Diagnosed Chaos

Chapter 2 • The Waiting Game ⏰

"She's here."
     I stood, collected my things, and walked out of our private room.
"Good luck, Lauren!" She shouted down the hall.
I felt slightly betrayed, but I knew she had only done this because she feared my death would soon follow.
When I got to the main office, there was my mother, one of the most beautiful women I've ever met. She was short, with short brown hair, beautiful golden toffee eyes, and she was fair skinned. The combination was flawless. That being said, she usually has the attitude of an 80 year old war vet who hadn't been given her daily steroid yet. When she saw me, she didn't look too happy. But I expected that. I had left a small detail out when I told Eleanor she could call my mom.

It was her 10 year wedding anniversary today.

     She pulled me in for a hug as soon as I was in arms-reach.
"My poor baby. I'm taking you to the ER, you know that right?" She said, cutting our hug short.
"I know. I'm okay with that. I want help, Mom. I have a body that is struggling every day to live, and a mind that is fighting to die. I can't take it anymore."
I had a hard time getting those words to come out.
"Okay, well lets go, your Dad is in the truck."
"Dad's here?" She was, of course, referring to my stepfather. Because in what fucked up life is there a real father truly present? Mine broke it off with my mom when I was four months old. They were never married, so not much of a blow, right?
Wrong.
"Yes, it's May 12th, our anniversary, remember?"
"Oh yeah. Sorry about this. Eleanor insisted-"
"It's fine, lets just go. Your Dad is waiting."
     I felt like such a burden at this point. I had just told El I don't want to be here anymore, that I feel like my mind and my body are no longer one in the same. I had told her about all the horrible things I'd seen that suicidal people had done to themselves. I really like the idea of being truly happy one day, solely because I want to set out to make a life for myself. Until then I needed the adults in my life to help me.
     When we got in the car, my stepdad just looked at me and shook his head. Then he put the truck in gear, and we were on our way.
The ER nurse was waiting for us, plus I'd been there so many times before she knew exactly who I was. My mother must have called ahead.
"What's your date of birth?" The nurse looked a little surprised when I took my shirt off, revealing my cuts as I changed into the hospital gown.
"June 29th of 2000."
"Okay, Doc will be in in just a second." She flashed me a quick smile and then she was gone.
My mom turned to me.
"So would you like to tell me what you were thinking?" She said, while staring at her phone.
I just stared at her.
After a minute she looked up at me. Tears were streaming down my face.
"I wasn't thinking at all. I couldn't feel anything. I was numb. I was a mindless emotionless machine with a safety pin and a mission, just trying to feel something." I said with rage. The soft kind of rage that is a little frightening in the right setting. We were in that setting.
She just blinked harshly a few times, pushing back tears, and then went back to her phone.
"The first time you were ever admitted to an inpatient program, it was your little brother's 7th birthday. Then the next, it was memorial weekend. After that, it was your OTHER little brothers birthday. For Christ's sake, pick another holiday."
"They are going to want to send you to an inpatient facility, you do understand that don't you?"
"I know. I need to get away from Grandma and Grandpa and you and Dad and everyone. So that I can focus on healing. Because right now, I'm like cracked China. So far broken, it's unusable. I can't even function anymore. It's either this or death, those are my only options. I can't control my emotions, and I don't want to either. I want to let it all go, but I can't do that here. I need to go somewhere where I can let my thoughts run wild, so I can learn how to reign them back in. How to ease the rage. How to muffle the sadness. Because things like what you just said make me-"
Just then the Doctor came through the curtain at high speed. He was very tall, he was bald but young, and he had a very large blinding smile.
"Hello Lauren! It's wonderful to meet you, I'm Dr. Tori. How are you feeling right now?"
I looked at this strange man for a second before I answered, choosing my words wisely.
"Could be worse."
Dr. Tori looked at me and frowned. He then walked around the other side of the bed and held out his hand.
"May I see your arm?"
I slowly pulled it out from under the blanket and laid it in his hand.
"Hmph. The nurse's report highly under exaggerated the severity of your wounds. Let me get that wrapped up for you. We're going to admit you here over night while we look for a psychiatric hospital that has an available bed. You'll be on 24 hour suicide watch, meaning someone is to be in the room with you at all times. And yes, this includes the bathroom. Your mother can be that person, or it can be a nurse if she needs to step out, but you can't be alone. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir." I said. I wasn't about to disobey this man.
My mother gathered up our things and I put on some hospital socks. They led us through a very large set of wooden doors, to the ICU, the Intensive Care Unit. We walked down the long hallway, past people's rooms whose doors were open. I always wondered, 'why are they here?' even though I didn't know any of them. We finally made it to my room,
where my mother made herself comfortable in the large brown recliner next to the bed.
I quietly cried myself to sleep that night.
•••

The next day, Saturday, Dr. Tori said that he was going to send me to another hospital for a screening of some sort, to see if going inpatient was the right thing to do. They discharged us, and Mom drove me from one hospital, to another hospital 45 minutes south of where we'd just been.
When we arrived there, we had to find this mythical screening office, (that took forever) and once we did, we had to wait for an hour just be seen. I got called into this tiny little room, and all that was inside was a table, three chairs, and a not-so-subtle camera in the corner on the ceiling. I felt like I was being interrogated for something. Oh wait! I was.
It took nearly two hours to explain myself to a very whiny bearded man who seemed like not only did he hate his job, people, and himself, but life as well.
After I was screened, they said that I was a 'good candidate' for inpatient treatment. With that news in hand, my mother took me to the ER that was located within the same hospital.
I was admitted there as well. The same process all over again. I stayed Saturday night, all day Sunday and that night as well. It was Monday morning that things started to fall into place.

•••

"Are you ready?" My mother asked, as I changed out of my hospital gown and into my regular clothes once again. I was going to Black Oak. And there was nothing on earth that could change it.
"Yeah. Just give me a second." I said as I shimmied into my crocs. I wasn't ready. I was far from it. I didn't know how bad the people would be this time, they're different each stay.

•••

When we pulled into the driveway for Black Oak, I immediately knew I would regret my choice to go. The building was huge, being that it contained an adult unit and a children's unit. It really did look like a rehabilitation center. It was tan, all made of cement, with a big frosted glass window in the front. We entered through the large frosted glass doors, into a room shaped like a hexagon. There were two couches in the center of the room, back to back. On one wall was a door with a lock. On another, there was large wooden door with a phone mounted on the wall. It was intimidating, to be completely truthful.
My mother picked up the phone and spoke for a few minutes with someone on the other end. Then she hung up and turned to me.
"Now we wait, Bee." She said to me. She sat down next to me and ran her fingers through my short, blond hair. Bee was my nickname when I was just a little girl. When she uses it these days, I know she's feeling sorry for me. She was giving me this look like, 'I know this is about to be hell, but just give it a chance'.
We waited for about an hour, and then the door that was locked slowly opened. A peeked her head out from behind the door. She was tall, with very dark skin, and she was wearing a badge that said 'Jamaica'.
"Are you Lauren?" Jamaica asked.
"Y-yes?" I said, on the verge of tears.
"Okay, please come with me. And you're Mom, Correct?" She asked my mother.
"Yes, do I bring her things?" My mom said. I then noticed she was shaking a little bit.
"Yes, come on back." Jamaica said with a smile.
She held the door open a little wider, and that's when I started to cry.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you are enjoying my story so far, come back everyday for more! ❤️💫

  National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255