The Hospital

I was inside pacing, peering out our kitchen window. Shoppers were picking through our stuff. Kids were moping that they had to be out there all morning. Heather and my in-laws were talking to shoppers and neighbors. I couldn't go out.

Days before, we were clearing out the farm. Heather drug me outside to help. Farm supplies. Tools. Tangles of drip irrigation and electric fence netting. A half-finished perimeter fence. Piles of farm trash.

The mania had ended. The depression that followed had been building for months. I had dreaded its return after my nine-month battle in 2024.

Riding shotgun in Dad's Silverado, on our second trip to the dump, he said it. "Buddy, it's time for you to go to the hospital. I know you don't want to. But I don't want my grandkids to lose their dad."

Heather called Kyle. I sat on the porch with him, looking over our flower field. He'd preached recently about his own hospital stay. He called it his "grippy socks vacation." I agreed to let them drive me to Birmingham.

We parked, walked to UAB. They waited with me in the ER for six hours. The psychiatrist asked if I wanted to be admitted to the residential program. "I do not." I left with a spring in my step...

The next day, I called Dad to take me back.

I was in the psych center for ten days. I told people, and myself, that it had been three weeks. I was sure, until I checked the journal.

I found it in my bedside drawer. A cheap brown notebook with lined paper. I wrote with the golf pencil they gave me. Less dangerous than a full length one. Sterile hospital air. The Indian girl that was kind, also bipolar. Stellar carrot cake. I learned from the others that you had to write it in on the meal card, though they occasionally got the meals wrong.

The ones desperate to leave, yelling and crying on the phone. The schizophrenic guy talking to imaginary people. The ones alone in their rooms down the hall, laughing and carrying on conversations. I remember all of them.

I journaled, "I used to run, strength train, bike to work and write sermons." Feeling trapped, walking in circles. The shower dribbling water, huddling in the corner to get wet. The yoga mat calling me. Snack time, pb crackers, oreos. Stepping out at 1am for sleep meds and pb crackers.

A couple of mornings a week they brought us individually into Dr. Bhatia's office. She sat in the center of the room, the large window to the hospital courtyard behind her, surrounded by three training psychiatrists and the social worker, big table in a small room, looking in her eyes across the table. "It sounds like you've tried a lot of different medications. That's bad practice — cycling through them before reaching maximum therapeutic effect." She was talking about my psychiatrist. I didn't know who was right.

I read a book someone left behind, The Butlerian Jihad. A late prequel in the Dune series. Talked with one of the attending psychiatrists about it, and my roommate — I'll call him Pete — who had read some of the series too. I couldn't read it when I got home, even though I got Mom to bring it to me while in the psych ward after I finished the Jihad.

Heather took all my calls while I was in there. She started her new job at the museum, while packing boxes, selling furniture on marketplace, homeschooling the kids. She visited me three times during my ten days. Once to see me. Once for the notary, house closure papers, my signature. Walking out of the ward, with Heather and the social worker to meet the notary, felt like freedom. A third time because the notary had taken the day off, so we had to reschedule and hire a mobile notary. We quietly signed papers and stamped our thumbs.

On the visits, we sat in eyeshot of the staff, in the main room where we spent all our time eating, playing cards, dominoes, watching TV. We talked quietly. Time limit was 30 minutes. Others who didn't have visitors had to stay in their rooms for quiet time.

Lining up to go to group therapy twice a day. I hated it. But I wanted to say I tried.

Most of the techs were kind. One — I barely remember her name. "Sit up so I can take your temperature." "Lift your arm." "Open your mouth." She criticized me for drinking too much water. I couldn't stand her.

Sam, a woman with a hijab, took me to a quiet room. She asked questions. "You had to move as a child because of choices your dad made. Now the same thing you've worked so hard to avoid is happening to you and your family. This is a major trigger for you — the thought of losing the farm is triggering your depression."

That had never occurred to me. That connection. Not sure it helped, but something in it rang truer than any other bs I'd heard that week.

We went to the gym a couple times. I played badminton with other residents, some in their hospital gowns. I walked on a treadmill watching The Office. It made me sore.

A few days later in the same gym, the staff hosted a fall festival for the residents, dressed up as farmers, aliens, superheroes. Residents walking around to make crafts, play games, collect candy. I sat in a corner doodling. Curvy lines, each one outlining the last, infinitely. Someone leaned over and said it was cool.

Sitting in my bed, journaling, I remembered their births.

Hannah
Noah
Sage
Soren

The years before, we were walking Glenwood Ave, with our friends and their kids, among thousands of others. Drinking spiked cider in my Yeti. Kids running, bags gripped tightly, homeowners at their doorsteps handing out fistfuls of candy. Admiring the neighborhood's gigantic werewolves and vampires and spider webs.

After the first week, I was ready to play the game. "I'm feeling a little better. I'm not having suicidal thoughts anymore."

A few days later, I was stuffing my bag: clothes, journal, tacky crafts we'd made in group therapy, book, toiletries.

Pete said, "you've been a great roommate. The best one I've had." I thought I was rather a bummer. He had been there weeks before me, multiple times. Still waiting on his family to sort out where he would stay when he got out. He said "we're not supposed to do this. But I can give you my number if you want. It'd be nice to stay in touch." He jotted it on a scrap of paper, I crammed it in my pocket in a hurry, then lost it a few days later.

When I got out, I lived in my parents' camper for a month. Heather and the kids lived with her parents.

A few weeks later, Dad parked the camper at Michael Tucker Park in Anniston so I could help drive the kids back and forth to tech week rehearsals (CAST Kidz was doing Annie). We had a microwave Thanksgiving dinner. Chicken nuggets with Chick-fil-A sauce and veggies. We played foxtail toss. I taught the kids Texas Hold'em Poker, the game I'd learned in the hospital.

It was good to be together.

After Thanksgiving, the power and water for the trailer on Littlejohn Road was turned on. We moved in. I resumed applying for jobs.

We spent Christmas there. Our first. Not as horrible as I'd imagined.

This week, I met Kyle for coffee. I told him I'd been angry with him in there. He laughed. I reminded him, "You called it a grippy sock vacation. That was not my experience. I knew it wouldn't be. But now I have a story, at least." He asked, "Did you have a guy that ate oatmeal with his hands?" He hunched, lifted his cupped hand to his face. "No, my best story was the badminton one."

Heather asked me that evening if I thought it was good for me, in hindsight. I said it was... It was and it wasn't...

"I needed you to be gone. I couldn't take anymore. You were fighting me at every turn. I couldn't do it."

The walk-in cooler. The renovated workshop. The dahlias, the peonies, hitting their third year prime. The Ladiga Trail kiosk. The Anniston Star articles. Mayor Ciara Smith's visit. Our equipment and my tools.

We sat quietly for a while at the table under the tree. The shadows of the sweetgum were leaning across the yard.