There's No Room Service at the Psych Ward (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

SOMEBODY SAVE ME

There’s a moment right when you wake up that brings a rush of information and context—a split second to take inventory of the where, when, what’s real, and why you have to get out of bed. At 5:18 on a Thursday morning, I had one of those jolting awakenings and that wondrous mystery of “Where on Earth am I?” I generally love those because you start running through the good, weird, and worst-case scenarios. Then, finally, it all gels. This resolution fell into place with a loud voice and words that I knew individually but had never heard together, particularly directed at me: “Time to get your blood.”

In that hazy instant, I saw a white ceiling, brown cabinets (with fake drawers that didn’t actually function), and a bluish-gray carpet like the one in the “temporary” classroom trailers at Eastover Elementary. I felt two flat sheets fighting against each other. I heard a sound under my ear like crinkling paper in a plastic bag where a pillow allegedly was. I smelled nothing, absolutely nothing, the hallmark of a sterile hospital environment.

I woke up in a psych ward on the first of thirty-eight mornings to come.

With an emotional numbness and a sense of robotic duty, I exited the bed and slipped into my stylish, brand-new-but-modified Walmart shorts. No drawstrings allowed, and since I was born with a completely flat backside, I had to hold my shorts aloft as I donned my Carolina blue slip-ons (Vans, of course) for the short walk down the hall.

At home, I sometimes never saw a human for an entire day. On that morning, however, I was escorted by a nurse past a table of nurses into a room with a nurse. My sagging shorts and I slumped into a cold plastic chair. The hum in my ears was either the lights, a machine, or my groggy imagination. I was half asleep, and a cuff around my arm measured something or another. While I was staring blankly at the floor, a cold needle went into my right arm. I watched the blood flow into tube after tube. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t particularly care why. I only hoped this was the worst of it, the lowest point of this experience. My liberty was gone. My compliance was expected. I would be jarred out of bed every day for a slow march to give blood (that last part turned out to be an exaggeration; it only happened one other time, but I was feeling dramatic).

The same nurse unceremoniously walked me back to my room. This time I was a bit more awake and felt every step of that journey. To my right, a brightly lit nurses’ station had the clutter and activity of a busy medical unit. Above me, mirrors displayed hidden corners and crevices to unearth any potential surprises that a rogue resident may have in store. Blue and red lights adorned the ceiling outside of each room. I’m still not sure about their purpose, but they seemed medical and ominous. A black-and-white tag hung beside each door, bearing the half-remembered names of my new peers I had met the night before. The doors themselves were cracked open with washcloths jammed between the door and the frame. The centimeter of open space made it feel strangely communal and definitely not private. I would soon find out why I would do the same for my door.

I heard other shuffling feet, but I kept my head down. For some reason, it felt like I shouldn’t look at the others. Maybe I just didn’t want them to see me. It felt like when I was a kid shopping for underwear with my mom and saw a cute girl from school in the store—you’re both there, you’re both self-conscious and embarrassed, but hey, at least you’re both mortified while you procure unmentionables.

I returned to my ultra-dull quarters at 5:31. I got the good news that I could go back to my slumber. Remounting the bed felt like putting on a button-down shirt with no sleeves. The sheets seemed designed to tangle and bunch on top of the mattress covered in plastic, for reasons I would rather not think about. I resumed my position of staring at the ceiling, checking all of my senses, and fighting off the racing, competing, and meandering thoughts that would inevitably take over.

I just woke up in a psych ward. I’m here. This is real. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. What time do I have to wake up? What’s that sound? What if I don’t get better? I miss my home and my people. I’m going to wear this shame forever. “Leverage” isn’t a verb; it’s a noun. You don’t “coverage” yourself with a blanket. Will I get along with anyone here? What am I missing at home? I’m exactly where I need to be. It was courageous of me to do this. Will people forget about me in here? There’s no way that the Summer Roberts from the pilot episode would ever be with Seth Cohen; they had to change her character like 165 degrees.

I couldn’t help but think of mornings in my past that were the direct opposite of what I was experiencing. I went back into the mind of the Michael who complained about ineffective blackout curtains in luxury hotels. Every hotel claims to have blackout curtains, but the true test is when you’ve been in seven time zones in less than a week. It’s especially important if you’ve been in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and on three continents in the same time period. Your body feels like it’s running the latest version of Windows on a 286 processor.

The Westin Paris Vendôme was always reliable in keeping the room dark. It’s one thing I always appreciated about that hotel. The last time I was there, I felt thankful for the darkness, given that my previous hotel room in Santa Cruz do Sul—southern Brazil, tobacco country—had left much to be desired.

Brazil was a great trip, though. I joined a client to learn how their company operated in South America. This mainly consisted of visiting the families of local tobacco farmers to see their production process and way of life. Picture a small backyard crammed with tobacco plants, a shed where the leaves dry, and the whole family pitching in to move their household economy forward. We then toured the processing plant, which of course was a fascinating ballet of machinery that turned raw leaf into the stuff they put into cigarettes (and separated out the nontobacco material, or NTM, which, on that day, included yellow nylon from a raincoat. I didn’t want to know if someone was wearing the raincoat shortly before).

As with many facilities that I toured, the best parts of the process were at the beginning and the end. At the front end of this process, the local farmers brought their trucks full of raw leaf for weighing and grading by my client’s staff of buyers. It was humbling to witness an entire family’s year reduced to a single qualitative assessment and negotiation from a guy who looked at tobacco all day, every day.

Yet what happened at the end of the line was the real highlight. Quality control is a critical process in the tobacco production industry—just ask any North Carolinian. It’s important to know that there are countless blends of tobacco that go into each finely tuned varietal of cigarette. Therefore, quality control must be nuanced and infallible. The process at this facility consisted of a blind man taking a pinch of each blend, hand rolling a cigarette, and smoking it to ensure a cool refreshing taste that made one Alive with PleasureTM.

The glamorous job that took me to this remote hub of tobacco production was that of a management consultant. Not just any management consultant but a partner and Managing Director, the highest order of the species. And I didn’t work for just any management consultancy, but one of the management consultancies. My particular niche within the firm was that of “guy who isn’t married and doesn’t have kids so we can send him anywhere to do anything and it’ll be okay.” Within that niche, it was “guy who is redneck enough to work in industries like tobacco, fast food, and outdoor sports.”

Becoming a partner was a multiyear process of mastering PowerPoint, becoming an “expert” in twenty topics (the definition became looser by the day), and making myself at home in seat 3F. There is much to say about management consulting. I will say more as this book unfolds. One day, it will all be told in the definitive book about elite management consulting that someone will hopefully write. (Let’s hope nobody writes that book. There is no place in the world for that book.)

Ten years of doing that job took me all over the world, which was great for a guy who hadn’t left the country until age twenty-six. The Brazil trip was short, but not as short as my forty-eight-hour trip to Australia for a meeting that got canceled while I was on the flight. Definitely not as short as the time I flew to London for a day to sit in a room so that I could be “present” for an internal meeting that needed quorum. And not as long as the trips to Tokyo, Berlin, Dublin (Ireland), Dublin (Ohio), Dubai, Istanbul, and countless other magnificent destinations around the globe.

My favorite city was Paris. I always tried to make it there when I was in the neighborhood. The Westin was my home base. I loved to run from the hotel to the Eiffel Tower and back. It was exactly four miles. I felt at home there somehow. Sure, the Westin Paris isn’t the nicest hotel in the area. But I was disappointed in the last Ritz I stayed in. And at least it...