I celebrated my six-month breakup with Sid, my psychiatrist of 20 plus years, with a bottle of Vodka, a handful of pills, and nighty-night.

To make a long story short, Stella found me and the empty bottles and stuck her finger down my throat. I puked all over my new duvet and spent the rest of the day worrying where she'd had her finger before she stuck into my mouth.

Leading up to my attempt: I'd been on a three day drunk and cried out a quart and a half of tears before the idea seemed reasonable. Of course, I'm glad she rescued me. I don't want to die; I just want to quit wanting to die.

But now she thinks I owe her a raise or a bonus for saving my life. I told her I was deducting the cleaning bill for the duvet from her paycheck. Next time carry me to the bathtub for fuck-sake.

Q had a shit-fit and spent the next day removing all sharp instruments from my condo and confiscating my pearl-handled derringer. I reminded him we live on the 50th floor, and jumping is always an option.

In truth, the only way I would kill myself by jumping is out of a plane wearing a parachute and making up mind on the way down.

Biggie asked if I'd seen Jesus. I lied and said, I had. She then asked what he was wearing, so I told her a Tuxedo; she seemed satisfied with my lie.

My gang, the crew, my employees laid down an ultimatum: find a new psychiatrist or, as they politely said, "We're having you committed."

To facilitate their request (I don't think I need to see a new psychiatrist, there is nothing wrong with me, and I'll kill anyone who says there is.) I succumbed to their suggestion, (Blackmail) and called the numbers on a list provided by Biggie, (Biggie...as in "Biggest" Traitor).

Well, in truth, I didn't call. Biggie made the appointments, Q drove, and Stella strong-armed me to the door and stood guard.

First appointment: Doctor Wilhelm Guttman. Graduate of the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna, Austria. (Assuming one can believe certificates hung on walls under glass and slightly askew) He smelled like dirty socks and picked at a scab on his chin. His thick accent hurt my ears. I lasted long enough to get directions to the ladies' room and skipped out.

Second appointment: Doctor Jason Turnbull. Tall, bearded, and smoked a pipe. The smoking part appealed to me, the pipe--not so much. Like Bernie, the Hooker used to say, "Never trust a man who smokes a pipe." I shortened the statement to "Never trust a man," but you get my point.

Doctor Turnbull seated me at a table in his office, handed me a pen and stack of paperwork. "Fill these out, and then we can begin."

The doctor required not only insurance and financial information but copies of the previous diagnosis by other psychiatrists. To include all medications prescribed (past and present) and a summary detailing all suicide attempts. The last page required my signature declaring I'd never sue him for malpractice.

I do not fill out forms. I stood to leave.

"Problem with the paperwork?" He asked.

"I don't consider it a problem. I'm not filling them out."

"Are we going to start with "Trust" issues?"

"Let me get this straight. You want my social security number and financial disclosure, and I'm the one with the trust issues?"

"We must start from a place of trust."

"How about we start with my telling you to go fuck yourself?"

Stella stood outside the door with a look of mirth on her face.

"You were eavesdropping?"

"What, you don't trust me?" And then she burst into a gale of laughter.

Third appointment: Reluctantly, a week later, I agreed to a third appointment. Q took the Eisenhower and exited at North Avenue. I hit the lock my door. We rolled into the parking lot of a small vacant strip mall except for one door marked, Doctor Bradli Cabot AS.

"Well, this is encouraging," I said. "Can I borrow your pistol?"

"You'll be fine. Stella has a black belt in ass whoppin'."

"Anyone think to bring along a Kevlar Vest?"

"Oh, don't be such a pussy," he said. "You used to live in a worse neighborhood than this."

"My point, exactly."

Approaching a door marked Dr. Bradli Cabot. I knocked, and then I knocked again. Finally, the door opened.

"Mrs. Markowicz?"

The voice came from below me. Doctor Cabot was, in fact, a little person. Or, perhaps, a dwarf is the politically correct term. Regardless, her face came within inches of my crotch. I took a step back.

"Yes," I said, looking down into the face of an incredibly short person with long jet black hair, a pixie nose, and acne-scarred skin. Her height said 10. Her face said 40. I decided to add and divide by two, 25 worked.

"Please, come in and have a seat. I've been waiting for you."

"Am I late?"

"No, you're just my first," she said.

"You're first patient today? It's three o'clock in the afternoon." I said.

"No, first patient ever."

She pointed to a folding chair next to the smallest desk I'd ever seen. My knees came to rest on cracked Formica. Doctor Cabot stepped onto a plywood box and propelled herself onto a computer type chair. As she swung around to meet me, her legs stuck straight out perpendicular to her body.

I sat looking at the bottom of her platform sandals strapped onto swollen feet attached to fence posts rising to a short skirt exposing ever-increasing mounds of flesh coming to rest on black lace panties or a bush in need of a Bikini Wax. (Wow, that's a long sentence.)

"I guess you're surprised I'm a woman? Bradli is normally a guy name, but my dad wanted a son...so my mother, suffering from battered wife syndrome, named me after my grandfather. I dropped them and added an I."

"Sounds like Mom was a peach. I'm familiar with mother issues," I said.

"Yeah, I'm still in analysis," she said.

Great, I thought. I'm in a shitty part of town, talking to a dwarf with more problems than I have. I needed a cigarette. "Can I smoke?" I asked, lighting up before she could answer.

"Oh, hell, yes," she said and pulled out an ashtray big enough to accommodate a full-sized turkey with all the trimmings.

"I've tried to quit for years, but each time I start biting my nails," She held up a paw-like hand with blood-red nail extensions.

"Nice nails," I said.

"Yeah, I was in the business before hanging out my shingle."

"You owned a nail salon?"

"No, I just worked there while I went to doctor school."

"Ahhh, where did you go to doctor school?"

"An online University. You've probably never heard of it. I'm two years and six months from my degree. I opened this office to get my feet wet." And with that, she wiggled her toes, reminding me to add Lil' Smokies to my shopping list.

Bradli (with and I) spent the next twenty minutes sharing her life story as if we were newly acquainted girlfriends out on a lunch date. We drank wine from Dixie cups and munched on cheese and crackers.

As it turned out, Bradli moved from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Chicago precisely one month ago. She paid six-months rent, bought a cot, a hot plate, and an apartment-sized refrigerator.

The desk and computer chair came from Goodwill. One of the janitors sawed the legs off the desk and delivered it for free. (I think she blew him...but not crucial to the story.)

Her mom was a regular-sized woman, and her dad came from a long line of Dwarfs.

According to Bradli, Dad worked the County Fair circuit, something to do with barrels and milk bottles. He came home long enough to break a few chairs and loosen a few teeth. Along with Alcoholism and being compulsive gambling, he had a bad case of Napoleon complex.

Her mother was a 'stay at home' mom, in that, she never left the house. She suffered from Agoraphobia, schizophrenia, and hypochondria. (Her self-diagnosis...refer to Hypochondria.)

"What was your mother like?" she asked.

"She was a peach," I said.

"How lucky for you. Mom killed herself the day I started my period. I'll never forget. She bought an angel food cake and put 12 candles on it. I didn't bother to tell her I was thirteen. No point in spoiling her celebration. Then she handed me a little box wrapped in aluminum foil. "Happy Birthday," she said.

"I was so excited. Mom seldom remembered my birthday and never left the house to shop for a gift. I peeled off the foil to find a half-full box of sanitary napkins. She must have noticed my disappoint because she walked into her bedroom and blew her brains out while I sang, Happy birthday to me. Wow, listen to me going on about my life when you're the patient," she said while dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex.

Truthfully, I was at a loss for words. I'd hit the psychiatrist jackpot. She drinks smokes, and her mom was more fucked up than mine. I felt better already. I'd not felt this good in years.

We were getting along famously when Stella banged on the door. "You okay in there?"

"I'll handle this," I said to my new best friend and opened to the door and stepped out.

"You can leave now," I said, clinging to the door and flicking my cigarette ash into the wind.

"Have you been drinking?"

"It's called therapy, Miss Nosey Parker. Now, beat it."

I closed the door and locked it.

"A friend of yours," Bradli asked while wrestling with a metal ice-cube tray. "These things are impossible."

"Fuck the ice. We don't need no stinkin' ice," I said, and we both had a great laugh.

Just as we were excavating our mutual neurosis, Bradli excused herself to the bathroom.

"Gotta drain the taco," she said. "And by the way, today is my birthday," She left the room singing, "Happy Birthday to me."

Kaboom.

I found her on the floor, propped up against the lavatory. Blood trickled from a wound to her forehead. "Woops, I guess I missed," she said. A large hole in the ceiling rained plaster.

I pressed "Q" on my iPhone. "Call Doctor Dark and hire a plasterer."

"Pardon me?"

"Your's is not to reason...etc."