Bright Lights, Big Buddha

I remember looking out the window of my parents BMW 735 as we made our way through the dilapidated buildings of downtown Brooklyn, which were set against the dark clouds of a gray September day. For some reason, the voices that had profoundly ruled my existence for the past few months seemed distant, though still chiding. To add insult to injury, a NYPD policeman stopped our car and gave my father a ticket for running a red light which he did not. At some point, I passed out from the codeine-laced Tylenol with which I had made a halfhearted suicide attempt a few hours ago. At the time, my dad was the chief of anesthesiology at Prince George County General Hospital in Cheverly, Maryland and so it was expected that he would take me to see his friend and colleague, Dr. Harold Hoyt, chief of the psychiatry department at the hospital.