A Short Trip

 I’m dodging foot-deep potholes on a half-mile-long looping driveway that takes me past a clutch of abandoned red-bricked buildings.  A man in jeans and a grey Patriots’ sweatshirt limps along the sidewalk holding onto a blue nylon rope that barely restrains a German Shepherd the size a small pony.

“YOUR DESTINATION IS ON THE RIGHT, YOUR DEST…,” Madame Google anxiously insists that I stop moving.

I roll along, staring at a long, four storied, red-bricked building with regularly spaced, dusty-blank windows.  It’s clearly newer than the other buildings along the driveway: They all have that washed-out redbrick-slate public building look that says they were opened with great pomp and aspirations in the early 1900s and then left to rot.  Now the rot has clearly won out over hope and the four storied building is one of the few in the sprawling complex that isn’t condemned with large white “X”s painted on a red background.

“YOU’VE ARRIVED!” the Madame announces as I slowly bring the car to a halt.

I’ve come to this old state mental hospital on a mission of nicotine-mercy for an friend who’s drying out in a detox somewhere in this confusing complex.

Seeing a VISITOR PARKING sign, I pull in and park before the Madame can reboot to start giving me new, precisely annoying directions.  Across the lot there’s a thickset-baldie-goateed security guard pacing around the entry, clouds of vape smoke swirling around his shiny fat head.  

I walk-run toward the clouds of smoke, images flashing through my mind of being chased down by a merciless German Shepherd, dragging his thirty-foot-long blue leash.  Making it to the entry without suffering a No Country For Old Men canine mauling but breathing heavily and having almost lost my mercy-cargo of four packs of Winston, the security guard has vanished and the doors won’t open. 

Presuming a simple door malfunction, I push my fingers between the sliding doors where the weather stripping has perished and pry them far enough apart for me to enter.  Careful of rampaging German Shepherds, I put extra effort into pushing the doors closed.

Inside I walk through a lobby devoid of any sign of humans and into a long, dimly lit, puke-green corridor.  At the other end of the corridor, the long red glint of the exit sign on the shiny tiled floor is broken up by the security guard’s bulky frame as he ambles along.  From one side of his belt a large set of kegs dangles from the other flashes the tiny green LED of a walkie-talkie.

With no else around, I yell:

“HELLO! … Eh, do you know wh….”

He spins around so fast I know this is not going to end well.

“HOW did you get here?” he snaps, his hands instinctively reaching to the keys and walkie as he covers the ground between us surprisingly quickly for a big man. 

Even in the dimness and him moving fast, I can make out the intensity of his scowl.

“This building’s CLOSED, what are you doin’ ….”

“Eh, the detox, I’m lookin’ for ….”

Instinctively, I engage my well-honed skills in becoming an instant asshole.

“This BUILDIN’S closed.”

“The doors aren’t locked,” I say deliberately quietly, “an’ there’s no sign, how would a MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC know it’s CLOSED?”

“Well it i…, what the doors aren’t locked?”

“Yeah, how’d ya think I got here?  Down a chimney?”

With lots of sighs and muttered grumbles, he accompanies me back to the not-quite-sliding doors and deposits me, with a goatee-curling scowl, on the other side, mumbling vague directions that the “main entry is down t’other end.”

My asshole-ometer cranked well above fifty percent, I stomp along the long redbrick, blank-windowed building until I can glare at a set of crumbling concrete steps that probably lead to another entry.  I stomp on up the steps and into an overly bright, shiny-tiled floor lobby. 

Behind the front desk sits a, tanned, bald, uniformed policeman, his golden-yellow sergeant chevrons shining in the brightness.

Trying to recover my nicotine-mercy-mindset, stuffing my assholishness back in its case, I smile as I approach the desk.

“Eh, I’m lookin’ for the detox,” I say, holding up four packs of Winston.

“Aint we’s all!” the sergeant says in a heavy Hispanic accent. 

He adds a chuckle and pops up out of his chair.  He’s so short standing, that I’m shocked how by short his legs must be.

“Less me shows yous how,” he walks spryly around the desk, the shortness of his legs giving a staccato sense to his movements.  “Inside a thees ‘ospital is … vury confusin’,” he shakes his head a bunch, “but outsides … all good an’ easy.”

With short sharp steps he heads back to the door I just entered.  Reluctant to get dispatched to yet another entry in this confusing complex, I stand still.

“Cum, cum,” the sergeant waves me on impatiently, his short steps quickening.

A stair door bangs open into the lobby.  My security guard friend bustles through and sigh-groaning stomps over to slam his walkie on the sergeant’s desk.  He issues me an obligatory scowl, then immediately averts his eyes.

Rapidly considering my options, I scurry across the lobby to catch up with the sergeant. 

“Thee archeetecks makes ‘ospitals vury confusin’, but I doan mind, gives me a more chances to halp – right? Right? Halp ones anudder, so Jesus he say in thee Bible, only halps ones anudder.”

We walk past a navy blue, electric Ford Mustang and a black Explorer both with State Hospital Police crests on their door.  The grounds are pleasantly, if parsimoniously, landscaped. 

“I’m just bringin’ a friend a few cigarettes,” I explain my mission of nicotine mercy.

“No you izn’t, cuz you justa drop one box,” he stops and points back to where one of the four packs of Winston has fallen from my pocket.

“Cigar…ettes is spenive, don’t leave a lyin’ ‘round, some a these,” he waves his hand in a circle, “will take.”

  As we round the corner, I see a busy smoking shed built on a concrete pad in the middle of a grassy area.  The shed’s plexiglass walls start about eighteen inches above the concrete and stop just above the smoker’s heads, a foot below a flat rusty-corrugated metal roof.  Through the fogged plexiglass panels, grey shapes move around in Brownian Motion; the jerky movements of their sweatpanted-legs and sneakers visible at the bottom; from the top gap waft clouds of blue-grey cigarette smoke.

“Now you a see that door,” the sergeant aims his short arm at yet another entry, which it seems to me, with my admittedly judgmental yet geometrically inclined brain, is just down the corridor from the front lobby.

“You a go in there, thee door it doan worken good, but you a pulls hard,” he makes a little frown and mimics yanking on a door open, “an’ at t’ends a thee corridors, … on thee right, ring a doorbell an’ they take yours cigarettes … give yours friend.”

“Thanks, thanks!” I offer genuinely appreciative, and start heading toward the door only to be stopped in my tracks by the huge German Shepherd bounding after the most frightened tennis ball on the planet.  His owner, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, the blue rope coiled in his hand, focuses on the dog’s legs, as, in tight pairs, they almost touch, then fully extend in energetic bounds.

“Hey surs!” the sergeant waves a short arm in the dog owner’s direction, “remembers, no a smokin’ ‘cept in thee puff-puffs house.”

He moves his arm to aim at the smoking shack.

I walk on, trying to pay no heed to the German Shepherd at it races across the grass chasing the grey-green tennis ball.

At the door there’s an unambiguous large-bold-red-lettered sign that prohibits my using this particular entry:  EMPLOYEE ENTRANCE ONLY – ALL OTHERS USE MAIN ENTRY.

 I stop to consider my options: 1) Enter my friend’s world through this portal in flagrant violation of the written rules, 2) Go back to Main Entry, do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not feel good about yourself, 3) Leave and bitterly blame the system, the man, the men – baldie and shortie – when tomorrow morning at 6:00AM my friend makes one of his increasingly desperate calls for nicotine.

Fuck this, my inner asshole takes over.

I hit the worn smooth stainless-steel “PUSH HERE TO OPEN” door paddle.

Nothing happens.

I grab the handle hard and yank the door open.

Walking toward me down the corridor is baldie: He grits his teeth, shakes his head, looks away. 

He passes me like I don’t exist, not even emitting a sigh.

I stride down the corridor, the four packs of Winston jammed into my left hand, my right hand ready for a doorbell to ring.

The sign for the TREATMENT CENTER is unmistakable: Finding the doorbell not so easy.  Finally, I see the kind of white-plastic-doorbell one would find at a typical house.  Presuming this what I need, I press on it for a respectfully, short few seconds: If the terse tone my friend calls in is any indication, then this probably a stress pressure cooker.  The staff are likely busy helping people and I don’t want it to appear like I think my time is more important.

I wait ….

I stare down the long and lonely EMPLOYEE ENTRY corridor.  In the opposite direction the corridor leads to a bank of three elevators, all but one of which have a yellow WARNING – WET FLOOR sandwich board signs leaning against the elevator doors.  Another longer corridor heads, per my reckoning, back in the direction of the Main Entry lobby.

I press the doorbell for a longer, bordering on obnoxious, time period.

And wait ….

The EMPLOYEE ONLY door gets yanked open and a heavy middle-aged woman, fully filling sky-blue scrubs, a bulging, pink Fjall Raven backpack slung over one shoulder, rushes towards me down the corridor.

Timing myself for maximum opportunity to get her attention, just as she’s outside the range of normal speaking, I say loudly:

“EH, SORRY, is this the deto….”

“I can’t help, I can’t help,” she shakes her head, won’t even look at me and keeps moving fast toward the one working elevator.

I lean into the doorbell for fully two minutes … all sense of decorum gone.

And I wait ….

Baldie returns, jingling keys, tuning the walkie, not even flicking an eye at me.

A man in his seventies, linked by what appears to be his daughter, emerges slowly from the Main Entry corridor, his orthopedic sneakers scuffing the shiny-tiled floor.  They shuffle over to the elevator talking in loud, terse whispers.

I wait …, and as often happens, I’m just about to leave when the door suddenly whips open.  A tall thin, African American man, balding, bloodshot tired-eyes stares out at me for a few seconds before he says.

“Yeah, … what?”

“Oh, I brought these for ____ ______, he’s been in here a few days an’ he as….”

“Wait,” he says those fateful words and closes the door too fast for me to stop him.

Again, I wait ….

A few more clinical staff in scrubs hurry down the corridor slung with backpacks, eyes carefully curated to avoid contact.

Yet again, when I’m on the verge of giving up, the door shoots open and the bloodshot, tired eyes are back.

“Yeah, … I’ll take ‘em.”

He holds his hand out.  I put the by now very warm packs of Winston onto his palm.

“Eh, … an’ is, eh … how do I know he’ll get them?” I ask, shocked at the sudden ending of my heretofore complex delivery.

“Cuz I’ll give ‘em to him.”

“Good, … good, …good,” I answer staring him in the eye.

“He’s doin’ fine,” he nods, closing the door.

“Awright, awright” I say, but the door is already closed.

Staring down the long corridor that probably leads back to the Main Entry, I weigh the chances of getting lost in this confusing complex.  My new, short-limbed friend would surely have never left his desk if the path here was as simple as my simple mind imagines. 

I start down the Employee Only corridor, then immediately get a vision of the rampaging German Shepherd.

I stop.

Choices.

Is life the sum of our choices?