I finally met Annie after talking to her online for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said something about a meeting at Rivers Edge Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I grinned and said \u201cI escaped from that place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laughed and said \u201cgood for you! The staff are terrible there, they treat you like prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I agreed. I said \u201cit was just like being locked up in county.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was at the hospital for some other reason and a doctor told me I was \u201ctangential and all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I explained that I\u2019d been up for a few days doing crystal meth, so of course I\u2019m tangential and all over the place. How many years did you spend in med school to figure that out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, that got me committed fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The doctors at Rush put several false statements on their paperwork and I would later learn that quite a few people had reported the exact same thing to the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHigh and not interested in getting help\u201d is not a valid reason to invoke that process and they know it and I know it. So they made some shit up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After detaining me under false pretenses and sending me to such squalor and filth (how this oubliette is even licensed as a healthcare facility is beyond me) these fuckers at Rivers Edge were screaming orders at me and I took exception to that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing I did was talking them into making it a \u201cvoluntary\u201d admission. I don\u2019t need that shit on my record. They actually agreed because now it meant they didn\u2019t have to take me to a judge in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then the second thing I did was to rip the placard with my room number on it off of the wall and then I used it to jimmy open the social workers office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a ring of keys in her desk drawer next to a pair of running shoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if that isn\u2019t Providence, I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used her keys to silence an emergency exit alarm and open the staircase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I walked to a bar and panhandled for bus fare and beer money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of the staff noticed because they were all too busy being assholes to the other inmates\u2014 errr, \u201cpatients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I got home I faxed them a copy of their ring of keys and my middle finger. \ud83d\udd95\ud83c\udffb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think that\u2019s when they went \u201coh shit\u201d and did a census of all of their patients and noticed one missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ended up on a missing and endangered list for a minute. I negotiated with them to return the keys and sneakers in exchange for my cell phone, keys, and wallet. It cost $800 in lawyers fees to make them fuck off and not press charges for stealing her sneakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, I would have gladly paid even more then that to not spend another minute in that filthy fucking shithole being treated like an inmate and screamed at by those awful people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also think they were all talk. I argued with Cliff a little and said there was no way in hell they were actually going to go on public record and admit to their incompetence or woefully inadequate security in any detail. Trust me, if the keys were not in that drawer I could have still gotten out. But he talked me into hiring \u201chis guy\u201d to mop it all up, and so I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ll have to excuse me for not \u201cgetting help\u201d considering that\u2019s the kind of place you\u2019ll get sent to in this city. It\u2019s a fucking joke. You just eat paste and shitty jail food for five days and they punt you out on the street and you fall between the cracks again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miracle on 34th street in my mind, hallelujah! I\u2019m not an addict or crazy anymore! And all you had to do was put me in a filthy room and scream at me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finally met Annie after talking to her online for a year. She said something about a meeting at Rivers Edge Hospital. I grinned and said \u201cI escaped from that place.\u201d She laughed and said \u201cgood for you! The staff are terrible there, they treat you like prisoners.\u201d I agreed. I said \u201cit was just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16905,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7222\/revisions\/16905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v4.fadingstar.mx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}