text: “Hello? Is this the law offices of Bergstrom and Associates?” “Yes, may I ask who is calling?” “Hi um, well, is there a message machine I could leave a voice mail to... it’s uhh... it’s urgent.” “Please hold... “The mailbox belonging to ‘LARRY’ is full.” “Dammit!” I slammed the plastic receiver right back into place, making a loud noise I didn’t want anyone else to hear. The large black lady looked up from her paperwork through the glass with a stale smug. She had been assigned to strip search me yesterday. I guess she just always looks like she smelled something bad. I made eye contact with her, startled by the noise with a wild look in my face. She said plainly, audible but muffled through the thick scratched glass, “calm down or you’ll go upstairs”, no variable in her tone, like it happens daily. Ok deep breath, more oxygen will steady my hand, maybe. I fingered through the quarters in my hand. I had half a role left, plus some in my pants I shoved under the bed back in my room. A parade of crazies from upstairs stammered by like a pack of half living zombies and fairies with down syndrome. “I’M GONNA TAKE OVER THE WORLD WITH A TOOTHPICK!” As they passed I felt my face twitch. I made it twitch, it made an ugly feeling, ugly and fun. I felt it morphing into crazy, like a schizophrenic scowl or a bi-polar bite. It was necessary to get through here. Turn a dove into a dagger, a mouse into a maniac. I had to pretend to survive, I had to believe to succeed. It was all an act, a mind game to get to high water. Plainly, I was planning my escape. I was attempting to dazzle authority with a great spectacle, enough to captivate them while I slipped away. I had made it this far. At least now there was no doubt they all believed I was crazy. “MEDS!” Screamed with true ritual and repetition, so was the line of sad adults and their drug addicted counterparts formed outside of the thick, scratched, barrier. The barrier made it clear, them and US, whatever side you were on. At this time, the only daily reminder I was required to be present to, I repeated the truth, my truth. One I forgot when I would wake up to the questionable blue stitched blanket and unforgiving linoleum. The truth that I am privileged, blonde, teenager wearing a paper gown in a psych ward in east L.A. This truth scares me. Without any contact to my previous life I could live in here forever. I am comfortable, I am dosed to oblivious bliss, and I can escape the hell that lies beyond the minimum security. Keeping us from them, keeping them from me. 6 months ago I would have expected to be here. 4 months ago I didn’t want to exist and last week I would have done anything to get my life back. It seems I did the best I could. I swallowed my medicine, dry. I started puking out the anti psychotics once I got here, except for the Adavan. I took the phone book. I wrote the numbers to law offices in crayon on a coloring book drawing of a leprechaun. I strayed from the “L” pages. I was now mapping out gentlemen’s clubs, pawn shops and hostels on familiar streets. I thought, I believed that if my plan wouldn’t succeed I would escape with my belongings, find a hostel and start work as a stripper. It was a choice I was prepared for. A possibility I was trying to wake myself up to. It was real. I was running out of quarters. On the 5th day in my paper gown, I finally got ahold of an actual voice on the other end of the telephone. “What does this regard?” “Well, I am a resident, or was a resident at Clarity House. It’s an inpatient rehabilitation facility, but I am positive they are performing illegal...” “So where are you calling from now? I don’t work with drug courts.” “Ok I know it sounds ridiculous, you probably assume I’m a drug addict. I assure you that this place is completely illegal. They switched my drug test with an actual drug addict and now my parents think...” I rehearsed this for months in my head. Months! But said aloud, I just sound... crazy, delusional. I sound like a drug addict. Another dead call. I could feel myself sliding down a pole, I could hear the thump of the club music get closer and closer. I could feel myself sink into the Los Angelas lost pit of dreams, far away from my identity. I had 5 quarters left. “MEDS!” I swallowed all my pills. The fog returned to my eyes, then my limbs. I tried to walk back to my room 20 feet away but the pills had stop bending my knees. A man who seemed overjoyed to be in a hospital psychiatric unit, whizzed past me. “HEH, that’s the psych ward strut, you got goin’ there, yeh yeh” I scowled, he kept grinning. I fell into sleep right away followed by a dream. On normal occasions I always remembered my dreams, even when I was very small, but for 3 months while I had been wrongly badgered to a pulp in a behavioral modification facility, I hadn’t had a single dream. This dream was dark and singular, not filled with oddities and outer planetary sceneries. I was strapped to a bed and a thin nurse with blonde hair was injecting something into my arm. She looked menacing, evil. She resembled Cathy from East of Eden or maybe me. I woke up and upon consciousness I remembered the name of a psychiatrist at Clarity House. We weren’t aloud to speak her name for some crazy reason I could only imagine was in the same light as my predicament. I looked for the name in the phone book but there were no matches. I had no computer, should I ask the orderlies to get the number from their iphone? Fuck no! We weren’t even allowed to have shoe laces! “Excuse me?” Glass door squeaks open. “You get another one of those “panick attacks?” “No I need the number for a psychiatrist, do you have numbers for that sorta thing?” “We have a resident doctor that comes every other day.” “But we do have an old directory from years back you can look at” I flipped through the tattered handout, sorting through unpronounceable ethnic names, names I used to think would be mine one day. HOLY SHIT. I found it. Dr. VU. I used the last 4 quarters on the call. It probably won’t work, she won’t pick up, it’l be disconnected. “Hello?” I froze. I felt like I was about to regurgitate my intestines. But I thought about the strip club, I thought about motels on sunset boulevard and my parents. I dove forth without my intended insanity and told her everything like I planned. My truth lead her to believe my circumstance and with that she assured me she was going to help me leave captivity, unscathed. I started crying, I started sobbing. No one had even spoke to me like a real person in months. A tear dropped on my hand, the hand that had been gripping my last quarter. I hung up, shaking with joy. I looked down at my quarter. 1990. The year I was born.