The Old Man on the Psych Ward

It’s nearly 3am and I should be sleeping, but there are so many words rushing through my head right now that all I want to do is write. Tell some more of my stories, talk about the old man in the psych ward high dependency unit who hit his head slowly but firmly against the corner of the wall, threatening to kill himself and the nurses in his shaking, elderly voice.

I don’t remember his name anymore, the old man. But I do remember how he shuffled up the corridor at snail’s pace in an attempt to go after the nurses, bare bum hanging out of his hospital gown, his creaky threats to kill fading to background noise by the time the nurses forgot he was coming for them and he would suddenly appear, grabbing on of them from behind.

Surprisingly strong for someone appearing so fragile, it took several nurses to dislodge his hands from around one nurses throat. We all wondered why he was even there, he seemed so out of place with the young schizophrenics, drug addicts and manic depressives. I guess there was no room in the acute care dementia ward that week for a psychotic octogenarian.

Maybe I would have written about the old man sooner, if I hadn’t have somewhat erased him from my mind. It was almost comical after all, or perhaps it would have been if it weren’t so goddam sad. But I had blocked out the thought of his shaky voice rasping threats of “look out, I’m coming! I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to. I’m sorry, but I have to kill you…”

Yes, I had blocked out the way he wrestled so hard and out loud with inner demons that he couldn’t remember properly from one meal to the next; and how he would bang his head repeatedly until crimson red blood trickled down his wrinkled forehead and onto the floor.

The way the doctors and nurses just ignored his blatent self harm until somewhere between compassion and exasperation I couldn’t sit by and watch anymore, running up to him and putting my hand between his head and the sharp corner of the wall as he cried out “no, no, no, stay back, I don’t want to hurt you.”

I tried to forget the way the nurses pulled me back telling me to keep away from him and stay out of the way even though they had done nothing to stop him. The fact that this happened time and time again, his seemingly weak threats mocked by staff until he had one of them by the neck.

Then there was the night I was unable to silence the hallucinogenic sounds of Mary Poppins music playing over and over through the heating system and the old man grabbed a hold of one of the physically smaller, younger nurses so hard and so suddenly that I was sure she would be crushed.

The way one of the other nurses yelled at me to “Go to my room” like a child after I had jumped up and tried to physically get the old man off of the young nurse. I wasn’t trying to interfere or get in the way, I just wanted to help. I was honestly scared he would kill her.

I blocked out the humiliation I felt in that moment and how I just couldn’t take the whole fucking sad scenario anymore and I ran into my baron room, so desperate to die in that moment that I tried to strangle myself on the bed frame with a blanket marked ‘hospital property’.

I remember now how aggressively that nurse yelled at me again when she burst into my room and saw what I was doing, how she grabbed me and shoved me back onto the common room floor, a sobbing mess, where once again I would have to sleep on a mattress on the floor in front of everybody like a naughty dog, wearing nothing but a hospital gown.

As I lay on the cold plastic mattress listening to oblivious patients, snore like freight trains and the fading sounds of the old man moaning as his injection took hold, Fucking Mary Poppins just kept on singing “Just a spoonful of sugar…” Tears streamed down my cheeks so violently that I prayed they would eventually drown me.

I was emotionally numb for a long, long time after my stay on the psych ward. So many things happened in those months spent on the unit; small by other people’s standards but still traumas to me, I suppose.

Those forgotten things continue to haunt me now, waking me from sleep in cold sweats and when strange triggers open up hidden memories, bringing me to tears at the oddest moments.

Writing about this now brings me comfort; letting some peace flow into my busy mind. Perhaps now I will finally sleep.