Radium in my Pocket

by Chantal Cote

I squirm in my seat. I am in my mother's Nissan and the cars are whirring by unnaturally fast; then again, I am having trouble focusing on any one car. It is not a natural day; I have just downed over 80 Tylenol. My mother drives precisely, obeying all the traffic laws. And I am wearing uncomfortable underwear.

The inelegant Scarborough Grace Hospital falls towards us rapidly, the clotty patches on the brick building looking like liver spots or oatmeal or acne, the building absorbing an urban gangrene from pollution and communal dereliction. It's not a great look for a hospital, I think, but I don't suppose it matters much what it looks like on the outside; it's the sort of place people spend minutes or hours or days or eternity looking out of. When you're on the outside, you look away. Sick bodies and sick buildings, they are very alike.

We pull up to the parking lot, and the sign says "$6/all day". I think it's horrible that they charge you for parking here. I wonder where the tow truck is; there must be one for all the people who drove themselves to the hospital and were turned away, left to die parked illegally on the street. This dulcet thought is made all the more vivid by the sight of my mother fumbling in her mammoth purse, searching for change among the lipsticks and used hankies. It doesn't matter, though, because I vomit on my joggers and the attendant waves us by without paying, for now. This is lucky because the moment the car stops I lean out the door and vomit again, and I am starting to get sticky.

This is not the first time I have graced these diseased hospital walls. A year or so back I had to come after hurting my knee. It happened during exam week and I remember getting really stressed about the science exam. This was when my two faces appeared; for months had I been proclaiming science my one true love, but the closer the exam came, the more I realized that there was so much more I didn't know about science rather than the other way around. I was a complete impostor­somehow I had managed to convince everyone I fully understood how amino acids were formed, how benzene behaved, how calcium oxidized. But I knew I was less than the sum of my parts; I crammed for quizzes, I was the student who always asked, "Will this be on the test?" I was disgusting, I knew nothing; not about life, or about truth, and especially not about chemistry.

My parents are useless about this. They don't even look up from their newspapers when they say, "Don't worry, you'll do fine", like it was just some form to fill out. I don't think they find me very interesting, you know. They went through all this stuff years ago and they're disappointed in me for being predictable. I suppose I am predictable. I'm sorry.

And as I was muttering something predictable to my mother, I fell past her down the stairs. The tumble down was exciting and bizarre, but I landed badly on my knee and felt the tendons scream. I started to cry shamelessly, and eventually looked up at my mother, who was staring down at me, startled and disappointed. I called her name, and she said, "What?" But she knew what. I said it anyhow. I told her to take me to this diseased building. And she did.

I don't think she said a word to me at the hospital, but the ostracism was eating me so I asked her why she was being so rude. Suddenly, this dam burst forth and in one overwhelming whirlwind she told me that this was all my fault; I hadn't studied like I should have, and in panicking I had been thoughtless and had fallen. I was completely absorbed in my own life and problems and let my weaknesses wreak havoc on my life and the lives of those around me. Now here I was, missing the exam because of my dull-witted dementia. God dammit, I always do this! I never think or plan ahead, I never think about people other than myself. Here she was, missing the meeting she had been talking about all week, all because of me. Well fine, she took me to the hospital and sat through the whole morning with me. But no way in hell, in hell, was she going to sit there and pretend to give a shit about the consequences of my failure.

It hurt me so much what she said, so that later when I was alone and away from her hard eyes I started crying madly, and I didn't stop for a very long time.

It hurt because I had purposely fallen down the stairs to miss that exam. I think about that all the time. I've never forgotten.

I love the Emergency Room.

Although there aren't many people at the flagging hour of 8:24 a.m., I still worry that they're going to make me sit in those blue plastic chairs until my butt becomes one with the upholstery and the toxin hits my blood stream. What an interesting opportunity to see whether people actually die waiting in emergency rooms, and if so, what they write down on the hospital forms ("dead on arrival"? "died in transit"? "died in blue plastic chair"?). I don't really think about this though; it seems forced and tacky. Besides, I wouldn't really get to find out what they wrote on the forms anyway.

Actually, they bring me into this sectioned off area and ask me reams of pointless questions until I fall out of the chair. Really, I do. They usher me into my own cell to wait for a doctor; the kind that only has a curtain for a door, the room I mean. I won't tell you what the doctor said, because it was very stern and condescending and boring, and I can't recall a single thing about it other than that. I figured out that suicide cases are the outcasts of the hospital system; you don't want to be there, they don't want to treat you, real sick people are dying while on waiting lists?complete lose­lose situation. But the doctor did give me this bottle of charcoal to drink, to absorb the poison so I won't have to get my stomach pumped. It's totally nasty, but my mom is watching my every move so I actually drink some. She looks so polished sitting in her pant suit and Prada shoes; composed even. Does that bother me? I can't say. And I don't bother because she turns away for a moment and I pour some charcoal into the garbage can.

While I go through the heaving stage, the three hours I spend lurching over the garbage can screaming and convulsing and expelling only white bile, until the nurse gives me an I.V. drip of Gravol that succeeds in doing nothing, I think about a lot of things; for I am in a strange place somewhere between pain and agony. I think about the hours I spent watching Woody Allen and Police Academy videos with my father, eating Big Macs and drinking root beer and burping. I think about my three weeks in Thunder Bay on an Outward Bound course, certain that I would never be so miserable ever again in my life. I remember coming home, thinking that now there was nothing left on Earth that could ever stop me again. I think about my first boyfriend and how bad a kisser he was and after he dumped me I locked myself in my room for three days and cried till my eyes were swollen like tennis balls. I think about how cold I became, how I learned to put down my enemies or friends worse than they could ever dream of lashing me. I think about when I brought home a report card with 100% in history, and how my parents didn't even see it because it was next to a 70% in chemistry. I think about times I woke up in the middle of the night crying, not of monsters but of shame, and I wouldn't stop till dawn. I think about the countless times my parents have driven away and I've wished them dead in a car wreck, clipped by a drunk driver; so sorry, what a shame, nothing they could do. I've screamed and I've raged and I've kicked and I've cussed and I've cried and I've scratched and I've died and I've lived. But always behind the closed door.

I'm still heaving, although I've been brought to a hospital room and now my father is there and is taking a turn holding the garbage can up to my mouth. But it's sort of died down now. However, I've been told by the doctor I may have liver damage because of the magnitude of the O.D. At least I'm not one of those people who try to kill themselves with, like, ten pills and end up surviving and having brain damage. Now that's really stupid. My father tries to be positive by remarking how quickly I got into a room; even though it's just because the Emergency Room people couldn't stand my operatic puking anymore. It's kind of strange though, the room is a private and it's in the children's ward, because they had extra space in here I'm told. There is panda wallpaper with a red border and a small TV hanging over me. We all stare at the pandas for a while, until my mother looks at me with this hurt look on her face and asks me why I did it. It is my turn to be disappointed in her. It is a stupid question asked with no real desire for understanding or acceptance. You can tell by that she thinks I did it because she yelled at me this morning, thinking that this is just my way of getting back at her. But it's not that. Not at all. Can't she see, can't she see through those soft -6.45 contact lenses that her daughter is withering under the weight of apathy and neglect and desperation, that all the Prozac and the therapy in the world can't stop a child born without a will from fraying at the edges until the fabric finally gives way? Why did I do it? I can explain it only by saying that I woke up this morning without a thought in my head or a feeling in my heart other than that I wanted my body to stop its beating and its flowing and its living. I have not done a single valuable thing for as long as I have memory. I am a burden to everyone responsible for me and one day they will discharge me and I will be alone to fight for my life that is not worth saving. I am ungrateful to every person who has ever tried to help me become happy or productive or lovable, because I am none of these things and I find it easier to think that it is they who have failed and not I. And I hate it when others around me are happy. I hate it that they can feel content and I cannot. I hate that they don't know how I feel and don't care. And I hate living when I think dying would be so much easier.

But I don't tell them this. Because I don't think they're really listening.