Page 22 - WTP Vol. VII #6

Late one night I was stitching up a young schizo- and I wished to get to bed.
Strait-jacket and padded-cell
phrenic man in a locked ward. It was a long but superficial wound: he had got hold of a broken bottle and had slashed his left forearm. It was the common- est injury in the hospital, at least, the commonest to which I was summoned. Self-harm was very common.
Four days later I saw Jim in the staff canteen.
A thin sickle of a moon shone in through the window above the pines.
“A good stitching-up,” he said, smilingly. ‘’Verkoper can certainly find ’em. When you have a moment come and see me in the ‘D’ Block locked ward and I’ll show you.”
“Don’t try to communicate with him—it’ll lead him on into some interior he can’t explain: just stitch the wound,” said the charge-nurse as we approached.
Jim Stolford was a kindly family man with unelabo- rate naval tattoos on his arms. Many of the older charge-nurses had been military or naval men; Jim had served in the Royal Navy on the North Atlantic convoys. “You don’t want to worry. Just do what you need to do.” He sighed. Jim rarely talked about his wartime experiences except to tell me once that he had been an able seaman on an escort destroyer. He didn’t say much, but I guess every day of each convoy had been filled with trepidation. And he had been a young man at the time. What he did now was perhaps light in comparison.
I did this.
He unwrapped the suture-set, drew up the syringe of 1% lignocaine, handed it to me, and I began my work under his obedient but judgmental eye. The hierarchi- cal system he had learned in his youth was rigorously maintained in his late middle age. To him I was an officer in embryo.
“Don’t speak to him,” said Jim, warningly, as we ap- proached him, “it’ll do no good. You won’t get a response. Let him talk, if he wants to, which he won’t. Save compassion for those who can use it. Honestly.
I had learned suturing in the Infirmary’s accident department and had found myself reasonable at it. I was a clinical medical student. In return for being on- call for suturing I was given free accommodation by Dr Straatverkoper, the medical director. I was handed a chatelaine of keys which was attached to my waist with a steel cord.
We took coffee together in his room in the heart of his secure ward. It was vile coffee, with essence of chicory and made with evaporated milk. This coffee had been his favourite on the destroyer. Then he rose and showed me to the door. On the way out, which lay at the end of a narrow corridor, we passed a row of narrow doors with viewing-holes in them.
“A neat job,” said the nurse, admiringly rather, as I
finished dressing the wound. “We’ll get him in a modi- I turned to him.
fied jacket when it’s done,” he said. “Or he’ll immedi- ately pick at your stitches as the sedative fades. It’s for the best. A splint won’t be enough: he’s inventive. We’ll see how it turns out. He may be calmer in the morning.”
“Padded cells? People are put into them wearing strait-jackets?”
I never saw how it turned out that night: it was late and I had been up since six and up the night before
“Well, of course. They might tear the padding or bite themselves if they weren’t restrained.”
I made a sudden resolution. 15
Surprisingly one of the keys on my chatelaine fitted the ward door.
“Christ, you can get everywhere,” said Jim, not allud- ing to my chatelaine of keys. He must have known that Straatverkoper gave the suturer the run of the place. “Come and look at your patient.” He led the way into the ward. “Good suturing,” he said.
I looked at the young man. The wound was healing fast. The patient himself was a good deal calmer.
I have compassion. But I don’t give it from the cuff of my sleeve. I’d get messed up in the head myself if I did.”
“What are they?”’ I asked.
“Padded cells,” said Jim.
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