Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland

are made of canvas and mesh; they are navy blue, and look like fashionable, oversized totes. These Velcro devices quickly turn an agitated and unmanageable person into a piece of luggage. When the patient is horizontal and wrapped up in the bag, there are sturdy straps that make it easier to heave him onto a stretcher. There is a peroxide-blond woman sitting in the nondetainable area and I assume she is a patient waiting to be seen, but I soon discover that she is one of the EMS workers. Along with two cops and her partner, she parades the new patient over to the triage nurse. The patient in the body bag is a woman in her thirties with long, curly hair and a strident voice. She is singing various songs at the top of her lungs, the best of which is “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night. She doesn’t want to be here; her mama said there’d be days like this.
    She calls everyone “babe,” in a casual, yet demeaning tone. It’s her way of equalizing the power structure, I figure. She is naked and immobilized in the blue canvas restraint, amid a room full of people in uniforms. I’d be calling everybody “babe,” too.
    “What’s with the body burrito?” I ask the cop.
    His eyes crinkle at my joke as the EMS driver steps in to give me the rundown. “Her landlord called 911 after her tub overfilled and damaged the apartment below hers. He also said she was blasting her music and that she was naked out on the fire escape.” It’s frigid outside, so I have to factor that in. The driver continues, “When the cops came, she started singing the lyrics to the Stevie Nicks album she was listening to, and jumped into and out of the tub. Then she pulled out a pipe and attempted to smoke something in front of the police, offering to share.”
    The blond EMS driver jokes with me about how she’s as crazy as the patients, as I nod and smile nervously back at her. She tells me that before she worked for EMS, she used to be a belly dancer who once garnered an offer of a million dollars from some visiting Saudis to dance for them privately. She turned them down.
    “Is that the crazy part?” I ask.
    Whenever I try to talk to my new patient, explaining where she is and what will happen next, she sings so loudly that I can’t get a word in edgewise. I finally give up and write the medication orders for sedation, filling out the paperwork for a 9.39. There is a lull afterwards, and I start to gather up my belongings to head to my office when two New York City policemen roll in an arrested man, who is yelling, “You got the wrong guy!” repeatedly.
    “You guys unloaded?” I ask the cops. It’s practically my standard greeting with NYPD. They have to unload their weapons before entering CPEP. I wonder if they resent the hospital policy. Maybe it’s uncomfortable for them to be carrying useless guns. Maybe it’s even more awkward when I confront them with their impotence; it somehow calls their manhood into question.
    “Yes, ma’am,” they both reply.
    “What’d you bring me?” I ask the younger-looking one.
    “Male black, twenty-nine, arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute.” The cops always talk backwards, Male Black, Female Hispanic. No one else presents cases this way. “When he got arraigned,he started screaming, telling off the judge, and then he went back into his cell and trashed the place. The judge wants him here.” The cop grins. “We shouldn’t get all the fun, right?”
    “They sent him to Bellevue as if there’s something psychiatrically wrong with this guy? He’s just acting up, right? Is he saying anything crazy?”
    “Not crazy, but he’s pretty threatening.”
    The prisoner taunts the police, his chin jutted out while he howls, “I … HAVE … A … RAZOR! It’s hidden on me. You’re never gonna find it. I’ll pull it out later and cut all your faces.”
    As he is being searched, his pockets emptied one by one, he shrieks at the police, “It’s not in my pants!