Tales from the Mental Hospital

Jamie was my roommate in Runnells. Jamie wasn't quite as bad as Ross from Summit, but he still fucking sucked. He'd sleep all day, which meant he'd be awake all night. If he wasn't a schizophrenic, it wouldn't have been that bad. But, he would spend the entire night awake talking to his closet. He would have serious conversations with it, to the point I started to wonder if I was as crazy as he was for listening to it and trying to figure out what the closet was "saying" to him. Jamie also didn't believe in showering. In Runnells, they actually have a shower checklist to make sure people are bathing. Apparently the truly whacked aren't big on showers, and he was definitely no exception.

The room was starting to smell, partly from Jamie himself, as well as his funky ass clothes he never bothered to put in the laundry. He was also a fucking bed wetter, so you can imagine what the room smelled like.

One day, I'd had enough and started yelling at him to take a shower and do his laundry, especially his bed linens. He just looked at me with an odd expression on his face, and rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. I ended up having to talk to the MHA's about his funk. "We've been trying to get him to shower for about 2 weeks now" Ken said. Ken was by far the coolest MHA on the ward. He'd let us take extra cigs out for break (the limit was 2), when he was on night shift he wasn't a dick about lights out as long as we were quiet, and he gave awesome haircuts.

I took Ken into my room and told him to get a good whiff. He did, and immediately got on Jamie's ass about it. “Jamie, get up man. You need to get your ass in the shower right now, and do some laundry, you're stinking the joint up" Jamie responded with a simple "No".

Ken left the room and came back with two other MHA's, Abe and Desmond. "Jamie, if you don't get up and hit the shower right now, we'll drag you into the shower room, strip you down and dump you in a stall, man" Ken told him. "Be smart about this" Jamie once again responded with "No".

Well, that pretty much did it. Desmond and Abe picked Jamie up, one holding each arm, and dragged him into the shower room. I could hear Jamie yelling and fighting while they were trying to strip him down, but 3 on 1 little guy is definitely not fair odds.

Out of nowhere I heard a different kind of yelling, and it sure as hell wasn't Jamie. "Sonofabitch! The little fucker just pissed on me!" Desmond yelled. At this point the whole wing was listening outside the door, and we all just erupted in laughter.

Desmond came flying out of the shower room, cursing like a sailor. “I don't get paid enough for this fucking bullshit. Motherfuckers pissing on me, and biting, all sorts of shit" he said. "Fuck this place".

While Abe and Ken were still trying to maneuver Jamie into the shower and get him scrubbed down, another MHA named Ginny went and collected all his laundry and threw it in the washing machine. She came over to me and asked “Can he wear something of yours while his clothes are in the wash?".

"No chance in hell" I replied. "Do you think I want a serial pisser in anything I own?” They ended up giving him a pair of scrubs to wear. I really felt sorry for the MHA's who had to handle that stinky little bastard.

The rest of the time I was there, anytime Desmond was on the floor, the running joke was "Anyone piss on you today Desmond"? Desmond ended up hating all of us.