Tired. I just spent my entire work day waiting in the Emergency Room with a suicidal student who needed psychiatric help. And in the end, they sent her home with me, with some photocopied sheets of paper to read about how to handle suicidal ideation. I wonder if we could have somehow managed without this brilliant intervention.
Waiting in the Emergency Room is one of those things that makes the construct of time lose all meaning. The student herself told me she felt as though she was in Narnia and when we stepped outside the hospital she would find it was still 8:45am and the day had only just begun. Something about the fluorescent lights, even harsher than the lights in public schools, sucks a person's energy into a vortex.
There was a print of that vortex on the wall that we had plenty of time to examine and interpret. I said, It looks like a wormhole in outer space. (I don't know why I said that. I do not know what a wormhole looks like.) She said, It looks like a peppermint candy. I liked her interpretation better. We watched a man whose arm was clearly broken moan for what seemed like an eternity. I felt ill and had to look away. She stared, fascinated.
Desperate, we began making fun of other patients. The small, pale, haunted looking girl in the hospital gown who kept wandering around looking lost became the subject of a horror movie. I whispered, Don't look into her eyes. She'll steal your soul. Sometimes I say things that I know are wrong. But it made my girl laugh and I just needed to get warm for a minute. I hoped that other little girl had someone with her who was making fun of me.
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1 comment:
I hate ERs. They seem like such forlorn places with interminable waiting. I think making your student laugh was probably exactly what you needed to do.
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