Mark comes out of the building now with the paperwork.
“Your patient,” I say.
Sound Mind
When we arrive at the small ranch house, the policeman meets us out front and says it’s a psych case. Inside, a thin, frail young woman sits on the couch. “I have diabetes,” she says in a quavering voice. “You have to check my blood sugar.”
“Is that all that is bothering you?” I ask.
“I have diabetes and no one will believe me,” she says.
“She was just released from Hartford Hospital today,” an elderly woman standing by the couch says. “She called me today to come over. She isn’t well.”
Her pulse, blood pressure, and blood sugar, which I take by pricking her finger and squeezing a drop onto a chemstrip, are all normal.
“You’re fine,” I say. “Do you live here alone?”
“Yes. I know I have diabetes. But no one will believe me.”
“Well, I don’t think you have diabetes. Your blood sugar is normal, but if you want, we can take you to Hartford Hospital and they’ll check you out.”
“I don’t want to go back there. They’ll put me in the psych ward. I know they will. I don’t want to go there.” She starts crying.
“It’s okay,” I say.
She is shaking.
On the table are her discharge papers from the Institute of Living. Her friend tells me that she is worried that she may try to kill herself with her pills. I try to convince the young woman that we should go to the hospital to have her checked, that we are all concerned about her.
“No,” she says. “Get out of my house. I’ll be all right.”
“I’m worried about you,” I say.
“May will stay with me, won’t you, May?”
“I can’t,” her friend says. “You’re not well. You need to go to the hospital.”
“But my house is tapped. I can’t stay here alone. When my phone rings there’s a recording on it that says security.”
“You really should come to the hospital with us.” I say.
The young woman screams, “Get out of my house. Leave me alone!” Her whole body is shaking, quivering. “I just wanted my blood sugar checked. I have diabetes and no one will believe me.”
We ask her what medications she is taking and whether she has taken them, and she gives us several different stories, changing each time we ask.
“Let us take you and you’ll get checked out, and if everything is all right, you’ll come back home.”
“I don’t want to leave,” she says in a tiny trembling voice. “I’ll be okay, really.”
It goes on like this for fifteen minutes. Each of us—me, my partner, the cop—tries to persuade her to go, but we are getting nowhere. I don’t think it is safe to leave her alone. I don’t want to get called back for her in another two hours because she thinks she has diabetes, and I don’t want someone to find her dead of an overdose the next day. She gets the ultimatum. Either she goes with us willingly, or the cop commits her and she goes unwillingly.
As much as I need improvement in many areas of the job, the one thing I am good at is getting people to come peacefully, calmly. “Come with us. We’ll get you checked out, and if you’re straight and honest with them, you’ll get back home.”
“I don’t want to go,” she says as we walk to the door with tiny steps. “Why can’t I just stay here?”
I sit with her in the back of the ambulance. “Take me home,” she says. “I’m okay, really. I am.”
“You have to get checked out.”
“But they’ll put me in the psych ward. I know they will. Where are you taking me?”
I say, “We’re taking you to the hospital to get checked. You have to be honest with them. If you talk crazy about your house being bugged or if you lie to them about your medication, then they’ll probably keep you longer. You have to prove to them that you are of sound mind.”
“You think I’m not of sound mind?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I am of sound mind. I am of sound mind.” Suddenly she yells at me. “What do you mean I’m not of sound mind? Take me home! Let me out of here!”
“Don’t yell,” I say. “Calm down. If you yell, they won’t let you go home. Listen to me, you have to be calm, you have to be honest with them. You can’t yell.”
“I am of sound mind,” she whispers. “I am of sound mind.”
“Just be calm and everything will go fine.”
At the hospital, we bring her in a wheelchair. The triage nurse is busy with two other patients. The young woman begins shaking. She starts to stand and says, “I want to go home.”
But I whisper to her, “Sit down and remember what I told you. If you get up, they’ll have to tie you up and you don’t want that.”
She sits back down. “I don’t want to be tied up. I don’t want to be tied up. I’m of sound mind. Sound mind.”
Every two minutes she tries to stand, but I talk her back down.
“I have diabetes,” she says. She tries to stand again. “I want to get out of here. They’re going to put me in the psych ward. Why are they all looking at me?”
Her entire body is quivering as she stands in front of the wheelchair. I lean in and whisper in her ear again. “Sit down or they’ll tie you up. Sit down and be calm. Convince them you’re of sound mind.”
She sits back. “I’m of sound mind. I’m of sound mind.”
When the triage nurse finally comes over, I start to tell the story, but the woman stands and says, “I want to leave. I have diabetes. You’ll put me in the psych ward.”
“Sit down!” the nurse barks.
The woman sits and shakes in fear.
“She was released from the IOL [Institute of Living] today. We checked her blood sugar. It’s fine. She’s been very nervous. She would like to go home. A friend of hers at the house expressed concern that she was going to hurt herself.”
The woman tries to stand again, and again the nurse barks “Sit down!” which she immediately does. A security guard appears with restraints in hand, ready to be called.
The nurse ignores him. “Room one-oh-five,” she says to us.
My partner wheels her into the room, while I go to the tech room to finish writing my report.
When I go to drop my copy off in room 105, three security guards run past me. I hear a commotion coming from the room. I think about my patient and cringe. As I enter the room, I see eight or nine guards and nurses fighting to hold a patient down.
“Goddamn, get the fuck off me. I’ll kill all you bastards!” a voice growls. A security guard smacks into the wall, and a male nurse takes a blow to the nose that causes it to gush blood. I see a woman’s head rise up, and snarl. “I’ll kill all you bastards!” It is a large blond woman with a purple face that seems to snort smoke. The guards pile back on. It looks like a scene from a Looney Tunes cartoon, where all you see is motion and an occasional arm or restraint strap rising above the fray before plummeting back into it.
I see my patient then. She sits in a hospital gown on the next bed, her feet not even reaching the floor. She is watching the struggle with large startled eyes. She is not even looking at the meal in front of her on a Styrofoam tray: hamburger steak, potatoes and mixed vegetables, a carton of milk, and a bowl of Jell-O. “I am of sound mind,” she says over and over. “I am of sound mind.”
Five White Men, a Blonde, and Jesus
“I want you to call the FBI,” she says. She is ninety-seven years old, homebound, living by herself. “In all my years I have never seen anything like it. Five white men and a lady with long blond hair come out of that picture of Jesus. And they messing around behind the TV. You would have seen them if you’d have been listening to me, instead of trying to put that oxygen on my face and that thing on my arm. Are you listening to me? I ain’t crazy. I ought to slug you.”
“My partner is doing a perimeter scan,” I say, “and he hasn’t come up with anything yet. Still n
othing, Mark?”
Mark is walking around the room with the pulse oximeter beeping. “Nothing,” he says. “Clear readings. Whatever was here is gone.”
“You can rest at ease,” I say.
“I had a pistol I’d have shot up that wall, at least until Jesus come out. I had that picture of him since 1964. That and the picture of John Kennedy. They matching photos my daughter got for me. And Jesus, he ain’t said nothing to me all that time he been up there since 1964. Then tonight he come out, he was wearing a gold crown, and he said, ‘Johnnie Mae, I can heal you, but your children, and your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren, they ain’t been going to church, and we have to talk about that.’ ”
I stay on scene with her for more than an hour as her whole family comes over. They say she has never acted like this before. I take one of her daughters into the other room, the daughter who is her legal guardian. “I’m the seventh oldest child,” she says to me, “but it’s like I’m the oldest. I’m the one that always has to make the decisions.” She starts to cry. I touch her shoulder.
“I know it’s been hard,” I say. “I don’t think we need to take her to the hospital tonight. Just have someone stay with her tonight, and then maybe if she’s still acting off in the morning, take it up with the visiting nurse and her doctor. She’s not in danger of her life tonight. She’s too old for us to take to the hospital, and she doesn’t want to go. It would be too traumatic for her. I think you can wait. But we will come again if you change your mind or she gets worse.”
She thanks me and signs a refusal for her mother.
Back in the main room, Johnnie Mae sits on the bed, holding her great-great-granddaughter on her lap.
“Why, don’t you two look alike,” I say.
“Don’t you sweet-talk me,” she says. “You had of been paying attention, you would have seen them, too.” She says to her family. “They was here when he come in.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“The five white men was right there behind the TV along with that girl with the beautiful blond hair,” she again tells the assembled family. “Then Jesus come out wearing a gold crown and speaking to me the first words he said all that time he been up on that wall since 1964. He said my children ain’t been going to church, and my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and you know it’s true. You got to get yourselves to church.”
“Good night,” I say.
“Good night,” she says. “Have you called the FBI yet?”
“You should be safe with your family here,” I say.
“Look, I told you to call the FBI. Now I ain’t afraid of Jesus, but as far as those five white men and the blond girl, I want the FBI after them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, inching out the door.
Little Gods
His wife meets us at the door. “My husband,” she says, “has a mental illness. He woke up screaming and throwing things. He’s very paranoid. Could you take him to Saint Francis?”
She is in her late forties, a well-dressed, rotund woman with a soft voice. The house is an old Victorian, nicely kept. Large works of modern art adorn the foyer and front living room.
She leads us back to the kitchen where a man sits at the table smoking. He stands up abruptly. He looks like the guy in the “Far Side” cartoons who is always chained to the dungeon wall. A skinny nervous man with a gray beard halfway down his chest and long, thin hair to his shoulders. “Gentlemen,” he says as his wife introduces us, “I am an artist. This is my work.” He picks up a small colorful print. His hands tremble. “I call it The Kiss of Love. It is the third in a series.”
“Nice,” I say. I look at it closely. It isn’t bad. It is actually pretty. Reds and oranges. It looks sort of like an upside-down heart, a red tulip, angel’s wings. “You are talented,” I say.
“Yes, yes, we are all little gods and goddesses,” he declares, his voice trembling.
“Are these your paintings in the front hall?”
“Yes, yes, they are.”
“Honey, these people are here to take you to the hospital.”
“I’m not going. I refuse to go. You can’t make me.”
“Show me your paintings,” I say. “I like that one out there.”
I am looking at a colorful painting with a small quarter-sized black circle in the middle that looks almost three-dimensional in the midst of the green, yellow, and red tie-dye swirl. When I stand fifteen feet away from it, it actually makes me dizzy. “Here, here is the spot,” I say. “Right here makes me dizzy.”
He smiles. “You see well. You are perhaps, I sense, a kindred spirit.”
“It was his wedding gift to me,” his wife says.
“Come, come let me show you.”
“John,” she says.
“Not now, honey. Let me show him.”
“You did all of these?”
“Yes, I’ve painted all my life. When I was in school, I couldn’t write, though they held my hand and tried to make me, but I could draw. I always could draw.”
“Oh, I like that one. What a nice use of colors, the blue and the green.”
“View from a Rock, I call it. You like it?”
“Very much.” The sea and rock are in blues, calm and serene, the sky is green, a rolling, hurtling turbulence. A storm brewing.
“And these,” he says.
There are three pictures of large eyes with visions coming from them. The first is a woman, lovely with three breasts. The second a child, half human, half puppy. The third I don’t understand. A horrific cloud.
“Apocalypse,” he says.
“Ah, yes. Yes, I see.” And I do. “Are you in museums?”
“No, but I should be. Do you think?”
“Yes, you are good, very good.”
I go from one painting to the next. They are all impressive, yet all in some way, disturbed, crying out.
“I have more in the basement.”
“I’d like to see them, but we have limited time. Have you sold any?”
“One for five hundred dollars.”
“A bargain, no doubt.”
“What would you pay for one?”
“I don’t have much money.”
“A small one?”
“The one you showed me?”
“Yes, how much would you pay for that?”
I think. “I don’t know. I do like it.”
“How about five dollars? Would you pay five dollars?”
“I would. Sold. You have a deal.”
He smiles. “I sold one, honey. He wants to buy one.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
I dig three ones out of my wallet and two out of my front pocket, and hand them to him. “And I want you to autograph it.”
“Five dollars. Here, honey,” he says. “There’s five dollars.” He hands it to her like a man handing over his weekly paycheck to his faithful wife.
“No, you keep it, you need to buy cigarettes.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll need cigarettes. Will I be able to smoke?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Thank you, thank you.”
I get him to sign the picture. His hands tremble, but he is able to complete his signature, and titles it The Kiss of Love.
He comes with us. At the door, he kisses his wife. “Take care,” he says. “I love you, honey.”
“I’ll come see you.”
“Don’t worry. You take care. Lock the door.”
In the ambulance, I give him my Pepsi to drink because his mouth is dry.
I asks him who his favorite artist is. He tells me he loves all artists, all of them. He talks like a boy in love, like a man blessed with a gift, with desire. His eyes glow. “All of them,” he says. His eyes are wet.
Jesus in Cedar Crest
We’re transporting a manic depressive to Cedar Crest, a mental health facility, after the man has threatened the proprietor of a store on Blue Hills Avenue, calling him a money changer, and promising to return with his arm
y of vengeance. The store owner filed a complaint with the cops, and both they and the mental health crisis team were on scene when we arrived at the patient’s boardinghouse. I peacefully talked him out of his barricaded room by agreeing that he could take his Bible and religious books. The man claims he is “Jesus Christ, resurrected today in Stowe Village.” He and I discuss religion. I tell him that while I do not believe in God, I am religious in my own way. While others believe in a person or force or ideal outside the body, I try to find a right way to live from inside me. When I am gone, I will be dead. But while I am alive, I want to be good, I want to stand tall, I want to be better than my human failings. “I’m not an angel, by any means,” I say, “But I am well-meaning. I try hard to be good, to do what is right, to find strength inside me.”
He nods, smiling beatifically at my earnestness. I’m not certain he is trying to understand me, but then again, he has that look on his face that says he understands all things. When I am finished he says, “Can you do me a favor? I can see you are a good man. I am asking you to be one of my apostles. You are going to be one of my apostles. It is ordained as so. I want you to go to television stations and tell them I, Jesus Christ, resurrected today in Stowe Village, am being held captive in Cedar Crest. I want you to tell the world what is going on. Will you do that for me?” He smiles again. “You will.”
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