Outpatient - A Story of Horror and Madness by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 3

She rose from the couch with the document still in hand and, making her way into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door.

“Shit!” she muttered to herself. She'd have to order groceries.

Catherine didn't like going into town. People made her nervous and she felt as though their eyes were constantly upon her, criticizing her every thought. She made her breakfast from what little there was – two eggs, scrambled; two slices of toast, no butter – and of course, coffee. She continued pouring over her psychiatric history, along with the notes written about her treatment at AMHI. Catherine could easily write a thesis on the confluence of energy into matter during the creation of the universe, but „psycho-speak" was not something she was ordinarily familiar with – thank God there was the Internet. She slid the documents back on the coffee table next to the folder marked „AMHI" and retreated into her bedroom, with Ivan close behind.

It seemed he was wherever Catherine was, always watching over her. Catherine quickly emerged back into the living room, dressed in cut-off shorts and a gray tank top. She turned on a small radio and tuned it into her favorite a.m. talk show. She needed the stimulation but refused to

buy a television. She saw the problems of a world gone mad and took them a bit too close to heart. War, poverty, starvation, genocide – whatever it was driving humanity over the edge toward extinction. Then, after a series of blaring tones, she heard a weather report. There was a large storm headed in her direction, moving northeast from southern New Hampshire. It was a previously recorded announcement, so there were no details on the size or destructive force of the storm. But, it was still in southern New Hampshire, and Catherine browsed the web for almost an hour – there had to be something good happening out there. „World rejoices as miners in Chile are rescued".

“Finally”, she whispered to herself. A little good news always lifted her spirits, knowing that the world was not an entirely evil place. She read a few more articles while Ivan drifted off on her lap. His whiskers and paws twitched as he lay dreaming about whatever it is that cats dream about. Before she logged off, Catherine ordered her groceries. It was always the same list of items every week, and she kept it on the grocery store's website. She could change it whenever she wanted and order with the click of a mouse. It was an incredible time saver and spared her the discomfort of being around people.

After shutting down her laptop, she got up, still sipping from her coffee, and wandered over to where her diploma hung on the wall. She gazed at it deeply and was gently overtaken by memories of those wonderful days. As a teacher, her favorite subject was relativity with its expenses of complex equations, like a beautiful language that few people truly understood. She especially enjoyed discussing the anthropocentric illusion of time, as well as the thought experiments of Einstein. But for Catherine, it was more than numbers and symbols. It was an art that transcended all things and was an expression of the fundamentals of creation itself.

She took a sudden breath and found herself back in her house – having left the memories of better days behind. Then, from out of nowhere, a wisp of smoke filled her nose. Her mind flew into a panic with a million racing thoughts. She ran frantically around her house, checking the stove and peering up the chimney. She slid her hands across the walls, looking for warm spots near the wiring, and ran up into the attic, then down into the cellar. The thought of a fire only caused the smell to become more intense. But when she paused in an attempt to regain her senses, she realized that the air was free of smoke.

“Fuck!” she yelled, grabbing her hair with both hands and falling to her knees, weeping in fear of her sanity. Catherine had no idea what brought this on. She may have just missed a dose of her medication. Yes, that must be it. She got to her feet, still crying, and stumbled out her front door, she sat down on the stoop and lit a cigarette, staring at it in disbelief as she held it between her fingers. She knew it made no sense at all – being a smoker and having the occasional hallucination of smelling smoke. But it did calm her nerves, as she couldn't take a sedative and expect to drive to her appointment at Franklin Memorial.

She knew what smoking could do to her. She saw the consequences of it on the internet once in a while. She imagined her couch catching fire from a lit cigarette, dangling between her fingers as she dozed off into a deep sleep – the house burning around her. Later, after the fire had been extinguished, her body would be found – a shrunken mass of twisted bone and fluid, contained within an unrecognizable charred husk. Catherine would quit this filthy habit someday, but today would not be that day. She only smoked half of it, dropping the rest to the ground and crushing it beneath her shoe. Catherine noticed that her hands were still trembling, but she was still able to get back on her feet. She went back into the house and checked her medication schedule. The antipsychotics she took affected her short-term memory, so she had to mark every dose as she took it. That morning's checkbox was blank, so she took them according to the directions on the label and penned in a check mark on the schedule. On one occasion, she took her morning meds and forgot to mark it on the schedule. She ended up taking a double dose and when she started to become confused, she called an ambulance. She was taken to Franklin Memorial Hospital, then, later, flown by life flight to Maine Medical Center in Portland. Franklin Memorial could have dealt with Catherine's condition, but she had a complicated history and was on some very powerful drugs. She was admitted to the kidney unit on the fifth floor of the Richards wing in order to have her blood cleansed by dialysis. The Narcan they gave her at Franklin Memorial counteracted the effects of the Thiothixene and Clozapine. But the doctors wanted to avoid any acute kidney damage, and they decided to insert a Tesio line directly into her bloodstream near her collarbone. After they spoke with Catherine"s psychiatrist, the event was determined to be accidental. So the placement of the Tesio line would be very temporary and would be removed shortly before her discharge.

She had a calendar for everything – all her medical appointments, her menstrual cycle when bills were due, and birthdays – including her father's but excluding her own. Even Ivan's birthday was on the calendar, and Catherine celebrated his birthday with more excitement than anything else. Loyalty wasn't exactly typical in cats, but Ivan was special. He seemed to be not just her companion, but her guardian – following her around the house like a puppy.

Catherine decided that what she needed now was to get out of the house. Stratton Pond was right outside her front door, and she went there often. She especially enjoyed the walk around the pond during the peak of autumn, when Bigelow Mountain"s foliage was ablaze with color. The multitude of colors spread out across the majestic mountain range. This helped Catherine to gain some perspective and made the problems of her life seem just a bit smaller. It was just small enough to hike in about an hour or so and as long as she stayed within sight of the water, she wouldn't have to worry about wandering from the pond and getting lost. On one weekend, Catherine decided to hike the trail to Little Bigelow Mountain. She wasn't exactly in shape, but she'd always wanted to try a hike that looked fairly easy and still find a place with a great view. But she didn't know how to prepare for even a small summit hike, and by the time Catherine got to the peak of Little Bigelow she had become badly dehydrated. When her mother was unable to reach her, she called the state police as well as the Bigelow Park service and e-mailed Catherine's picture to them. She was later found trying to make her way down the mountain, covered with cuts and bruises from tripping over her own feet. Catherine spent a night in Franklin Memorial for rehydration therapy and in spite of what she would later think of as a near-death experience, she wanted to get back into the mountains. But the next time, she wanted to be prepared and hindsight being twenty-twenty, she later decided that making her first hike into Mt. Bigelow in the middle of July was probably a bad idea from the start. So, a couple of weeks after her recovery, Catherine picked up the phone and called Nancy.