In cross-shift, they told us of how the newest admission to the children's unit had missed the bus to school. When his mother said she was going to take him immediately, he went into the kitchen, where he found a butcher knife. He threatened to hill her and then kill himself. His step father called 911 for help. When the police arrived, they had to hold the child at gun point to get him to give up his weapon. He's ten years old. His name is Stan.

I was put on a 1:1 with Stan. He asked many questions about the facility, and told me that he was a little hyper because they hadn't given him his ritalin yet. The doctor's orders haven't come through yet, basically. He also told me that he needed "at least X amount of X medicine" to get to sleep. It seems his mother has a long history of mental disorders. She seemed normal when I met her, but you can tell she's a firecracker.

When some one is doing something, be it anything, and you give it a name, it's called labeling. If some one is cutting themselves, some one may say that they're suicidal, but this may not be the case. After you tell this person that they're suicidal though, they may just start to believe it. This is called deviance labeling. In children, if they're told that they have anger problems, or that they need these meds in order to sleep, they'll believe you.

This child, Stan, was given meds for everything. His mother started him on them early for preventative purposes; insanity runs in the family. He takes pills to wake up, go to sleep, stay calm, have energy, be happy. The kid's a walking clinic cabinet.

The first thing I noticed about him, other than the fact that he's very skinny, is his beautiful eyes. As the day progressed, I realized that his pupils were dilated. I asked his mother about it, but she looked at me like I was crazy.

He decided around 8pm that he wanted to read in his room. I pulled up a chair to his doorway and had to watch him read. All around me, shit was going bad, but I couldn't go anywhere because of my 1:1. This new girl Reannon refused to sit and talk to the nurse about being polite to her peers. She became very angry when he continued to press her about simply having common decency for her fellow patients. When she refused to talk and looked very angry, they thought it best to put her in the quiet room. Once in there, they talked to her. I could hear her screaming and wailing and saw a nurse bring a restraint stretcher around the corner and into the quiet room. The familiar and distinct sounds of screaming, buckels being fastened, the shuffle of feet as they restrained her.

Charles was the other 1:1 we had. I could hear him screaming in his room. When he's very angry, he doesn't speak, he just grunts and cries, yells. He sounds like a gorilla. They drug him to the restraint room and put him in the four point bed. Shots came and went. I was still in front of Stan's door watching him read.

Stan's roommate is Elmo. Elmo's a bed wetter, pants wetter, everything wetter. When he has an accident during the day, he doesn't tell anyone. He goes to his room and changed and hides the soaked pants and underwear under his bed or in a corner. Just a little present to those who'll come tomorrow and find it, smell it, be disgusted by it. After lights out, Elmo came out of Stan's and his room and said he had to use the restroom. I told him to ask some one who wasn't on a 1:1. He entered the dayroom and looked around to see no one was there.

Just then, he saw a pack of runts on top of the alarm system. I'd put them there, way out of reach. He climbed onto a chair and grabbed them, jumped down. A coworker of mine came out of the nurse's station just in time to see him jumping off furniture. She told him to immediately go to his room. He said he had to use the restroom, but she insisted he go take a time out first. Elmo was angry.

He walked toward me and kicked his laundry basket that I'd placed outside his room, full of piss soaked articles of clothing. He then went into his room and punched the cabinet and lay in bed. Stan was in another bed next to him, watching all this on his first day. Elmo stood up on his bed with his back to the wall, leaning on it. He began to bang his head into the wall; soft at first and then harder and harder. I asked him to stop and he continued. I put him in a personal hold on the floor until more staff entered the room. By this time, Charles had received his shot and was sent to bed, so the restrain room was open, and this is where Elmo was taken.

I could hear his head being hit against the wall over and over. He screamed and screamed, continued banging. All I could do was sit at the door and watch my 1:1 trying to go to sleep. I saw that Charles had to use the restroom and was returning to his room. His eyes were rolled back in his head, he could barely stand. His 1:1 had to carry him to his room because he had received such a large amount of zypexa for his behavior.

A shot came for Elmo and he screamed and screamed. The kind that pierces, where you hear your ear get pushed past that point of hearing, where the noise becomes a single droning note.

After all was quiet, and the nurse's had left, once the floor was swept up of cereal and tiny rocks from the playscape area, I sat and watched my 1:1 twitch in his sleep, fidget and roll around, toss and turn. Ever so often, he'd think I was gone and look up at me, eyes huge and dilated. Stan wasn't asleep until 10:30. I wonder what he'll be like when he gets restained.