Ward D

by Freida McFadden

“All the patients are very well controlled on their medications. There’s nothing to worry about.” That sounds like a lie. If they were well controlled, the unit wouldn’t have to be locked, would it?

The truth is, I’ve already seen Ward D. I visited it once before, nearly a decade ago. Back when my best friend was a patient there. I still remember her matted hair and wild eyes when I came to visit. She didn’t look like my best friend anymore—more like a wild animal closed up in a cage. But the thing that sticks with me most—the thing I will never forget—are the words she spit out at me just seconds before I ran out of the unit, swearing to myself I would never return ever again: You should be the one locked up here, Amy.

“What if,” I say quietly, “at the end of the night, they get confused and think that I’m one of the patients there and they don’t let me out?”

“What little girl?” “The little blond girl who was standing next to me.” “I didn’t see a little blond girl standing next to you. What are you talking about, Amy?”

“No.” Dr. Beck frowns. “He’s not ‘a schizophrenic.’ We don’t refer to patients that way. Miguel is a human being, and he’s more than his psychiatric diagnosis. He is not a schizophrenic—he’s a man who has schizophrenia. Do you understand that?”

The patients locked in this unit are human beings just like everyone else. A mental health diagnosis is not a death sentence. All the patients in this unit are just trying to get better.

But on the other hand, this is a man who has been hearing voices telling him to murder people. Maybe this isn’t the patient I want to see. But in some ways, that’s exactly why I want to see him. After all, if you meet someone who is truly mentally ill, that’s the only way to know that you’re sane.

How does somebody get to the point where their brain stops functioning like a normal brain? That their reality completely breaks from the reality that every other person in the world lives in? And what’s to stop it from happening to anyone else?

“Damon Sawyer wants to kill every single one of us tonight.” “Why…” My voice is a hoarse croak. “Why do you think that?” “Because that’s what he told me he’s going to do.”

“I could hear him screaming about it.” Will shakes his head. “I don’t know what he was doing that made them stick him in there, but the guy is obviously disturbed. Really disturbed.” “So if he heard voices telling him to kill people, he would do it?” Will drops his eyes. “Yeah. I’d imagine so.”

Whenever I pick up a book, it’s like an escape. For an hour or two, I get to be part of the book world instead of my own much more boring world.