Eastertide Commitment

After spending seven days in the ER, C was transferred to the regional psychiatric hospital yesterday morning.

Sent to the loonie bin - that's the bad news. The good news is that now we can visit him. So Lisa and I went up last night after supper.

The facility is brand new, replacing the older one in that same town. This probably helped to relieve a bit of the awkward nervousness I felt approaching my first mental health ward. They lead us through a series of four electrically locking doors. The hallways were white and sterile but bigger than your average hospital types. This would have been comforting, but medical hospitals are usually bustling with doctors, nurses and patients, carts and machinery here and there. Here there was nothing. No other people, bare, slightly curving, medium-light corridors smelling of antiseptic soap.

They led us into an austere little room with two chairs, a table and a bench. "Shut the door behind you," the nurse said. She then opened the other door into the common area of C's wing. "Mr. G____?!" she yelled.

C walked in, staring at the floor. He was dressed in his normal street clothes, which had clearly had a recent run through the wash. He looked good.

We all sat down and C started talking. He said that he had just been transferred there today and that they hadn't given him any drugs yet. He said he didn't know what had set "that lady they call my sister" to commit him at that time. He ran through various things that had happened in the few days before the police nabbed him, and wasn't sure what it had been. "They just kept telling me that it was because I'm not showering...but that doesn't seem right." To that charge was later added, he said, that he was a danger to himself and others. The former might, by an almost infinite stretch of the imagination, in the state's definition, be entailed in long periods without a shower (which, by the way, is itself highly questionable). The latter is simply laughable.

C talked a lot about how his present predicament is caused by the state's inability to put up with or even comprehend his chosen way of life. "They got all their people out on this one...police, FBI, CIA, Army, Navy, Marines, ROTC. They are killing each other all day trying to kill me because I love God. But they really are destroying themselves...they say they are helping me but I know that they gotta do this to function a profit [benefit] for the rest of the world. So they' really just blessin' themselves."

As always, though, he takes this with patience and understanding and never blames anyone personally. Quite in the New Testament sense, he blames "the world." "I talk to folks all day who are trying to help me, and I'm trying to help them, cause I know they're not even intending to do what they are doin'. But whatever I say they just make me look stupid."

He refuses even to speak badly of his sister, who had him committed and whom he has not seen or heard from through this whole process. Responding to something I said hinting of a negative vibe toward his sister he said, "People are gonna think I should make war against her, but I'm not gonna do that."

Lisa and I told him that the Guys were worried about him and that JR and Adam would be up to visit soon. I said that we've been able to talk to his social worker and doctors and that hopefully our testimonies of our normal life with him, along with Adam's ability to speak intelligently about things psychiatric would convince them that the facilities' over-crowed beds need not be taken up by Crete. He looked intently and hopefully when I told him we'd do everything we can.

Probably the biggest obstacle to his release right now is the way he talks. His speach sounds strange, incomprehensible and, well, crazy - to someone who doesn't know him. But it is eminently intelligible and rational - it is simply a different idiom, laden with metaphors and rather apocalyptic in tone, spoken from the underbelly of the world. The problem is that psychiatrists don't know him or live with him, so when he says that he's "gettin' hit" or that "the world is trying to kill him" or that he's "not getting any women" he can only be classed as delusional, paranoid, or perverted.

The ER psychiatrist told us the other day that three weeks is along stay at the Regional Psychiatric Hospital. Lets pray its shorter than that.