Moments I Was Scared

It was my first night at St.  Vincent’s hospital and I was in the bathroom. The stalls (two) didn’t have doors. There was toilet paper on the floor. I could not get over the feeling that I would scratch out my eyes. It was midnight and I had just been transferred from the emergency room to the psych ward. After a while the nurse appeared doing rounds. Fortunately it was Debbie who would prove to be really compassionate. She gave me Haldol, Benadryl, a pencil and some paper. Eventually I fell asleep.

When I was in elementary school I had a gym teacher. I was convinced this teacher had romantic inclinations towards me. He was friendly to me but nothing sexual. I didn’t even know what sex was. In second grade I started getting headaches and stomachaches when I had to go to gym class but I never told anybody why. In my diary I drafted ways I could kill my teacher or who I could marry him off to. By third grade I realized I didn’t have anything to worry about.

When I tried to kill myself it was a desperate clutch to please the voices. There was a lot of blood bt it actually were very shallow wounds. Still I looked down and thought I was dying which was sort of the idea. But as soon as I did it I wish I could reverse it. I was hysterical and screaming. Christy (my friend’s mom) held me down and pressed a towel to my wrist while Dave (my friend’s dad) called an ambulance. I was left screaming in the ER with a migraine and hallucinations until they gave me something to make me pass out,

It was the day after Parade Day and I had spent the night with a guy I had just started seeing. It was such a new thing- sexual more than anything else. Anyway I woke up not feeling good but since I often drank alot I often woke up with tremors or hangovers. I went to the bathroom and started vomiting. I swiftly became disoriented and rested my  head against the cool tile. I don’t know how much time had passed. “Leigh, are you okay?” I think I opened the door and asked for water. Then I saw him glance at the toilet and blanch. I  had been vomiting up blood. He ran to get his friend who was an EMT. Chris told us “This is way more than a hangover. She needs to go to the hospital” The ambulance got there very fast. They gave me something to prevent vomiting which I had been doing all this time. They slipped in an IV in my arm. Mike got in the ambulance and we were off to the ER with me still slightly disoriented and very scared. In the ER I got seen by a relatively unsympathetic doctor who ran a few tests then shoved a tube down my nose to drain the blood. I was bleeding internally. Mike stayed for like six hours until my dad arrived. My two best friends also came down. Finally  I was transferred out of the Er and stayed for a few days. They don’t fool around when you throw up blood. I dated Mike for three months and haven’t thrown up blood since.

After the whole throwing up blood thing I didn’t drink much and then after medication was added I stopped drinking completely. But one night I went to a bar with two of my friends. I had the  mistaken belief that all O’Doul’s were non-alcoholic. Well, they aren’t. I was on my third beer when I went to say something and I vomited all down the front of my shirt. Panicked I just ran out of the bar leaving behind my friends and my stuff. It was Halloween season and I ran pasr a group of people in costume. I found an abandoned doorway and crouched there, crying, scared at how the alcohol and my meds were interacting. Some people came to check on me which was kind but their attention only alarmed me further. I went back in, found my friends and my purse nad we left. As we walked back to my friends house we frequently had to pause so I could throw up in storm drains. Fortunately there was no lasting damage.