Breaking Out of the Loony Bin
This past weekend I drove upriver into the foothills east of Bellingham to visit my old friend from the Seattle days when we were both young and drove bus to the same elementary school. She and her biker beau had built a cabin on the Nooksack and I had even helped put up the roof. Funny how we both ended up living in shacks far off the beaten path, but then again, probably why we were friends in the first place.
Melinda lived in my ghetto house for a few months, about the time I hit the road for the island but before the house was sold. She came with her golden lab and I left with Dr. Gonzo, the fiercest dog I ever met and the beast that kept our larcenous neighbors from acting on their urges in regard to breaking and entering the two years or so I lived there. I didn’t bother locking doors back then, not with Gonzo on the inside.
But we left and Melinda stayed. She was mid-bath one afternoon when she heard a crash down below the upstairs bathroom and heard voices yelling at her lab which had started barking wildly. So she grabbed a bathrobe and scooted downstairs and out the front door while the intruders were helping themselves in the back to whatever they could find, not much in that house, trust me. Her plan was to barefoot it over to the hospital catty-corner, find a phone and call the police.
Which is exactly what she did. But when she headed back outside, a nurse asked her where she thought she was going. Home, Melinda told her. And the nurse, shaking her head, called a couple of orderlies to prevent that from happening. You aren’t going anywhere, she told Melinda, except back to your room. Now, what Melinda didn’t realize in her haste to get to a phone, was she’d flown into the cuckoo’s nest, the psych unit of Providence Hospital and there was no way the good custodians of the mentally ill were going to allow her to just waltz out of there barefoot in her bathrobe.
She tried explaining there was a robbery underway back at her house across the street, she told them how two intruders had hurled a potted plant at her dog on the stairs, she even mentioned she had been in the tub, why she was dressed in a bathrobe and no shoes. But these folks had heard it all before, they weren’t falling for that old line. No, ma’am, you need to get back to your room. Probably need an extra couple of sedatives.
Well, in the end Melinda finally convinced them she wasn’t totally crazy — and if you knew Melinda, you’d know how hard that would be — and by the time she got herself released from the mental ward the police were at the house and the thieves were long gone. Nothing much was stolen, not too much damage done, her dog was okay and the only thing hurt was maybe her pride. I brought the ferocious Dr. Gonzo back down to prevent repeat psych ward incarcerations and shortly after got the house sold. You ever wonder why I left the city, and Melinda too, maybe that was exactly why….
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Tags: One flew into the cuckoo's nest, Who you calling crazy?