"It is. I'm giving you a mild sedative. We can't help you until you're calmer and ready to listen."
"I'm perfectly calm. I just disagree with you. I am the sort of person who learns through debate. Medication won't stop that."
"We'll see," the doctor said, and left, before I could muster a riposte.
I was finally allowed onto the ward, dressed in what the nurses called "day clothes" — the civilian duds that I'd packed before leaving the hotel, which an orderly retrieved for me from a locked closet in my room. The clustered nuts were watching slackjaw TV, or staring out the windows, or rocking in place, fidgeting and muttering. I found myself a seat next to a birdy woman whose long oily hair was parted down the middle, leaving a furrow in her scalp lined with twin rows of dandruff. She was young, maybe twenty-five, and seemed the least stuporous of the lot.
"Hello," I said to her.
She smiled shyly, then pitched forward and vomited copiously and noisily between her knees. I shrank back and struggled to keep my face neutral. A nurse hastened to her side and dropped a plastic bucket in the stream of puke, which was still gushing out of her mouth, her thin chest heaving.
"Here, Sarah, in here," the nurse said, with an air of irritation.
"Can I help?" I said, ridiculously.
She looked sharply at me. "Art, isn't it? Why aren't you in Group? It's after one!"
"Group?" I asked.