One reason Bob Deutsch had given when he suggested South Oaks to me, was that it had a gym. Even though my life hadn’t changed much as a result of the work I’d been doing with him, or the meetings I’d been attending, I had at least begun working out.

When I was growing up, we had played lots of sports on the street in front of our house, but I’d barely been able to play Little League because of the size I’d reached. When I reached the majors, the standard uniform didn’t fit me, so the league had to take me to a sporting goods store for a larger size that had the same color scheme, but still stood out as different. The big red 9 on my back became my scarlet number, and I pretty much stopped doing any physical activity after that.

So the return to any physical activity, which had been delayed when the gym manager insisted that I get a doctor’s letter saying I was healthy enough to enter, was momentous, and I was enjoying it.

But when I got to the hospital, I had to await explicit permission before I could engage in all but the lightest physical activity. This was one reason, during my first week, that I’d taken to returning from the cafeteria to the ward via an outside route, even though it was perhaps only 20 steps longer.

Most times, I would be with one or more peers, but Friday morning, I was walking alone when something — or perhaps nothing — happened that has stuck in my mind ever since. The late October morning was damp and chilled, and light fog wafted across the four-laned Sunrise Highway that ran parallel to my path, just beyond a fence perhaps a hundred yards away.

In my memory, everything about the moment was still until a truck lumbered out of the mist. It was a semi-style hauler with an elongated trailer bed and relatively low sides divided by three stiffening uprights. In each of the four bays created by these uprights was a word, making the sentence, “GET RID OF IT.”

That was it. No phone number, no address, no logo. Just those big block letters.

In the first instant I figured it was just some company’s slogan. In the second instant, I was amused by a second meaning I could take from it, that I should jettison all the misconceptions and sorrow and rage that I carried inside of me. And in the third, I wondered if perhaps it was even an instruction intended particularly for me.

The hauler had been really haulin’, so by the time I pivoted to see if it had really been there, all that was left was a whorl in the vapor and a receding rumble.

I still wonder if there ever was a truck or if it was just a message from … what? Who? Especially in a Google-ized world there are ways to find out if a trucking company on Long Island has such a slogan, but I’d really rather not. Even if it was merely a truck dispatched to its next mundane assignment, for me it remains one of the most mystical, ethereal experiences I’ve ever had.

Saturday mornings were reserved for Feelings Workshop. They were held in a couple of locations on the campus and were open to present and former patients. On my first Saturday, I fell in behind people I didn’t know and ended up in a small classroom with about 25 others. We sat in small wooden school chairs placed way too closely to each other for my comfort. As the session unfolded, my discomfort grew for other reasons.

The facilitator began by asking each of us to identify ourselves and to say what costume we would choose if we were dressing for Halloween. I said “clown,” because they put on a happy face to entertain others, regardless of what they’re feeling inside.

Sally, another of the group, said “ghost,” and when we’d all had a chance, the leader came back to her to ask why. She said she wanted to fade away, because she’d been feeling so much anger and hurt, in part because of the sexual abuse she’d endured when younger.

As the sharing progressed, a half-dozen young women – that’s one in four of the assembled – spoke about their abuse.

One had been raped and said she blamed herself for not fighting harder, wishing he’d had a gun or a knife to give her an explanation for why she hadn’t. Two others spoke about feeling like “dirty little girls” for what had happened to them. Another one said she’d had two abortions but had never told her family in five years of pursuing loveless sex that had been triggered by abuse.

I’d never witnessed anything so intense, or real. And that was before Marcus, the only other guy in the room, spoke up. He had experience with abuse, too, he said, but he’d been a perpetrator, with siblings. He said he could nevertheless relate with others who had spoken, because he had carried guilt and regret with him for so long.

Rarely had I felt so moved, or so afraid, or so conflicted. How could these people be in the same room? How could the abused not lash out at an abuser? How could Marcus dare to reveal such a thing in front of these women? How could an abuser seem courageous, not for his actions when growing up but for his honesty now? I couldn’t wait to get out of the room, and I didn’t speak to anyone for hours.

I experienced madness of a different sort the next night. My roommate Virgil and I were watching Game 7 of the World Series. It was the 9th inning, and neither Atlanta nor Minnesota had scored. It was unprecedented. One of the most dramatic endings to a World Series ever. Tension with every pitch.

Then the clock struck 11:30 p.m., and the night nurse told us to shut off the TV and get to bed.

“But … the game! Can’t we say just a couple more minutes?” I asked, trying to explain to her that it was an extraordinary moment in a once-a-year event.

“Lights out at 11:30. Sorry,” she said, betraying no sorrow at all.

“Could I trade a few more minutes for a restriction [the penalty patients got for breaking a regulation]?” I asked. It seemed like a fair deal: I wouldn’t get away with anything, and I’d get to see the game.

Not only did she not strike the bargain, she threatened me with a ticket to the Flight Deck, the locked ward where they sent recalcitrant patients. I appealed to the night counselors, but they offered neither aid nor solace. Faced with the prospect of a Thorazine nightcap, I slinked away in outrageous defeat, pissed off but good and thinking I had just met Nurse Ratchett.