Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [58]
When I worked on the evening shift, which went from 3:00 P.M. to 11:30 P.M. the workload was lighter and I could be spontaneous. I went out in the garden with the patients or played horseshoes or croquet or took people out for walks.
The day shift was the busy one though. That's when all the patients had to be woken up, helped with getting washed and dressed, and assisted through breakfast and lunch. Daytime was when we got most of the admissions too. During my orientation, I had been trained to take admissions reports, and do all the other required paperwork.
I wound up doing a lot of paperwork because, unlike the other staffers, I enjoyed it. I liked to write, and I liked to interview the incoming patients and their families. I asked them questions about their problems and complaints and wrote them down in great detail. And I helped with the record keeping about the daily events of the hospital. I also learned how to do EKGs, which were required for all admissions, hooking people up to the electrodes and taking the totally painless reading of their brain waves.
I never mentioned my past to anyone, and at first no one asked. But a few weeks after I began working at Rye Psychiatric, Eddie Mae Barnes called me into her office. She was director of nursing, and a stout, no-nonsense person. She had noticed a tremor in my hands, she said, and wondered if I had “seen anyone about it.”
“Yes,” I said, holding my breath.
“Do you take any medication?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been under a doctor's care for it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you under a doctor's care now?”
“Yes.” By now I was really shaking.
“A psychiatrist?”
Yes.”
I C3.
“And have you ever been in a psychiatric hospital yourself?”
“Yes,” I said. And waited.
But miraculously, she didn't fire me. She didn't even cut back on my duties. After that, I did notice that she was watching me more closely. But aside from that, nothing else happened. I was amazed, and grateful. It wasn't common in those days to use former mental patients as mental health workers. She was being creative—and taking a chance.
Within a very short time, I began working marathon shifts at Rye Psych. I was usually scheduled for day shifts, beginning at 7:00 in the morning and ending at 3:30. But often when another worker didn't show up or was sick, I found myself taking the next shift too, which ended at 11:30 P.M. Or sometimes I would do the evening shift, and then stay overnight to cover until morning. Sometimes I would do the morning shift, go home at 3:00 in the afternoon, catch some sleep and come back at 11:00 at night. Sometimes I'd be home asleep when Eddie Mae called at 5:00 A.M. to ask if I could be there by 7:00. I almost always accepted.
Once, during a raging blizzard, I worked all three shifts in a row, staying there, and awake, for twenty-four hours straight. It was snowing too hard for anyone else to report to work, or for me to get home.
I liked doing all the overtime. Partly, I liked the money. Very soon, I was making more from my extra shifts than I was from my regular salary. But partly, I discovered I was good at the work. I was a hard worker, a good writer, and conscientious. When the state came to recertify the hospital once, the examiners pulled reports I had written to explain to the others that this was how a report should be written.
I was trying so hard to be normal.
My mom and I went on errands together. We bought groceries, stopped at the pharmacy, the dry cleaners. We went to buy flowers for the house. Doing errands was safe. We didn't have to talk. When my Voices yelled at me to jump out of the car, I could focus on the radio and keep myself under control. Down to the Golden Horseshoe shopping center we went. My mother gave me assignments, I carried them out. But when I went into the pharmacy to fill a prescription, the owner and his assistant, who had been there for years, didn't recognize me.
All right. All right. I know. I'm a big fat tub