CHAPTER 1

SOMEBODY SAVE ME

There’s a moment right when you wake up that brings a rush of information and context—a split second to take inventory of the where, when, what’s real, and why you have to get out of bed. At 5:18 on a Thursday morning, I had one of those jolting awakenings and that wondrous mystery of “Where on Earth am I?” I generally love those because you start running through the good, weird, and worst-case scenarios. Then, finally, it all gels. This resolution fell into place with a loud voice and words that I knew individually but had never heard together, particularly directed at me: “Time to get your blood.”

In that hazy instant, I saw a white ceiling, brown cabinets (with fake drawers that didn’t actually function), and a bluish-gray carpet like the one in the “temporary” classroom trailers at Eastover Elementary. I felt two flat sheets fighting against each other. I heard a sound under my ear like crinkling paper in a plastic bag where a pillow allegedly was. I smelled nothing, absolutely nothing, the hallmark of a sterile hospital environment.

I woke up in a psych ward on the first of thirty-eight mornings to come.

With an emotional numbness and a sense of robotic duty, I exited the bed and slipped into my stylish, brand-new-but-modified Walmart shorts. No drawstrings allowed, and since I was born with a completely flat backside, I had to hold my shorts aloft as I donned my Carolina blue slip-ons (Vans, of course) for the short walk down the hall.

At home, I sometimes never saw a human for an entire day. On that morning, however, I was escorted by a nurse past a table of nurses into a room with a nurse. My sagging shorts and I slumped into a cold plastic chair. The hum in my ears was either the lights, a machine, or my groggy imagination. I was half asleep, and a cuff around my arm measured something or another. While I was staring blankly at the floor, a cold needle went into my right arm. I watched the blood flow into tube after tube. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t particularly care why. I only hoped this was the worst of it, the lowest point of this experience. My liberty was gone. My compliance was expected. I would be jarred out of bed every day for a slow march to give blood (that last part turned out to be an exaggeration; it only happened one other time, but I was feeling dramatic).

The same nurse unceremoniously walked me back to my room. This t