Loony Bin
A Short Story
23 December 2017
10.30am
It was revealed at handover this morning that at some point during the night one of the schizophrenic patients in the men's wing snuck into his neighbour's room and blasted the occupant with urine while he slept. The receiver of this pissy Christmas present happens to be the most ferocious, snarling little pit bull of a man in existence (current diagnosis: likely antisocial personality disorder; definite asshole). Miraculously the stealthy piddler escaped unharmed and the victim was calmed with little more than a cup of tea, a biscuit, and a scratch behind the ears. Good boy! The motivation behind the assault remains unclear and, as with most incidents in the unit, will probably never be solved.
Meanwhile everyone's favourite nudist is still roaming the intensive care wing claiming that her body is a gift from God and to cover it up would be the ultimate sin. She's had enough olanzapine to calm a deranged rhinoceros but it’s barely made a dent on her impenetrable shield of mania. I’m still recovering from an incident the previous week when I accidentally wandered into her burrow after making a wrong turn. She was midway through her eighth de-robing for the morning when she spotted me. Her eyes lit up like a constellation. “Hi there” she said in a sickly seductive tone that evoked an image of a hungry witch eyeing a plump young German boy in her larder. Luckily I had a bulky ECG machine to use as armour as I scrambled towards the nearest exit. I escaped, unmolested, to a chorus of shrieks and cackles from the nearby nurses station.
As for the other patients in the unit there have been no real changes. There's still spider webs in Delia's abdomen and she is refusing to shower; Lucas won't remove his sunglasses even in the shower; Tony keeps inviting his nurses to shower with him, etc. The two new patients that were admitted overnight will need a full workup and we'd better have a session with the antisocial mongrel to ensure he's not plotting the assassination of our selectively continent friend.
My day to day duties as a newly minted psychiatry trainee extend barely past that of a junior secretary at a rural law firm but to be honest I am glad to be away from the chaos and gore of the hospital proper. My main role is scribing for Dr Labinot - a sun starved consultant psychiatrist-come-amateur-comedian originally from an obscure Eastern European country (Macedonia? Estonia? Albania?). He practices his routines at morning handover, mocking the patients to a captive audience of nurses, social workers and psychologists who would all rather still be in bed.
1.00pm
Transcript of Pit-bull interview
Present: Dr Labinot the albino Albanian, Pit-bull, Pit-bull’s social worker (Gerard or Jared?) and his heavily tattooed nurse (reformed gang member), two burly healthcare assistants and myself the lowly scribe, M.B.ChB.
Dr Labinot: Thank you for joining us today Michael. I heard you had a rough night?
Pit-bull: Yeah no fucking shit I did doc! What sort of a place are you running here where innocent people get pissed all over while they are trying to sleep? Fucking hell!
Tats: Oi he’s trying to help you! Watch your language.
Dr Labinot: That’s O.K. Tania. Michael we just wanted to check in with you and make sure you were doing alright after the incident. We don’t want you doing anything that could jeopardize your discharge next week.
Pit-bull: I wont. Jesus do you think I’m fucking stupid?
Dr Labinot: No of course not. Jared any news from the halfway house?
Jared (not Gerard): Yes, they will have a room available on the 28th.
Pit-bull: I’m just looking forward to getting out of this shithole.
Dr Labinot: Okay thank you Michael. A pleasure as always.
The healthcare assistants escort Pit-bull from the room.
Dr Labinot: He was actually more pleasant than I was expecting. Given his background I’m concerned he will try to retaliate. We had better move the perpetrator into the intensive care ward for now to be on the safe side. Are there any other issues to address?
Tats: Do you want to restrict his daily leave allowance?
Dr Labinot: No I think that would only exacerbate the situation. Hopefully he can keep his rage contained at least until discharge. Then he's the justice systems problem. They'll be doing more than urinating on him when he ends up in prison.
24 December 2017
11.00am
We spent yesterday afternoon and this morning completing the initial work ups with the newbies... I’m struggling to decide which was more intense!
The first was a behemoth Tongan man of thirty eight. At least six-foot-four, he was dressed in a crimson basketball singlet and yellow shorts with an afro so immense it seemed to have its own gravity, pulling apart the features on his wide flat face. He gave the impression of a cartoon character come to life as though he’d been plucked from the movie Space Jam. According to his notes he's had several previous admissions to the unit but has kept off the radar for around five years and has been leading a relatively normal life, or so it seemed.
He was surprisingly softly spoken, polite and pleasant and, strikingly, he seemed to have a reasonable grasp of the fact that he was mentally unwell and needed treatment (our understanding wasn’t so good - he'd had three different diagnoses from his past three admissions). Despite this insight he has an unwavering belief that his neighbours are viciously tormenting him on a daily basis. During the interview he described how they would sneak into his room at night via a series of secret underground tunnels they had constructed over the years. They would do horrendous things to him while he slept - sedating him with illicit drugs to keep him comatose, piercing his skin with blades so tiny as to be imperceptible to the naked eye, and sexually assaulting him with garden tools. Christ! I get annoyed when the little shits next door blast Ed Sheeran too loudly. He couldn’t explain why he'd been targeted all these years but spoke of these occurrences with the conviction of priest.
His father had brought him in yesterday after the neighbours had caught him threatening their Jack Russell with a cricket bat (in his defence those dogs do tend to be self righteous little pricks). Dr Labinot feels he needs to come in for a period so we can try to formulate a formal diagnosis and medicate the bejesus out of him. Or at the very least arrange for the for the tunnels to be filled in.
The next patient was a Bipolar Caucasian lady in her late forties in the throes of the manic episode. She was adamant that she doesn't need to be here (she does) and is being kept against her will (she is). She was brought in yesterday after being found supine in a cul-de-sac with her arms to the sky, cackling wildly and hollering passages from the New Testament. According to her niece who dropped her off, over the past few weeks she has been more hyperactive, sleeping less, and has been generally being more of a pain in the ass than usual.
“It’s just energy!” She claimed “I feel great! Honestly it’s not like last time".
Her story would have been more believable if she hadn't been fidgeting like a rabid Tasmanian devil in her chair.
“So why do you think you're niece thought you needed to be seen then?” Asked an expressionless Dr Labinot. Clearly she wanted to contain herself to prove her sanity but the ten seconds of silence that followed were too much to bare. The flood gates opened.
“Well she needs to stop being so bossy and controlling and sort her own stuff out before worrying about me the nosy cow I mean I love her really but the way she treats those kids I mean I think kids should be free and happy but honestly the stuff she lets them get away with I mean obviously I don’t mean she should hit them but then discipline is discipline I mean if we'd put a foot out of line my mother would’ve got the wooden spoon out…”
For the next hour we were like ocean hardened sailors circumnavigating the endless torrents of verbal diarrhoea that spewed forth from this patients mouth. We managed to decipher that the reason she was found making asphalt angels while reciting scripture was as follows: after noticing there were no cars or people on her street that morning she quickly concluded the rapture had finally happened, meaning the chosen few would soon ascend to heaven and it was her job to welcome them at the gates. She was simply having a private celebration ceremony in the street in preparation for the task ahead.
“That’s not crazy it’s in the bible you can look it up it the rapture is coming at some point that’s common knowledge so I don’t think it was too far out there to assume it has happened but anyway Sarah thought it meant I was ill again which obviously I’m not and I ended up here oh well it'll give me a chance to have a break before I get back out there I’ve got a busy life to lead.”
We never found out why saint Peter had been demoted but the end of the interview I was beginning to pray for the rapture myself.
4.00pm
That’s the excitement over for me for a few days at least. It'll be a relief to get out of this loony bin over the Christmas break, though my family could probably give some of the patients here a run for their money. Still, I pity the poor bastard that's been rostered on to cover this place. At least there will be booze at home.
December 25 2017
9.30am
I awoke this morning, not to a stocking full of presents, but the following message from the registrar on call:
“Hey mate hope ur xmas is going well. Sorry to txt you when ur off duty but didn’t want you to be sprung with this out of the blue when you’re back on the 27th… Your antisocial patient, the one due for discharge, is DEAD!!! He was strangled overnight by one of the newbies. Not clear what happened yet but the police are swarming the place and we are on full lock down. Sorry to hand over a shit storm. Merry Christmas.”
December 27 2017
2.00pm
Handover was a sombre affair this morning. There was no routine from Dr Labinot and the staff were all hysterical trying to work out what the hell had happened. Naturally much finger pointing was taking place, largely in the direction of the staff who’d been working over the break and were now at home, unable to defend themselves. Most of the day was spent tediously completing paperwork to try and cover our asses.
It seems that Pit bull had been out on day leave Christmas Eve and had treated himself with a few honks on his crack pipe. He returned late at night with a head full of vengeful thoughts and broke onto the urinators old room (now occupied by Space Jam) armed with a plastic knife from the kitchen. Space Jam woke up, likely in a chemical stupor from the cocktail of meds we’d just started him on, strangled the mongrel to death, and then fled the scene. The poor guy must have thought his neighbours had sent an assassin to finally finish him off. I felt proud of him in a strange way. It wasn’t the Jack Russell as he had intended but at least he got to put down one mutt.