THE LONG HALLWAY ….. UNEXPECTED LESSONS
Once I began receiving paychecks, I stopped at the Commissary each afternoon to pick up small things for the men who had nothing to spend. Candy bars, plastic combs, and any inexpensive item I could afford proved to be small treasures on the ward. One day, Robert called out, “Jackson, get me a see-gar when you go to the store. C’mon, Jackson, please get me a see-gar.” He repeated this request over and over for the next hour and a half. I brought him the cigar when I returned from lunch, and from that day on, he begged for one daily.
I explained to Robert that other men wanted things too, but he didn’t lessen his continuous pleading. I endured the whining and kept rotating treats among different patients.
As I moved up and down the ward, Robert asked me the time again and again. When I pointed out the clock hanging not far from his bed, he insisted, “I cain’t see, Jackson. I cain’t see.” Yet he somehow managed to sprint to the chair in the C-11 doorway the moment the clock showed it was time for the Aide’s lunch.
Staff posted the weekly menu on a board beside C-12, and Robert would ask, “What’s for dinner, after each item. “Robert, do you like salad? Do you eat mashed potatoes? Is meatloaf one of your favorites?” He noticed I hadn’t read the drink choices and demanded them again. I read them. Twice. When he asked yet again, I stared him down and refused.
Just then, a couple of visitors were walking past us. Robert immediately began whining and pleading for me to read the menu. I ignored him. The couple stopped, shot me looks full of contempt, and read him every detail of the day’s meal. When they were out of earshot, I’m fairly certain I heard Robert chuckle.
Robert lagged wherever C-11 went. He lay on his bed during cleaning chores and insisted, “I’m tard, Jackson. I’m tard.” The Nurse Aide suggested I speak to Dr. Natesan, Robert’s psychiatrist, about his lethargy. When the doctor visited the next day, I suggested Robert might need vitamins. I don’t know what Dr. Natesan prescribed, but two days later, when we lined up for breakfast, Robert skipped – literally skipped – past the end of the line and straight on past Fred at the front. In those crepe-soled shoes, it was quite a sight.
On another of the doctor’s visits, I convinced him that Robert needed more to do. He needed a challenge. Dr. Natesan decided Robert should shine the doc’s shoes for twenty-five cents a day. Robert was delighted. The next morning, he knelt in front of the small doctorshined the shoes, popped the rag, whistled, and looked thoroughly pleased with himself. The second day, Robert announced he wanted fifty cents per day. The doctor willingly paid him. On the third day, when Robert tried to raise his fee again, the doctor decided he no longer needed daily shoe shines. Robert’s plan to fund his “see-gars” was thwarted.
As I learned more about the system, I discovered that, after a period without negative notes in their records, patients could be allowed home visits. Three successful such visits made the patients eligible for conditional release, and after another incident-free stretch – ninety days, I think – they could be permanently released.
When I re-read Robert’s card, I saw that no one from his family had visited in two years. I made it my mission to re-establish contact so he could qualify for a home visit. I’d
like to say my motives were pure, but the truth is I wanted to sit doors without him, avoid the constant begging for cigars, and stop having to drag him out of bed for morning cleaning.
I used our time together to ask about his life before the hospital. It took loads of patience and persistence, but he eventually shared that his family lived in Chicago, that he had lived with his brother and sister-in-law, and that his sister-in-law was blind. His voice was flat when he spoke of them, but he brightened right up when he talked of fried chicken and beer. When I asked why their visits had stopped, he said he didn’t know. He was not a reliable source of information in most cases, and his card showed a pattern of several visits, then fewer, then none. I concluded the family had made the long trip – over 250 miles – until his lack of engagement wore them down.
His records listed next-of-kin information, and I was determined to help him write them a letter. He claimed he couldn’t write, so I told him I would write for him. When I asked what he wanted to say, he answered, “I dunno, Jackson. I dunno.” I suggested phrases – “I’m sorry for not contacting you, I would like for you to come visit me.” After much deliberation, he agreed to some of my suggestions. Robert was very relaxed by the time we finished; I was exhausted. But the letter was finished, and I mailed it the next day.
A day or two after writing the letter, my assignment changed, and I began “floating” to other wards. The shift in assignments pulled me out of the familiar rhythm of C-11 and into corners of the hospital I had barely noticed before. One morning, as I helped form a breakfast line at Ward C-3, a booming voice echoed down the long hallway: “JACKSON! HEY, JACKSON!” Robert. Embarrassment flooded through me as patients and staff looked up and down the dozens of people in the hall, trying to identify the “Jackson” he was addressing. My nemesis stood head and shoulders above most men – hard to miss, and with a voice impossible to ignore. The C-11 line eventually moved on, and I eventually regained my composure.
Working on other wards exposed me to scenes that disturbed me greatly. On one unit, all the patients were deemed profoundly retarded. They ate with their hands or directly from the long, metal-topped table. Food was everywhere. After meals, staff hosed down the table, the floor, and the patients. The contrast between their world and the relative peace and order of C-11 was jarring.
On another ward, I assisted elderly men with showers. Some had massively enlarged genitalia and open sores – late-stage syphilis, the staff explained. That night, I looked the word up in the World Book Encyclopedia and learned the disease could also cause dementia, insanity, organ atrophy, and death. Many patients at Research Hospital showed these effects. The more I saw, the more I realized how little I had understood about the place when I first arrived.
When walking through the halls, I often encountered Marty, an eighteen-year-old whose poetry was often printed in the hospital newsletter. He was intelligent, handsome, outgoing – a favorite among staff and patients. During one of his mother’s visits, I saw the toll her controlling behavior took on him. I was told she brushed his teeth when he was at home. After her visits, he withdrew and became catatonic. The last time I saw him, he was being wheeled down the hall on a gurney after electroconvulsive therapy. His face was blank. The hospital could swallow a person whole in ways I hadn’t imagined.
Back on C-11, when I sat doors with Fred, I wondered why such a normal-seeming man was hospitalized. Later, I checked his card and realized he was the patient who attempted to kill his wife during home visits. I remembered meeting her – brash, bold, overbearing – and felt a strong empathy for him. Every patient had a story, and none of them were simple. The hospitalized member of the family often seemed to be the healthiest.
I returned to C-11 after more than a week away. On my second day back, there was a gurney in the middle of the ward, with an elderly gentleman on it. His name was Jimmy, and he had died. Staff tied a tag on his toe and wheeled him away. No one reacted. Most didn’t shift in their chairs in front of the television. I was stunned by the lack of response. Life and death existed side by side here, and the men had learned not to flinch.
One morning, a male Aide named Steve was on duty. He called me in the office, and asked me several personal questions – college, family, dating – that felt oddly intrusive. My mother, who was the assistant to the personnel director of the hospital, checked Steve’s personnel file and discovered he was a former patient, admitted for sexual issues, later released, and eventually hired as an Aide. The hiring of former patients as Aides was not uncommon, she said. I was relieved when I did not have to work again with Steve. The boundaries in this place were never too clear.
Midway through the summer, a charitable group held a carnival for the patients on the grounds outside of the C hall. Bright decorations, music, popcorn, snow cones, and games. I expected the men would enjoy it, but many were distressed by the noise and commotion. Staff and volunteers seemed oblivious to their discomfort. A few men watched from the windows at the end of the ward – feeling safer behind the glass. The outside world, even in celebration, could overwhelm them.
One afternoon, when I was working on another ward, I saw a well-dressed Black woman standing at the door of C-11. The Aide hadn’t answered her knock, so I used my key to let her in. I asked if she was here to visit Robert. She touched my arm, and asked if I had written the letter. When I said yes, she said, “We were so surprised to receive a letter from Robert. It’s been such a long time since we visited him.” I hoped he would be glad to see her. It was the first sign that the letter had reached someone who cared.
As summer drew to a close, I was walking down the long hallway with a birthday card for a co-worker, seeking signatures from the Aides. In the distance, I saw three figures approaching. The middle one was very tall. On his left walked a man; on his right was a woman wearing dark glasses and guiding herself with a white cane. As they drew closer, I recognized the grin – wide, exuberant, stretching across Robert’s face.
Robert looked distinguished in black-framed eyeglasses, a large paper bag tucked under his arm. He called out long before they reached me. “Jackson! Jackson! I’m goin’ home, Jackson! I’m goin’ home. I’m gonna have fried chicken and beer! I’m goin’ to Chicago, Jackson!”
Robert’s brother and sister-in-law introduced themselves and explained that this was his second home visit. They believed it would go well, and after a third, he would receive a conditional release. My heart swelled at the truth of everything he had told me – the brother, the blind sister-in-law, Chicago, fried chicken, and beer – and at the sight of him standing there, ready to leave.
I wished them well and watched the three of them continue down that long hallway. For the first time, Robert wasn’t lagging. He was leading the way.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The men, the staff, and the hospital itself occupied my mind and heart that entire summer. My encounters at Galesburg State Research Hospital in 1966 were so foreign to my previous life that integrating them took years. I cherish all of it, for the depth and breadth of human experience it afforded me. At nineteen, I became intimate with frailty and strength, vulnerability and perseverance, and the indomitable human spirit.
Galesburg State Research Hospital was originally built between 1945 and 1947 as Mayo Hospital. The 155-acre property held 99 buildings, where 6,000 WWII soldiers were treated and prepared for discharge from the service. The hospital closed in 1949. In 1950, the Illinois Department of Public Welfare took over and operated the facility as a psychiatric hospital until its closure in 1985. The summer after my freshman year of college, at Bradley University, I spent as a Summer Worker on the C wards. It was 1966.
The men I met that summer, the staff who worked with them, and the institution that held them, have stayed with me ever since.