An Episode Began Eight Years Ago

I was screaming.

Helpless. Sad. 

 But on the outside I was giggling. My manic phase hit me hard. There I was, en route to the psychiatric ward. Without me knowing what was going to happen for the next half-decade. That my life would just be THIS.

I was just a child who didn't even take the bus to school. I always got from one point to another with either mom or my grandfather behind the wheel in a little Japanese auto.

I was taken from my bedroom, sedated with a needle, and strapped to a stretcher. I was finally placed inside an (unlocked) padded room. Then I was awaken. My mom had followed the ambulance in the car, I could see that before I nodded off to sleep. 

 Comically I was placed in a wheelchair, and wasn't allowed to decline the service. Two orderlies: muscular, tanned, evidently homosexual males were on either side of me and grasped my teenage self tight.

I then realized I had been wheeled into the neuro-psychiatric ward of a premier (but the walls were leaking) hospital. 

I used to run up and down the crowded hallways. There I was, in my full glory: tight jog pants and some canvas slip-ons mom bought that only lasted for the entirety of my stay. I whizzed past the ticking machines, past the old man in the stretcher and past the attractive doctor.

As any fifteen-year-old would do, I stopped somewhere in the vicinity of this doctor and proceeded to do a humping motion. This then gained me the ire of the orderlies, and the amusement of another doctor who was also youthful and her companion.

In my two-and-a-half week stay in this medical hotel, I ended up getting forcibly sedated twice. On the first time, I was up and running (quite literally!) when I woke after the shots. I was then given a treadmill privilege, which I then proceeded to put on max and end up getting caught on camera spilling off.

I was also insanely irritated because I was not allowed to play GTA on the PCs. I had a conversation with a Hindu man's mother who refused to eat the burgers served for they contained beef (she correctly lectured me that running to-and-fro a ward's hall is not a Nirvanic thing to do): I ate the little cow patties for him, in front of him.

 I was given full laboratory assessments while placed in a wheelchair. These included a urinalysis, a thyroid test, CT scan and chest x-ray. All of these were abnormal. It turns out I had a UTI, hypothyroidism, focal seizures and pneumonia, respectively. 

Summarily, I met: a woman who kissed me on the way out. A husband, he was Malaysian-Chinese, of a patient who saw me as a son and bought me ice cream and a KFC bucket on my birthday. We also jammed to the Beatles. And I was translator of a Canadian military personnel with PTSD who was also named Steven.

When the weeks came to an end, I was transferred to a long-term center. This time, I wasn't sedated in the van. I was behaved. But only for the trip.

When I began, I was helpless.

When the hospital stint ended, I still was (or made more so). 

Perhaps, until this very moment.