Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

fidget while she called us in one at a time to talk. She had a small, dark, pleasant office filled with bookshelves. This was the doctor in charge of making your diagnosis and deciding what medication you needed. My diagnosis was depression. No shit. My life was hell and showed no signs of improvement, I had a stepfather who was a ten on the asshole scale, I’d spent two or three weeks in jail for reasons I still didn’t understand, I didn’t know where my lover was being held, and I was now locked in a building full of sociopaths, schizophrenics, and other assorted freaks. You bet your ass I was depressed. I’d be more inclined to believe I had a problem if I
wasn’t
depressed. At any rate, I was prescribed antidepressants, which I was given shortly after I got there.
    Antidepressants were a horrid invention. The only thing I could tell they did was make me so tired I couldn’t think straight. I told one of the nurses that something was wrong because it hurt to open my eyes and I kept falling asleep every time I quit moving. I was told not to worry, this was natural and I’d get used to it. That’s not something you want to hear. Over time I did grow used to it, and in another month I wasn’t even able to tell I’d taken anything.
    After talking to the doctor, we went to the gym for a bit of morning exercise. There was a stationary bike, a punching bag, a rowing machine, and a StairMaster. Everyone spent time on each one. There was also a foosball table and a basketball hoop we could use after lunch.
    Every so often we would go to an arts-and-crafts room to work on individual projects. I made two ceramic unicorns that I took home with me when I left. I’ve no idea what eventually happened to them, but I was proud of them at the time.
    For lunch it was back to the kitchen, then another group session, which was usually greeted with outraged cries of “This is bullshit!” I agreed wholeheartedly but kept my opinion silent. After suffering through this indignity, we were allowed to take a thirty-minute nap.
    In the evening we went outside to a large fenced-in area to walk around and enjoy the air. We talked, looked out into the woods, or bounced tennis balls back and forth. Before bed we were allowed to choose a snack. There were granola bars, chocolate milk, peanut butter and crackers, or a cup of pudding. It wasn’t a bad place to be, as far as psych wards go.
    We were rewarded for good behavior by being taken on field trips. Once, we were all loaded into a long white van with a giant handicap symbol on the side and taken to the circus. It was hard to tell if there were more clowns in the show or in the stands. Another time we were taken swimming, and I never even got in the pool. I stood under an umbrella, dressed head to toe in black, and waited to go back to the hospital. The last and most wretched trip was to a movie theater, where we watched Whoopi Goldberg in
Sister Act
.
    Life went on, with my anxiety continuing to build. After I had been there for about three weeks, I was given a twenty-four-hour pass and my mother, father, and sister came to visit. A therapist met with them privately to describe how and what I’d been doing over the past few weeks, and to tell them that the hospital had deemed me well enough to be discharged. Before leaving us alone, she informed them that they could come to her with any questions they might have. This was the first real chance I’d had to talk to my father in many years. He hadn’t kept in touch with us during his absence, and we discussed both the future and the past.
    He lived in Oregon and had been preparing to come back when my sister contacted him. He had been married several times since he left, and I had an eight-year-old half brother who lived with him. I was amazed to learn that he and my mother were planning to get married again, and as soon as I was out of the hospital we were all moving to Oregon. Ordinarily I would have been thrilled, as this was everything I could possibly have wanted—Jack was gone, my father was back, I was receiving a twenty-four-hour pass to spend the next day with my family, and we were moving up in the world. Now it was a nightmare. I would be leaving Deanna behind. I started to rock gently in my chair as I silently cried. I didn’t make a sound, but the tears came so fast and heavy that I couldn’t see the room. I was looking at the world from behind a waterfall. I was sad and desperate, but something in my guts