Notes · Fiction excerpt
Getting Out Was Supposed to Be the Easy Part
Getting out was supposed to be the easy part.
An excerpt from Blue.
Content note: Psychiatric hospitalization.
As the nurse and I passed through the door to freedom, I was overcome with a sense of gratitude. I recognized that I was having a lot of spontaneous emotions, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it except go with it.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” I said to the nurse as we walked through the unused waiting room.
“Thank you for being such a good patient,” she replied. “We were worried about you, holing up in your room those first couple days.”
“I was worried about me too.”
We went through the door that led to the outside. I was free. I didn’t want to be, though. Intensely. I wanted to turn around and go back inside. How was I going to face Angela after all this crazy shit? After the humiliation of everyone at the police department knowing I’d been committed? I’d given everyone in the hospital a sobriquet except myself. What nickname had Angela given me? Whack Job J? Crazy J? J-Nut? Jason McLunatic?
Future Ex Husband?
—
Read the opening of Blue on my website: