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.