The hospital I was sent to was clearly not ready for my arrival. In fact, judging from its under-construction exterior, I initially thought it wasn't ready for any new arrival.
But all judgement aside, the ambulance pulled into the back of the hospital deposited me with the psychiatric ward reception downstairs, and left. The reception doctor at the psychiatric ward couldn't admit me yet, so she had me wait, for whatever reason, in the solitary confinement room. I cannot describe how offputting that was.
The room was about 15 feet square, with one permanent furnashing - a wooden-framed queensized bed with a foam mattress. At each of the four corners were heavy leather straps clearly used to pin down its occupants. The walls were, except for one thick tinted window for the doctors to examine me, empty and whitewashed. The door, probably about an inch and a half thick, could only be opened or unlocked from the outside.
At about 7 o'clock, after calling my mother (who wasn't informed of what was going on, which seemed odd given that the other hospital had been so quick to volunteer information) and my girlfriend, the woman whose desk sat in such a position that she could look through the tinted window at me came in and asked me for the whole story. Again. She took down all of my talking points about my issues, and then she, I, and a new police officer (ooh fancy!) went down the hall and to the left to the Psych Ward.
Entering the hospital's pyschiatric ward after having been through 24 hours of a bureaucratic clusterfuck, I couldn't help but think of Dante's Inferno. Fortunately, I was 17, not 18 at the age of entry, and I was therefore put in the kids' ward. For those that want an accurate depiction of what the adult ward was like, just watch the first episode of the sixth season of the show House. From what I saw through my brief passings in there, the House episode shows how it works pretty well.
The adults' Psych Ward mostly housed people above the age of 65 wearing nothing but gowns, diapers, and tubes connected to bags on. It couldn't have been more depressing. When I walked past the front desk a man was arguing with the nurse about whether or not he could keep his cigarettes.
A nurse pushed me to keep walking and guided me to a door with no handles and a card reader on the wall next to it. The nurse swiped his card and the doors magically opened to a hallway with 7 rooms, 3 on the left and 4 on the right. See diagram for arrangement.
Note: Every bedroom door was double wide, with locks on the outside and a reinforced rectangular window in the middle. The door handles are just a lever you push on, standard in all hospitals I think.
The two mens' rooms and womens' rooms both had two beds and a bathroom. But, because the assumption is that all of the residents are crazies, they didn't have a lot of things.
Here's a list of what they didn't have:
-toilet seat
-fire alarm
-trash can
-unsecured furnature
-paper towels or paper towel dispenser
-soap
-chairs
-curtains over the windows
-clocks
-power outlets
-staples on the orientation packets
The isolation room was like something out of a mad doctor's dream. It had 3 padlocks on the door, metal bars on the windows, and a camera on the ceiling trained on the bed. The bed was centered the room with places in each corner for shackles. I was never put in there, but I did go exploring on my last day.
They had about 25 rules of conduct. Some were reasonable, some were absurd, and most of which I don't remember. Here are the ones I do remember:
-no physical contact of any kind (I was admonished for giving a high five once)
-no strings, no shoe laces, no cords
-no electronics
-no escaping
-no alcohol, tobacco, or illegal substances
-no offensive language or behavior
-no going into another person's room
-no pens or pencils in bedrooms
-participation during therapy sessions is required
-stay out of the office
