Voices Beyond the Stream

PART ONE: THE DELIVERANCE Chapter 1 Some nights I could hear them calling out from the deepest cellars of their dreams. The frantic cries of the tragically neglected and pathetically misunderstood, the very people society had misread and labeled outcasts and had all but forgotten, echoed in unsettling tones throughout the mazes of poorly lit corridors. They often sounded very much the same, those dispirited people, as if they were all despondent members of a secret brotherhood or a miserable alliance, united eternally by the pure agony of living. Their sporadic screams shattered the nighttime stillness, the nocturnal monotony, and I was innately aware of the fact that they were suffering. After all, I shared with them their pain. There were also the dreaded nights I listened to screams of my own resound inside my throbbing head as I lie alone in a room at the far end of one of those shadowy corridors waiting to die from the aftereffects of an intentional drug overdose. Those nights were the same nights I prayed I would pass away long before the sun appeared on the horizon. Only after I was dead would I be able to listen to peaceful, everlasting silence and escape the damnation of my depression for all time. I was a believer that death and only death would put an absolute end to all of the awful screaming and, even more important, erase my melancholy, the one thing author Robert Burton appropriately deemed “a hell upon earth.” So many nights I wended my way along the razor-edged pathways of my overworked mind as I strived to bring into harmony alternating stages of disabling mania and depression. I moved aimlessly through states of reciprocating euphoria and treaded recklessly through infernal regions of sadness that were governed by me and only me. Those changes in mood, the moodswings, dominated my life at unexpected intervals. And as I trudged through the passages of my depressed and private underworld night after night after night, I hoped that my fractured heart would explode or just stop beating altogether. So many times I wished that my shattered soul would drift beyond the swirling, violent tides of my diminished sleep. So many times I yearned for my broken self to float far away from the shores of reality, as if it were lost in a nightmare, and never return to my body in time to live another day. So very many times I petitioned God that my anima might wither and expire. Unfortunately for me, God did not respond to my many pleas for unending quiet. God left me alone to suffer. God left me alone in the darkest hollows of my depressive mind to agonize over my splintered thoughts and to reflect on what I had done to myself or, rather, what I had attempted to do to myself. God left me alone no matter how loudly I shouted at Him and so, for what would turn out to be three of the most eye-opening weeks of my life, I subsisted on an occasional smile, a fleeting, joyful memory, an infrequent kind word from a stranger, a small measure of optimism and that is all. Yes, I had managed to “get by” the three excruciating weeks I was held against my will on a psychiatric ward and in doing so had maintained a relatively decent outlook, especially when considering the certainty that something had changed for the worse inside of me. Nevertheless, life, as you probably already know, can be unfair and I understood that I had to move forward in spite of my burgeoning depression and my terrifying emptiness. Therefore, I chose to carry on without a single hint to anyone that I was still aching both physically and emotionally and that I was still suicidal. The first nurse to violate the space I was occupying I ignored. I had been delivered with haste from the emergency room onto the psychiatric ward only a few minutes before she made her initial appearance and, irregardless of the sobering and bothersome truth that I was already undergoing treatment to save my injured liver from the toxic aftershock of an acetaminophen overdose, I was convinced that I did not require her attention or her care. I was satisfied that there was nothing wrong with me other than an insignificant dose of sadness, a random case of the blues. The anguish I had endured day in and day out, year after year, was typical of me. That anguish was a basic element of my identity, an integral ingredient of the man I had always been, and I was very positive that the bouts of sorrow from which I suffered so regularly were all I had in common with the night screamers, the mental defectives who populated the psychiatric ward at Lakeshore General Hospital. Yes, that is where the similarity between us began and, more important, ended. In no way was I an affiliate of the deplorable order of the mentally ill as my incarceration inferred. No, I was not one of them. Compared to them, I was normal, very, very normal. Unlike them, I was leaving soon, very soon in fact. I was going home in the morning and I was never coming back. I was in the wrong place. Despite my physical and emotional pain, I did not belong on a psychiatric ward. I did not even belong in a hospital. Of that I was certain. Everything had been a mistake, a mix-up, a misunderstanding. The day I would resign myself to the verity of my situation was still unknown to me and until that day arrived—and I doubted that it ever would—and became a reality I could no longer overlook, I was going to live my life my way. Therefore, I dismissed the first nurse with a nod and a wink. A second nurse marched into the room shortly after the first nurse exited. I was reminded instantly of Louise Fletcher’s depiction of the unyielding Nurse Mildred Ratched in the movie “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I sensed immediately that this nurse was not to be ignored. “Take this,” “Nurse Ratched” commanded in a tone I had never heard before, in a tone I suspected I would never hear again. Methodically, she dispensed a small bluish pill onto my bloodstained palm. The pill had a hollow center. The pill had the appearance of a tiny blue doughnut. “No.” A single, wounded syllable fell from my mouth. “What is it?” I labored to whisper. I noticed that what was left of my voice was not my own. “It’s a medication called Haloperidol. There is no need for you to worry yourself.” Almost instantly, a pleated white paper cup was pushed in front of my face. Water was what I craved more than anything in the world. Evidently, swallowing a medication called Haloperidol was the price I would have to pay for such a luxury. “Halo-what?” “Halo-per-i-dol. Haloperidol.” “What in the hell is Haloperidol?” Disgust for the nurse and the medication I was now holding onto marked the worn inflection of my speech. With my free hand, I grabbed the nurse by the forearm and shoved her away from me. “It’s just a medication, an antipsychotic. Haloperidol is the generic name for Haldol,” she responded with shocking calm, regaining her balance and stepping toward me once again. “This is a very small dose I am giving you, Hunter. It will help to calm you. It will help you relax.” “An antipsychotic?” I nearly shouted, surprising both Ratched and myself. “Yes, an antipsychotic. Now put it in your mouth and drink.” The pleated white paper cup was pushed in front of my face a second time. Without further inquiry, I acquiesced. I dropped the pill onto my tongue and chased it down. The tiny blue “doughnut” was washed away. I was still thirsty. “Now what happens to me? When do I get to go home? When do I get out of here? That’s what I want to know, you idiot. I want out of this place now!” My voice was suddenly resurrected, but I sounded very tense, frustrated and angry. I sounded bitter. “The psychiatrist will be in to see you in the morning, Hunter. It’s already quite late and he will be here first thing, so you need to rest right now. Try to get some sleep.” Having said that, the domineering nurse spun away from me and left the room without speaking another word. Then, without warning, t