A Tiny Little Dot

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE EVENT

My eyes flicker open as I awake from my slumber. I stare up at my dark ceiling. Colors begin to swirl as my eyes get used to the darkness. I lay still, hearing nothing but the faint sound of my breathing. I close my eyes once more, inhaling deeply.

I look to my left at my alarm clock. I see that its 5:30 am. My blood runs cold and my face burns hot as the alarming realization that I have school washes over me. My breathing picks up as the anxiety builds. My face twists into a pained look.

I throw my blankets off of me and I jump out of bed. I fall to my hands and knees when I lose my balance. I wimper as I pick myself off the floor. Once I am to my feet, I begin pacing around my room frantically. I run my fingers deeply through my hair as I begin to cry.

After a mere few seconds, the answer comes to me. I run down the hallway of my foster home to the bathroom. I flick the light on and I open the medicine cabinet. Squinting, I look for the answer to my problems. I find my bottle of Seroquel. I twist off the cap and pour the contents into my hand. I count ten pills and then shove them into my mouth. I take a big swig of water and swallow the tablets down.

With the pill bottle still grasped in my right hand, I walk slowly back to my room. I shuffle to my bed and lay on my stomach without even pulling my blankets back over me. My mind is completely blank as the seconds tick by. My breathing becomes shallow as my mind begins to fade.

Suddenly, my eyes fly open. I have now realized what I have done and I panic. I pick myself up from my mattress and I sprint to my foster parent's room. I breathe heavily and tears begin to roll down my cheeks when I fall to my knees next to my foster mom's sleeping body.

"Sheryl," I cry. "Sheryl, wake up!"

"Wha-what's wrong Virginia?" She asks, lifting her head.

"I did something bad."

"What did you do?" She asks, alarmed.

"I took the rest of my Seroquel," I wimper.

"What?" Sheryl exclaims as she jumps out of bed. She puts her hands firmly on my shoulders. "Go downstairs and get your shoes on, honey."

"Okay," I say quietly. I stand up and make my way toward the stairs. I lightly stomp my way down, depressed at what I have done. At the bottom, I slip on my flip flops and I follow Sheryl out to the car. It is still pitch black outside.

On the ride to the hospital, Sheryl tries to keep me concious by constantly asking me questions about school and my friends and the concerts I had planned for the coming months. I answer them quietly with my eyes shut and head leaning back on the head rest of my seat.

When we arrive at the hospital, Sheryl tells me to stay in the car. She runs in and comes out with a man pulling a wheel chair. They both help me into the chair and then the man rolls me through the emergency room. At the end of the hall, the man puts me in a room with an older lady at a computer.

"Hello!" She says. "What seems to be the problem here?" She asks me.

"I took the rest of my Seroquel," I mumble, holding out the pill bottle to her.

She takes it and reads the label. She begins typing on her computer. "And how many pills did you take?"

"I took ten," I say, embarrassed and ashamed.

"Okay," she says. She types some more and then prints a wristband out for me. She puts its on me and says goodbye.

I am then pushed further down the hallway to my room. They make me take off my shirt. I then slide on a hospital gown. The nurse ties it and helps me into my hospital bed. She grabs me a pair of hospital socks that have been heated. They feel amazing on my cold feet.

I begin to drift out of lucidness. "Will the IV hurt," I ask Sheryl.

"It'll just feel like a little pinch, honey," she assures me, rubbing my left arm.

"Which hurts more, getting your blood drawn or an IV?"

"I think getting your blood drawn hurts way more."

I turn my head toward the nurse. I watch as the woman slides the IV into my arm. I feel a faint pinch and then lay my head back down on the pillow. The nurse then draws blood. I don't even feel needle go in.

After awhile, the nurse leaves and another one comes in holding a styrofoam cup with a lid and straw. "Hello, Virginia. We're going to need you to drink this charcoal. It will bind up the medicine in your stomach so you'll poop it out."

"Okay," I say, scared. I had heard awful things about the charcoal mixture they make people drink. I take the cup anyway and try to down my first sip. "Agh! That's disgusting!"

"Well, you're going to have to drink the whole thing for me, okay?" The nurse says.

After struggling with the charcoal for about a half an hour, my Seroquel begins to sink in even more. I become completely undone and rude toward the nurses.

"You need to drink it!" The nurse says.

"You can't make me do anything!" I yell back at her.

"Yes, we can if you're trying to hurt yourself. If you don't drink that charcoal, I'm going to stick a tube down your throat and pump it into your stomach!"

"Whatever!"

After another interval, I begin to really fade out. A case manager then comes in to talk to Sheryl and me. I barely stay concious as the case manager screams at me.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to hurt yourself?" The case manager yells at me.

I just roll my head back and forth on my pillow. My eyes are closed and I'm not able to speak. I just listen as I hear the case manager yell at Sheryl and Sheryl continues to tell me to keep a tight grasp on my cup.

After hours of trying to drink the charcoal, I finish the whole damn thing. I then drink some apple juice and I fall asleep, dying for some rest.

Later, I wake up, feeling sick. "I'm going to be sick," I mumble as I lean over to my right. Sheryl is there just in time as I vomit three times into the bucket. My body strains with each hurl. My vomit it pitch black and extremely watery from the charcoal and apple juice. I immediately fall back on my pillow and fall asleep.

Around noon, I rouse once again to the nurse telling me the paramedics are going to be here soon to take me to Devos Children's Hospital downtown. She takes me to the bathroom and I return to my room to two men in uniform standing by a stretcher. They help me up on it and I lay down. They strap me in and I let out a nervous sigh.

"I'll meet you there," Sheryl says, squeezing my hand.

The paramedic guys then roll me back out of the ER. The sun pierces all around me as the two men load me into the car. One stays with me and the other drives. I try my best to stay awake but I'm too exhausted. I doze off.

I am awoken by the sound of the back doors being open. I lay still as the two paramedics roll me out of the vehicle and onto the ground. They push me to the hospital and we travel to the sixth floor to the room I will be staying in.

"Hello, Virginia," a nurse greets me. "You can go ahead and get in your bed. I'll then hook you up to the EKG."

I slowly climbed on the bed and lay back. The nurse came around to my left and placed the EKG stickies to my chest and abdomen. The machine picked up my pulse. The nurse then took my blood pressure.

I figured that I would have to stay at a hospital but I wasn't exactly sure why I was specifically there. I guess it was for my heart rate. It was kind of all over the place. Or maybe it was for my blood pressure. God knows they took it only about a million times.

"Hey, Virginia," Sheryl says with a smile as she enters my room.

"Hello, Sheryl," I say back.

"How are you feeling, honey?"

"Okay. I'm still pretty sleepy."

Sheryl came up to my bed. "Well you just get some rest," she says as she pulls my blankets up to my neck.

Over the next few hours, I just slept and watched tv with Sheryl. My nurse changed every couple hours. I wasn't allowed to leave my room or be left alone. Someone was always there babysitting me. My legs got extremely sore from only being able to walk to the bathroom every few hours. And each time I went, I had to pee in a plastic container so the nurses could make sure I wasn't dehydrated.

I slept all through the night. Sheryl couldn't stay the night because she had to go home to be with my foster brothers and sisters. I awoke a few times to my nurses watching MTV or Animal Planet. I just ignored them and went back to bed.

I had pancakes and a bunch of other stuff for breakfast. Hospitals make me lose my appetite so I didn't eat much. I actually only ate about two small meals a day. Plus, the food wasn't very good. They purposely gave me crappy food so I wouldn't like staying there.

"Hello, Virgina. My name is Phil." A short man with thinning blond hair says as he appears in my doorway. "I'm your case manager." He walks over to my bed side and shakes my hand.

"Hello," I say quietly.

"How are you feeling?" He asks sincerely.

"Pretty good. I've just been sleeping a lot."

"Well that's good," he says as he pulls up a chair and takes a seat."

Phil then continues to ask me questions. We discuss what exactly happened the morning before. It's all really a blur to me but I try my best to give good answers. I can really sense his sincerity, unlike the case manager at the other hospital.

"Well, here's the plan for today: later on in the afternoon, you're going to be taken to Pine Rest in the inpatient for further monitoring. You're going to have to be taken in an ambulance. It's not because we think you need an ambulance, it's just the law. You will then stay there until your psychiatrist deems you okay to go home. Okay?"

"Okay," I mumble.

Phil then shakes my hand and says goodbye.

Since I had to wait until about 3 pm, I just read my book and talked with the nurses. I wasn't allowed to have any contact and I wasn't allowed to have my phone. I didn't really mind. I didn't really want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to scare any of my friends.

3 pm finally rolled around and it was time for me to go. My quiet room then began to buzz with activity. A nurse took our my IV and blood gushed out of my arm, even with the bandage on it. She fixed it up and then it was time for me to get on the stretcher and leave.

"Hello, I'm Adam and this is Nate," one of the paramedics says with a smile. He was Hispanic and very attractive. Adam and Nate roll me out of the room but we have to wait there while they finish up the paperwork.

"There's a lot of cows on this floor," Adam says, gesturing to the many paintings of cows along the walls. "I wonder if there's like a chicken floor, a pig floor and then a cow floor. Like a different animal for each floor."

"Yeah, maybe," Nate says with a smirk.

"So did you get a chance to get some ice cream down in the cafeteria. They have a whole ice cream shop with tons of toppings," Adam asks me.

"No, I wasn't allowed to. They didn't want to make this a positive experience for me so I wasn't allowed to leave my room," I say with a sigh.

"Aw, that sucks," Adam says.

"Okay, let's go!" Nate says, grabbing the last of the paperwork out of a lady's hand.
They roll me down the hallway to the elevators. We all squeeze in and Nate pressed the C floor button. My stomach jolts a little bit as the elevators begins to drop.

"There's no floor B," Adam says with a laugh as we stop.

"That's bad luck," Nate says.

The two men then roll me past other ambulances to their's. They lift me in and Nate sits in the back with me while Adam drives. I was kind of disappointed that Adam wasn't in the back but Nate was pretty cool too.

On the ride to Pine Rest, Nate asks me all kinds of questions. Like what school I go to, what classes I'm taking, what I like to do for fun. I really enjoyed having the conversation. It made me feel a lot more comfortable. He knew that I was going to a psychiatric hospital but he didn't act like it. He made me feel somewhat normal.