I'm
not sure what it is about nights like tonight, but I can feel that this is
going to be a bad one. It seems to be the only thing shrinks can expect from
working at an asylum, or "mental health rehabilitation facility." The
board makes us call it that as if folks don't actually know what it's really
all about: making crazy people not crazy. That's what we like to think, anyway.
Sadly, many of the "residents" of this place are lifers. Never again
to see the light of day. I'd go crazy just looking at those padded walls,
especially since I got called in at 2:00 am to talk to a patient in solitary
confinement.
As I enter the
building, I begin to ponder what might have happened. Did someone get hurt? How
many were involved? Is extra intervention necessary to deal with this problem?
Will this take all night? I would much rather be sleeping at home and deal with
this during my office hours later, but there's always that intern who pulled a
double shift and is looking for an excuse to bring me in for a consult, or the
on-call resident that thinks every interaction with a patient holds significant
information on how to treat them. In my experience, both of these people exist
simply to annoy their colleagues and kiss the asses of the grant committee to
get more funding for some long-shot research project that won't deliver any
promising medical results. Nonetheless, when the horn sounds, I come running. I
am a doctor, after all.
Walking down the hall
in solitary confinement is like some of the patients; some of the windows are
lit but nobody's home. I know that sounds jaded, but in some cases it holds
true to the state at which some of the patients are in. Some are incurable,
which makes them dangerous. The best we can do is give them their own space and
one-on-one therapy so they don't hurt anyone. Used to break my heart to do this
to them, but now it's common practice. I look through one window to see a
patient writing on the wall of his room, where all I can make out is "the
criminal disappears after the inventor." Seems pretty vague and screwy to
me. Maybe a retelling of some demented dream brought on by psychotic delusions,
or even the start of an event that put him in here. It's all the same at 2:00
am, but I need to focus on the reason I'm here, and not get distracted by every
patient that writes stuff on the walls. Get in, deal with the problem, get out.
As I reach the end of
the hall, I hear an intern talking to one of the security patrol personnel,
also known as "the guards." When the intern saw me, he broke away
quickly to walk with me and talk. He tells me that one of the patients started
making enough noise to cause some other restless patients to wake up from deep
sleep. Crazy people don't like having their sleep disturbed either. What are
the odds?
We walk to the room
where the offending patient is located, who is making no noise at this point.
If it weren't for multiple eye witnesses, I think I would go right home. Sadly,
that is not correct etiquette, which is dictated by hospital protocol written
by the people who sign our paychecks and nothing more. As I look in at the
patient, I notice nothing immediately out of the ordinary. The lights were on,
but the patient seemed to be asleep. I prescribe a mild sedative in case he
wakes up again and begin to walk away. I can't believe I got called in for
something so trivial. Such is the cross us attending physicians must bear, I
suppose. I walk back and my eye is drawn to the patient from earlier, writing
on the wall. The same sentence over and over like a mantra. I've seen something
like this many times over and want to intervene and get to the bottom of it, but
I just don't have the energy. I am sorry for what happened to you, but I cannot
help you right now, pal.
Pulling into my
driveway, I start to think back to the patient's room. It was surprisingly
clean compared to others. Cleaner than any of those rooms should be.
Considering the company that is kept in that wing, details like that tend to
stand out. It may just be nothing, but I call the intern again and order him to
check in on the offending patient and call me back. The call doesn't come.
Driving up to the
office, I see lots of yellow police tape and cruisers in the parking lot. My
stomach drops, wondering if this had anything to do with the intern not calling
me back last night. Making my way through the mess of cops and asylum
personnel, I eventually reach the scene that is causing the commotion. Fearing
the worst, I peer through the doorway of the room I checked in on last night.
It was no longer clean.
The white floors now
run crimson with the blood of the intern, whose throat, wrists and ankles are
slashed. I can't do anything else but look away out of shame. I make my way
outside and fall to my knees, trying to come to grips with sending a young
doctor to their death. For some reason, my mind goes back to the patient
writing on the wall, and my attitude toward him. I think to myself that if I
had taken more time to help people like him when I see the problem, something
like this can be avoided. I thought I've stopped blaming myself for those
things a long time ago, but I guess I haven't yet.
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