"I'd just gotten in. The first day. The nurse said, "This is your room and this is your roommate, blah, blah, blah." It was about ten-thirty in the morning. I lay down on the bed, put my hands behind my head, and was just about to take a deep breath and go Ahhhh, when Edie came in. She was wearing one of those white cloth things that they make you wear for X-rays. She come in smoking a cigarette - this horrible, raspy cough - and she looked as light as a feather . . . like she was walking on air . . . and she sort of came down and lighted on one side of the bed. She held my wrist. I thought, "Oh, wow, this chick really looks like she's been through the war! The war." she said "I'm Edie Sedgwick." "My goodness," I thought, "this sure is a friendly hospital." I said I'd read something about her in the paper not too long before . . . about her father being a sculptor. We went on like that . . . just kind of small talk, really. That's how I met her. There wasn't anything sexual between us while I was in the hospital. I didn't want to be another statistic on the boards. I saw her go through a number of guys. Like once a guy named Preacher came in filthy jeans, black leather jacket, Hell's Angels type guy and I thought, "What is she doing with him?" Before that, it was somebody who'd just gotten out of prison notorious as the Santa Barbara cat burglar. He would steal people blind while they were right in bed sleeping . . . take the rings and watched off their fingers. He was with her. I didn't want that. Besides, I had made a vow to myself that I would not make love to anyone before I was twenty-one. But I thought Edie was fascinating. I was in Cottage Hospital to quit the drug world. To get away from it. But even in the hospital I couldn't. People in the corridors kept coming at me to ask, "Can you get me this? Can you get me that?" I would say, "But I'm a patient here. How in the world am I going to get that?" They wanted me to get, like, hundreds of thousands of pills. Speed pills I took very rarely. Just on Friday or Saturday night."