#AMREADING Per Petterson, I REFUSE. Spinning a coin in the asylum.

• On medication. As long as I remembered to take my pills, one day slid nicely into another. If I don’t take my medication, panic sets in. I cry. I hold my mouth wide open, the noise wasn’t as loud then, and the air flowed easier in and out, and I didn’t groan as much.
• The helicopter ride to the hospital: The sky wasn’t as blue up there as it was when you were down on the ground looking up. It was greyer, more indeterminate, more undefined.
• In the hospital. There was a phone booth with Plexiglass walls. You couldn’t hear the person on the phone crying behind those sound proof walls, but you suspected it, you almost heard the silent gasp before the wails begin. You saw a man’s mouth open without a sound and it was wide and dark as a deep dish.
• Do I or don’t I visit my friend in hospital? A Proustian description of a coin toss.He spun the coin into the air, and it rose and rose until it hung there up beneath the ceiling and was spinning and didn’t want to come down…It was whistling and flashing and wouldn’t come down, it was Newton suspended…Everything was frozen and then the Krone began to fall, slowly at first and then faster and faster…and Jim’s hand was a funnel, a glove, and he grabbed the coin from the air…and closed his hand around it and held it for a moment before slapping it against the back of his left hand and stood still.  He stared at this hand. Then he raised it slowly. “Tails,” he said.