juice’ or ‘Let’s go talk to the nurse.’ And get friendly with the staff. You never know when you’re going to need someone’s help.”
I was dismissed. I left T.’s office. The halls became livelier as the morning wore on and the manic energy worked its magic, and I relaxed a little more. There were handfuls of patients up and about, some sitting in the dayroom’s plastic chairs staring at the television, others pacing the hallways or leaning against walls. Two police meandered in with a dirty man in handcuffs between them (I would learn to term him “poorly groomed”) and made their way to the nursing station to check him in. A couple of flies buzzed about—I recognized them from our ER seminars. A fat black woman in a red bra and a full-length black skirt was walking in circles at the hub of the corridors chanting “Jesus is coming, in Jesus’s name” over and over and then over again. I stayed as long as I could bear and then let myself out with my skeleton key. As I reentered the main lobby of G and felt myself exhale fully for the first time that morning, I realized how relieved I was to be leaving the locked ward and just how ambivalent I felt about returning the next day.
But it was an ambivalence tinged with delight. I both did not want to be in CPEP and would not have traded it for any rotation in the world. If I could only absorb its lessons without having to spend any time there, in the near stench. Twenty-one hours later, I unlocked the door and passed the guard stationed inside. I walked down the quiet hall to T.’s office andlet myself in, putting down my things. Her computer was still on, and the garbage was filled with grease-stained food wrappers left by the psychiatry residents on duty the night before. I wondered what went on in the psych ER in the middle of the night. I was sure it was horrible because mornings had a calm-after-the-storm feel. I half wished psychologists were deemed necessary during off-hours. That we weren’t seemed just one more endorsement of psychiatry’s primacy, of its greater import.
I checked my e-mail to delay my next task, which was to gather the EOB patients for my first group. I’d lamented that the court clinic required so little of me, and I was eager to see more action here, but it felt taxing in its unfamiliarity, and it was October but still so damn hot. At 9:30, I forced myself to close T.’s Web browser and went back into the hallway. Patients were scattered about, eating breakfasts of cold cereal and hard-boiled eggs and bananas off sturdy plastic trays that made me think of my college cafeteria and sledding after the first snowfall, and I felt nostalgia for that languorous time when I might still have chosen any profession in the world.
I cajoled myself into the hallway, and as per Dr. T.’s instructions I walked the short distance to the nursing station at the hub of the Y-shaped space to get the census, the master list of patients who’d been admitted to CPEP. It would say “EOB” next to the names of the six patients registered to T.’s little unit. I knocked and was let in by a nurse’s aide. I introduced myself to the head nurse, Miss Higgins, who looked far too busy with a stack of charts and the patients lined up at her window to bother with me. “I’m the new psychology intern,” I began. If ever I’d hated a sentence … “I need to get the census.”
“Ask Rhoda,” she directed, glancing my way and thenturning to holler back at the patient yelling at her through the nursing station’s window, which was like a ticket seller’s at a movie theater, but with thicker, bulletproof glass.
I didn’t know Rhoda, and the nurse’s aide who’d opened the door for me just shook her head when I looked at her questioningly. I went back into the hallway. One of the psych techs was leaning against the wall. He was young and a little burly, which was par for the course for psychiatric technicians, who as far as I could tell were
I was dismissed. I left T.’s office. The halls became livelier as the morning wore on and the manic energy worked its magic, and I relaxed a little more. There were handfuls of patients up and about, some sitting in the dayroom’s plastic chairs staring at the television, others pacing the hallways or leaning against walls. Two police meandered in with a dirty man in handcuffs between them (I would learn to term him “poorly groomed”) and made their way to the nursing station to check him in. A couple of flies buzzed about—I recognized them from our ER seminars. A fat black woman in a red bra and a full-length black skirt was walking in circles at the hub of the corridors chanting “Jesus is coming, in Jesus’s name” over and over and then over again. I stayed as long as I could bear and then let myself out with my skeleton key. As I reentered the main lobby of G and felt myself exhale fully for the first time that morning, I realized how relieved I was to be leaving the locked ward and just how ambivalent I felt about returning the next day.
But it was an ambivalence tinged with delight. I both did not want to be in CPEP and would not have traded it for any rotation in the world. If I could only absorb its lessons without having to spend any time there, in the near stench. Twenty-one hours later, I unlocked the door and passed the guard stationed inside. I walked down the quiet hall to T.’s office andlet myself in, putting down my things. Her computer was still on, and the garbage was filled with grease-stained food wrappers left by the psychiatry residents on duty the night before. I wondered what went on in the psych ER in the middle of the night. I was sure it was horrible because mornings had a calm-after-the-storm feel. I half wished psychologists were deemed necessary during off-hours. That we weren’t seemed just one more endorsement of psychiatry’s primacy, of its greater import.
I checked my e-mail to delay my next task, which was to gather the EOB patients for my first group. I’d lamented that the court clinic required so little of me, and I was eager to see more action here, but it felt taxing in its unfamiliarity, and it was October but still so damn hot. At 9:30, I forced myself to close T.’s Web browser and went back into the hallway. Patients were scattered about, eating breakfasts of cold cereal and hard-boiled eggs and bananas off sturdy plastic trays that made me think of my college cafeteria and sledding after the first snowfall, and I felt nostalgia for that languorous time when I might still have chosen any profession in the world.
I cajoled myself into the hallway, and as per Dr. T.’s instructions I walked the short distance to the nursing station at the hub of the Y-shaped space to get the census, the master list of patients who’d been admitted to CPEP. It would say “EOB” next to the names of the six patients registered to T.’s little unit. I knocked and was let in by a nurse’s aide. I introduced myself to the head nurse, Miss Higgins, who looked far too busy with a stack of charts and the patients lined up at her window to bother with me. “I’m the new psychology intern,” I began. If ever I’d hated a sentence … “I need to get the census.”
“Ask Rhoda,” she directed, glancing my way and thenturning to holler back at the patient yelling at her through the nursing station’s window, which was like a ticket seller’s at a movie theater, but with thicker, bulletproof glass.
I didn’t know Rhoda, and the nurse’s aide who’d opened the door for me just shook her head when I looked at her questioningly. I went back into the hallway. One of the psych techs was leaning against the wall. He was young and a little burly, which was par for the course for psychiatric technicians, who as far as I could tell were
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