An Action Scene (from WITHIN THE BOX)

Day Eleven in a substance abuse rehab facility. Excuse me, a multi-component self-growth therapy center, and it had been the other aspects -- "social skills and communication skills and how you integrate into your social environment" -- that had lured me into signing myself into the place, not the substance abuse rehab stuff.

I'm trying to come out. It's 1982 and the terminology available for coming out as what would later be called genderqueer or nonbinary does not exist yet, so I wish for more fluent social skills, to be a speaker, to have an influence on people and affect their thinking, you know?

Unfortunately, I find them heavy-handed and authoritarian.

It's not quite that I'm not getting anything out of the experience -- I like the class they call "psychodrama" and also the informal chatting with the other resident patients. But I'm not broken and I didn't come in here to turn myself over to these folks to let them "fix" me.

One thing that's gotten on my nerves by this time is their insistence that we be honest and open about what we feel and think, but the staff don't share what their actual feelings and reactions are -- they're instead constantly telling or reacting according to what they think we need to hear.

WITHIN THE BOX, by Allan D. Hunter (work in progress)

--- excerpt begins ---


I’m idly hovering in the vicinity of our unit’s nurses’ station. It’s not that I’ve made close friends of all the nurses; more that I find something reassuring about the rhythms and professionalism at this intersection of medical and office work. I hear the click clack of the Selectric typewriters, the booble-booble-boop of the multi-line office phones, the muted chatter of people doing their tasks. One of the nurses opens a cardboard box and unpacks bandages and cotton balls and carries them to where they stock them.

I watch Nurse Vicky signal to the other nurses to handle the phones, then go back past the racks of medicines and syringes and stuff and into the staff bathroom. She closes the door and I hear the faint chink of the lock turning. We don’t have locks on our own bathroom doors. Or our bedroom doors for that matter. It’s not for us to decide to put a door between us and the rest of this place. I’ve had bonus privacy they hadn’t officially planned on giving me, due to being without a roommate all this time, but that’s soon coming to an end.

I stare for a little while longer, thinking.

I often think better when I’m in motion. I begin doing my corridor laps. Down towards Unit One. Right turn. Across to Unit Three. Back up and past the cafeteria to Unit Four. Over again to Unit Two. Eyes track my progress everywhere I go. I see the nurses lift their heads from their paperwork as I blast by them with my long strides. Down to Unit One again. Past the hallway that goes to the entrance foyer. Right turn at the end of Unit Three. Sailing past the piano. Right turn and the approach to Unit Two again.

But this time, instead of continuing down the corridor, I make a sudden left into the nurse’s station itself. Nurse Vicky looks up in belated surprise as I stride past her, still moving at my brisk hiking pace, my fingers snagging my own chart out of the chromium wire rack as I zoom by. I continue full bore past the medicines and supply shelves and into the currently empty nurse’s station bathroom. I immediately whirl and lock the door behind me.

I close the toilet lid to make a seat. Flip to page one and begin reading. Intake sheet. Address and social security and date of birth and all that. Flip. MMPI interpretation. Rorschach interpretation. Signs of confused mental processing. Antisocial elements.

Flip. Dr. James Barnes signature on my diagnosis. Paranoid schizophrenic with delusional content. DSM-III code numbers following that.

Flip.

BANG. BANG. BANG. “Open up, Derek! What are you doing in there? You are not supposed to be in this bathroom. I need you to come out of there!” BANG. BANG.

Nurse’s notes, dated timed and signed. “Continues to display inappropriate behavior.” “Withdrawn. Hostile.” “Still not engaging with others.” “Very little affect, uncommunicative.”

BANG. BANG. BANG. “Derek?? Did you take your chart? I need you to give that back” BANG. BANG. “Right now! Open this door!”

Flip. Group notes. Psychodrama notes. Individual counseling notes. “Still rejects all opportunities to integrate.” “Still continues to display inappropriate behavior” “Constantly and deliberately uncooperative.”

There are many more voices now. Male voices. Mark. Gary. “If you open up, you won’t be in any trouble.” “If you don’t open this door you’re going to be in so much trouble.” “C’mon now. I don’t have patience for this!” BANG. BANG. KICK!! “What do you want me to do, he’s got the door locked” “Go see if there’s a key for opening it from the outside” BANG. BANG.

“Derek, are you in there reading your chart?.” Dr. Barnes’ voice.

“Yes I am”, I reply.

“Derek, you shouldn’t be doing that. It could be very disturbing for you. These are medical evaluations that you don’t have the training to understand!”

Flip. Drug tests. Urine. Blood. Flip. Weight. Blood pressure. Respiration. Temp.

Flip. I, Edward Turner, relationship father, do authorize Dr. James Barnes to involuntarily impose any treatments deemed necessary for the care of Derek Turner, dated and signed.

Flip.

When I’m done reading, I unlatch the bathroom door, hand my chart to Dr. Barnes with a smile, and walk back out of the nurses’ station.

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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.


My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.

My third book is deep in second draft, and I'm seeking more beta readers for feedback. It is provisionally titled Within the Box and is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir.Contact me if you're interested.






Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.

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