Crux by Jean Guerrero

Author:Jean Guerrero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

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Back on campus, I disinfected my wrist, wrapped it in gauze, set my alarm clock, curled up in bed and fell asleep. I awoke to an all-male crowd of LAPD officers, EMTs and campus security around 1:00 a.m. We got a report you were trying to kill yourself, one said. Police are looking for you in Santa Monica. How amusing, I thought. An army of men come to my rescue, yet none were my Prince Charming. Nope, I said, removing my gauze to show them my horizontal cuts. Across the road, not down the street, I said. They stared at one another in confusion. I mean, the ambulance is already outside, someone whispered. Another cleared his throat and said: You’re going to have to come with us.

As they belted me into a wheelchair, I felt a giddy sense of climax. I had long feared becoming my father. Now I was a mental-illness patient. And Alex had made it happen. At the hospital, the perverse thrill gave way to real anxiety. I needed to be well rested for my neuroscience exam; the minutes were ticking by; the nocturnal anxiety of my childhood gripped me. I required at least eight hours of sleep a night, an obsessive-compulsive inheritance from my mother when she was sleepless and on call. I begged the nurses to let me go. They refused. California law allows the involuntary detainment of anyone deemed a danger to him- or herself. A skinny male nurse said with a giggle: You should have thought about your test before trying to kill yourself, little girl. I trembled with loathing. These ignorant strangers were violating me. They were doing with my body something I did not consent to. It was institutionalized torture. It made me sick with rage. I despised the world’s authority systems, its arbitrary and irrational laws. A woman on a cot beside me had blood seeping out of her stomach. She wept: I’ve been waiting for hours and nobody is helping me! Around four in the morning, I called my mother. She answered with a groggy voice. I just cut myself a little, Mom, because I’m stressed, but they’re acting like it’s a big deal. I’m going to fail my test because of them. She called the front office and demanded that they release me. They refused. My mother told me to walk out of the hospital. I asked to go to the bathroom and was unbelted from the wheelchair. I made my way toward the emergency exit. Opened it. Walked out. Climbed a chain-link fence. And ran into the night of South Central Los Angeles.

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