THE LONG HALLWAY CHAPTER 7

THE LONG HALLWAY CHAPTER 7

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 tried to regain 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.