There was a phone by the bed, but I couldn’t reach it, because it was on the handcuffed side. That was a much more pleasant encounter than you expected with a doctor after you’d tried suicide. The doctor grabbed my foot, shook it gently, even affectionately, shrugged his shoulders, and left the room. So maybe this can be your get-out-of-jail-free card. But, you know, you were very lucky, and most people wise up after one attempt. “There’s even a book you can buy that tells you how. Nobody dies from overdosing on pills anymore.” He went into some detail about how to do it, almost as if he were making a suggestion. And if you want to kill yourself, don’t use pills. Better yet, don’t have a next time, would you? We’d like to keep you around. Anyway, I’d been in jail just a few weeks before, for public intoxication, after passing out in a bar near my home in Kansas City. I wanted to explain about my anklet, that it was only to prove I was sober to my then-wife, that it wasn’t a jail thing, but I realized extra details from me would sound defensive. You ruined your fancy anklet.” He laughed. They will transfer you to the psychiatric ward tomorrow and then this security won’t be necessary. “We had to pump your stomach but basically you’re fine. “You must have fallen at some point, your head was bleeding. Two minor procedures.” He reached over to gesture at my head, where my staples and my fingers were. I drank the water and then spat out the straw. “Here, let me get it for you.” He tucked the cup between the bed rail and the pillow and bent the plastic straw into my mouth. Then I realized that I was handcuffed to the bed. I was very thirsty and, still nervously fingering those metal staples, I reached with my free hand for a large plastic cup of water that was on a bedside table. But that may have been his manner: Perhaps he simply launched into conversations with his patients and let them catch up when they were ready. I seemed to be joining the conversation midstream. I didn’t know how long he’d been talking or if I had been talking back. A handsome young dark-haired doctor with a bushy mustache and brightly lit, amused eyes was standing at the side of my bed conversing cheerfully with me. I reached into my hair and felt the staples in my scalp. I came to in a hospital bed with a sore head. If it weren’t for that anklet, you’d be dead right now.” They should put that in an advertisement. You know what’s funny? Your jail anklet saved your life.
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