My Mother V

I don’t remember the ride to Josephine County Hospital with my mother. I do remember the emergency waiting room. Because I was fine, tripping, having a fun time before that, the emergency room was like a trip into Mordor. Suddenly there were, as there always is, grim realities. And I became, as one does, completely paranoid. I was sure that everyone who was talking in the emergency waiting room was talking about ME. Looking at ME. Whispering about ME. Eventually mom (at that point, I didn’t believe anything was what it seemed, including her) took me into the ER. I next remember lying flat on a gurney with one of those lights with the gigantic metallic domes around them staring down at me, like in old fashioned surgery rooms. Mom was on one side, some attending doc on the other. My mother asked him (hey, i’m here!) whether I would be normal again. The attending dude said (in what I now know was a very identifiable northeastern US accent) “Well, once they’v broken with reality, it’s hard to tell.” This, standing over a teenager whose brain is filled with LSD!