Against Medical Advice Read online

  My father’s expression changes slightly, and I can see in it a small ray of hope. He seems sympathetic yet angry at the same time, and I can’t read which emotion is winning.

  “You can’t give up without trying,” he says finally. “Give it time to work out.”

  “I’m leaving. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “What choice do you have? Think about it. This isn’t your choice anymore.”

  This message sends me into a rage. I’m spinning out of control. I’ll crash my way out if I have to.

  I quickly rush to the door and stop when I see that there’s another golden rule on it, etched on a bronze plate. This one stops me cold.

  NO ONE PERMITTED OUTSIDE AFTER 6 P.M.

  My watch says seven twenty. We’ve already been in this so-called hospital for more than three hours.

  I try the door anyway. It doesn’t move, not even a jiggle.

  My anxiety spikes way past panic. If they lock me up, my life will be over. I’ll die of fear. People can die of fear. I’ve read about it.

  “Take a few deep breaths and try to calm down,” my mother says when she catches up to me. “I know you’re scared, Cory. We’ll work something out. We always do.”

  “I promise I’ll stop drinking on my own,” I plead, my voice cracking. I’m completely helpless, dependent on her — as usual. “I swear it. Please, Mom, I know I can do it on my own. Don’t make me stay!”

  Chapter 4

  WE’RE BACK in the supervisor’s office, and he’s just returned after leaving us alone for a few minutes to talk. My parents are having a really hard time deciding what to do. My father is usually fast with decisions, but this one is giving him trouble.

  Finally, he takes a breath and delivers the words I’ve been praying for. “We don’t think this is what we need for our son after all. We had a different idea of the hospital before we came.”

  I’m joyous inside. My father has done a complete about-face and is now going to fight for me. I want to hug him.

  Unbelievably, the supervisor isn’t taking my father seriously. He shakes his head as if he doesn’t care what my dad just said.

  “I’d appreciate you letting us out,” my father announces.

  He has to say it again before it seems to sink in with the guy.

  “It’s not possible for Cory to leave,” the supervisor reports without any emotion. “Once a patient is admitted to the ward, New York State requires a minimum seventy-two-hour stay. It’s the law.”

  “But we’re not admitting him,” my father explains. “We’re going to leave right now, before he’s admitted.”

  “He’s already admitted,” the man says more strongly. “It happened when he came through that door. Seventy-two hours, no exceptions,” he adds, delivering what to him are just simple facts.

  To me the number of hours — seventy-two — is like a death sentence to be executed in slow motion.

  My father jumps up. “I want to speak to the hospital administrator,” he barks. When the supervisor still doesn’t react, he says, “Let me put it another way. I demand to speak to the administrator.”

  The supervisor thinks about it, then shrugs and picks up his phone. In a minute he hands the receiver to my dad.

  My mother and I look at each other nervously. Everything is riding on this next conversation.

  My father takes the phone and tells the administrator what’s going on. He listens for a long time, and my mother and I don’t know what’s being said.

  “There has to be a way,” he says finally, obviously very frustrated. “What if someone came here by mistake, like we have?”

  The debate continues, and he’s beginning to lose his temper, which isn’t like him.

  “Even a criminal can post bond and get out of jail. What do you want me to do, call a lawyer?”

  My father keeps going at the administrator. It seems hopeless. Then, all at once, he stops talking. “Yes, I understand. Thank you. I will.” He hangs up and turns to us. “Maybe” is all he says.

  Mom and I are both surprised when we hear who he’s calling next.

  “Dr. Meyerson! Thank God you picked up.”

  Dr. Meyerson is my current therapist. It’s an absolute stroke of luck that he has answered his phone this late in the evening. We usually get his answering machine.

  “We have an emergency here, and you’re our only hope,” my father continues.

  The two of them talk for a few more minutes as he explains the situation.

  After a while he lets out a deep breath.

  “Say it just like that?” he asks. “Exactly that way?” He nods to us, then thanks Dr. Meyerson and hangs up.

  My father turns to the supervisor and announces defiantly, “I request the release of my son AMA.”

  The man cocks his head suspiciously but doesn’t respond. Not a word.

  My father repeats the special code letters, this time as an order. “We are leaving the hospital with our son AMA. I’m told you understand what that means.”

  In a moment, the supervisor nods reluctantly, then gets on the phone again.

  While he’s talking to someone high up, my father explains, “AMA is an acronym for against medical advice. It’s a legal code that allows the hospital to go around the law. It means that we understand the hospital advises against it, and it shifts responsibility to us — the parents — and our therapist. It lets the hospital off the hook in case a patient . . . harms himself or something.”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that,” I reply, to reinforce his decision.

  “It’s the only way we have a chance of getting you out of here.”

  “And what if we’d never learned about AMA?” my mother asks. “Or if Dr. Meyerson wasn’t around or didn’t pick up?”

  My father shakes his head. “We were lucky. Very lucky.”

  I study my father’s face. He looks older than I’ve ever seen him. He’s worn out. It’s been as long a day for him as for me.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  He nods, but he isn’t happy. “You know that we haven’t fixed what we came here for.”

  It’s not a question.

  A long time later, the nightmare is finally ending. The supervisor is still waiting for whatever approvals he needs. My breathing has almost returned to normal.

  Eventually someone comes into the ward with papers and the required signatures. The supervisor gets his key, and the thousand-pound door swings open again.

  It’s been five hours since we entered the hospital. I walk out the front door without looking back.

  The ride home to New Jersey is silent. No one has the energy to say anything, and nothing we can talk about seems important compared to what’s just happened.

  My mother lets me smoke a cigarette, then a second one, and after that I fall asleep. In an hour or so, they wake me in New Jersey and I drag myself into our darkened house.

  “I really mean it, Mom. I’m going to quit drinking,” I tell her before going to bed. “I know I can do it.”

  I’m not lying. I really believe I can.

  It’s the middle of the week, and my resolve lasts until Friday night, when my body is again driving me crazy. After my parents go to bed, I sneak down to the basement and chug five or six big swallows from a bottle of vodka my father thought he’d hidden when he’d squirreled it away in the back of an armoire in the living room. In a short time, the bottle is only half full.

  I fall asleep with my head reeling. Images of the psychiatric ward are getting hazier. I have a dim awareness that despite my honest desire to change, my absolute need to change, I won’t be able to.

  Something else is going to have to happen. And happen soon.

  In the Blink of an Eye

  Chapter 5

  MANY YEARS BEFORE my narrow escape from the psychiatric ward, my mind begins to play terribly cruel tricks on my body. My life changes forever sometime before my fifth birthday, with a simple shake of my head. Just like that.

  It starts as I’m play
ing a video game. I feel an unusual, intense tension building up in my neck, and I think the only way to relieve it is to jerk my head to one side. A little while later, the tension is back and I do it again.

  Soon my head is twisting more and more often, and the muscles in my neck are beginning to cramp.

  I’m starting to get scared. Remember, I’m not quite five years old at the time. I’m just a little kid.

  I try to stop, but the more I hold back, the stronger I feel the need to do it. My parents are looking at me, wondering what’s going on.

  That makes three of us.

  When I wake up the next day, my head shaking is more or less a continuous thing. By lunchtime I know that my mother and father are worried because they aren’t talking as much as they usually do.

  By the following afternoon, the three of us are on our way to see a doctor. My father is driving pretty fast, and it feels as if we’re in a speeding ambulance. At first I think it’s my pediatrician we’re going to see, but it’s not.

  “Is it going to hurt?” I want to know, stepping into an unfamiliar office.

  “No, honey. This is a doctor who just wants to talk to you. This is a talking doctor.”

  In her office, Dr. Laufton asks me a lot of questions, such as “Do you ever feel like you have extra energy?”

  “I guess so,” I answer, because I think that’s what she wants to hear.

  Looking back, I realize this wasn’t a good question. How could a kid my age have any idea what extra energy feels like?

  “Why do you think you shake your head so much?” she asks after that.

  Just thinking about it makes the shaking more violent. “I don’t know. It feels like it wants me to,” I say in between head thrusts.

  That evening, my mother gives me a little pill to take. It’s called Ritalin. I fall asleep pretty fast, but in the middle of the night I wake up feeling very restless and frightened.

  I have no way of knowing it at the time, but Dr. Laufton has guessed wrong on the condition that’s making my head shake. And she didn’t realize that giving me Ritalin was like trying to put out a fire by drowning it in gasoline.

  Brainstorm

  Chapter 6

  AFTER TWO DAYS on Ritalin, I wake up having to move different parts of my face all the time — my nose, ears, forehead, cheeks, tongue.

  Every few seconds, I squeeze my eyes shut until they hurt, then open them as wide as I can, then repeat this over and over. In the bathroom, I can’t stop looking at myself in the mirror and distorting my face into the most grotesque expressions I can possibly make. I don’t find the faces funny, just weird.

  It’s obvious that whatever was controlling me before has only been worsened by the medicine. For some reason, though, the urge to twist my head is gone. For now, anyway.

  A day or two later, I’m in the kitchen and I’m about to eat breakfast with my sister, Jessie. Jessie is only eight months older than I am. My parents adopted her when my mom thought she couldn’t have children of her own. Then Mom got pregnant with me that same week. Jessie may be only a little older than I am, but she’s years ahead of me in just about every other way.

  This morning I’m thinking about armies of bugs and germs. So there I am at breakfast, getting extremely disgusted by the idea that they could get inside my body somehow.

  Then I see a big hairy horsefly buzzing overhead.

  “Get it away from me!” I yell to anyone who can help. “Get it away, get it away!”

  “Do you know what flies do every time they land?” Jessie says to me.

  “What?”

  “Throw up or go to the bathroom.”

  I’m so disgusted by this thought that as the fly lands near my plate, I start gagging.

  My mother sees me and tries to swat the fly with a dishcloth, but she misses. The idea of its insect guts being smeared on the countertop makes me almost throw up again, and I beg her not to kill the fly.

  “Please, Mommy, don’t!” I screech.

  Still, I’m very hungry. Last night the spaghetti Mom served made me think of a bunch of long, skinny white worms, and I went to bed without eating supper.

  Jessie lifts a forkful of pancakes dripping with maple syrup, and I get past my bug thoughts long enough to do the same.

  Enjoying her meal, she turns to me to see if I like it as much as she does. So there’s absolutely no reason why, without any warning, I spit my mouthful of pancakes right in her face.

  Jessie is so shocked that she just sits there, covered with food. Then she starts screaming.

  “Don’t do that again,” my mother scolds loudly. “Tell your sister you’re sorry.”

  I should feel bad, but instead I’m mostly fascinated with the impact of my spitting.

  “Sorry, Jessie.” Then I repeat, “Sorry, Jessie.”

  For some reason the word sorry stays in my mind. I want to say sorry again.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Jessie. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Repeating the same word over and over makes everyone even more angry at me.

  After a while Jessie calms down and we continue to eat, but the urge strikes again, and I can’t help spitting another mouthful of pancakes at her.

  This time her earsplitting scream brings my father running — and when he leans in to scold me, I spit right in his face, too. He’s so surprised, he doesn’t know what to do, except wipe his face with a towel.

  “You’ll have to leave the kitchen,” my mother says, more serious than I’ve ever heard her. Actually, she looks more worried than angry. She doesn’t understand why I’m doing this spitting thing any more than I do.

  Instead of listening to her, I reach for more food to do it again. She takes the plate away just in time.

  “Sorry, Dad. Sorry. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Jessie. Sorry.”

  “That’s the worst thing you can do to people,” my father tells me, still dabbing wet spots on his cheeks. “The worst, Cory.”

  “Sorry, Dad. Sorry,” I say, making a silly face.

  I jump off my chair and take off to the family room, hooting as I run. I can’t understand what’s happening or what I’m doing. I love my family and would never spit at them.

  This isn’t me.

  So who is it?

  Chapter 7

  AFTER I’VE SPENT a few more days on Ritalin, the totally new things I feel compelled to do keep shocking all of us.

  And they change from day to day.

  My parents tell Dr. Laufton they want me to stop taking the drug, but she says we have to give it a chance to work and allow my body time to adjust to it. I think that if the doctor had to live in my body for even a few minutes, she’d never give out that advice again.

  Later that week at dinner, my father is at my side, showing me how to use my knife and fork.

  “You feeling better today?” he asks.

  Right away I answer, “You feeling better today?”

  “No, I’m serious,” he tries again. “How are you doing, Cory? I want to know.”

  “No, I’m serious. How are you doing?” I repeat back to him. “I want to know.”

  “Please don’t do that,” he says.

  “Please don’t do that,” I answer, even though I don’t want to. I want to talk to him about normal stuff, but instead I’ve made him angry with this stupid new habit of becoming a human echo.

  Later on, when anybody tries to talk to me, I repeat their words before they can even finish the sentence. When I do this for the fifth or sixth time with my father, he gets up and walks away from me, just shaking his head. There’s an expression on his face that I’ve never seen before, more like sadness than anger. My father’s feelings always show on his face.

  The next day, Jessie and I are in the TV room and I have a new urge: clearing my throat. The sound I make is halfway between a grunt and a low-pitched musical note.

  After she’s had enough, Jessie gets up to leave rather than start another fight. But as she passes by, I have to touch her on the shoulder.
/>
  “Don’t do that, Cory,” she says.

  I touch her again several times at even intervals until something inside me feels satisfied.

  “Get away from me,” she yells.

  I run after her, touching her shoulder again. Two taps, a pause, then three taps to make the feeling of having to do it go away. Her yelling gets my mother’s attention and gets me a time-out.

  “Sorry, Jessie. Sorry. Sorry, Jessie,” I begin repeating like some kind of broken record.

  Alone in my room, I pound my head with my fists to make it stop doing these things.

  The next morning, I hear a song on my stereo, and when it’s over I can’t stop hearing the melody. It pushes out all other thoughts until I can’t concentrate on anything else.

  Later on that day, I hear a silly word in a cartoon and have to say the word over and over to everyone I come across. Gooneybird. Gooneybird. Gooneybird. I’ve begun to flap my arms like a bird, too, and I run around the house doing it whenever I get excited.

  Things are getting worse every day, not better like the doctor said.

  Today I’m like a jack-in-the-box, with new surprises popping out at any given moment. I feel as if my body is filled with electricity, and when I go to bed I can’t lie still, even though I’m exhausted from my body moving all day. After a while my mother gives me a dose of Benadryl to get me to sleep, then another when the first doesn’t work. The two doses eventually knock me out.

  Finally, Gooneybird sleeps.

  Chapter 8

  TWO WEEKS AFTER our first visit to Dr. Laufton, we’re back in her office, but I can’t sit still in my chair for ten seconds. The head shaking is back full force, plus a lot of extreme grimacing and blinking and God only knows what else I’m doing. Even I can’t keep track of all my new movements.

  Dr. Laufton closes the notebook she’s been using and sits back in her chair. She talks about some medical stuff that I don’t understand. But I catch a bunch of unusual words coming out of her mouth.