EMPM: Geography

The East Unit was kept secure by three sets of electromagnets. In the absence of a 9-10 key or person to press the button inside the nurses’ fishbowl, only a great amount of inertia would open the doors attached thereto. Even then, one set lead only to the West Unit, another set downstairs, and the third to the elevator. All routes eventually collided with more electromagnets, whose freedom signal was a sharp Click. They were the facticity of space made abundantly and audibly clear.

East was a designation left over from the building in which the unit was previously housed, and it seemed to lend a sense of pride to some patients, who would chant “East Siiiiiide” in the morning before breakfast or as a farewell upon being discharged. Manuel M didn’t bother with these chants, though he did nod politely or wave an unassuming goodbye to other patients and staff as they left. I always admired Manuel M. Looking back on that time, he was one of the sanest people I knew. Manuel was a patient on the Adult Acute unit in a psychiatric hospital, and I was what corporate beureaucrats and healthcare professionals alike call a “community counselor.” That means orderly.

Manuel M was about five eleven. He was muscular, but a small belly exposed his middle age, which one might not have divined otherwise. He had clear skin, and his dark brown face was neither wrinkled nor scarred. Manuel generally carried a serious look on his face, though that hardly set him apart from anyone else on East. What did set him apart was a trait only he and a few others on the unit posessed, restraint. Let it not be doubted in an appropriately contemporary way. Let it not be mitigated by the overwhelming facticity of human existence. Let it not be tarnished by his subconscious desires or normative presuppositions. If this story has a hero, it is Manuel M. Of course that’s not his real name. You won’t find any real names here.

There were adult units other than East, which was for the most acute patients. Dual III was dedicated to addiction recovery, and West was for patients who fit somewhere between East and Dual III. Finally there was Gero, the geriatric unit.

Gero patients had a wide range of diagnoses, and they were together because they were frail or vulnerable. As it happened, Gero was also the least crowded unit. It had its own cafeteria, a television room, a lounge, a group therapy room, one men’s hall, one women’s hall, and a garden for walking. It was also one of the older buildings. In the center stood the nurse’s station, a circular desk with rolling chairs, computers, and medical charts. It was much like a concierge desk, but in a psychiatric hospital. Unlike the East and West nurse’s station, Gero’s was not encased with glass from waist level up. It was open, but sets of electromagnetically-controlled doors did close off the men’s and women’s hallways. These intersected the station at a right angle from each other. If you were to look past the nurse’s station from the Men’s hallway, you would see another hall. This housed the lounge, therapy room, and one more room not exclusively for Gero patients: the ECT room. To the layman this is known as shock therapy.

At the end of the women’s hallway was a set of doors that lead outside. A 9-10 key would invoke the freedom sound Click and release the doors to the back entrance of the main building, where East and West were.

East and West were side by side. In fact, geographically they might as well have been two parts of the same unit. West was large, with one hallway for men; one for women; a large common room in between; and therapy rooms, a laundry room, and the Head Nurse’s office attached to the common room. East was much smaller. It had only one hallway and a similarly open common room with attached therapy rooms and one isolation room. Why they reserved the smallest space for the most violent patients I will never understand. East was a pressure cooker. In between East and West, as a kind of nexus, was one set of electromagnetic doors and the nurse’s station. Waist down was drywall. Waist up was glass. That’s why they called it the fishbowl. At the end of the West Unit’s men’s hall and the East Unit’s only hall were smoking patios.

Every morning at 6:37, I put my 9-10 key into the wall

Click

and entered the main building by the door near the cafeteria. I walked up the stairs through the West Unit and into the fishbowl. I put my lunch in the refrigerator and a pair of latex gloves in my back left pocket. Then I sat down and waited for the Charge Nurse’s report on the previous shift. At 3:22 I retraced my steps, inserting the 9-10 key again into the wall near the cafeteria.

Click