Neil, 71-105, Summarizer

This passage opens with Norah continuing to explain the connections she is making her fellow patients at Meriwether. She explains how some of the patients look up to her and then are desperate for her attention. She then made the mistake of trying to cheer Ellen up by getting her some McDonald's and a Pepsi from the outside. Once another patient found out that she did this for Ellen, the flood gates opened and everybody was on her to get them stuff from the outside. She continued to do it for a few days until Kid asked her to get him an iPod, that was the last straw, she was done.

Norah then goes into a bit of a rant against prescription drugs. She talks about how many people not only inside Meriwether but around the country are over-prescribed to drugs. She notices that the hospital not only accepts drugging everybody, they promote it. Zyprexa, a mood stabilizer, was the flavor of the month at Meriwether. There was posters and fliers promoting the drug and the nurses even used a clipboard embroidered with the drugs name.

Norah thinks that some of the people who are in Meriwether do not need to be there at all. Casey for example simply was a little bit down and made some slightly suicidal remarks to her therapist, and here she is. Norah thinks that many therapists are way to willing to admit their patients to mental hospitals. She thinks they do this to cover their back, because if they didn't put them away and the patient ended up hurting them self or someone else it would be their head.

Norah then realizes her stay at Meriwether is coming to a close. She is reaching the 10-day mark, the mark she set out to be released on before she entered the hospital. After what she claimed was hours upon hours of paperwork on that final day she was released, she was free. When she got outside it was almost as if it wasn't real, she thought someone was going to grab her and bring her right back inside. Her time on the inside made her learn to not take for granted the little things you enjoy in everyday life.

After leaving Meriwether Norah realized that her research wasn't complete. She needed to investigate another hospital. A hospital that was much more white and middle class. She believed the inner city hospital she was at had provided good information but she is looking for more. The passage ends just as she finds "a place with a population that was both small and 95 percent white" (103).