other things. I kept coming back to the neighbours. Those were the only people I saw after I quit my job. Sammi was always suspicious of the neighbours.
Dr. Kim kept me on the higher dose of medication for a couple of weeks.
“You’re showing great signs of improvement,” she said.
Can you reduce the meds?” I asked. “Maybe to half?”
“I’m hesitant to do this right now,” she said.
“I realize now it was all in my head,” I told her. “Pex isn’t toxic.”
“What do you think?” Dr. Kim asked Bob.
“We could give the lower meds a try,” Bob said. “Jackson’s been playing ping-pong and socializing well with the other patients.”
“What about the gangsters?” Dr. Kim asked. “Do you still believe they’re out to get you?”
“I can’t believe I almost burned my house down,” I told her.
Martin came to visit again that evening.
This time, he brought his dog Tip, a small shitzu.
“I’m going to get in trouble,” I told him. “Did you carry it in under your coat?”
“No,” he said. “I showed Tip to the staff. They love her. Do you ever feel,’ he asked, “that you want to join Sammi?”
“That’s probably what was at the bottom of all that gangster B. S,” I said.
After he left, I opened the closet door and opened up a folded towel, counted my twenty-five risperidone pills, saved from all my medication cheeking over the past few weeks. I wasn’t planning on taking them, but it was good to know that they were there. That whole closet still stank like Pex.
The only thing Martin left after this visit were some of TIp’s dog hairs.
I cleaned those up without incident, then paced up and down the halls with Hank and tried to perceive reality without imagination, and without my wife.
