The Passion of Jazz and Other Short Stories by Nicholas Bridgman
Jeff.” My only escape from the hell that had become my mind, and the hell of my surroundings in jail, was more sleep.
After the two weeks of sleeping, I had my hearing and the judge approved me for McGeorge. I had to wait five more weeks for a bed to open up at McGeorge. I slept these away too. I slowly resigned myself to sleeping becoming the norm for me—but it could only be a partial resignation. I still always wished I could be more productive. Finally, after these weeks of stagnation, deputies transported me the 110 miles to the hospital.
In the hospital, I initially found myself in a chaos of new people and activity. I walked between buildings to go to orientation, and some patients I passed wore red identification badges, others blue. I thought the color red symbolized these people worked for the devil. I tried to avoid looking at their eyes for fear they would attack me. I found myself surrounded by stimuli, body language, clothing, people’s hand motions—almost everything startled me and made me fear for my life.
After orientation, one of the first things I did was meet with a treatment team, a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, and rehabilitation therapist. The psychiatrist explained that I had schizophrenia and the Geodon was not working for me. He would change my medication to Abilify, which for some patients had more effectiveness.
The social worker told me I was in the hospital because I had been found “incompetent to stand trial.” My lawyer had felt I did not have the mental stability to cooperate with him or understand the court proceedings. It could take four to six months in the hospital to stabilize and regain my sanity. I had difficulty processing all this information, especially since I did not know who to trust. But the amount of time struck me—I had spent over two months in jail, and now they were telling me I could spend over twice that in the hospital. Where was God in all this? Did he not want to defeat the devil? Why did the people on the side of goodness not help me, protect me? Would there be more here to do than sleep? The months in the hospital could be more time spent of my life, wasted.
Over the next few days in the hospital, I still wished I could take part in work, exercise, even reading, just something to keep busy. But instead I found it even harder to do anything on the Abilify. It made me extremely drowsy, so that I would sleep all the morning away and then the part of the afternoon I did not have to go to activity groups. My sleep was not light as in jail—now I had deep sleeps lasting several hours, only waking up when roommates or staff called my name several times or shook my bed.
The one good part was that on the Abilify I found myself coming out of psychosis. I stopped fearing the color red. I stopped thinking the devil was after me personally. Demons became distant, abstract ideas once more, not actual beings I could kill or meet. I saw my delusions slip away as obvious unrealities that could not be true. I established a grounding in the real world I shared with other people. In two weeks, I had another conference and the psychiatrist noted, “I see you’re getting your mind back.”
Ironically, one of the effects of having my mind back was that I felt extremely bored in the hospital. I took part in groups in the afternoons, such as beadwork and self-esteem building, but they only lasted two hours. The hospital provided little interesting activities outside of group. I tried watching TV in the dayhall, but I could only do that for so long, and I did not usually like the shows the other patients watched. I tried to interest myself in reading, but the unit only had about half a dozen books, romance and science fiction, nothing I was interested in. I had no family or friends to send me anything else. Sometimes I sat in the courtyard with other patients, but the view was just of a razor wire fence and surrounding concrete buildings. Almost all the patients I could not talk to, since they were so deep in psychosis, mania, depression, or other severe mental disorders.
I did manage to have a brief conversation with a patient named James, a young man with a wild beard. I told him my case and asked him about how long he thought I would have to stay in the hospital.
He said, “You’re lucky you’re just here on incompetence, you should be gone in a couple of months. I was sentenced here as NGI, Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. I’m going to be moved off this unit to the Lamar Building. I could spend years there—an indefinite stay—until the doctors determine I’m fit for society.”
“Why years?”
“That’s how long they think it takes to determine mentally ill people like us have truly stabilized.”
“But you seem pretty sane right now.”
“Maybe I do, but I cycle, I have relapses. I know there are some things I need to work on. Just a minute.” He put two fingers up to his mouth and started talking into them in an incomprehensible language, as if they were a microphone.
“Well, good luck,” I said, wanting to let him live with his delusions in peace. He was entranced and no longer replied. I had managed to converse with him normally for only a few minutes, and that was the case with most of the patients. It was difficult in the hospital to find people to socialize with.
After trying unsuccessfully to socialize and find things to do for weeks, I discovered the easiest solution for something to do was to sleep. I did not like this solution, but sleep allowed me to escape the confines of the hospital and its lack of things to do. Besides, my three roommates and most of the other patients slept their time away too. I would return to my room from the bathroom in the middle of the day and find all three of them tucked under their covers, eyes closed, some with blankets even covering their heads. It reminded me of a mausoleum. I laid down on my bed and joined them in their slumbers. After over four months of this, I became so used to the routine of sleeping that I almost could not remember my regular life, waking up early, cooking, working.
In five months, the hospital finally sent me back to court and jail, deeming me competent to stand trial. My lawyer argued I was legally insane at the time of the arson, and my medical records from McGeorge supported that I had an illness. In the end, the judge found me NGI and sentenced me to an indefinite stay at McGeorge.
In my cell, waiting to go back to McGeorge, I remembered James, how he had said people could stay there years on an NGI sentence. I still did not feel ready to accept sleep as my main activity for the foreseeable future, and maybe I never would. But like it or not, it had become my inescapable reality. Spending the last ten months sleeping had made the time go by quickly. Years would likely pass just the same.
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After the two weeks of sleeping, I had my hearing and the judge approved me for McGeorge. I had to wait five more weeks for a bed to open up at McGeorge. I slept these away too. I slowly resigned myself to sleeping becoming the norm for me—but it could only be a partial resignation. I still always wished I could be more productive. Finally, after these weeks of stagnation, deputies transported me the 110 miles to the hospital.
In the hospital, I initially found myself in a chaos of new people and activity. I walked between buildings to go to orientation, and some patients I passed wore red identification badges, others blue. I thought the color red symbolized these people worked for the devil. I tried to avoid looking at their eyes for fear they would attack me. I found myself surrounded by stimuli, body language, clothing, people’s hand motions—almost everything startled me and made me fear for my life.
After orientation, one of the first things I did was meet with a treatment team, a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, and rehabilitation therapist. The psychiatrist explained that I had schizophrenia and the Geodon was not working for me. He would change my medication to Abilify, which for some patients had more effectiveness.
The social worker told me I was in the hospital because I had been found “incompetent to stand trial.” My lawyer had felt I did not have the mental stability to cooperate with him or understand the court proceedings. It could take four to six months in the hospital to stabilize and regain my sanity. I had difficulty processing all this information, especially since I did not know who to trust. But the amount of time struck me—I had spent over two months in jail, and now they were telling me I could spend over twice that in the hospital. Where was God in all this? Did he not want to defeat the devil? Why did the people on the side of goodness not help me, protect me? Would there be more here to do than sleep? The months in the hospital could be more time spent of my life, wasted.
Over the next few days in the hospital, I still wished I could take part in work, exercise, even reading, just something to keep busy. But instead I found it even harder to do anything on the Abilify. It made me extremely drowsy, so that I would sleep all the morning away and then the part of the afternoon I did not have to go to activity groups. My sleep was not light as in jail—now I had deep sleeps lasting several hours, only waking up when roommates or staff called my name several times or shook my bed.
The one good part was that on the Abilify I found myself coming out of psychosis. I stopped fearing the color red. I stopped thinking the devil was after me personally. Demons became distant, abstract ideas once more, not actual beings I could kill or meet. I saw my delusions slip away as obvious unrealities that could not be true. I established a grounding in the real world I shared with other people. In two weeks, I had another conference and the psychiatrist noted, “I see you’re getting your mind back.”
Ironically, one of the effects of having my mind back was that I felt extremely bored in the hospital. I took part in groups in the afternoons, such as beadwork and self-esteem building, but they only lasted two hours. The hospital provided little interesting activities outside of group. I tried watching TV in the dayhall, but I could only do that for so long, and I did not usually like the shows the other patients watched. I tried to interest myself in reading, but the unit only had about half a dozen books, romance and science fiction, nothing I was interested in. I had no family or friends to send me anything else. Sometimes I sat in the courtyard with other patients, but the view was just of a razor wire fence and surrounding concrete buildings. Almost all the patients I could not talk to, since they were so deep in psychosis, mania, depression, or other severe mental disorders.
I did manage to have a brief conversation with a patient named James, a young man with a wild beard. I told him my case and asked him about how long he thought I would have to stay in the hospital.
He said, “You’re lucky you’re just here on incompetence, you should be gone in a couple of months. I was sentenced here as NGI, Not Guilty by reason of Insanity. I’m going to be moved off this unit to the Lamar Building. I could spend years there—an indefinite stay—until the doctors determine I’m fit for society.”
“Why years?”
“That’s how long they think it takes to determine mentally ill people like us have truly stabilized.”
“But you seem pretty sane right now.”
“Maybe I do, but I cycle, I have relapses. I know there are some things I need to work on. Just a minute.” He put two fingers up to his mouth and started talking into them in an incomprehensible language, as if they were a microphone.
“Well, good luck,” I said, wanting to let him live with his delusions in peace. He was entranced and no longer replied. I had managed to converse with him normally for only a few minutes, and that was the case with most of the patients. It was difficult in the hospital to find people to socialize with.
After trying unsuccessfully to socialize and find things to do for weeks, I discovered the easiest solution for something to do was to sleep. I did not like this solution, but sleep allowed me to escape the confines of the hospital and its lack of things to do. Besides, my three roommates and most of the other patients slept their time away too. I would return to my room from the bathroom in the middle of the day and find all three of them tucked under their covers, eyes closed, some with blankets even covering their heads. It reminded me of a mausoleum. I laid down on my bed and joined them in their slumbers. After over four months of this, I became so used to the routine of sleeping that I almost could not remember my regular life, waking up early, cooking, working.
In five months, the hospital finally sent me back to court and jail, deeming me competent to stand trial. My lawyer argued I was legally insane at the time of the arson, and my medical records from McGeorge supported that I had an illness. In the end, the judge found me NGI and sentenced me to an indefinite stay at McGeorge.
In my cell, waiting to go back to McGeorge, I remembered James, how he had said people could stay there years on an NGI sentence. I still did not feel ready to accept sleep as my main activity for the foreseeable future, and maybe I never would. But like it or not, it had become my inescapable reality. Spending the last ten months sleeping had made the time go by quickly. Years would likely pass just the same.
More by Nicholas Bridgman: