High Crime Area Read Free

“pain” as an element in restraint-and-control, medical workers are not allowed “pain” and may be legally censured if patients are injured.
    Despite my training, there have been injuries of patients I’d been obliged to restrain and control, both in U.S. care facilities and in the medical units in Iraq.
    None of these were my fault. And yet, there were injuries.
    The nurses were gossiping: Sister Mary Alphonsus had no close next of kin.
    Or, if there were relatives of the deceased woman, they were distant relatives who had no wish to come forward to identify themselves.
    Maybe no wish to associate themselves with the individual who’d been director of the Craigmillnar Home for Children, that had been shut down in 1977 by Oybwa County health authorities and the State of Wisconsin.
    Just recently too, Craigmillnar was back in the headlines.
    A full week after her death on November 11, no one from the Oybwa County medical examiner had contacted the facility. So it appeared, Dr. Bromwalder’s death certificate had not been questioned.
    The gauzy strip of “curtain”—unless it was some kind of nun’s “veil” or “wimple”—had disappeared from the premises. All of Sister Mary Alphonsus’s things had been packed up and removed from room twenty-two and a new, unsuspecting arrival, also an elderly woman, had been moved in.
    Yet, the subject of the mysterious “head covering” continued to come up, in Unit D. It seemed strange to me—(I said so)—that I appeared to be the only person to have seen Sister Mary Alphonsus fix something like a “head-shroud” over her head several times in the past. Some kind of cloth—might’ve been a towel—(I didn’t remember it as white)—she’d drawn like a hood over her head, for whatever reason. I hadn’t asked the Sister what she was doing of course. She’d have been offended at such familiarity.
    One day our young consulting physician Dr. Godai asked me about this, for he’d overheard some of us talking.
    So you’d seen the Sister putting some kind of “cloth” on her head, or around her head, Francis? When was this, d’you remember?
    Might’ve been a few weeks ago, doctor. Maybe two months.
    How often did you see the Sister putting this “cloth” on her head?
    Maybe three times, doctor. I never thought anything of it, you know how old people are sometimes.
    Dr. Godai laughed. He was the newest consultant on our staff, from the University of Minnesota Medical School. He had a burnished-skinned Paki look, dark-eyed, sharp-witted. Knowing that certain of the elderly patients and certain of the medical staff did not feel comfortable with him, as non-white, Dr. Godai was what you’d call forceful-friendly, engaging you with his startling-white eyes and smile sharp as a knife-blade. Between Dr. Godai and me there flashed a kind of understanding as if the elderly nun was in the room with us, helpless, yet furious, glaring at us in disdain and in hurt, that she could not lash out at us to punish.
    Eccentric is the word, Francis. A kindly word. For you wouldn’t want to say demented, deranged, senile —eh?
    Dr. Godai and I laughed together. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that Dr. Godai could ever be my friend, though we are about the same age.
    I told Dr. Godai that each time I’d seen Sister Mary Alphonsus behaving in this way, putting a “shroud” on her head, I’d made no comment of course. I didn’t even ask her if she was cold, or needed an extra blanket. Nor did Sister Mary Alphonsus encourage conversation with me or with others on the staff. In my memory it had seemed to me that the woman was just slightly embarrassed, and annoyed, by my having seen her with the “cloths.” And so out of courtesy I turned away from her, as if I hadn’t seen.
    It’s a strange life isn’t it, Francis?