"Do you wanna be my assistant?" He asked, "for the game?" I tell him sure sure and I said what kind of game and he said oh it's not really a game I'm just setting up this board and he turns with his felt tipped marker and finishes a drawing of a question mark with a large fluffy hat.
When I first walk in he's standing there, the cape around him like a dress with a slit from the hip to the neck, he's clasping his hands together trying to decide what he wants from the menu.
Finally I tell him I will surprise him and he clips the lid on the top of the marker, relief. Around his hand is a necklace with the shape of a cross on the end. He keeps wrapping and unwrapping it around his fingers.
Outside there is a man the shape of a pencil,
deep in a hospital bed, just laying out in the hallway like this is a beach or a sauna or something
the beard of him grows long and hard from his chin, unkept like his health his brain his attire
his hands knotted like a sailor, below his chin, asleep.
A young man, around 26, yells at a cop and his assistant while he undresses claiming his mental stability over and over .
I have found the things you feel you must claim loudly are largely not true.
Like my brother who claims he is Jesus the Christ or a prophet how did it come to this
A old lady rolls by on a bed, with her mouth unlocked, open and wide, neck bent to the left as if frozen there.
The nurse is rude no one told me his food would take an hour to get here so after 40 minutes I call
He rearranges the furniture
All three chairs in a row next to his bed
I sit in one
I don't care
He can do what he wants
I love him and his mental illness if he comes with that
Before he eats he heads to the bathroom
Flushing his ankle bracelet down the toilet
An alarm goes off and the nurses barge in on him
She yells at him telling him if he keeps doing that he's not going to get privileges and he has to leave it on his ankle and he says I know the bracelet is for me he tells her the anklet
It told him to flush it
Right on the side
She says no it didn't
And he says oh yeah??
After she leaves he asks me if I saw that how she backed down from him
I said no no I didn't
He says it's because of the authority he has
He lays the arm pressure bands next to each other like two babies
Wraps the smaller one around his arm
Telling me he's fine if he doesn't have the authority he thinks he does
After
I tell him he has less then he thinks
It doesn't matter he says
It doesn't matter what you think
I hold onto parts of today like when I prayed for him to be healed and he reached up and held my hand on his head and said that is what I really want but after I was done it was the same confusing chatter but it's ok I don't mind...
You are never ready for this sort of thing
You sort of just put one foot in front of the other
And document all of it
And praise God for the good parts
