She had been taken to Kern General Hospital, her mother told me, and admitted to the psych ward.
Several weeks after Sunny was admitted to Kern General, her mother took me to see her. I think she told the nurses I was Sunny’s sister so I could get in.
When I got to the hospital, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Sunny was no longer Sunny. Instead, some pale, mousy, crazy-eyed woman had taken her place. It was like someone had pricked her with a pin and all the air had drained out of her. I felt a mixture of fear and sadness at the realization that somewhere inside this stranger was my dear friend.
At first, she didn’t seem to recognize me. Finally, the light of recognition flickered in her eyes, but even then she didn’t seem happy to see me. Looking back on it, I’m sure she must have felt embarrassed. After all, she prided herself on being a strong person, someone no one could mess with, and here she was locked up, helpless, in a mental hospital.
I asked her how she was but all she did was look down at the picture she was drawing with crayons. Then she began to beg her mother to take her out of there.
“I don’t belong here, Mother,” she said. “Take me home, please!”
Her mother looked down and mumbled, “I’m sorry, Sunny, you have to stay here. The doctors tell me you are sick and need help.”
“Okay, but I don’t need to be here, Mother,” Sunny said. “If I need help, I’ll just keep going to Dr. Walters like I have been.”
“You need more help than Dr. Walters can give you. And I’m sure you won’t have to stay long, they just need to observe you for a while.”
Sunny stopped pleading with her mother and fell silent.
We didn’t stay long. I was horribly uncomfortable and I’m sure Sunny’s mother was as well. Sunny had stopped talking to us and just continued looking down at her drawing. But as we were leaving, she physically clung to her mother, begging once again for her to take her home.
“Please, please, Mother, take me with you. Tell them you’re going to take care of me. Tell them I won’t do anything but go to therapy and come straight home. Please.”
But Sunny’s mother pushed her away and scurried out of there as fast as she could.
Shortly after our visit, Sunny’s mother told me Sunny had been put on suicide watch because she had hidden herself under her bed by clinging to the metal bars that held up the mattress. They thought she was trying to kill herself, though Sunny told her mother she was just hoping to hide long enough to escape. I could see Sunny doing something like this because she was so bent on getting out of there, and I didn’t understand why the people at the hospital considered it a suicide attempt.
I called Sunny’s mother a few times over the next few weeks to ask her to take me with her to see Sunny again, but she told me each time that she was taking one of Sunny’s siblings instead. The next time I called, she told me Sunny had been transferred to a state mental hospital in Camarillo, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive away. She had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and would have to be hospitalized indefinitely.
I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I imagined Sunny being confined to a mental hospital indefinitely and I felt devastated. I wondered what life was like for her. I imagined that it must feel like a nightmare to be locked up—especially for someone as active and who loved her freedom as much as Sunny did. But I also thought about something else. It slowly started to dawn on me that it wasn’t a coincidence that Sunny and I had been in three accidents in the span of a few months. Yes, Sunny was reckless. But there had been more to it with the last accident, when she crashed her VW. It finally occurred to me that maybe Sunny had been trying to kill herself.
I began to feel lucky that I was alive. And while I felt horribly sad for Sunny, I was also glad she was getting the help she obviously needed. It was one thing to want to take your own life. I could understand that. But I couldn’t understand her trying to do it with me in the car. What was going on in her head? A sinister thought creeped into my head like a slithering snake: Had she intended to take me with her?
In a matter of weeks, I’d lost my best friend and confidant. I desperately missed having someone in my life who understood me and what I’d been through in my life. The deep, painful feelings of loss I felt reminded me of how it had been when I lost Pam. It felt like whenever I had the good fortune to meet someone I could really get close to, I always lost them; whenever I got really happy, something always happened to take that happiness away. Like when my mother spoiled my happiness by telling me I was illegitimate. I railed against the injustice of it all. It wasn’t just my mother wanting to take me down a notch or two. Now it seemed as if God was taking me down as well.
I had to start taking the bus to college, and this meant having to get up much earlier in the morning. Fortunately, Florence’s parents had talked her into going to junior college too so she started driving me home, but it wasn’t the same. I missed going to Sunny’s house and being with her siblings. I’d come to love those kids, each and every one of them.
