I sat in the break room as usual, waiting for the cross shift meeting to start. I could see as people entered that we were WAY understaffed. Some people were running late, some not at all. One had a spouse in a car accident, one was on vacation, one was sick. I was first sent to the children's ward until the car crash spouse arrived. I've gotten into the habit of bringing a book with me, which just so happened to be Blood Canticle by Anne Rice (DON'T READ IT. IT'S NOT WORTH IT) which takes the time away for awhile. I placed it on the table. I was there for about 5 minutes, talking with the boys and asking them to clean up their mess, etc...The car crash spouse arrived, and I turned to pick up my book from the table before I left. It wasn't there, but in the air floating to the ground was a white piece of paper. It flipped through the air and landed and I saw that it was my bookmark. I looked to the closest room where it had landed and saw that VHS boy had just walked through his door. I ran into the room and saw that he was lining up my book with his fucking VHS tapes. He saw me and started screaming (little monkey noises) and I grabbed the book from him and told him "this is MY book!" He started screaming louder, but I didn't give a fuck and just left to go to the other unit.
When I arrived, Sally was in restraint.......AGAIN. They let her out and she sat on the couch, playing with her hair. She turned to look at me and I saw that her eyes were rolled back in her head. All the patients love her, despite her being mentally retarded, making her a dead weight for the rest of the girls who are highpaced and highly active. They all sat in the dayroom with her and comforted her.
Today is little thug girl's (the pot seller's) birthday. I've yet to give her a name, so I'll call her Terra. She turned 18 today. She usually bounces off the fucking walls as it is, terribly immature and undeveloped in social skills. She acts like she's 13 and has the hyper nature of a 5 year old, but today she was even worse. Terra constantly bothered staff about giving her money, candy, cokes, "Where's my birthday cake? I can do what I want. It's my birthday." REALLY annoying. It was also a Texas holiday today (LBJ's birthday) so there were no rehab classes. For the majority of the day, the girls sat around bored, getting on each other's nerves and needed to be told over and over again to mind their own business, especially Terra.
There's one girl that's louder than the others, even Terra. I'll call her Jasmine. She's 15, black, LOUD, talks really ghetto. She's also really funny, when she's not bothersome. I have no idea why she's here or her past history, but I do know that she's been here awhile and I've never heard talk of sending her home. She's normally the instigator of the group. She'll tell anyone, even you, what to do. She likes to get into people's business, bring up people's hurtful past, and blame everything on anyone but herself. She gets angry very easily, slams doors, screams alot.
Today....she wasn't like that at all. We told her straight off at the beginning of the shift that she was doing very well today and that we hadn't had to tell her anything about keeping her voice down. Jasmine thanked us and continued to sit on the couch and draw. You could tell by looking in her eyes that something was different today. She was using a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, drawing the same thing over and over again; a really fucked up looking flower. After about 30 minutes, she announced to us, and really the whole room because she's so fucking loud, "I feel paranoid." We suggested that she move from the couch and onto the floor, so she could sit with her back to a wall and people couldn't walk behind her. After a few minutes of sitting there, I looked over to see that her eyes were dashing all over the room. She'd pulled her knees up to her chest and was still drawing, faster and furiously now. A few minutes after that, she'd dropped the paper and the pencil, and all expression from her face. It almost looked like her face was melting, I'd never seen anything like it. Her eyes were closed and her entire body was limp, tears streaming down her cheeks. My supervisor sat with her for a few minutes asking her what was wrong. She put both hands to her cheeks and opened her eyes, they were darting all over the room. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I could hear my supervisor, who assured her "What you're seeing isn't real, Jasmine. It's a hallucination. I know you think it's real, and for you it is, but that's your world. In my world, I don't see anything. We're gonna get you some medication to make your world normal again." She was sobbing now, hands covering her face. I called a nurse and she said that her daily meds included a dose of something near unpronounceable that stopped hallucinations. She'd already given it her today, a little late in fact, and it would take awhile to kick in.
Sally's therapist arrived. She stayed in the dayroom with the rest of the girls because Sally didn't want to leave, she said she was worried about Jasmine. The therapist brought out a bunch os toys, squishy things, and blinky lighted plastic doodads. All the girls passed them around and Jasmine perked up when she saw them. I asked if she wanted to play with one, but she declined the offer and just watched. We took the girls to lunch, leaving Jasmine to eat lunch alone on the unit. When we got back, she was her normal loud self.
One of the staff members left to go to blockbuster to get a movie for Terra for her birthday; something the girls could watch while they ate birthday cake. While she was gone we decided to get showers started early. Since there was only two staff now, myself and another girl, I had to do showers alone while the other girl did paperwork. I spent a good hour running around checking on everyone, making sure the doors were locked, making sure everyone had the right soap. Some of the girls don't even USE their soap. They don't know how to shower properly and need help. Finally, after everyone was done showering, Sally announced that she wanted a shower. She simply can't do it on her own. I helped her undress, shower, and dress again. It all took about 15 minutes. I literally had to stand in the doorway and give her step by step instructions on how to take a shower. "Open this, put some in your hand, and then put it all over your hair. Make sure you don't get it in your eyes." That kinda shit. Sally likes to repeat herself. She'll say the same thing over and over again until she gets her way, which never happens at the unit. Her favorite catch phrases are as follows: "I'm hungry." "I want to go home." "My stomach hurts." "Don't touch me." And when she's in restraints she says "Fuck you. Let me out." She will say these OVER and OVER again for sometimes hours, usually waiting a few minutes in between each time she says it. Today she was saying a new one. "I want hamburger." lol...it was so awesome. It was driving the whole unit crazy. Some of the girls were asking us to make her shut up. What are we supposed to do? I want a fucking hamburger too, bitch. What makes you think you're getting one? While she was in the shower, she pulled back the curtain. I could see that her hair was covered in soap. She said to me "I want hamburger." I started laughing, and couldn't help it. I just imagined the little tard in there naked, taking a shower, eating a hamburger.
After showers, the girls started watching the credits of the movie. We had to turn it off for a moment to send all the girls to get their night meds. All the girls returned and sat down again. Sally sat on the couch in Terra's spot. Jasmine sat beside her a little down the couch and rested her feet on the coffee table. Terra was furious at Sally. "THAT'S MY SPOT! YOU TOOK MY SPOT!" Sally looked up at her, she didn't even know what she was talking about. I told Terra that she'd lost her seat and that I didn't care if it was her birthday, she has no right to talk to people like that. Terra pointed her finger at me, coke and M&M's in the other hand, and said "That's not fair! You guys baby her." Jasmine....HATES Terra, and vise versa. Jasmine went back to her old ways, getting into other people's business. "You lost your seat, Terra. Just because it's your birthday doesn't mean you own the damn place. Look at you with your M&M's. You get babied too." They started exchanging "SHUT UP!" "NO. YOU SHUT UP!" until Jasmine lost her temper and pushed the coffee table away with her feet, knocking over Sally's juice from med time. Jasmine went straight to her room and slammed the door. A few minutes later she came out and went to the furthest door down the hall. Just on the other side of the door, you can see sunlight peeking out from the bottom of it, is the outside world. This door ALWAYS reamins locked. She started kicking it over and over. My suprvisor told her to go to her room and calm down. She came to the dayroom and sat down, but wouldn't go to her room. She finally said "FINE! I'll go to my room. I'm gonna hurt myself." and ran to her room. My supervisor called after her "Ok...after you've said that, I can't let you go to your room alone." She stood in the doorway until a nurse arrived to give her even MORE meds. She finally slept after that.
After the movie, the rest of the girls went to sleep. I finally had a chance to eat, I hadn't eaten all day. I went to the closest mexican restaurant, a privately owned busienss that's been open for 50 years. I returned with the food, SO HUNGRY and couldn't wait to eat. I got back and was told that a new girl had just come in and that I had to do a body search, wound search and create a chart for her. I couldn't eat. I found the girl in the nurse's startion speaking with the head nurse. She wouldn't stop moving around and fidgeting. Her pupils were HUGE and she had a piece of playdo that they'd given her. She was squishing it, passing it from hand to hand. She had a huge bandage on her arm and blood smeared all over her shirt and jeans. They asked her where the blood was from and she said her arm. She said she'd been on the street, found a pice of glass, and just started cutting herself. She came in with no shoes or socks. Her name is Katie.
We took Katie into the restroom and assessed her body wounds. She said she had an "infection" on her knee, which was but a large scar now. We removed her bandage from her arm to see that the hospital had taken good care of it. She'd had no time for method, and had just scratched no particular pattern in her skin with the glass shard. It was some mishapen crisscross design of deep cuts. We had to put a bed in the dayroom for her. Anyone on suicide precautions has to be watched 24 hours a day, even when they sleep and use the restroom, and shower. She was filling out paper work with me and I asked if they'd given her anything at the hospital. She said no. I then pointed at that her eyes were really large and that she couldn't stop moving. I said it looked like she was tweeking. Katie shook her head no, but a few minutes later looked up at me from her paperwork and shook her head yes. She refused to make her bed, and just sat on the edge of it with her arms over her head rocking back and forth. Another staff arrived, and I left the room to make her chart. When I returned she was laying in bed with her eyes closed. I doubt she was asleep, because she was tweeking so hard, but I got to leave right after that, so it's none of my concern anymore.