Jim from across the hall is the only guy in the psych ward that other patients expected to see when they got there.
“He’s like that one guy in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ all lumbering and silent and catatonic,” said Katie McDonnell, who admitted herself to Evanston Hospital last week. “You could see him on the street and peg him as someone who has been here before. The distress is all over him. Mentally, he’s living somewhere else.”
But the others on the ward, McDonnell conceded, were not so easy to typecast. “You’ve got a pretty mixed bag around here. Not a ton of mutterers, screamers … no manic street preachers or anything like that. Most sound like their lives are pretty put together. Two people have or are pursuing PhDs. But not Jim, no. He’s a classic.”
Jim spends most of the day either in his bed or in a corner chair in the community room. He hangs his head, squints one eye and looks at the floor. Occasionally he moves his eyes back and forth in a suspicious manner, glaring at other patients and holding his gaze for several seconds too long.
“When I checked myself in, I was halfway thinking I would come out with an exposé about the snake pit,” said McDonnell, who had never been on a psych ward before. “And it started off that way. Security escorted me in, staff took everything I had and sealed it in plastic bags. They explained the rules to me, which felt like being parented back in the third grade. But past that, I learned that a lot of my fears are just imagination. The proper way to understand psychiatric units, I was told, is that the bad ones are like cheap motels but with the rules of a prison. The nice ones are four-star hotels but with the rules of a prison. This right here — this is an airport Hilton. Plain, unexceptional, Middle America. But with the rules of a prison.”
She went on: “It’s really not different from my normal social circuit. In fact, some of these people are in my social circuit. Take Rachel, for example. It turns out she was close with my cousin in high school. We were actually at the same wedding last year and didn’t realize it. And Janice, I actually recognized her from tennis club with my mom. And Rafael, he’s the guy at the electronics shop that I use about twice per year.”
But there was still Jim.
“Yeah, he’s the one real loon in the mix,” McDonnell said. “We’ve never spoken, but once I saw him in that chair, and there were cartoons on the television, like ‘CatDog’ or something old like that. Anyways, the program ends, the credits run and the TV cuts to commercial. About seven seconds later, Jim bursts out laughing, holds it for a while then cuts to immediate silence.”
When asked about his reputation, Jim’s affect became suddenly open, his communication smooth and uninhibited. “Honestly, it’s kind of exaggerated. I’m here a lot, they aren’t — and I like to mess with people who seem uncomfortable about being ‘one of those people.’” Then his face turned flat and expressionless again. “But if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you,” he said, staring down the interviewer and slowly closing the door.