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Leading the Witness
Megan Wildhood
Nurse Dean taps the day-shift social-work intern assigned to watching the wall of cameras. “I’m going in,” he says as he snaps on single-use gloves and rolls out his shoulders.
“Roger that,” the intern says eagerly. The door between the staff area and the living room/kitchen/dining area/coloring table/14 sleeping cubbies for people experiencing mental-health and/or substance-abuse crises shimmies its way to a slam, but the intern still hears the cause of the ruckus.
“I have PTSD in my knee and you better bring antibiotics quickly because I’m so, so sorry.” Jane sniffles.
“Jane, why don’t you hand me the knives?” Dean holds out his hand and points to his palm.
“Yeah, you better be wearing gloves.” Jane smiles as if Dean is about to take her photo. “You need to stay, everyone needs to stay fifteen feet and a half away from me.” Jane holds both her fists, full of plastic knives, like goalposts above her head as she turns to the part of the unit with the high ceilings and the thick, fuzzy light columns from the imperfect skylights. “I have a bacteria and you’re all depriving me of calcium. Is it because you’re not real people?”
Ronaldo leaps from the couch and runs to the emergency exit where he knocks and knocks and knocks. Jane looks after him and nods. “Smart kid, that one.” The only other nurse on today, Sunday, walks up to him and starts up a quiet conversation. Corey remains asleep in one of the armchairs in front of the TV. Vicki laughs off the rest of her meth behind him on the rubber mats that lock together like the easiest puzzle in the world.
“Jane, look. I have gloves on.” Dean holds his hands up like an invitation to play patty cake. Jane turns her fists of plastic knives over and puts the pointy edges in Dean’s palms. Her eyes flash she looks at him so hard, like she knows there’s something that will hurt her and her son at the back of Dean’s brain. The multiple deflated bags under her eyes, too many for her age, twitch. She pushes on the knives hard.
“Shit!” Dean yells, but he’s not cut. “How did you get a metal knife, Jane?” He tries to get his fingers around all the knives, the plastic ones surrounding a single metal one that only staff are supposed to have access to. The most important thing is to get the knives away from Jane; she’s on the No Sharps list. She’s not suicidal—the dementia part of her is not suicidal. The mental-health professionals haven’t been able to assess the psychosis part yet. Please, Lord, let the case managers be working on declarations, Dean prays to the God who he believes called him into this work.
“Get someone out here,” Dean mouths at the camera in the corner of the room. He’s not scared. It’s just that no one else can write about this in their declarations if they don’t witness it themselves and it almost always takes more than one declaration to move the court to get clients the help they don’t think they need. “Jane, can you let go of—”
“Yes, because I am womaaaaan, heeeeeear meeee roaaaaar,” Jane sings. “And ain’t I woman? I would never have sex before marriage because I am a nondenominational Christian.”
The other nurse hasn’t gotten Ronaldo to stop knocking on the glass of the emergency exit yet. Jane nods her head to the irregular beat.
“I am expecting visitors, but you need to wear a cap and gown and disinfect everything because I know they gave me a virus.”
Sarah enters the unit, pony tail boinging with each step. Dean drops his chin so the person watching the cameras in the office doesn’t see him swear. This hotshot has led protest marches through several American cities against involuntary treatment. She’s gotten some very helpful laws repealed, making it much harder to detain clients who really need help. That’s probably why she took this job as a case manager, she thinks she can coach the clients up so they pass assessments when the facility does manage to get the county’s designated crisis responders out there. Maybe she’s got a mind to also direct staff never to call the DCRs in the first place but handle all situations, even the ones outside the scope of the facility’s care, themselves. She’ll probably refuse to write declarations for clients who clearly need intensive treatment they’re convinced they’re fine without and she most definitely believes with every fiber of Vegan, Keto, high-intensity-interval trained being that she can change the social-service system fastest from the inside without involving mental-health court until she can abolish it completely.
“They can treat viruses at the hospital, Jane.” Dean tugs on the knives; Jane’s strength surprises him.
“Does Jane have a virus?” The smell of bleach from the mid-morning cleaning that’s started at the other end of the unit makes Dean gag.
Damn you, Sarah. “Validation therapy,” Dean whispers.
Sarah shakes her head. “I don’t know what that is.” That’s the other infuriating thing about Sarah. She has no education, no background in social work, let alone crisis services, at all. And she’s too literal to be a social worker. She’d make a good lawyer, actually. If she believed in the system, or any systems.
Though it’s not like Dean believes in the system, either. He became a nurse because this, earth, society, all of it, is a triage situation and, since he didn’t know how to change the big-picture brokenness, the least he could do was try to help people survive until someone could. Dean knows he’s not that person and he’s pretty sure Sarah’s not, either; he’s just as sure that Sarah thinks she is.
“Pay attention.” Dean turns back to Jane, who’s got a death grip on the knives. “Jane—”
“Little Missy needs to put on gloves, too. She’ll give me a kiss if she doesn’t. And I really need you all to tell him I’m so sorry and I pray for him every day.” Jane’s oversized Batman T-shirt flaps as Jane points back and forth between Sarah and her own cheek. Sarah’s nose wrinkles and, a second later, Dean smells the reason: garlic, sweat and stale smoke waft off of Jane with each shirt-sleeve flap.
“Jane, where are your dentures?” Sarah draws a circle around her own mouth and pokes her top lip. Of course Sarah knows about the dentures. She reads every word of every file before engaging with any client, which is why Dean was out here with Zany Jane and the Knives alone until now.
“I said Little Missy needs to pray for him every day and they don’t want me. Why don’t they want me?” Cords briefly bulge in her neck and forearms before she stomps, releasing the tension buildup.
“Who doesn’t want you, Jane?” Dean glares at the camera and shakes his head.
“I have manic and when I’m manic, I have a fear of germs.”
Sarah looks at Dean. “I don’t know what your validation therapy is, but, if the client expresses insight, wouldn’t validating the delusions, which is my guess about what validation therapy is, quash those?”
“Quash is something you do to, say, a subpoena.” He clears his throat forcefully.
“You understand that your fear of germs isn’t caused by the germs, right?” Sarah turns to Jane, who is squared off to Sarah with her hands on her hips, knife tips pointing to the wall full of client art behind her, and her jaw jutted forward.
“I have this friend who’s also afraid of germs,” she says and waves a fist of knives at Sarah. “Her name is Jane, well, I can’t remember what her name is, but she and I both suffer from perfectionism.” Jane’s eyes get wide and watery. “How many stages are there?”
“Of perfectionism?” Sarah struggles to fully swallow a laugh. “What a brilliant question.”
“Oh my God.” Jane yells, startling everyone including Ronaldo, who finally stops knocking on the window and runs back to his cubby. The other nurse looks at Dean from across the room. Dean nods, releasing the nurse to follow Ronaldo. “Is that what it is? Perfectionism? You need to get me my inhaler.”
“You don’t have asthma, Jane,” Sarah says as Dean races to the nurse’s station and back with a mass-produced, plastic inhaler in a red and yellow box.
“See, Jane, this one is fresh out of the package. No germs.” He shakes the box. The tear of its cardboard startles Jane and she jumps back from Dean as he stretches the inhaler, pinched between pointer and thumb like it’s hazardous, toward Jane’s hands.
Jane traps the inhaler between her wrists, keeping both fists of knives tight.
“Isn’t Jane supposed to transfer next door about now?” Sarah waves at her friend from the facility’s two-week stabilization program who is walking through the door to do a transfer. “You ready, Jane?
“Have you seen the volcano yet?” Jane says through drags on her inhaler.
Dean looks up from gathering the knives. “They approved her referral?” He wiggles a knife out from under Sarah’s foot. “Wait, who even referred her in the first place?”
“I did. Come on, Jane, let’s go meet Rami.” Sarah hovers her hand behind Jane’s back and swipes her badge to open the door into the lobby.
“Sarah, she can’t go over there like that. The program is for working on longer-term goals,” Dean explains because maybe Sarah doesn’t know yet. She’s been here less than two months. “She needs a higher level of care than we can provide. Plus, uh, she’s still got the knives.”
Sarah flaps her hand at him. “Hey, Jane, where are your dentures?”
“I lost all the hearts.” Jane’s face falls so fast Sarah thinks it might drop all the way off her skull.
“Jane, can you put the knives where you put your dentures?”
“Yeah, but I’m going to need you to tell him.” She walks over, face practically on her chest, to the trashcan and throws all the knives in with enough force that a few bounce back out. Trevor, the client in cubby 6, pokes his scruffy head above the wall, darts his eyes between the trash can, Dena and Jane, takes a few heavy breaths, and ducks back into his assigned space.
Dean has to admit he’s marveling a bit at Sarah, how she knew where Jane’s dentures were, mostly, and how she thought of the trick to release the knives. He’d seen her throw the dentures away—how did Sarah know, though?—and hadn’t thought of that himself.
“Sarah—”
“Jane, this is Rami. She’s going to take you next door.” Sarah loop-de-loops her name at the bottom of the belongings inventory in Jane’s chart and hands it to Rami. “Jane didn’t come in with much, as you can see.”
Rami skims the belongings sheet, taps the end of her pin on the paper as she glances at each item of clothing Jane’s got on—the Batman shirt that’s big enough on Jane to be a tent, black stretch pants, one orange sock, one red one, untied shoes, and a blue cardigan that looks like it has shredded doilies sewn all over it. “All righty, Jane,” Rami nods at Sarah and leads Jane to the door.
“In the middle of the niiiiiiight,” Jane sings as she zigzags after Rami. “I was walking down the streeeeeeeet.” She throws her arms up and the inhaler flies overhead, landing in the staircase behind them. She stops at the door and shakes her head so hard the cracks in her neck echoes around the lobby.
Sarah holds the outside door open. “It’s okay, Jane.” She points to the outside.
“They don’t want me over there and I’m a nonviolent person.”
Sarah smiles at Rami. “Just keeping walking. She’ll follow you. That’s how I got her to eat today.” She covers her mouth with her hands. “Not so good with the words anymore, but she can imitate.”
Rami walks toward the other program’s door. Jane seems to understand and follows until they are out of sight.
“Whew, that was close.” Sarah swipes her badge and the door to the office area beeps and clicks.
Dean glares, brow furrowed. “She needs to be hospitalized,” he says to everyone else in the office but Sarah.
“Maybe that’s why she’s coming back,” a mental-health professional says, leaning toward the window and hitting it softly with his knuckle.
“Jane?” Sarah yells and runs out to the lobby as Jane walks past the door she had just exited.
“She ran away from me,” Rami sighs, opening the door to the staff area fast enough to create a gust that blows some substance-abuse evaluation forms to the floor.
“Jane!” Sarah and Rami yell at the same time.
Jane stops but doesn’t turn around. “They don’t want me over there.”
Rami barely touches Jane’s shoulder. “Oh, honey, that’s not true. We want you with us very much.” She widens her eyes at Dean, though, then frowns at Sarah.
Jane’s head shakes like someone has pinched it between two fingers and is turning it back and forth like a jammed key. “People sing about raising the roof but nobody sings about breaking the roof like Jesus did.” She turns to Sarah, her cheeks like crumpled and unfolded pieces of paper. “I guess they do about shattering the ceiling, though.” She howls the chorus of Spirit in the Sky; the sliding window shielding the person watching cameras. The phone rings, trembling in its holder, while the camera watcher gawks at the scene Jane is making.
“She can’t go over there,” Dean says. “She requires a much higher level of care than we can provide.” He walks toward the nursing station, says over his shoulder, “I’m calling AMR.”
Sarah looks at Jane, then Rami, then Jane again. “Hospitals can’t cure dementia, Dean,” she hisses.
“I lost all the hearts.” Jane’s face is suddenly covered in tears.
Rami reaches for Sarah’s hand. “Sweetie.” She squeezes, pinching her wedding band painfully against Sarah’s surrounding fingers. “We’re a crisis stabilization center. We’re not doing any good keeping her here. We have to discharge her.”
“I can’t think of a bigger crisis than dementia.” Sarah’s eyes smolder at the Tyvek on the luxury condos being constructed across the street and the construction machines belching black smoke around it. “Except that.”
“If she doesn’t go to the hospital, where do you propose we discharge her to? A shelter? The street?” Dean leans on the doorframe, and his scrubs stick to it.
“She ran away from you,” Sarah says, pulling her shoulders back. “No way she’ll get into an ambulance.”
“Only for a change of atmospheeeeeere.” Jane sings, leaning against the door to the outside, one foot holding it open. Rami waves Jane back inside, points to the lobby’s table and chair.
“Oh, hun, I deeply admire your unadulterated idealism.” Rami lets go of Sarah’s hand and pats her back between the shoulder blades. “Which is why I hate to say this: you know the stabilization work we do here won’t resolve Jane’s crisis.”
“Or even slow it down, apparently.” Sarah pushes her lips together and her bottom one pokes out like she’s actually pouting.
“Jane has decompensated rapidly even since her admittance, Sarah.” Rami says.
“Fine, side with oppression. Side with violating another human’s rights.” Sarah turns her eyefuls of daggers to the center’s mission and values statement tacked to the wall above the table Jane is questioning loudly.
“Don’t you think I’m a nonviolent person, Ms. Rounds?” Jane turns to Sarah. “She’s half of my first-grade teacher. I don’t know where the other half went.” Her jaw drops and her eyes dart all over the room. “Oh my God, why did I do that?”
“Her options are the hospital or a shelter, from what I understand about her situation,” Rami says. “Not oppression or freedom.”
“AMR is on the way.” Dean’s voice echoes into the lobby. “I’m working on my declaration now since pass-down is in fifteen minutes.” Swing shift is already starting to arrive, shuffling quietly past Jane, who’s at the door again, holding it open and clapping whoever walks through on the back. “The people evaluating for involuntary detainment are going to need more than one declaration to take Jane’s case seriously, just an FYI.”
“I can write one,” Rami says, “but I won’t be able to say much. This is my first time interacting with her.”
“Yeah, the lawyers aren’t going to take you seriously, then, probably.” Dean shrugs.
“Jane, do you know what we’re talking about?” Sarah walks to the door and leans on the frame. She knows she’s not supposed to block clients’ exits.
“I’ll die out there.” Jane shakes her head. “It’s like a really sad movie out there.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Sarah says, leaning toward Dean. “What part are you playing in the movie, Jane?” Sarah turns back to Jane, her face, tone, everything, completely serious.
“I have a friend with that name. Same hair as me, too.” Jane pulls her curls straight. “Which, I swear, I need to be smooth. Do you understand? Smooth!”
“Is your friend in the movie?” Sarah inches through the doorway. Now it’s Rami and Dean’s turn to shake their heads sadly.
“He’s probably forgotten all about me.” She sighs. “I really have lost all the hearts.” She steps outside and starts to walk toward the stairs down to the busy street in front of the center. It isn’t until now that Dean notices Jane’s barefoot.
“Jane. Jane, where are you going?” Sarah lets the door slam as she follows Jane.
“To get my son.” Jane stops in the middle of the right lane, which is reserved for buses at this stretch.
“Where’s he? Jane?” Sarah stops on the sidewalk and holds her hand out to Jane.
“1962.” Jane takes Sarah’s hand and shakes it. “Nice to finally meet you,” Jane says. As soon as Sarah lets go of her hand, Jane’s eyes widen and she bolts toward the road.
Redblue redblue redblue flashes on Jane, who is now in the middle of the road, and she wobbles. An ambulance rears up on the curb swerving to miss her. Sarah hears footsteps and breath regulated like a marathon runner’s before she sees Dean rushing toward them. “This is the client you’re here to pick up,” Dean pants. “Don’t let her tell you otherwise.” He glances at Sarah then Jane. “Either of them.”
Jane cocks her head at the large blue M on the side of the ambulance. “You didn’t have your disco or your music on.” She strokes the M, muttering “M is for Marty, that’s good enough for meeeee, M is for Marty, my one and only little babyyyyyyyy.” She suddenly stops singing and shakes her finger at the ambulance. “Shame on you. You all need some new decals.” She interrupts herself with a song Sarah doesn’t recognize and wanders around to the front of the ambulance. “Get to your emergency,” Jane inserts between choruses. “Quick. And bring me back some antibiotics and also a blood transfusion.” Her hair has gone even wilder in the August-thick humidity that has arrived three months early.
“If you go with these nice folks here,” Dean says, motioning for the paramedics to follow him, “they can take you to doctors who can get you all checked out.”
Jane narrows her eyes and leans toward Dean. She stares at him like that, tapping her ratty-tennis-shoed, for almost a full minute straight before she says. “Am I really a nonviolent person?”
“Hey Jane? My name is Bryce.” The male paramedic steps toward Jane.
“Ev-ry-bo-dy needs to hear me roar,” Jane sings to the tune of I’m A Little Teapot. She trots away from the paramedic and almost into oncoming traffic. She throws her hands up at the beater who’s had to slam on its brakes. The driver honks, which provokes Jane to yell, “From the looks of that old rust bucket, I was here first, ya filthy animal.” The other paramedic jumps into the driver’s seat, flips a crackly switch that turns on the flashers and whirlies and officially blocks traffic.
Bryce turns to Dean, who’s pleading with Sarah under his breath to write a declaration. “It doesn’t appear like Ms. Tagen is going to come with us willingly, and, unless we have an order from law enforcement, we are unable to transport clients involuntarily.”
Sarah holds up a hand in Dean’s face. “Oh? Really?” She throws a glare over her shoulder at Dean as she steps toward Bryce. “And why might that be?”
Bryce draws a breath to speak.
“Do you really think she’s making any of her choices willingly?” Dean points to Jane, who has taken the lotus position on the lane line near the front of the ambulance. Her meditation does not seem to be at all disturbed by the mounting cacophony of car horns from too far back to see what’s causing the backup.
“Look,” Bryce bends toward Dean, “between you and me, I have no doubt that she’s sick and, if it were up to me, I’d take her. But that’s the law. Unless she goes willingly, we need a DCR order.”
“Gosh, you know, it’s too bad there isn’t a law that mandates people give a shit about each other.” Sarah flips her braids over her shoulders. “You think people would do it then?”
Dean raises his voice. “There kind of is a law like that.”
Sarah raises her eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”
“To use it,” Dean says through clenched teeth, “you have to write a declaration.”
“So that they can send Jane to treatment against her will?” Sarah jerks her chin to the side and flutters her thick bangs with her sigh.
“At the moment, I can’t think of anything that violates someone’s will more than dementia.” Dean gestures toward Jane, who has arisen and is on the move again. “Jane is currently attempting to get around a paramedic to do the chicken dance across a major arterial to get back to 1962.”
Sarah clenches her fists. “There’s a whole movement of people who’ve had to recover from their wills being violated in the name of treatment.”
The rush of traffic sounds like a waterfall. Dean pinches the bridge of his nose like he does when he feels a migraine brewing. “I’m not sure you’d call it a movement, but there’s probably a ton of people trying to recover from being hit by cars, too.”
Sarah nods. “But Jane doesn’t think she needs treatment,” she says slowly.
“Jane also thinks 1962 is a place you can walk to and, gosh darn it, she’s going to do it barefoot even with the PTSD in her knee.” Dean scrunches his cheeks toward his eyes and purses his lips. “That reminds me, actually. She was demanding treatment earlier.”
“But there is no treatment for dementia.” Sarah frowns. The Tyvek flogs the framing of the latest condomium complex in the city, making the kind of sound Dean has seen startle Sarah.
“I thought you were convinced that wasn’t what was up with—”
“I got her in the ambulance,” the female paramedic says as she walks back toward the group.
Dean and Sarah turn to her and say “How?” at the same time.
“She wasn’t responding to anything I was saying and her communication was all word salad. But I noticed she was doing something funny with her arms.”
“The chicken dance, apparently.” Sarah avoids looking at Dean. Dean wipes the sweat and humidity off his face with his sleeve.
“I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with my arms that wouldn’t agitate her. She just kept wincing and cowering. But then, she started imitating me so we played charades all the way to the gurney. Damsel’s got some moves, which only stopped if I stopped singing.”
“Fascinating,” Bryce says.
“She needs help,” Sarah and Dean say together. They make brief eye contact before turning away, Sarah’s cheeks flushing, beads of sweat appearing on Dean’s brow.
“Well, she’s going to get it now.” The other paramedic adjusts her gloves.
“But how’d you get her onto the gurney?”
“Danced her up to it, strapped myself on it to show her how it’s done, then got up and gave her the old now-you-try gesture. Took me a minute to understand her demand to disinfect it. Something about the PTSD of germs. Anyway, I strpped her in and loaded her into the wagon. Singing the whole time, naturally.”
Dean hands Bryce the emergency responder information about Jane, there are handshakes all around and the ambulance glides off toward Pill Hill. “I filed a declaration before I called you,” he says to the paramedic.
“What’s the request?” The paramedic snaps the ends of her gloves against her wrists one at a time.
“Evaluation for grave disability,” Dean says, bracing for Sarah’s comeback.
“Sweet. So, the hospital can hold her for three days, I believe.” The paramedic tugs on the ambulance doors to make sure they’re locked. The rattle but Jane still sings away on the other side of them.
Sarah’s forehead is red and wrinkled by her fury. “Sweet, so the county’s lackies have three days to judge her and if they don’t, the hospital can release her.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted, Sarah?” Dean says, fanning himself with the client’s chart he was holding when Jane took the drama outside.
“No.” Rami appears right behind Dean. “What Sarah wanted was for there to be an option besides homelessness or the hospital.”
Sarah drops the pen she hadn’t realized she’d been holding this whole time. “Yeah,” she says, leaning over to pick up the pen and hide her fresh tears. She stays bent, staring at the millions of tiny cracks in the concrete. “Neither of those are voluntary,” she says to the asphalt. “They’re not real choices.”
“Options is not synonymous with choices.” Dean whispers. Does he actually have an urge to put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder?
“And you’re …” Sarah turns to face the center, “all right with that?”
Dean nods to the paramedics who are getting ready to head off. “No,” he says to Sarah. “That’s why I wrote a declaration.”
“We all good here, counselors?” The paramedic in the driver’s seat leans out the window.
“Thank you so much, guys.” Dean gives a sad face in Sarah’s direction, but she’d already stalked off back to the staff area inside. “Oh, hey!” He says as the ambulance’s engine starts. “What song was she singing?”
“These Boots Are Made For Walking.”
Dean nods and waves the ambulance away. He heads through the office area, where the pass-down to swing shift is in progress, to the nurse’s station. The fax machine is flashing red and beeping. The document causing the paper jam begins like this, Dean sees as he tries to wriggle it free:
JERICA COUNTY MUNICIPAL COURT
WASHINGTON STATE
SARAH HOLLINGSWORTH / Case No: 18-000-0001A
Witness,
In re: the involuntary detainment of / Declaration of Primary Witness
JANE TAGEN
Respondent
I, Sarah Hollingsworth, a Case Manager at Crisis Resolution am writing regarding Jane Tagen (DOB: 1/13/1955), as well as the multiple supports and services that have failed her thus far in her life. My colleagues are likely going to file or have already filed declarations advocating for Ms. Tagen’s forced commitment in a psychiatric ward, after which she will likely be discharged to the streets. I am writing to balance the perspective on Ms. Tagen such that neither of these options remain feasible. Ms. Tagen is a client at my place of employment, where she came to us two days ago, during which time I interacted with her extensively and have observed the following:
The machine has mangled the rest, except a few lines at the end:
It is clear that Ms. Tagen is in need of relief. It is unclear why such relief, whatever form it may take, must include the suspension of Ms. Tagen’s civil liberties. I am willing to testify to the fact…
Of course the paper is torn at the important part.
I can be reached at my workplace via subpoena or the phone number listed in your records. I implore you to contact me before rendering a final diagnosis of Ms. Tagen.
Sarah Hollingsworth, MA, CM
________________________________
May the 8th, 2018
Jerica County, WA
United States of America
“So she wrote a declaration after all,” Dean says to an empty nurse’s station. “One the DCRs won’t do much with besides laugh at and throw out, probably. But still.”
“Backup, please come to the office area. Any available staff. Backup. Please, thanks. Roger out,” the swing shift lead’s voice stumbles through the PA before Dean could decide about Sarah’s declaration. Why does no one ever get the Roger sign-off right? Dean hustles to the staff area, where two police officers are interviewing the swing shift case manager and everyone else but Michael monitoring the cameras out on the floor with the clients.
“They need you to turn over bed 13,” Michael says without turning from the cameras. “Intake arriving in five.”
“Nurses don’t turn over beds.” Dean shakes his head. How many times had he explained this to staff? It was more the turnover rate than thick-headedness, he reminded himself.
“They don’t care who does it. That’s why they called for backup. You showed up.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean flicks his wrist at Michael, gloved up and headed for the supply closet to grab linens, a broom and the cleaning spray.
He walks through a couple of staff de-escalating a client who is, from what he overheard, certain that the trashcans re data-collection devices and shaes his head again when one of the staff says, “Well, I mean, you’re not that far off, Trevor.”
Dean finds a meticulously organized mess in cubicle 13. Snack wrappers, organized by color, piled in one corner, all the crumbs in the cubby gathered in another. Jane had hospital-cornered her bed. Faded, creased lace-up boots rest perfectely centered on the floor at the end of Jane’s bed. A large stack of printer paper, mostly blank, sits exactly in the upper right corner of Jane’s mattress, the sheet on top smaller than the rest, ripped from a larger sheet filled with ancient cursive that reads:
The gurus here demand declarations. So this is mine:
When I was nine, yes, I was the one who cut my baby sister free from the rope she’d gotten around her wrists because of the horses. I think there was a virus but we also lived on a farm. I had the knife and yes, I did cut her free. I didn’t hurt her at all because I’m concerned about that very thing. Twice, my dad smacked my face so hard some teeth came out. My sister only saw the second time and she was scared of him forever after that.
She ran away, so she missed it when the barn caught flame and that caught all the germs on fire and then they got in the house because germs are everywhere god damn it. So then our house burned down all the way. I probably breathed up 18 half gallons of smoke that day. I bet my doctors thought I was a coal miner! I tried to tell them that I’m just a canary, but I think they didn’t believe me because my middle name is Robin instead, but I actually can fly. Or at least, I really should be able to. They may be gurus at the crisis place, but I know they believe me. They don’t think I’m crazy.
Until then, though, I guess my boots are made for walking.
Dean blinks; a tear plops onto Jane’s handwriting, magnifying the word free.
Two clients cat-fight over the eternally malfunctioning TV. He leaves the broom, the linens, all but the (toxic) cleaning spray, in Jane’s cubby, and walks back to the nurse’s station. After addressing a fax cover letter to the hospital Jane is probably at by now, he writes in the memo field:
- A declaration from primary witness opposing involuntary detainment.
- A declaration from a second primary witness in favor of client’s freedom.
He dials the hospital’s fax number. He pauses, finger twitching. He finally taps send.
His ow declaration, which he’d already filed before the ambulance arrived, still shows on the nurse’s station computer. He types “revision” in bolded, thick red letters at the top, turns on Track changes and types. I request that Ms. Tagen be evaluated for grave disability before she is discharged from your facility. a discharged back to Crisis Resolution so that those who have established bonds with Ms. Tagen can continue their work with her. He slides his declaration under a fax cover sheet and dials the hospital’s fax number again. This time, he does not hesitate to press send.
▪ ▪ ▪
Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com. Read the author’s commentary on her story.
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