TO THE FUCKWIT THAT KEEPS POSTING TO THIS, STOP BEING A FUCKWIT. THANKS. sandbagging it today
Hands shoving down my shoulders. Some heated demands, some soothing. My head ripped around trying to see what I was facing as the zip of fluorescent light chains passed me by. I felt my legs kick, trying to work double-time for my arms curled up and in agony. I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to push the gurney. I’m supposed to be taking charge and soothing a violent patient… this isn’t really happening.
Screaming now because I can’t process this scene. Cut it loose and howl. That deep-seeded hurt that rips the voice out of their throats. No one speaks until the Big Boy slams me down hard with a definitive STOP.
Now I’m crying. I hurt. I can smell hospital. I can hear the click of the wheels under me. The smell bed linen makes when you breathe in. the sharp wafting smell radiating off my arms. Burned skin collapsing into itself as we move along. My mouth is open moaning and shuck it in. it’s a chemical taste and I want to throw up. I want to fight and run off the gurney. Fast and far and away from this scene that I’m being escorted to. It’s an emergency. Why am I not standing up to help?
I’m suffocating in the competing stinks of emergency room and the chemicals smoldering into me. I’m making myself choke from trying to breathe and not wanting to actually catch a scent. From the side I hear a metal clink that I recognize from years of putting people into restraints. Padded leather with wide rectangles to easily tie someone down. For therapeutic purposes only. To get a waist restraint would make me throw up for sure…. I can’t possibly deserve this.
I have applied restraints to people more than I’ve gotten laid. What a horrible ratio. Wrists and ankles: 4 point retstraint. Wrists and ankles and waist: 5 point. Posey jacket. Jumper with a zipper up the back so you can’t get out of it. Lateral shoulder restraint with a sheet with someone in a wheelchair. Arm hold. Sleeper hold. Anything to stop someone from hurting themselves or someone else. Something fast. Something strong in case your partner fucks up and lets go. Something that won’t bruise too much. Something that’ll assert your role and the underlying need to be in control of the situation. Fast as possible. And for the love of god, don’t break any bones or dislocate something out of a socket. The doctors hated treating someone violent. It was just such a damn nuisance.
My first supervisor came from one of the roughest asylums in England. Literally an evolved Bedlam that schooled you on your feet before you got raped or choked to death. And that’s not even for the sake of a dramatic statement, really, it’s what you were up against. My supervisor was hard and silent from years of being a nurse in that environment. She packed up that persona and brought it with her to Canada. The name Mean Jean wasn’t a rhyming scheme it was very real and probably the best thing I could have been attached to in my meek beginning on the ward.
Jean assigned us units to work in for the shift and didn’t take kindly to negotiating or whinging when you didn’t agree with the selection process. She lined up the new orderlies for assignments and let lifers come in at will to sign and chuckle at us quivering or trying to reneg on our unit delegation. A girl standing beside me was picking at her long manicured nails making them click when Jean suddenly lit up. “Oh MY! Let me see those nails!” Her vanity trumped her logic and she stuck a hand out to fan long natural nails. Jean yanked her arm and spun her around into a hold. Her arm was bolted at a 90 degree angle and she screamed as the nail clipper snapped off curls of pink to the ground. ClickClickClickClick. She shrieked looking down but too upset to think and get out of the hold. She was too hung up on her nails falling to the ground. Jean let her go and stuck the clippers into her hand. “Finish the rest of them off. Don’t show up to my ward with nails like that. You’ll do more harm than good.”
The girl mewled as the clippers snapped off what was left and I felt my cheeks go flush with stress that I’d mess up and get centered out for some other idiocy. I hated getting sweaty in my uniform before I had actually done any work. Makes for a damp and clammy 12 hours.
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