After a few hours at one hospital, Jones was automatically given a ride to the state hospital in the city - the mental ward. Any suicide attempt earned a person a stay at this venerable institution. Over the years, Jones had heard plenty of stories from people who had stayed in the state "loony bin" for one thing or another, and they always mentioned being up on the third floor, or the lock-down, which you entered and exited by elevator only, under the eye of at least one security guard. Some patients on the third floor were evidently considered dangerous to more than just themselves.

Jones was given a bed in a fairly large room, with one other patient, an elderly man, who was out of the room when he arrived. The nurse gave Jones his new medicine right away and asked him if he was hungry or wanted something to drink. He accepted some juice and a sandwich.

Before he got the food, he had to get out of his own clothes and dress himself in baggy hospital pyjamas. When he did that, it hit him fully that he was a patient, checked in by the state, for an unspecified length of time. He wondered how strong the medicine was that he'd been given and what it was intended to do. Hopefully, it would help him sleep.

His roommate was Tom Redding, a gaunt, balding man, round-shouldered, with thick glasses on a long, bent nose. A man in his sixties, it looked like, with a loud, gruff voice. He came right over to Jones's bed and shook hands. "Well, you've got a view of the city, that's about all I can say for this place," he said, sitting on his bed.

Indeed, this was considered the third floor, but it was actually the fourth level of the building, the ground floor being a lobby with a large, covered parking area outside its doors for ambulances to pull up in and staff to park. Parking was always a problem in this old part of the city, which allowed for very little expansion in any direction. A couple of new parking lots had been built a few years earlier, at a short walk from the hospital itself, and yet these were always full.

Jones looked out further from the big double window in their room, which provided plenty of light, to the low rolling hills of the residential neighbourhoods outside the downtown area. The hills were packed with old houses, once big residences for single families, but long since having been converted into apartments, neglected looking now, as was much of the old city in these neighbourhoods. Old, empty brick mills could be seen along one branch of the big river going through the city centre (the river split into three branches here), at one time part of a hub of industrial activity that brought most of the residents to the area in the first place.

Still, it was a view, as Redding said, and with the summertime wooded green further out past the neighbourhoods, it was preferable to the blank walls of the room, or the TV in the community room down the hall. Jones was to spend quite a bit of time each day at that big window, watching the pedestrian and vehicular traffic below, the racing motor traffic on the raised highway off to one side, the lazy flow of the big river and the rows of the old houses on the surrounding hills. He often daydreamed that he was an office worker here in the city, one of the many putting in his time in one of these tall buildings, wishing he was out somewhere in one of those wooded areas near the coast, or in one of the city parks at least, somewhere where he was close to the trees, grass, and birds singing (this is what Jones really missed while in the hospital). At home, he was accustomed to going out for daily strolls, and the confines of the room and the whole floor itself began to get to him after a while, as it did to almost every patient who had been there for a few days at least. The only place to go was inside your head, which is where the doctors wanted you to go, and then let them know what you found.

"They're always asking you questions, trying to find out what makes you tick," Redding grumbled. "And the nurses get in on the act, just like my sister and daughter at home. Always questions. I'm glad you don't ask questions. The guy that was in here before you couldn't stop asking about my condition. I almost said to him: hey, pal, shouldn't you be asking yourself some hard questions? You're not in here because everything was rosy out there."

Jones smiled at the constant run of complaints that came from the old man: the doctors and the medicines they had him on; the bothersome nurses; the lousy TV programming that the "dimwits" watched in the community room; the stupid meetings every patient was required to attend; the lousy diet he was restricted to; the extended stay here, period, that was driving him up the wall; it went on and on. After a while, Tom would realize that he was doing all the talking, and he would chuckle and say that Jones could put in a few words now.

Redding was in the hospital because his family - his sister and daughter - thought he needed help in taking care of himself. He had been retired from work for a few years now, a widower, who was often found wandering around the city, not seeming to know who or where he was. And Tom wasn't selective about the neighbourhoods he wandered in. Once, he had been assaulted and knocked down by tough youths looking for an easy mark just like him. Luckily for him, his wounds weren't serious and he didn't lose a lot of money in the wallet they took.

"I didn't just hand it over to those punks, I can tell you that," the feisty old timer said to Jones, laughing about it now. "They had to earn those thirty bucks they got. Hell, thirty years ago, they wouldn't have got anything but an ass kicking, I know that. I don't look like much now, but I was pretty big and solid in my day. I've lost so much weight in the last few years you wouldn't know it."

Jones thought of the Grim Reaper symbol, with its scythe that mowed everybody down sooner or later, even the biggest and the strongest. Old Tom was coming to grips with that now, it seemed, and maybe that was his problem, in dealing with himself in his last years. Or maybe he was losing his mind to Alzheimer's or something like that.

"I do have these times when I seem to blank everything out," he admitted to Jones, the third day they were together. By then, Redding knew some of Jones's story, too, so there was two-way communication going on. "I can understand why my sister and daughter are worried. I mean I'll just come out of those spells or whatever you call it and I'll be somewhere and not remember how the hell I got there." He laughed and shook his head. "It's the damndest thing. I don't even remember why I went to the place to start with. I mean I must have had a reason, or why would I go there?"

And then another one of Redding 's problems, which Jones heard about through the doctor that treated them both, was his failure to take his necessary, daily medications - for his physical health and mental depression (which Redding admitted to in one of the group meetings). It was this failure to comply with the doctor's orders that annoyed Redding 's sister and daughter. It forced them to check on him more often than they wanted to, especially after Tom had one of his spells.

When Redding complained to the doctor about all of the medicine he had to take, Doctor Harte cut him off.

"That's one of the problems we're working on, Mr. Redding," he said to Tom, as Jones sat propped up in his bed, reading a book. "That stubbornness about taking your medicine. That's what worries your family." He said this sharply and that quieted the patient - for a couple of minutes. Then Tom wondered - aloud - when he could start eating normally again. It wasn't easy watching the other patients filling their trays in the cafeteria, while he picked at the few items he was allowed.

"There's a purpose for that, too, Mr. Redding, though I know you find it hard to believe." At this, Doctor Harte glanced at Jones, who couldn't keep the smile from his face. The doctor allowed himself a tolerant little smirk. "I am glad to see you're going to the meetings again, though. It's good for you to participate. One thing we don't need you doing is brooding in the room here."

"Well, that's true," Redding conceded. "And try to get them to watch anything intelligent on TV. That's enough to drive you batty as it is."

"Thomas ." The doctor shook his head disapprovingly as he checked Redding 's bed chart

"I know, I'm getting worked up over nothing," Redding said, smiling at Jones.

Jones also found Doctor Harte a bit stiff in his manner. He was a big, solid man just going gray, with long sideburns and a large, tanned face. His eyebrows, like the rest of him, were big and thick, and he was clearly a man who had to shave at least once a day (twice for special occasions). He handled the patients as he did their clipboards, with abrupt, no nonsense movements, his thick, strong fingers drumming impatiently on something all the time. He had a cool look in his light blue eyes, with something hard and yet strong suggested. A man used to getting his own way, Jones thought. And the doctor did, on the third floor of the hospital anyway. Doctor Harte was the senior doctor here, with a small, overworked staff under him. The other doctors were younger and not long out of school, and were more popular with the patients than the strict and often abrupt Harte.

During their first meeting, at a table in the small cafeteria, Harte asked Jones some questions about his history with drugs and alcohol, and he wasn't surprised by the answer. He had heard many stories just like it, he said.

"So we both know what the problem is," the doctor concluded. "And we know now that it can't go on like this. But you have to work at changing things. I can help you only so much as you want to do something about it." He shrugged and looked Jones in the eye. Jones didn't like the way the doctor summed up his "difficulty" in such a quick and, one might have added, efficient manner, and they hadn't sat at the table for more than ten minutes. He knew Harte was a busy man and couldn't afford to waste time, but Jones couldn't quite accept the idea that his case could be summed up and "labelled", if you will, and put up there on the shelf with many of the doctor's other cases. He felt his problems were a little larger than that, or they wouldn't have been with him such a long time. Yet the doctor only had so much time, so Jones understood his desire to get right to the point. Harte wanted to know if any family members would be visiting, and when he heard that Jones had been residing with his parents for most of the last year, he said that he would like to meet with them; he would like to have a meeting with both Jones and his parents present. - The sooner the better. He asked for a phone number so he could contact them.

Jones didn't know what Harte had in mind for this meeting, but he wasn't enthusiastic about it; he couldn't see what good it would do. Jones's parents had visited him already, on his second morning in the place, bringing him clothes and books. It was his father who had found him on his bedroom floor. He had wanted to talk to Jones in a serious way, to discuss his future. When Jones didn't answer his knock on the door, his father assumed he had his headphones on, which was often the case when he came home drunk. When his father saw the different pill bottles on a desk, and his son stretched out on the floor, very still, he wasted no time calling 9-1-1.

He and his parents couldn't find many words to say to each other. Jones tried to make them feel better by saying that he had done something drunkenly foolish, but that everything would be all right. When he left the hospital, he would start over again with the AA meetings. He'd had a sober six months and he could do it again. There were other jobs.

Jones was willing to tell them almost anything to get rid of that questioning look in their tired looking faces that look of incomprehension and disbelief. Jones had never been the easiest son to understand - there had been some trying times for them in the past - but he never done something like this to stop them completely in their tracks. They hadn't thought he was capable of attempting it, and now they seemed at a complete loss as to where to go from here. Jones saw that in their looks, their quietness and slow movements around the room. Redding had had the tact to leave the room.

"Those words we had the other night," his father said, taking his hand. "I hope you didn't think that I . I mean, it was just the heat of the moment. I hope that didn't have anything to do with this." Jones was quick to assure his father that their argument wasn't on his mind that night (though it had added to his overall low feeling about himself).

"Let's just forget about it," his father urged. "It's water under the bridge. It's not important what I said. Forget about it and just try to get better."

His father had told Jones that he would never amount to anything (not for the first time) and that he might as well just hit the road again rather than string them along anymore. He was only making things miserable for them, upsetting his mother, and they didn't need that at their age. Jones could see his father's side of it, and he understood his father's disappointment at this latest slide into drunkenness. Yet, on this morning at the hospital, Jones saw only concern and sadness in his father's face. For a moment, standing close to his father in the bright light from the window, he saw how old his father was, his seventy years. Living in the same house in the last year, Jones had become accustomed to it; his parents' age wasn't something he noticed every day. Yet now he saw how gray and small they looked away from home, how shrunken, both of them looking all around them and at any of the nurses that passed in the hallway, as if disoriented in some way and about to ask directions. For a moment, Jones almost smiled. Here he was, the problem, the reason for them being here in the first place, the troubled one, and yet standing here with his parents, he felt like the strong one, the clear-sighted one. There were a few moments of him - in his baggy, clown like pyjamas - feeling protective, guiding them to seats, asking them if they wanted some water. The host in his new digs.

Jones's brother and sister had sent word through his parents, encouraging messages of course, and Jones's brother, who lived in the state, mentioned something about a visit in the coming days. Jones couldn't help but be touched by their concern, and, after a couple days in the hospital, he felt more foolish than anything about his "last action", as he sarcastically referred to it. It was hard to believe that he'd had that resolution to act only a couple nights before; it seemed that he was a different person here. But Jones knew better; he knew that other side was still there, under this face that he showed to his parents, the nurses, the counsellors and the doctors, with medicine in him and comfortable in his bed. He knew how quickly things could change, and so did Doctor Harte, who wasn't fooled by the sudden upswing in mood. This was a serious matter that had to be addressed immediately, for, quite frankly, there was a shortage of beds in this ward. If a patient wasn't serious about recovery, then his bed could be better used by someone who was.

Jones was required to go to the daily meetings - three or four a day, usually a half hour, an hour at the longest - held in one of the two conference rooms in the ward. Other than the TV room and the cafeteria, these were the two biggest rooms on the third floor, with large, cheap, plastic covered tables for groups to sit around, in hard plastic chairs (presumably to keep patients from snoozing even if they were on heavy doses of meds) and participate in the "gab sessions", as one counsellor termed them, or the simple games introduced to put everybody at ease with each other and promote communication. It wasn't an easy thing for the counsellors to get some of the patients to open up even a little bit. After all, some of these people had just come away from traumatic experiences with drug and alcohol abuse, violent episodes that had required police involvement and restraint, suicide attempts like Jones's, sometimes devastating experiences that left them shattered in a shock-like state of silence, where they seemed indifferent to everything around them. But if a counsellor probed too much, too fast, that patient might suddenly come to life and snap at them, or yell even, and you realized right away what they were holding in. Usually, an angry eruption from a patient was enough to make a counsellor back off, with the idea of trying to make contact at another time. It seemed to be understood by patient and counsellor alike that time was needed for the healing process to take over. Certainly, it looked to Jones as if some of these people would need to be looked after for quite some time; they had retreated from the world into their own heads and appeared to have no desire to ever come out again. After a couple days of the meetings and walking in the hallways - usually with Redding who had time on his hands also - Jones felt that he was far from being the "craziest" person in the ward. He wasn't even close. In fact, some of the counsellors had struck up conversations with the two men, as if they had met on a downtown sidewalk, and as if Redding and Jones weren't wearing hospital pyjamas. Some of them were quite a few years younger than Jones, never mind Redding , having just come out of whatever school and training program they had attended, fresh-faced and healthy, full of enthusiasm, believing in themselves and what they were doing.

"They're like my grandkids," Redding said. "Good kids. But wait 'til they work around here a while and see how it really is. They'll end up like Tompkins, or that guy, Nash, with the drinking nose." He shared a smile with Jones, who had noticed the counsellor's inflamed snoz also.

Nash and Tompkins were two of the older counsellors, studying to be doctors perhaps or at least hoping to raise themselves into a higher pay bracket, both of whom looked as if they felt every one of the years spent in the "crazy business", as Redding called it. At times, looking at them (the weariness, the signs of too much drink and countless cigarettes, the seriousness that bordered on glumness), Jones sometimes wondered if they should be sitting on the other side of the clipboards.

Particularly Brenda Tompkins with her mouth turned down sourly, her rattled nerves (always fidgeting with something in her hands), often with a dreamy look of her own as activity went on around her, as if she herself were medicated. Sometimes, it seemed to Jones, that counsellor Tompkins was looking for something in her own mind as much as anybody else's, something that seemed to be just out of her grasp. She had been looking for years, it was evident. Basically, an unhappy person, Jones thought. Whether from an unfulfilling personal life, an unrealized career, personal demons of her own (alcoholism?), or a combination of all of this, no one but Brenda knew for certain, but they all saw that weary cynicism that hung over her during the day, while performing her duties well enough to keep her job (what would she do now in her mid thirties?). On occasion, there were flashes of the old Brenda Tompkins, a much younger counsellor like some of them just starting out now, the woman who seemed to have a depthless well of caring in her that had impressed doctor and patient alike. Occasionally, the counsellor lit up when one of her patients was having a particularly good day or showed signs of particular progress; she laughed right along with them, and how could you not feel for the woman and what things had become for her over the years, the dedication worn away by the endless stream of mental illness coming through the doors. Did someone as sensitive as Brenda Tompkins or Nipper Nash end up by having a breakdown, he wondered. Did the clipboard clatter on the floor, and the white coat come off, before they were guided to an empty bed? What a nightmare that would be, a horror story. But Jones had to remind himself that he was in here for problems of his own. He had to think positive thoughts about recovery, and dwelling on someone else's situation with his always capable imagination wasn't the way to do it. Of course, the third floor ward of the hospital wasn't the easiest place to hold onto any sunny optimism one might have had, not when he and Redding walked by the two "rubber rooms" with their light blue padded walls, the rooms for those unfortunates who came in here in a real bad way. Whenever Jones glanced into one of the rooms, located (purposely?) at the very end of a long corridor, he didn't see anybody in them, no tormented figure crumpled in a corner, wrapped in a straitjacket. Or did they need straitjackets anymore, or just knock them out with an injection and keep them drugged up?

There were certainly enough patients complaining that they weren't getting enough of their medication, or the correct drug for their predicament. Some of them, and Jones didn't know if he could blame them, obviously wanted something to take them out of there, something to make them forget, temporarily, and they were angry with the doctors for not providing it.

There was one redheaded woman with a black eye and banged up face who sat in the TV room and loudly complained about how she wasn't getting the right medicine. She talked to herself and anyone who would listen. She stared at the floor and then looked up and around the room to see if she did have anyone's attention.

"I've been taking the stuff for years. I know what I'm supposed to have. These doctors don't even know me a week and they think they're doing what's best for me." She scoffed at that. "I keep telling them that it's the wrong stuff, but they don't listen to me."

"No, they don't," a middle-aged man, portly, with a balding head, commiserated. "They pretend to listen to you. They nod their heads and smile, and then go do whatever they want." There was some muttered agreement from around the room, and Jones figured it wouldn't take much to whip up the discontent seething just under the surface of things. Perhaps that is why one of the counsellors stepped over to the redhead and asked her, gently, to keep it down.

"Other people are trying to watch the TV," the counsellor, a young woman who looked fresh from college, said. Another newcomer to the "business".

Though, the others in the room weren't really watching the game show on the screen; they were wrapped up in their own thoughts. It could have been a soap opera or a sporting event on TV, it really didn't matter.

The counsellors and orderlies also had to keep an eye on Frederick, who paced the halls with his music headset on, moving his head to what he heard, his face tight, unsmiling, sunglasses on. The headset and sunglasses never came off at any time of the day.

"I wonder if he sleeps with those things on," Redding joked.

Frederick hardly ever stopped pacing; he was wired with energy (and the cafeteria didn't even serve regular coffee). He often talked to himself and made sudden gestures with his hands. He looked to be on edge all the time and didn't speak to anybody else, so he was avoided by the other patients. His long hair went uncombed and sometimes hung in his face so that, with the glasses, one hardly saw any face at all.

Frederick must have been recognized as being particularly volatile, for he was handled with care - soft words and plenty of coaxing - by the staff. It seemed that they didn't want this man to explode; they didn't want to light that short fuse (perhaps he'd had a history of violence).

"Whatever it is they're giving him, it's not enough," Redding observed, with a chuckle.

At the meetings, Frederick sat there silently, his headphones off, but still moving his head to some private music. When called on by Counsellor Tompkins, who tried to open up a communication channel between them, Frederick would look at her, suddenly, from behind the shades, and then glance around at everybody in the group, as if just then realizing where he was.

This man is definitely wrapped up in his own head, Jones thought. Prior to his stay in the hospital, Jones considered himself a man consumed by his own thoughts, but Frederick took it to another level. Then there was angry Danny, with his jailhouse tattoos. Jones had met him outside on the rooftop smoking area for patients, where they were allowed fifteen minute breaks. Jones didn't smoke, but he went outside for the fresh air (after a few days on the ward, he looked forward to these breaks).

"What are you in for?" Danny had said, as he smoked and the two men looked through a chain-link fence down at the parking lot below. Danny said this in the same weary, "seen it all" voice he used for just about everything. Nothing in this life was worth any emotion, Danny seemed to say. It was all just a shitty joke and what could you do about it?

When Jones told him why he was there, he got a knowing nod from Danny.

"That's not an uncommon story around here," Danny said, dropping his stub in a can. He was a short man, shorter than Jones who was five-eight, but with the broad-shouldered, muscular body of someone who had done some jailhouse weight training. He walked with a cocky strut, and there was something hard beneath that soft-spoken, indifferent attitude he put forth, a man from the city streets. To Jones, it seemed he had know Danny's all over, tough working stiffs and criminal types who had never gotten a break but weren't asking for one, men who were gruff, plain-spoken and simple in their ways, and yet could be mean and dangerous in certain situations, usually when drunk. They were men you didn't want to run into when those nasty moods took over - born scrappers.

According to Danny, he was in the hospital for not taking his medicine and getting into some kind of legal trouble. Jones got the impression that this wasn't Danny's first time here, either. He seemed to be familiar with all the doctors and counsellors. Jones didn't press him for information, though; he wasn't that curious. If he had to make a guess, he would have said that now quiet Danny, off his calming medicine, had gone off the wall, so to speak, scaring people, maybe doing violent harm. If he hadn't ended up in here, he'd probably be in jail. Or perhaps this was just a stopover before he went to jail.

Jones could also tell that Danny was a veteran of group meetings - jail, rehabs, AA? He had the line down, as Jones had heard AA regulars say about people who knew the right words and phrases and yet didn't seem to show the right feeling behind them. Something learned by rote, in other words. When called upon, Danny gave the counsellors what he considered acceptable responses, but nothing more - just enough so that they focused on someone else. He definitely wasn't digging out any pain with his responses, as some of the others seemed to do. Some of the patients broke down crying in these group sessions, and there were always moments of awkward silence following these displays of raw emotion. But after the uncomfortable moments, the group would usually come together behind the people who had exposed themselves; everyone seemed to realize that this was what therapy was really about, digging into some of that inner pain and letting it go.

Probably why Jones saw through Danny, and even Redding (who pretended to be bored and dismissed things in his cynical way), was that he was guilty of going through the motions himself. It takes one to know one, as the saying goes. And Jones had to honestly say that, other than providing him with an excuse to get out of bed, the meetings offered very little for him; he'd much rather have stayed with his book. But Jones figured he'd go along with the routine and play the game in every way, and hopefully it might lead to an early release from the place. He'd put up with the boring meetings and the grade school games the counsellors came up with to keep them occupied, games that purposely required very little thinking, easy word games of association and guessing, designed to get the whole group to participate. At times, the groups were divided up into teams - such as team A versus team B - and Jones felt as if he were in grade school again. He wondered if these simple, kid games were suggested in the counsellor handbook, or if Tompkins and Nash came up with them at night over cocktails.

"If you don't answer the question right, you get your hand slapped with a ruler," Redding said, chuckling.

Most of the conversation between the two roommates cantered on their current situation at the hospital, their observations, complaints, criticisms, shared laughs, which made each man feel better, as if he had a confidante in this sometimes coldly efficient and professional atmosphere. It made them feel better when they went to sleep at night, having a laugh and thinking that things weren't as bad as they had perhaps thought earlier in the day. Just communicating with somebody gave them a boost; much better than trying to slip off into some rest with nothing but their own depression and worry as a companion in bed, staring at these strange, bare walls and the ceiling, hearing staff members talking outside in the hall, or one of the patients moaning or complaining about something; everything, in short, that told them again they were in a hospital for the sick.

Doctor Harte, or "All Heart", as Redding called him, arranged for a meeting between him, Jones and Jones's parents early one morning, perhaps because he was curious as to what their relationship was like. Jones had told him that it was a solid one, except for lately when Jones had started drinking again, but that had always been the case, from high school on.

Jones's parents didn't understand what the object of the meeting was, either, though they were willing to go along with it. The four people sat in the doctors' small, cluttered office at nine o'clock, with Jones still burping up breakfast and nursing a coffee. His parents looked as if they hadn't slept much the night before, but then Jones reminded himself that this might just have been old age under the doctor's fluorescent lighting.

"I wanted to bring the family together to establish just how things stand between all of you, and to see what the best way might be to treat Robert, so that he is able to leave here as fast as possible," the doctor opened it up. "I like to know where the patient has been living prior to the crisis period." Jones glanced at his parents, but then put his nose in the coffee cup. Watered down brew that wouldn't give a baby a lift.

"Now, Robert and I have gone over some of his past history with substance abuse," the doctor continued, "and I'd like to hear what you have to say, from your perspective, and your feelings right now about the current situation."

Jones couldn't help but get the feeling that Harte had the lines memorized; it sounded like a recording. Jones wondered if the doctor took any drugs to help him through the day - prescribed medicine, of course.

His parents weren't sure what to say, didn't know how to start. They felt better after their first visit two days prior to that, having left reassured (by their son's own words) that he wouldn't try anything like he had two nights earlier, and feeling good with hope. They had just figured that they would get calls from Jones with updates on his progress and status and, finally, a call to come get him. For Jones would have to be released into their custody. A patient had to assure the doctor that he or she had a definite home to go to. It wasn't uncommon for patients to have come to the hospital from the streets, picked up by ambulance after an overdose or suicide attempt (sometimes the same thing).

Doctor Harte nudged Jones's parents into saying something, though both his mother and father looked at Jones before they spoke, which the doctor noticed.

"I wanted you all here in the same room so that we could get things out in the open. Usually, some of the hurt and pain is kept inside, which is detrimental. We want to look at the problem objectively, clinically, and any grievances or ill will festering inside somebody isn't going to help. I've seen this many times, where people try to keep things inside and aren't really honest with each other. I know Robert mentioned AA meetings to me, and he knows one of the first things they ask of you in that program is that you look at your life with a rigorous honesty. It's the only way to get at the problem. And oftentimes, the problem can be aggravated by circumstances around the patient - family, friends, the work place. Or the patient is enabled in some way, which doesn't work."

Not only was Jones's coffee weak, but it was cold now. He knew that whatever Doctor Harte was trying to get out of them, he wasn't going to get it. Jones knew that his parents were just as reserved as he was; there would be no "opening up".

Yet his folks were also unfailingly polite, and they made an effort to give the doctor something he might be interested in, from a professional standpoint. Basically, they gave him more of a "case history" about their son, providing details that had stuck with them over the years, yet not touching on anything that might provoke an unpleasant reaction from Jones. In other words, they were careful to avoid possible points of contention, remembering fierce arguments from the past, no doubt. And they certainly weren't going to drag out any "dirty laundry" in this office, even if the man was a doctor. Jones's parents didn't know anything about this kind of doctor; they had never had any reason to. To them, a doctor was someone you visited for physical ailments, not mind troubles, and they were wary of this one, despite the diplomas on the wall. The bottom line: the older people were as sceptical as Jones of Doctor Harte's place in their son's life.

"At least he can prescribe medicine," Jones's father had said to his wife in the car that morning. "He can give him something to keep him calm."

"Maybe he can give him something for the drink craving," Mrs. Jones said, trying to be hopeful.

During the hour long meeting, Jones stayed almost as quiet as he did in the daily meetings with the counsellors. As usual, when talking about himself, he didn't know where to start; he didn't believe he could ever adequately explain himself to people. He had tried that often enough in the past - particularly when drunk or high - and it had inevitably resulted in what he considered failure in the end. He always came away disappointed in himself, feeling he didn't have the verbal skill to communicate. He wasn't glib, or as "slick" with words as some people he knew. Things fast became confused when Jones tried to voice his feelings (part of it he attributed to natural shyness).

Doctor Harte would no doubt try to dig what he could out of Jones, or the counsellors would (the doc was pressed for time), but it would be like the AA meetings in the end, with Jones only giving up bits and pieces - just enough to get them off his back. For that's how he would view the staff after only a short time at the hospital - a daily nuisance that had to be dealt with in an "agreeable" manner so that they could see him progressing toward the day when the elevator took him down to the outside world again. If he showed a bad temper or unwillingness to co-operate, he could very well end up staying here for some time, or be transferred to the long term centre on the other side of the city. That was where the "hopeless cases" went, to be put away, permanently malfunctioning parts that would never find a place in the societal machine.

"I still don't know why we had to drive here this morning," Jones's father said, after the doctor had seen them out of the office with a polite smile. "I mean what was he trying to accomplish?"

"I guess he just wanted to meet us," Mrs. Jones said, guiding him down the hall.

"Did it have to be at nine in the morning?" her husband asked, looking at his son, who shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

"It's the first time I've ever been in one of these places," he said with a smile.

"Yeah, well, promise us it's your last time," his mother said. "Just go along with the program so that you can come home."

Jones only had two more short talks with Doctor Harte in his short stay at the hospital - which amounted to almost two weeks. This included a weekend, when most of the doctors weren't on duty.

To start both of these talks, the doctor asked Jones how he was getting along, to which Jones replied "Very well, thanks to the staff". When asked about the daily meetings, Jones replied that he looked forward to them, which, in one sense, wasn't a lie.

"I know this place seems small after a few days," Harte said. "And that's why we encourage everyone to participate, instead of staring at the walls. And I think it's good to share with others in similar situations, so you don't feel you're alone here."

Like a family, Jones thought. Did the doc actually know what went on in those meetings? It was clear what he would have liked the meetings to support: some true inter-group communication, and hence some valuable knowledge passed back and forth; it was probably what the program was designed for. Yet Jones had been to enough of the "sessions" now to know how far reality was from the ideal. Still, he guessed that the doc had to have something to believe in showing up at this place every day. He'd bet if he caught Harte with his guard down some time - with a few martinis in him at a luncheon, say - that he'd hear some disillusionment in the man's words, and get a dose of cynicism, too. How could it be helped after so much time put in at this hospital and, no doubt, others like it.

In their first talk, Harte brought up the idea of Jones entering a month-long drug and alcohol rehabilitation program right here in the city. It was a strict program, but a good one; he knew the people that ran it.

"The thing is, we're short on beds here, as you know. But I'm not sure going back to your parents' house is the right thing just yet. I think some more time in a controlled environment would be the thing. Your parents are nice people and they're concerned, but many times that isn't enough. I've seen many people come through here who end up back here because they repeat old habits. That's no good. You got to the point where you felt you had no other place to go. So something was wrong in that environment. You have to be honest with yourself. Something has to change."

Jones felt the doctor was being sincere with him, and he knew the man had a point when he said something had to change. He agreed to think about entering the program.

"It's a month-long stay, but your stay can be extended if you go into the work release program," the doctor explained.

"You have a safe place to stay, and they allow you to leave for a job and meetings. You get outside daily for recreation. It's not in the best part of the city, but you're always with the group, so ." He shrugged. "I think it would be the best thing for you at this point."

"Why not try it?" Redding said to him.

They sat in their room at a quiet time of the day - a rainy day outside, but the gray weather seemed to have affected the overall mood of the place inside, also. There wasn't any point in looking out the big window, not if you wanted your spirits raised. The walls were still plain, bright and ugly - remorselessly so.

"I mean what do you have to lose? A place like that might be what you need to get you back on your feet again. If they can help you, let them help you. Hell, you're too young and too nice of a guy to be in this place. I'm in here because I'm old and they don't know where to put me. But if that's what it takes for them to let you out of here, do it. You know you're not getting anything out of this place." No, he certainly wasn't. Jones, like his roommate, was ready to go up the walls.

"What about you?" he asked Tom. "Has Harte said anything about you leaving?"

"I don't know. He said he talked to my daughter yesterday. Whatever that means. Sometimes I think I'm kept in the dark around here, and I'm the patient." Jones laughed at the sour expression, and Redding chuckled with him.

"If it came right down to it, my daughter would take me in, but I don't want to be a burden on her. I have my own house, my own life. And she really doesn't have room for me at her place. Hell, she has her own family, kids. It wouldn't work."

"What about your sister?"

"She lives in an apartment in one of those old folks' places. Besides, she and I never got along that well to live together. I guess I'll have to sell the place eventually. Neither of my daughters wants it, and my son lives out west. I hate to give it up, though, because it belonged to my parents, too. It's been in the family quite a few years. But none of the young people want to live in town now. They don't want to raise their kids here, and I can't say I blame them. Things have gotten bad over the years. It never used to be that way when I was young. I never thought twice about walking through these neighbourhoods when I was a kid. But ." He shrugged. "They say it's gotten like this in every city." He smiled in that sad, weary way, no longer the arrogant, dismissive old bird he was most of the time. Jones had a few moments like this with his roommate and he came to like the old guy. Looking at Redding 's situation took his mind off his own, and that seemed necessary now and then. Jones believed that too much brooding was detrimental to recovery; it just soured him more, made him surly, uncooperative (and those words definitely weren't included in Harte's recommended treatment).

Surprisingly, Jones had found himself laughing in the hospital more than he had in months, and yet at the same time there was a sad tragedy on the flip side of every laugh in here. Tears were just a quick change of perspective away from those laughs, and those quick shifts could be cutting. He saw it every day in others: people smiling or laughing in the TV room in the morning, only to be crying and raging with themselves a couple hours hence. He couldn't help but be affected by it, but at the same time tried not to get too worked up; he couldn't afford that. He was on his way out of here, and not to the residential loony bin, either.

Jones looked at himself - he had to - as someone who had been desperate enough to do something very foolish indeed, and now he was putting his time in here; it was the price he had to pay. But it was only temporary; he wasn't mired in his own illness as some of these people were, flailing about to no avail. No, he felt like a student at the top of his class, with his eyes on a promising future, or a step up from the current situation anyway.

"They don't still do that anymore, do they?" Jones said to Redding , as they ate lunch in the cafeteria.

"I think that's where they took our little friend," Tom said.

Their little friend had been a young woman of eighteen who had been brought in two days before, with her wrists bandaged up. A pretty and yet so sad looking young woman who had been devastated by something in her life, barely speaking above a whisper, but he and Redding had been able to draw a smile out of her. A tired, sad smile, but they felt they had accomplished something nonetheless. She seemed to appreciate their efforts anyway, and they didn't ask her any personal questions. They treated her as a newly arrived "guest" at this "hotel" that they stayed in, a little act of theirs intended to take the initial edge off for her.

"That's heartbreaking to see that," Redding had said, after first meeting the young woman, who looked like she was still in high school (though apparently she had recently graduated). "A young girl like that so depressed, I don't understand it. Her whole life ahead of her and she does something like that."

The young woman stayed quiet the following day, hardly saying anything, not eating. A doctor talked to her, or tried to. Counsellors encouraged her to eat.

On her third day there, she was taken out of the ward. Redding said that she may have been taken downstairs for a shock treatment, which surprised Jones.

"I thought they stopped all that Cuckoo's Nest stuff?" Jones said.

"No, they still use that shock treatment," Redding said. "Not as much as they used to. But in certain cases of bad depression - like hers ." He left it hanging and bit into a piece of bread.

"I thought they just used drugs now," Jones said.

"Most of the time, yes. But I saw her yesterday and we talked for a few minutes, and she said she thought they were going to give her electro-therapy, or whatever they call it."

"She said that?"

Redding nodded his head, serious.

"I talked with her in the hall while you were in bed with your book," he said. "She said she thought that's where they were taking her." The thought of the young woman being shocked was unsettling to say the least. It certainly put a damper on Jones's lunchtime spirits (his appetite had come back in a very healthy way in recent days).

"I don't even like to think of that," he said, as he was reminded, with sudden and effective force, just where he was. And there was that flip side to everything in here, he thought. Just when you were feeling good, personally, and enjoying an upbeat swing in your day, you got a glimpse into somebody else's hell, and it clipped your wings, so to speak. It could bring you right back to feeling like just another lump of shit in the loony bin, a failure, a loser. And then Jones retreated into himself, and sought his books so as to escape, at least for an hour or two.

He never saw that young woman again. Perhaps there was a ward for the more serious cases, or she had been transferred to the long term facility. Jones wondered whether to believe what he had been told about the shock therapy. He was quite sure that lobotomies weren't performed anymore, though not absolutely certain. What did he really know about what happened behind the walls of mental hospitals, except for his little experience here so far, and the picture presented by books and movies. When you heard about hospital scandals, it was always after some mistreatment or malpractice had been carried out, the harm done and the finger pointing started. It was always after someone had suffered irreparable harm or injury, or been killed, that the horror stories came to light, the institution exposed. Yet so far, Jones couldn't say he had any suspicions about this hospital; his care had been exemplary, considering the size of the facility and the budget he knew they worked under (as with any state funded place, there was always a call for more money).

Jones and Redding got a new neighbour, a woman who liked to walk around naked and was quite friendly with everybody. Friendly but simple, Redding called her. Her name was Teresa, and the first time Jones met her was when he sat on the toilet and she walked into the bathroom on him. Teresa just smiled, with the gaps in her teeth, and introduced herself. It was a shared bathroom between the two rooms, without locks on the doors, and patients were instructed to give a courtesy knock before entering. Teresa couldn't seem to remember that (she caught Redding with his drawers down, too), and she left her room door open for them to get a sight of her bare-ass in bed. She'd giggle at them as they shut the door on her.

"I think she knows what she's doing," Redding said, chuckling. "She likes teasing us, but she plays dumb when the nurses are around. She's not fooling me with that game. She came barging in here earlier, no knock, with just a little towel wrapped around her, and giggling like a little girl of course."

"Maybe that was her problem out there," Jones said. "She couldn't keep her clothes on with men around."

"Well, I've known a few women like that in my time, and they didn't get locked up in this kind of place."

"Maybe she likes to strip in public places."

"It wouldn't surprise me. Some day we might get a show in the TV room. Miss Flabby Flanks takes it all off." Jones laughed at that.

"She is carrying a few extra pounds, isn't she?"

"Hell, you wouldn't hear me complaining if she was a looker," Redding said. "And how could she get anybody excited with those teeth?"

They both laughed at that.

"What's so funny, gentlemen?" a nurse asked, coming in with their meds.

"We're just discussing our neighbour's friendliness," Redding said, winking at Jones.

"Mr. Redding, I hope you're not saying anything bad about your neighbour," the nurse said, shaking her head and doing her best to give them a frown.

"Of course not, Nurse Jacobs," Redding answered, clearly enjoying himself. He got a kick out of flirting with the nurses and teasing them. "How could I do that with someone so friendly?" Nurse Jacobs caught his tone and gave him a reproving look

"Here's your medicine, Mr. Redding. Let's keep our minds on our own business."

"I'm all for that," he said, taking the cup and his pills. "Are you sure those pills don't have me hallucinating? I could have sworn I saw a naked woman in my bathroom today." He looked at Jones and they both cracked up.

"That's not just your bathroom, Mr. Redding," the nurse said. "And you're supposed to knock before you go in. You know that."

"I swear to god I knocked," Redding said, holding up his right hand. "I knocked a couple of times."

"Now just be nice. We're working on that. She's on some heavy medication at the moment." Redding winked at Jones, behind the nurse's back, as she poured a cup of water for Jones.

"We're nice guys, Nurse Jacobs," Redding said. "We really are."

"I like to think so," she said. "But sometimes I'm not so sure." She gave the two men a gently chiding, motherly look that, for Jones anyway, stirred something in him sexually. He had an instant vision of having Nurse Jacobs bent over one end of his bed and giving her more than just a doctor's examination. Jones wondered if Redding was too old for that kind of sudden vision, and concluded that an old goat like that would never be too old for those thoughts. Jones thought he detected a lecherous glint in those rheumy eyes at that moment, as a matter of fact.

Well, Jones couldn't blame the guy for ogling the nurses in this place (he found himself looking, too) It was as if there was a surplus of pleasant distractions to help pass the time. The second time Jones met Teresa, the positions were reversed, and she sat on the toilet. He had knocked, but there had been no answer. He quickly shut the door and heard her laugh.

Jones took to using the restroom down the hall, as did Redding.

And then came the night the two men returned to the room from the TV room and noticed water all over the floor, coming from under the bathroom door. They heard the shower running, of course. Redding banged on the door and yelled; then he cracked it open and steam poured in. Jones went to get a nurse, as the puddle had spread over one half of their room.

"I don't think anybody's in there!" he heard Redding say, and he laughed, knowing Teresa was responsible. It turned out there was water all over the next room, also; the shower drain was blocked with a towel. No Teresa.

"I think she's talking with a counsellor right now," one of the nurses said. There was so much steam in both rooms it was hard to see for a few minutes. Then a couple of attendants were called to mop up the water.

"We can't let her go in here alone anymore," one of the nurses said.

Yet after a couple days, Teresa's bed was empty for the next patient; she had been taken away somewhere. Jones heard two nurses talking, and it was said that Teresa wasn't making the hoped for progress on her medication. What that meant, Jones didn't know, but it sounded slightly ominous for Teresa.

Freddie Headphones really snapped one day. All that chatter to himself as he paced the hallways got louder until it became more than just a minor distraction. Freddy, with his headphones and shades still on, ranted away in the hall, until a couple of the counsellors approached him, intending to quiet him, or lead him back to his room anyway. Yet Freddy wasn't finished with his address to the ward and, at first, he ignored the counsellors. When two of the burly orderlies attempted to physically guide him away, he shrugged them off. This wasn't difficult for him because Freddy was a good sized guy himself, young and in the prime of life. The orderlies realized this immediately: this was a pumped up Freddy they were dealing with and they needed help. In the end, it took four men and Doctor Harte to handle the situation, with the four orderlies surrounding the patient, while the doctor talked to him, calmly asking Fred to settle down.

"We can deal with whatever it is, Frederick ," Harte said. "Please calm down. Nothing is accomplished this way. We've talked things out before." Freddy looked around him like a cornered animal (though the headphones stayed on); he appeared tensed up for a struggle. Yet then he just relaxed, shrugged his shoulders and looked at Harte, as if to say: what next?

"Where do you want to go, Frederick ?" Harte asked. "Your room? My office? The conference room? We can talk anywhere." They finally led him into one of the meeting rooms and shut the door. Tom Redding, sitting in the TV room with Jones, looked at his roommate and rolled his eyes.

"What next?" he said.

"Showtime all the time in here," Jones said.

"You got that right. Although I was waiting for something like that from Freddy. He was too uptight. They better change that medicine he's on." He laughed and looked up at the TV mounted on wall brackets in one corner of the room. A soap opera was on, and there were a few patients staring at the screen again. Their program had been briefly interrupted by Freddy's performance.

"Yeah, give him some of the stuff they give me," Jones said. "All he'll think about is bed."

Jones had been yawning for days, it seemed. If the medicine was intended to keep him calm, then it was more than effective, something he mentioned to the nurses. Some days he felt wiped out, or perhaps spaced out was the better way of putting it, his mind easily drifting to places other than the one he was at. He couldn't concentrate on his books or at the meetings. Both Tompkins and Nash had to repeat questions to him in the meetings; he wouldn't know what the group discussion was about. Not only did he not get excited, but he barely got animated for even the basic daily activities like washing, going to the bathroom, and eating. Even Redding noticed the difference.

"I can understand them wanting you to be calm," he said. "But this is ridiculous. That's why I say I don't like this guy we got. I don't think he's had me on the right stuff, either."

One of the nurses said something to Harte, who cut back on the strength of the dose. He didn't want Jones drifting off in the meetings.

And then, two days before Jones left the hospital for the rehab house, Tom Redding got the word that he was going to be released. His daughter was coming to pick him up the next morning. Jones had already committed himself to the rehab program, so he knew his days were numbered, too. If the two men had been able to get their hands on a bottle, they would have had a farewell drink together. In the short time they had been together, they had been able to share more about their personal lives with each other than they ever would have outside the hospital. Being roommates for just over a week here had made for a quick friendship; and it was because both of them knew it was a temporary stay that they had found it easy to open up. They shared more in their room at night, when not able to sleep, than in any group meeting, and that counted for something, and they both knew it.

And so it was just a quick handshake in front of Redding 's daughter that morning, and a wishing each other well. "You got a good head on your shoulders, kid," Redding said, before he left the room. "And you're one of the nicest young guys I've met in a long time. Stay away from that bottle and you'll be all right."

Those words meant more to Jones than anything the doctors or counsellors had said to him during his stay. He would remember them when he needed to feel good about himself in the coming weeks.