Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen Read Free Book Online Page B

find you a new one in the cafeteria,” said Georgina.
    “Bring a few extra back,” said Lisa. She was still restricted to the ward.
    “I’m sure Wade knows somebody nice,” Georgina went on.
    “Let’s forget it,” I said. The truth was, I didn’t want a crazy boyfriend.
    Lisa looked at me. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You don’t want some crazy boyfriend, right?”
    I was embarrassed and didn’t say anything.
    “You’ll get over it,” she told me. “What choice have you got?”
    Everybody laughed. Even I had to laugh.
    The person on checks put her head out of the nursing station and bobbed it four times, once for each of us.
    “Half-hour checks,” said Georgina. “That would be good.”
    “A million dollars would be good, too,” said Lisa Cody.
    “This place,” said Lisa.
    We all sighed.

Do You Believe Him or Me?
    That doctor says he interviewed me for three hours. I say it was twenty minutes. Twenty minutes between my walking in the door and his deciding to send me to McLean. I might have spent another hour in his office while he called the hospital, called my parents, called the taxi. An hour and a half is the most I’ll grant him.
    We can’t both be right. Does it matter which of us is right?
    It matters to me. But it turns out I’m wrong.
    I have a piece of hard evidence, the Time Admitted line from the Nurse’s Report of Patient on Admission. From that I can reconstruct everything. It reads: 1:30 P.M.
    I said I left home early. But my idea of early might have been as late as nine in the morning. I’d switched night and day—that was one of the things the doctor harped on.
    I said I was in his office before eight, but I seem to have been wrong about that, too.
    I’ll compromise by saying that I left home at eight and spent an hour traveling to a nine o’clock appointment. Twenty minutes later is nine-twenty.
    Now let’s jump ahead to the taxi ride. The trip from Newton to Belmont takes about half an hour. And I remember waiting fifteen minutes in the Administration Building to sign myself in. Add another fifteen minutes of bureaucracy before I reached the nurse who wrote that report. This totals up to an hour, which means I arrived at the hospital at half past twelve.
    And there we are, between nine-twenty and twelve-thirty—a three-hour interview!
    I still think I’m right. I’m right about what counts.
    But now you believe him.
    Don’t be so quick. I have more evidence.
    The Admission Note, written by the doctor who supervised my case, and who evidently took an extensive history before I reached that nurse. At the top right corner, at the line Hour of Adm., it reads: 11:30 A.M.
    Let’s reconstruct it again.
    Subtracting the half hour waiting to be admitted and wading through bureaucracy takes us to eleven o’clock. Subtracting the half-hour taxi ride takes us to ten-thirty. Subtracting the hour I waited while the doctor made phone calls takes us to nine-thirty. Assuming my departure from home at eight o’clock for a nine o’clock appointment results in a half-hour interview.
    There we are, between nine and nine-thirty. I won’t quibble over ten minutes.
    Now you believe me.

Velocity vs. Viscosity
    Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast.
    I’m not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the insanity, the day-to-day business of being nuts.
    There are a lot of names: depression, catatonia, mania, anxiety, agitation. They don’t tell you much.
    The predominant quality of the slow form is viscosity.
    Experience is thick. Perceptions are thickened and dulled Time is slow, dripping slowly through the clogged filter of thickened perception. The body temperature is low. The pulse is sluggish. The immune system is half-asleep. The organism is torpid and brackish. Even the reflexes are diminished, as if the lower leg couldn’t be bothered to jerk itself out of its stupor when the knee is tapped.
    Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And