I was allowed to visit with my brother once. For ten minutes. In the hallway. With a guard. To make sure I didn’t run. I might run off to the drug rehab unit across the hall. You had to be eighteen to visit on the adult psych units. Jared wasn’t old enough. He wasn’t allowed on the unit. Technically, neither was I. Joe was allowed to visit. He was eighteen. Sonja had just turned seventeen. She wasn’t allowed. We talked on the phone sometimes. None of my other friends were allowed. They were all to young to visit me on a unit I was to young to visit, let alone be held on, myself.
  Towards the end of my stay we had Thanksgiving. Dry mashed potatoes, drier turkey and something calling itself gravy. The jellied cranberry sauce was okay. Jellied things were always okay. Although the flavor combinations were sometimes questionable. Jell-O was the one thing that kitchen was able to get right. And thanksgiving was no exception. At least it was edible.
  I was often in trouble for not eating.  They had caught on to my hiding the food between the plate and the silver plate holder thingy. So I had to have the orderly in charge of dinner sign off on my having eaten at least half of dinner or more. If I wouldn’t eat it the doctor would be notified and I would lose my visitation for the next day. One day the meat was green. Actually green. I shit you not, green. So I called over the orderly. It was usually the same guy every night. I called him over. I showed him. I told him I would eat it. If. IF he would take a bite of it first. I never got in trouble for not eating after that. He never told on me anyway. So the Thanksgiving food was bad, but it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t green. I ate some of it anyway. At least half. Maybe a little more.
  November into December and still no discharge date. My mom and I watched “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” on tv in the dining room with Jeff. Me and him in our hospital robes and slippers. Her all dressed up on her way home from work and fidgety. The tv had a lot of static, it always did, but it was watchable. In my family it was tradition to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” every year on tv. Right up until they moved it to cable and then took it off tv altogether. And we didn’t let the psych ward stop us. Although my brother wasn’t there.
  After thirty one days, longer than I’d been in drug rehab, they had to do something. By law they had to. Now they want to follow the law? And so something was done. I was leaving. But I wasn’t going home. The found another place for me. Another place to take me. I was being transferred.
  There was some discussion about how to transfer me there. The hospital wanted me to go by ambulance. As if I was going to run away. In the end, that didn’t work out. Probably my mom’s insurance said no. So my mom was the one who would take me. She was to take me right there, no stops. No going home. No nothing.
  I was allowed to have my pants and shoes for the trip that day. And I finally got to wear my trench coat. I got all my t-shirts. I left with more clothes than I came in with. And all of them clothes I didn’t own before my hospital visit. That was a neat little trick. And one I would repeat.
  It was sunny out and much colder than I remembered the last time I had been allowed to wander freely in the world. I wasn’t prepared for it. I had only a t-shirt and a trench coat. Apparently I wasn’t going that far. I didn’t really know where I was going. They gave my mom an admission packet to give to the hospital staff, driving directions and sent us off with instructions to take me straight there and not stop for anything. Where’s the trust? Seriously. And off we went. From Covington to Ft. Mitchell.
  I paid extra close attention, trying to memorize everything, all the landmarks that I could. So I could find my way back. I didn’t know where I was going but I would be damned if I was going to stay there. I had lived in Kentucky for two months, the last month of it was in the hospital. I had no idea where I was or where I was going, but I thought it seemed pretty simple so far. The side streets around the hospital had confused me, but there were signs. And so far we had only taken one major street with no turns.
  And look here. There’s a Pizza Hut. It was lunch time so we stopped of course. It only occurs to me now, just this very minute as I write this, that Pizza Huts and hospital stays went hand in hand for me back then. Or maybe we just ate Pizza Hut a lot.
  Over lunch my mom had a little look-see in the manila envelope will all the admission forms for the new hospital. I didn’t get to see. We didn’t talk much and I didn’t ask where I was going. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t be staying very long if I could help it. Besides, I was busy going over where we had come from in my head. Memorizing the street we had come down in detail, so I wouldn’t forget. And I never did.
  After lunch we continued. I didn’t want to. I felt sick. I wanted to throw up. I didn’t. Up the hill. Left at the four way stop. Left again at the first stop sign. A little ways down the road. There it is. Off to the left is the entrance to the parking lot. To the right of the parking lot is the ugly brick building. What I can see of it is in a U shape. To the left of the parking is a baseball field. In front of the parking is walkway with benches. In front of the building is a large lawn area with several picnic tables. Far out, beyond the lawn and the baseball field, extending all around the fields, just before they go to woods is a very tall fence. And I can’t tell, but it might have a barbed wire at the top. I’m not sure.
  I read the name on the sign as we drive past, into the parking lot. Children’s Psychiatric Hospital of Northern Kentucky.

Dr. Schneider was there when I got there. So Dr. Schneider was who I got. He would come in every day during his rounds and ask me how I slept, like crap, and increase my med. I’m sure he asked me other questions too. But that was the constant. And sometimes the only. I complained about my stomach hurting to him. Enough that I got myself an upper GI exam complete with that nasty barium radium stuff you have to drink. Note to self: shut the hell up. And I did. They said there was nothing wrong with my stomach.
  Dr. Schneider talked to my dad. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what was said. But then he wanted to talk to my mom right away. And where the hell was she anyway? No one seed to know. No one had been able to find her. She was not in San Francisco. Her work confirmed there was no conference or training there for her to be at. Finally, after three days a friend was found that knew the truth about where she really was. Mom had been found. In jail. For her second DUI she had received six months jail time, suspended all but ten days. She had been doing those ten days. She was required to complete an outpatient program too. They wouldn’t let her out of jail to come see me but now, at least, we knew where she was. And that she couldn’t rather than wouldn’t come visit me.
  The day came when her ten days were up and she came to see me. Dr Schneider was there too. He wanted to talk with her as well. I was there for that meeting. I don’t know why he didn’t meet with her privately. But he didn’t. We all went into a private sitting room off the left hallway.
  It didn’t take long before she asked ‘The Question’. The one I wanted to know as well. He hadn’t brought it up, had left that to her. And maybe that was a calculated move on his part, planning how he wanted this to go the whole time. Or maybe he was just a bitter, mean little man who saw an opportunity and took it. Either way, it was the perfect set up.
  “So what’s wrong with my daughter?”
  And we all waited for an answer to that. But what we got was not what we were looking for. My being there was a mistake. Just a huge misunderstanding. And now my mom was here and she could take me home. And he could tell her that. OR he could say what he thought was wrong with me and how I had to take medicine and she could tell him he was wrong and it was a huge mistake the problem was clearly the school and how she was going to put me in a different school, one that wouldn’t hurt me and problem solved and she would take me home now. Because school was the problem, not me. I didn’t belong here, I wasn’t sick. There wasn’t anything wrong with me. It was the school. I was going to be hurt if I went there. And she could tell him that. She had seen how badly I couldn’t go there. I wasn’t sick. There was nothing wrong with me. I just couldn’t go to that school.
  “So what’s wrong with my daughter” she said.
  And without missing a beat , with the straightest face, in all seriousness, “You are. YOU are what’s wrong with your daughter.”

  …….WOW. That was unexpected. I hated Dr. Schneider. But at that moment I loved him too. I had a lot of pent up anger toward my mom, and here he was blaming her. I was fourteen and he was telling me it really was all my mom’s fault. I ate it up. The only problem was It wasn’t true. How could it be when there wasn’t anything wrong with me to be her fault. And how dare he talk about my mom like that. This wasn’t her fault it was his. This was HIS misunderstanding what I was trying to say about the school. And I would have tried to tell him that again but every time I tried I just seemed to make things worse. Besides I was safe here. The danger wasn’t so imminent, it didn’t feel so urgent.
 
  Over games of cards we would also talk about our doctors. Who had whom and who liked theirs and who hated theirs. Our meds and who was on what and our treatments and what was working and what wasn’t. Mostly they would talk and I would listen. I did make my feelings known through a drawing I did of Dr. Schneider with fangs and horns and I believe I even gave him a tail as well.
  I only took one med but had my blood drawn every few days. Others quite a few more and never had blood draws. A few had electro shock therapy. Jamie was one of them. He would go down for therapy two times a week and I wouldn’t see him all that day and half the next. His memory became an issue when they bumped him up to three treatments in a week, towards the end of my stay. It got worse and worse. One day he came up to me and told me it wouldn’t be long before he wouldn’t remember me at all and not to be upset, it wasn’t my fault.
  “I can’t even remember my mom sometimes” I cried when it finally happened.
  Jamie was caught trying to jump off the Suspension Bridge. His lover had left him. He wanted to die. Jeff had taken an overdose. His wife had left him. He wanted to die. Same scenario. Same doctor. Jamie got ECT treatments. Jeff got meds. Jamie deteriorated. Jeff did okay. Jamie was gay. Jeff was straight. Jamie came to me and protected me on my first day. Jeff spent thanksgiving with me after my mom left and every one else still had visitation for an hour. No one explained to me the extreme difference in treatments between the two with very similar problems and the same doctor. So, at fourteen, I came up with my own explanations. That doctor doesn’t come off so well in my idea for why this was as it was.
  The man in the room off the left hall got IV treatments several times a day. At meal times he was rolled into the nurses station in a wheelchair and fed through an IV tube. But he was in for AIDS not psych. His treatment was worse than the rest of ours, if only because he was no longer capable of complaining about it with the rest of us. I put up pictures in his room so he wouldn’t have to stare at blank walls, but I don’t know what good it did in the end.
  Which is worse, to be left in the psych ward to die. Or to be left in the psych ward watching someone else left in the psych ward to die. 

Joe came everyday in the afternoon to visit me. He rarely missed a day. Thanksgiving and there was a day I was refused visitation because I overslept. The doctor saw my regular visits and used them as ‘motivation’. If I wasn’t up and showered and dressed by ten a.m. I had lost visitation for the day. That only happened once and Joe was refused at the door that afternoon. But once he found out where I was he came often. Nearly every afternoon. More than my family came.
  He brought me all the gossip of our mutual friends and lots I didn’t know. All the news of Short Vine, the neighborhood area we hung out. He was very upset with all the people there. And he complained to me about them. Told me all the things they were doing and what he felt they should be doing. One of our friends had been beaten up by her boyfriend Walter, beat up bad, put in the hospital even, and he didn’t think they were upset enough. Angry (violent?) enough. He wanted to return the favor and wanted everyone else to, as well. That was the main complaint on most days. He hung out with the S.H.A.R.P. skinheads (skin heads against racial prejudice) and he was just starting to resent them. Thinking they were letting Walter off because he was black. Joe started to pull away from them, and so he would visit me everyday, telling me all the things they should be doing to Walter for what he did. Joe was angry. And hurt. What Walter did hurt more than just his girlfriend. And as long as I knew him Joe never got completely over it. Though he did get better in time.
  When he wasn’t complaining to me about what S.H.A.R.P. was or wasn’t doing he was giving me all the details about who was or wasn’t doing whom. Very juicy stuff. And who was doing it behind who’s back. Even better. Who got caught and who was clueless, pretty much like a soap opera, except most of the people I barely knew. But I loved hearing about it anyway. And one day knowing all these people better was my hope, getting out of the psych ward and hanging out with them.
  One day Joe came in while I was napping. He didn’t wake me up though. Instead I woke up to quiet laughing. Well, not quiet enough, I woke up anyway. Apparently Zanex makes me drool in my sleep. A lot. The whole pillow was wet. Hahahahaha. Very funny. And Joe just stood there and laughed. Quietly. At least he was trying to let me sleep?
  Another day he brought me a big bag of t-shirt. T-shirt and a trench coat. Olive with orange and green striped inner lining. I didn’t have any where to wear the trench coat but I did wear it a few times on the unit anyway. The t-shirts I wore everyday. I still had to wear my hospital pants and rope and slippers, but the t-shirts made my look complete. They were band t-shirts. Punk bands. C.O.C. Exploited. Circle Jerks. Black Flag. There were probably eight or nine in there.
  Joe liked G.G. Allen. If you don’t know who that is a good google session is in order. I thought GG Allen was disgusting. I think Joe probably thought so too. Maybe he was more fascinated with him than actually liking him. Or maybe it was just the shock factor and the shock factor of telling people that you liked GG Allen. (hint* look up gg Allen on jerry springer) I don’t believe Joe ever went to one of his concerts, although he threatened to go quite often. Any discussion of Allen, and it always turned to GG Allen, always, ended with the same “what would you do if you woke up in bed next to him one morning?” The only acceptable answer was, of course, suicide. The real question was ‘how did I get there?’ After all, I would not be going to one of his shows, whereas Joe would and could be drugged.  This was a conversation we had almost every day when he would visit. It was the appropriate setting for such a conversation. Maybe that’s why we were compelled to have it so many times. It was almost always interrupted by staff or other patients or something else. One time it was a page over the intercom for a “Dr. Slaughter”. That broke us up. We didn’t stop laughing for the rest of the visit. But I don’t ever remember coming to a conclusion about how I ended up in bed beside GG Allen. It had to be a believable scenario. What I would do about it didn’t even matter if I wouldn’t believe how I got there in the first place. And so the debate raged on. And still there is not a satisfactory answer. I just don’t know. Fortunately the man is dead and I don’t have to contemplate that particular question anymore. 

Its not like there weren’t some fun times. Aggravation was fun. Headache was fun. Daytime tv was lots of fun. At least back then it was. Looking back, 5C was the best place I was ever put in. There were some good times there. Even though it was illegal to put a fourteen year old on an adult locked unit. You had to be sixteen in an emergency. And they had to have made a suicide attempt at least. I wasn’t and I hadn’t. It was still the best treatment I got.
  Headache was a game we sometimes played. At first we played it a lot. You got to push the pop-o-matic bubble to see where your man would go. You tried to get your cone shaped man to land on top of, and thereby capture, another players man. It was fun. (The pop-o-matic bubble was the best.) Especially when there really was nothing else to do.
  As the days went on I was introduced to another game. One I had never played before. Aggravation. I ended up liking it better. No pop-o-matic bubble. But marbles with this one. And dice. It was also simpler to play. And quieter. We could play it later into the night. If we could be quiet ourselves, that is. And so it became more popular. Towards the end of my stay we didn’t play Headache at all anymore.
  Of course the card games were the most popular. You only needed two people to play, one really. You could always play solitaire.  Hearts, spades, gin, rummy, speed. We played them all. And cards were the quietest of all. You only had to shuffle, a whisper really compared to the dice and marbles of Aggravation that could be heard into the hall. And the pop-o-matic? That could be heard all the way to the nurses station if it was quiet.
  Then there was daytime tv. And by that I mean talk shows. And they were nothing like what they are today. Sally Jessie, Jenny Jones, Maury, Donahue, Joan Rivers. If you didn’t live through talk shows in their original form you really missed something. Geraldo had a talk show. Remember that? I do. I didn’t watch it in the psych ward though. We watched Sally Jessie and Jenny Jones,  Joan Rivers and sometimes Donahue. What daytime tv was meant to be. Sometimes I’d watch cartoons with Jeff. Back when they still had cartoons after school. They had them in the mornings before school too. Imagine.
  And school? The tutor only came over from the drug rehab for an hour and a half twice a week. That was it. She mostly taught me nothing. Everything she brought I had already been through. I think she was just there for show. Because, as a hospital, they had to show they were providing for my education. But no one expected much, I’m sure.
  Cards and games and daytime tv were a nice distraction from why we were there and how we all got there. They allowed us to talk and gossip and get to know each other. Learn each others stories. What else was there to do. Sometimes I would draw and color them in. The designs, all line drawings I still do today. They filled the long days and empty nights when some of us had no visitors.  We would drink hot chocolate (or coffee or sanka for the others, I stuck to hot chocolate) and eat individual ice cream cups from the freezer while playing and talking and smoking cigarette and after cigarette. I must have been smoking a pack a day while I was in there. Not that much compared to others but still a considerable amount compared to what I had been smoking.

The next I was awake well before the nurses came to get me for breakfast. I put on my slippers and out I went. First stop, nurses station. Had to get my pack of cigarettes for the day, of course. The onto the dining room to see if there was an empty table to sit at. There was not. But there was also no breakfast yet, so back into the hall I went, to find another place to smoke and wait for breakfast to be brought up. I was starving. .
  He walked right up to me. “You can sit with me to eat. So you don’t have to eat alone. I’m Jamie” Not too tall, kinda stocky, late twenties. He was nice. He smiled at me.
  “I’m Sasha” and I followed him back into the dinning room. He sat down next to a woman named Norma and I sat too. We talked a bit waiting for breakfast . The psych ward is always the last unit to get served breakfast, so we had plenty of time. The last to get served in general.
  Breakfast came and went and many cigarettes followed. So did the cards and a game called headache. Over many rounds of cards and games of headache I learned about everyone. Some of it first hand, some of it just observation, some of it gossip.
  In 1988 the psych ward was filled with women that had killed their husbands. Two of the three women that I was now playing cards with on a regular basis had killed their husbands. Norma had killed her husband. She was the first person I met that killed another human being. “Battered Woman’s Syndrome” was still a new thing and so here they were, playing cards with me between attorney visits and Dr. visits.
  The other woman I played cards with on a fairly regular basis, Berneice, had not killed her husband. He had hung himself. So had one of her son and an only daughter had also committed suicide. She had had a breakdown. It was easy to see why.
  My roommate, Rose, had not killed her husband, I don’t believe. Unless she scrubbed him to death in a cleaning frenzy. Not out of the question. But Rose was a cleaner, not a card player, so I never heard from her directly. But she just didn’t seem the husband killing type. But that was just it. None of them did. There is no “type”. Most of them didn’t talk about it. I learned form an off hand comment about a lawyer visit.
  Except Norma. She was very upfront and chatty about it all. Very open with me. I was never scared by anything she said about. In fact, she reminded me of my grandma. Except for the killing part. She even looked a bit like my grandma. I liked her very much.
  She said he beat her. But when he threatened the kids it was too much. She said the was the final straw. “I only meant to hit him with that baseball bat once, but it felt so good I just couldn’t stop”
  There was one woman they brought in that had killed her husband that very different from the rest of them. They brought her in strapped to a gurney. She was given the private room. The one with the cameras. And the straps on the bed. They used them. I only met her once in the shower room.  She didn’t speak and she looked traumatized. Other than that she never came out of her room. I don’t think she was allowed. She must have been really bad off. Her lawyer or someone ’official’ came to visit a lot. Maybe to check on her mental state.
  Then there was Mike. Not all the killers on 5C were women. Mike got there because he slashed his wrist. He did this because they were going to transfer him to some far away prison for killing his cell mate and he didn’t want to be that far from home. I think he might just have been afraid. He was short with curly blond hair and he taught me to play spades. He had learned while in prison playing for cigarettes.  He was also the only person that would play Blackjack with me. And he would play with me longer than anyone else. Turns out I’m very lucky at cards and win a lot. Most people would stop playing pretty quick. Mike played a lot longer. He told me he should take me to Vegas. But of course if it was for money, or even cigarettes, I’m sure I would lose.
  Everyone else was just a suicide attempt. Everyone except me.
  Jeff tried to OD when his wife left him. We would watch Sesame Street in the morning and Sally Jessie, Jenny Jones, Donahue, all the talk shows in the afternoon. We didn’t get cable in the psych ward. And the reception was really bad some days. Some days we could only get a really weak signal and not see anything at all. But most days it was pretty good.
  Jamie. Jamie was the first person I met there. He was the first person to talk to and be nice to me. He recognized my fear and invited me to eat with him. I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t. Probably I would have skipped eating I was terrified. Jamie stayed with me my first few days so I wasn’t alone. Eating, playing games, watching tv, smoking. He introduced me to Norma and Berniece, some of the other ladies and some staff as they came on duty. I would have been lost without him. He taught me how to play headache, the preferred game of the psych unit group I was now a part of. Jamie had tried to jump off the suspension bridge after his lover had left him.
  Julia used to be a school teacher. She had slit her wrists but was happy now. Always giggling about something. She seemed to be mentally all of five years old. With many secrets that made her smile and laugh all the time. As if someone was whispering funny jokes into her ear. She was having a great time. We would color together. Me doing my designs in regular and colored pencils. And her coloring in a coloring book with crayons. It was then that I started drawing.
  I take it back. Not everyone was a suicide. The man down the hall from me was not there for any mental problems at all. He was there because he was dying of AIDS and in 1988 there were no hospices and that’s what they did with end-stage AIDS patients. Dumped them in psych wards. At least in northern Kentucky they did. There was no place else to put them. Not yet.
  He never left his bed. In fact, he never even changed positions. I snuck in and taped my designs up on the wall where I thought he was staring, so he would have something to look at. And of course the nurses saw this. We had to have a talk. This is how I learned about HIV and AIDS. What they were and what they weren’t and how you could and couldn’t catch it. It wasn’t a curse from god. You couldn’t get by touch or a public toilet. It wasn’t a gay disease. You got it through sex or blood. The man in that room, they told me, had had a blood transfusion in 1976, before the blood supply was screened for HIV. HIV turns into AIDS. And AIDS is what you die from. He was going to die and die soon. His wife would visit but his kids were my age, and you had to be 18 to be allowed to visit on the ward. They would not get to say goodby.
  They told me I could tape my drawings up but not to get caught doing it by the Drs. You are not supposed to be in another patients room. Or what? They’d throw us out? More likely they’d fire a nurse for allowing it to happen.
  I didn’t want any of the nurses to get in trouble, a few of them were really nice. They would, on their breaks, come out and smoke with us, play a round of headache or a round of hearts. This wasn’t often, but on a rare occasion.
  I did see the Dr. that second day. He didn’t tell me what he thought was wrong, just asked me how I slept. Like crap. Asked me a few more questions. Then increased my medication a little bit. We only talked a little bit. He didn’t really have time for me. And I didn’t like him much anyway. He asked where my mom was, San Francisco, and my dad, at home. Said he would talk to them.
  Then I had ‘school’. The tutor came. She would be coming for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday. You’re kidding me right? That’s all the schooling I have to do?
  Also on that second day, late in the evening, my dad brought me cigarettes. This is how I know he cared and loved me and worried and wanted to help. It was this small act of kindness that sticks out the most. Not the visit. That he brought me cigarettes. He didn’t bring me clothes, but that was okay, he didn’t know what to bring. He didn’t know where my mom was. No one could find her in San Francisco. That was where her week long training she was supposed to be at was held. Her work couldn’t find her. They were trying to track her down. But no luck yet.