Could It Work? Continued.......

I went! I got my shoes on and walked to the car. There was a strange confidence that came over me, and I could feel my shoulders fall back in place as I stood taller, straighter. As we drove up Main Street, I began to feel my heart pound. No, we were not headed to the hospital where I received so much trauma, but the path was the same as my goal in therapy. Get someone to drive, leave the house, get in the car, drive to the hospital, and get to the ER doors and then my anxiety would get to be too much, and in therapy we would have to stop and work. All of a sudden we were there. We parked in the hospital lot and the anxiety left. The confidence came back. Confidence and this empowering curiosity. What would it be like to need help again? What would it be like to walk through the doors again? I walked towards the ER beside my mom and she asked if I was OK. "Yes!" I stated with no question. We walked in the sliding doors. A set of baby twin girls came out. Wow, I thought. Life comes out of a place like this. We walked and I tensed as we passed security. In my last hospital experience I was not seen kindly. I was placed in green scrubs and blue footie socks and looked at with suspicion and question. I was escorted to each bathroom break and shower as I stayed four days in the ER in Portland Oregon, by security officers who watched every move I made in case I made a break for it, or tried to kill myself within the sterile confines of the ER.
Mom walked up to this security station and asked where the procedure room was and with a big smile and a sure finger he pointed us down the way. We found dad and I sat down to breathe. So far so good, but I had not seen into the actual ER doors or seen the tile floors or scrub adorned nurses. Well, I went to find them. Dad went down a tile floored hall way and I went and stood with two feet on the floor. I waited......I jumped up and down a bit.....and waited....soon I saw a nurse in scrubs.....he was watching his hands....I waited....I looked in another door, down another tile hallway....NOTHING! No panic! No flashbacks! The ER doors were next. I got mom to come and I found them, big metal sliding doors with "Authorized personel only" on the side. I stood there daring the doors to open and swallow me whole. A nurse walked by with a wheel chair and the doors opened. I looked into the ER, saw the curtained off rooms and folded scrubs on beds. I was breathing. I sat outside the bathrooms and what unfolded before my eyes was an intake of a patient who was in a very bizarre state of mind. She gazed at the ER nurse who was interviewing her and stared through her. She looked over the intake nurse's shoulder and her eyes were blank, taken by a mental state that I dared not think about. She was helped to standing and then guided out, stumbling through the doors of the intake room and lead through the big metal doors. Her frail figure and the entourage of people who accompanied her went in. She mumbled something about that being her old bed and pointed to a curtained off bed and then the doors swallowed her and she was gone. Soon a woman walked out carrying a bag "Patients Belongings."
Once and only once did my heart begin to pound. That bag meant minimal clothes so your body could be examined by a Doctor, maybe three. It meant "You're not leaving." It meant soon family would be gone, the night shift would take over and you'd be alone. I was number 26 in my hospital bed. #26 in a glassed in room with nothing in it but sheets on a bed. I remember trying to hang myself with those sheets when no one was looking, just to end the fear, the sterile land of the ER, the paranoia that told me someone would come to get me, put me in prison and leave me to die. In the throws of a mixed episode, death seemed the only hope for freedom.
It was the sight of this bag that started a panic that I stared down. I stared right at that bag and wouldn't stop until my heart calmed and the memories were silent. After Dad's procedure we went back to see him. Tile floors, scrubs every which way, and my father lying in a bed hooked up to tubes and sleeping. I saw my Grandpa and suddenly my heart was beating again. "He needs to wake up, Mom." I said and reached for his hand. "He will. No worries." After 5 min he opened his eyes and my eyes which had been transfixed on the heart monitor changed to meet his. "Phew." I breathed. We sat and talked and laughed. "How ya doin', kiddo?" He asked. "Pretty damn good, Poppi." He got dressed and gave me his "Patients Belongings" bag while laughing. HA! I took it and put it in my purse as proof. I have it even now!