Gretchen And Her Moms

S1

Teeter Tottering

Nothing I learned in my two years of social work graduate school prepared me, on my first job, for Gretchen, and, on my second job, for her mother, Rachel.

A degree does not confer experience.

What does a therapist do?

First: “Do No Harm.”

How in the world can you, “Do No Harm,” when the Greek root word for “Therapy” is a verb that means, “To Change?”

It’s unnatural. Isn’t that the whole point?

Rachel’s one and only child was born two months premature. Rachel refused to identify the father. Her newborn’s health required special care and the infant was whisked away to the hospital’s “Pre-Me Unit.” Rachel somehow got herself together enough to flee from the hospital, and her baby, but not before scribbling a note, naming her baby, Gretchen.

Hospital Social Services searched for a relative’s home for Gretchen, based on Rachel’s last name: no kinfolk were found.

So, infant Gretchen was placed in a foster home, a good, stable home, with caring foster parents. For eight years she was loved. She was happy. She played and she laughed. She did very well with others and in school.

Then, Rachel, now living in a cult, resurfaced. She had gone to Juvenile Court to meet with a court case manager, announcing her intention to be reunited with her daughter. After a few minutes of chit chat the case manager’s supervisor knocked on his door and called the worker out from his office. The worker apologized to Rachel, “I’m so sorry but there’s some kind of emergency and I have to see my supervisor. I should be back in a minute or two.” He left Gretchen’s file on her desk. Rachel grabbed it and pored through it until she found the address of Gretchen’s foster parents.

Rachel’s mission was accomplished.

When the case manager returned he said, “Ms. Rachel, we have to start out by doing a background check on you. It’s just our normal first step. We’ll need your permission to take this first step.”

“Who the fuck is this, ‘We,’ you are talking about?” she asked.

Quite taken back the case manager answered, “It’s the state.“

“Hell no,” said Rachel and she got up and stormed out of the office. That afternoon, with the help of her boyfriend, and his car, Rachel cruised past the address of Gretchen’s foster home. The next afternoon the two returned and parked on the corner to see if they could catch a glimpse of Gretchen.

Sure enough, after about an hour, a car pulled into the driveway. A thin, short, blond haired girl with a round snowy face exited her foster mother’s car. Rachel nodded to her boyfriend and said, “Yep, that’s my daughter. That’s exactly how I would have looked at her age.” Satisfied, they drove to a bar to plan the kidnapping.

The next day they followed Gretchen’s foster mother as she drove Gretchen to school. They parked down the street from the school to scope out the area.

They saw a small plaza with benches separated from the school’s playground by a row of low shrubs.

“Perfect,” said Rachel. “I’ll sit on the bench facing the playground. I’ll grab her when her class comes out for recess.”

“Yes,” said her boyfriend, “That bench was made for this.” Satisfied, they drove off to a bar to savor their plan.

At eight the next morning Rachel waited in the plaza while her boyfriend waited in the car. Three hours later Gretchen and her classmates came out to the playground for recess. Gretchen played with a friend on a teeter totter adjacent to the plaza

With the teacher’s back turned while smoking a cigarette Rachel got up, slipped through the bushes and calmly walked toward Gretchen.

“Gretchen I’m your mother’s friend and she had a bad accident and she wants me to take you to the hospital to see her.”

“Should I tell my teacher?” asked Gretchen.

“No, sweetie,” said Rachel, “She’s busy. There’s no time for that. We’ll tell her later.”

She reached out to Gretchen’s hand.

“Is my mom going to be okay?” asked Gretchen.

“They don’t know yet honey. You can help her. Come on, we need to hurry,” said Rachel. “And you little girl,” she said to Gretchen’s friend on the teeter totter, “You go tell your teacher that Gretchen’s mom’s friend came and took her on a family emergency.” Rachel and Gretchen, hand in hand, scurried off to the car.

Nobody else noticed.

They drove off to Rachel’s cult.

It wasn’t long before unspeakably depraved things started happening to Gretchen. The brutality muted her while her brain recorded the depredations.

S2

Another Level of Care

Gretchen came, at the age of eleven to the residential treatment center where I had been working about three months. On Gretchen’s first day the Social Work Director introduced her to me.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said warmly.

Silence and no eye contact on her part.

“Great,” said the director. He led me to his office in the administrative building.

Seated in his office he said to me, “I know you have a full case load for sure but I need to start Gretchen off with you.”

“May I ask, why me?”

“Certainly,” he said. “I believe that Gretchen has traumatic female abandonment issues with huge countertransference issues counterindicating treatment work with a female therapist. And, because you are the only male social worker here, it makes sense to me that you give it a go.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Thank you for the extra effort,” he said. “I have been here twenty five years and after reading her referral materials I think her prognosis at this point is very poor. I wish I could take on her case but, you know, I’m retiring in two months and another treatment disruption for her is to be avoided at all costs.”

“I see,” I said.

“I think this is her last chance for any kind of stability,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Until the age of eight Gretchen had had been done quite all around. But her biological mother kidnapped her from school and took Gretchen to live in her cult. Gretchen became, for lack of a better choice of words, a sex object.”

“Oh, dear,” I said.

He was actually winding down and retiring at the end of the month.

“What suggestions would you have for me to get on the right track with her?”

“You’ll find that out for us,” he said.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Okay. Anything else?” I asked.

“Don’t be negative,” he said. “Just keep in mind she has ‘fired’ anyone who tries to help her.”

Burned out and disengaged he was, for his own good, protecting himself, keeping his energy to himself. He was focused on avoiding any last minute problems and be freed to reap and enjoy that pension.

I forced out a smile and let his absence go.

“Okay,” I said, “Wish me luck.”

He gave me the old thumbs up motion. He handed me Gretchen’s chart and off I went to my office.

The social worker’s offices were located in a one story building on the margin of the residential treatment center. It also housed the center’s on-grounds school.

The building was a structure constructed of concrete blocks. It was a downright ugly and depressing building and the social workers and teachers hated it. Just imagine what the kids thought.

My office was a dinky room with a desk and a swivel chair for me and one medium sized wooden chair (for kids?) in front of the desk. In the corner was a short metal filing cabinet. I asked the administrator if I had a budget for treatment supplies. I was told, “No.”

For the middle of the room I purchased a round shag rug, a short, round, green table and two short plastic yellow chairs. I also had purchased art supplies.

I began reading Gretchen’s file. I learned that after the FBI raided the cult Gretchen went through a lengthy psychiatric hospitalization. Then she lived, serially, in two different foster homes, having “problems” in each of them after which she had then another psychiatric hospitalization, this one was for a much shorter duration. Then she was placed in a residential treatment center, like mine, where she again had “problems.” Then there was another hospitalization, then another foster home, then another hospitalization, then here.

My arithmetic skills added up to nine joint dislocations. The only thing that changed over all that was her medication.

After reading her chart I went to Gretchen’s living unit and I introduced myself to the child care staff as Gretchen’s therapist. After that I went back to my building for sessions. After the school day I introduced myself to Gretchen’s teacher.

My first session with Gretchen was two days later.

S3

Breakfast

I watched as Gretchen schlepped towards me down the hall connecting the school and social work offices. I bent down to say, “Hello.”

“Yeah, I seen you around a lot,” she said.

More than once? How’d she do that? I had hadn’t seen her. Was she that afraid of me?

Gretchen huffed past me and made her way to the wooden chair in front of my desk. She looked like she knew her part. The chair engulfed her and she curled up into a ball to make her even tinier.

I followed her lead and sat at my desk across from her. I smiled and again said, “Hello.”

“Whatever,” she mumbled.

That was a very good start!

I asked her what she had for breakfast. She looked up, squished her face, and reslumped.

“Hey,” I said. “How about we move over to those other chairs?

“Oh, I don’t care… whatever.”

We took our new places.

“How is this for you?” I asked.

“Hmmmf,” she exhaled.

“So, Gretchen, what did you have for breakfast?” I gently asked again.

She crossed her eyes so hard it had to have hurt her.

Hurt was what she was used to from adults. She could do it quite well to herself.

My turn again, “Okay, Gretchen, how about a game?”

“Okay,” she said, “Sure, a game.”

“What kind of game would you like to play?” I asked.

“The kind that delivers me from this fucking place,” she said, staring me down.

“Oh,” I said with a smile. That’s when I felt her anger. Could it set her free?

“Well,” I said, “I better stay out of your way.”

She looked surprised and said, “I guess so.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“You mean I can go back to school?”

“Yes, unless you want to stay.”

“Fuck no,” she said. “School is way better than this.”

She popped up from her chair. The shag rug high-lighted her departure with static electricity. I fought my feelings and said nothing. I got up and watched her skip on her way back to her classroom.

Later on that day, as I was writing my progress note, I figured out a game, a card game, to try for our next session: “War.” After work I purchased a deck of cards.

At our next session, I asked her if she knew how to play, “War.”

“Dummy, everyone knows that,” she said. I peeled the plastic off the deck and began shuffling the cards.

“Have you ever been in a cult?” she asked.

I took some extra time to respond. I had to get this right. But before I could come up with a therapeutic answer she asked, “Wait, do you have any pencils and paper?”

“Maybe, let me see,” I said. I got up and went to the desk and loudly fiddled with its three drawers. “Aha, Gretchen! Oh my goodness! Yes! Look! Look what I have found here!!” I held aloft and waved a pad of drawing paper in one hand and a clutch of colored pencils, and markers, and crayons in the other.

“Don’t be such an asshole. Every therapist has that shit,” she said.

“Really? I thought I was different,” I said as I walked back to the table.

“Oh, yes; you, are, very, different!” She grabbed and opened the pad and chose a piece of black chalk and with it in her fist she drew a thick circle. Seeing it, I said, “So that’s what a cult is like?”

“No. That’s what I had for breakfast,” she said.

S4

Packing

For the next four sessions we played, “War.”

Nothing was squeezed out despite the associative potential of the game. Gretchen took me by surprise when she asked to play checkers. Maybe “War” was too direct of an approach.

“Okay. I’ll pick up a checker board after work,” I said.

I hadn’t been fired.

Progress!

Gretchen was a very good checker player right off the bat. During the second game I asked her the same old what did you have for breakfast question?

Her answer deepened: “Food.”

And then I asked her, “How is school today?”

“Boring.”

After eight sessions of checkers her answers became phrases like, “Juice and cereal,” and, “Spelling and recess.”

Then she started using sentences like, “The food here sucks,” and, “I hate reading.” With those answers I knew, so far, I still wasn’t getting fired.

After another couple of weeks Gretchen asked me, “Where are the people that hurt me?”

“What did they do?” I asked.

“Don’t you know anything?” she snorted.

She went to my desk and opened the drawer and came back with a piece of paper and black chalk. She drew an “X” across the paper.

“What is that?” I asked.

“That’s what they did,” she said.

Early the next morning, before breakfast, a neighbor across the street called the center. The call was transferred to the child care supervisor.

“There’s a butt naked young girl in her second story window mooning the traffic below on the street,” said the caller.

“What room is it?” she asked.

“The one next to the north corner window.”

Gretchen’s room.

“Thank you. I’ll take care of it,” she said.

The child care supervisor went to Gretchen’s room and knocked on the door. Gretchen, fully clothed, answered her door.

“What were you doing in there?” asked the worker.

“Sleeping, bitch.”

“That’s enough!” said the supervisor. “”You are grounded in your room today. That means no free time.” Then she loudly shut Gretchen’s door.

Five minutes after I arrived at work the center’s administrator came to my office.

“You’re Gretchen’s therapist, right?”

“Yes sir.” And I offered up a little more, “I think she’s making progress in therapy.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked. He proceeded to tell me about the report of her defrocked behavior. He told me to confront Gretchen about the alleged incident. He directed me to make the bad behavior go away immediately, implying, forever. “And,” he said, “When you’re done, come to my office and give me a full report.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “I will go to her room.” Then I said, somewhat sassily, “But, I’ll do it my way.”

“For Cripe’s sake,” said the administrator, “Just do it!”

I went to my office and grabbed the checker board and checkers and went to Gretchen’s room where I knocked and identified myself.

There was no answer so I knocked again, much louder.

Still no answer.

Oh my God, I thought, what if she hurt herself?

I said, ”I’m coming in. I have something good for you,” and I opened the door.

Gretchen was sitting on the floor in a corner, all balled up, thank goodness clothed, sobbing and shaking.

“Gretchen, everything is going to be okay. How about a game of checkers?” I asked, with a smile.

“Yeah, okay,” she said.

I sat down next to her.

“My real mother never played anything with me,” she said.

“How does that make you feel?” I asked.

“It makes me want to pee on the whole fucking world.”

“How can I help you,” I asked.

“Do you think you could find my real mother? I wrote her a letter that I want to give her.”

“Would you be willing to read the letter to me Gretchen?”

“Whatever,” she replied. “It’s over there, under my pillow. You can get it out.”

I pulled out a tightly folded piece of paper and held it out to her and said, “Gretchen, I would really like it if you read it to me.”

“You are so mother fucking lazy like all the other social workers in the world,” she said, smiling.

“Pretty please?” I asked.

“I hate reading,” she said.

“Pretty, pretty please?” I asked.

“Whatever,” said Gretchen, unfolding the small piece of scratch paper.

Dear Mom,

When I hurt I get angry. I wanted to punch somebody or something. But I did not mean to take off my clothes. It just happened. It made me feel better. So that was bad but it was the only bad thing I’ve done here. I would never punch you. Please come and take me back. I’m telling the truth. I am sorry about everything. I hope that you are not mad at me. I will be good now. I want you to take me home. I love you.

Sorry.”

“Gretchen,” what are you going to do with that letter?” I asked.

“I want you to give it to my real mom.”

“How will I do this?”

“Just you go find her, that’s all.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll start looking today. Now, though, it’s time for breakfast.”

“Whatever,” she said. She got up and we left for the cafeteria.

“I’ll see you later in therapy,” I said.

“Therapy, fareapee,” she said.

I went to the administrator’s office. His door was open and he beckoned me in. “Did you talk to Gretchen?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“How did it go? You did impress upon her very clearly that her, that, you know, uh, that her behavior is strictly forbidden, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir. I sure did. It won’t happen again.”

“You might try harder to be sure about everything with her,” he said.

You don’t say. How about you sticking to fund raising? What the hell, screw this corrective interview. I let him have it from my English major days.

“Sir,” I said, “While both ‘might’ and ‘may’ are modal verbs, your use of ‘might’ was incorrect. You should have used ‘may’ to talk about a possibility.”

He stood up, furious. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “That is insubordination! You are fired!!”

Not, “Whatever.”

“How about me doing closure sessions with my kids? Especially Gretchen. Please ask my supervisor about it.”

“He doesn’t care. That therapy crap doesn’t work. Pack your weird stuff and out of here!”

With that, I left my all things in my office and promised myself to look for a job where the rules of engagement were left to the clinicians.

S5

Promise Kept

A month later I obtained a new position as a clinical social worker position on the night shift in an adult unit of a psychiatric hospital. Not a great time for a shift but it allowed me a lot of flexibility with the head honchos not around.

Two weeks into my new job, on a Saturday Night, a telephone call was transferred to me. The call was from an anonymous source. The man said he was worried about a woman across the street from his second floor apartment. He said she was pacing back and forth in the middle of the street in front of a Starbucks. He said she was shrieking, swinging a knapsack at passing-by autos, literally throwing herself around in the street in the December ice rain.

“What Starbucks?” I asked. The man gave me the address.

“Could you please give me a physical description of the woman?” I asked.

“She’s very short, maybe young middle aged. She’s dressed in a long black coat,” he said.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Hold on,” I said and I paged the 911 Dispatcher and gave the dispatcher the Starbucks address and the physical description of the woman. When I got back to the man on the phone he was gone.

What the man didn’t say was that his name was Justin, that the woman was his roommate, his girlfriend, Rachel. He also didn’t say that she was an uncommon beauty, that she had been the real shit in high school, a Ford Model at that, and later an actress in several television commercials.

And he didn’t say he had just thrown her drunk ass out of his apartment, lock, stock, and barrel.

Rachel had been drinking nonstop for two days, just drinking time away, this way and that way. She told Justin that she was very depressed over what happened to her six months ago. Six months earlier she had been living with her previous boyfriend, Timothy. Timothy worked odd hours as a repair man at a bicycle shop. While he worked Rachel hung out at Starbucks. That’s where she met Justin who took an instant liking to her and bought her a world of free artisan coffees.

One day Timothy’s bike repair job was so slow that he left work early. When he got home and opened the apartment door he saw Rachel on the couch cuddling with Justin, a guy he knew worked at the local Starbucks. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked.

“Nothing, sweetie, nothing, we’re just talking,” cooed Rachel.

Didn’t look to Timothy like, “just talking.” He threatened Justin with the baseball bat he kept by the door. When Justin ran out Timothy turned on Rachel. He dragged her off the sofa and shoved her out to the hallway. Ever the gallant, he tossed her coat and boots out after her. He slammed the door and collected all of her clothes, and belongings, and her two make up kits, and walked everything out to his third floor back porch. From there he lifted the bundles over the railing and dropped them down to a dumpster parked in the back of the apartment building.

Rachel put on her boots and coat in the hallway and slipped off to the Starbucks. She saw Justin there and told him what had happened.

“You can come and live with me,” he said.

“Thank you darling,” she said.

To be fair to Rachel, she didn’t have a place of her own after her husband divorced her two years earlier. Her ex, Brian, had allowed her to stay with him until she could find a place of her own. But instead of organizing her resume, seeking employment and pursuing housing, she practiced drinking wine and extended her drink zone from her head to her soul.

This went on for three months until Brian evicted her from “their” home. This ouster started with a fairly simple question.

“What are you going to do with your life Rachel?” asked Brian for the hundredth time.

No response.

Then her phone rang. She answered it and smiled and began flirting with the caller.

“Who the fuck is that?” asked Brian.

Before she could answer with a lie he grabbed the phone away from her.

“Babe, it’s only a high school friend,” she said.

Rachel was thirty one.

“Bull shit!” said Brian.

“Who is this?” he asked the caller.

“My name is Ray,” said the caller. “I went to high school with Rachel. Who is this?”

“Fuck you Ray!” said Brian.

“Fuck all men!” Rachel shouted.

“That’s what you do,” said Brian and he whipped her phone into the kitchen wall and it crashed apart and fell to the floor. He walked over to it and crushed it with his foot.

“How dare you!” she screamed as she got up and approached him in the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah! You’re gonna pay for that!” shouted Rachel in front of him.

“Try this payment on,” he said and he pushed her violently into a solid plaster wall.

She saw stars but did not lose consciousness.

“I think you jacked my jaw,” she mumbled.

“Oh my God Rachel,” he cried. “I am so, so sorry,” said Brian. “Come here and let me give you a big hug and make it all better.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said.

They agreed to forego any medical attention, Rachel fearing detox and Brian fearing police involvement. For the next week all she could do to tolerate the pain was drink vodka through a straw. She lost ten pounds. She let her looks go all raggedy while hunkering down on the couch watching Michael Jackson videos.

Brian had seen enough, again. “You look like shit Rachel. Take a shower and change your clothes, now.”

“Okay, okay,” she mumbled.

That’s enough of his bull shit, she said to herself. She got up and staggered, a little, to the bedroom and closed the door and filled her shoulder bag with some clothing and her two make-up kits. She listened at the bedroom door and when she heard Brian running the shower for her she vamoosed with her coat and shoulder bag, but not before grabbing the vodka bottle off the kitchen table.

When Brian came out of the bathroom he went to the bedroom door and opened it.

“She just poofed up and gone?!” he said. “Good riddance!!”

She went to Starbucks where Timothy bought her a coffee.

That’s what happens, more often than not, when you, in Rachel’s own words, “Live off weird guys.”

By the time the hospital ambulance got to the Starbucks address Rachel was gone. “Hey, I have a hunch,” said Marie, one of the two paramedics. “Frank,” she said to the driver, “Turn right and go three blocks. There’s a park there with a kiosk; she may be there.”

It was a good hunch.

“There she is!” said Frank.

When Rachel saw the ambulance she took off, stumbling badly, sloshing around in her soaked boots until she tripped and fell and busted her healed jaw on the pavement.

“It hurts so much!” she cried from the ground as the two paramedics approached. She clenched her fists in an attempt to freeze the pain but that just made her jaw hurt even more. When they got to her they pulled her up by her arms to her feet and cradle walked her to the ambulance, set her on the gurney and lifted her into the ambulance.

The ambulance’s lights revealed her misaligned jaw.

“Would you like some ice for your jaw?” asked Marie.

“Nah,” she said. One thing Rachel became really good at was taking a punch.

“But I need to shave my legs,” she mumbled.

How’s that for a non sequitur? The ambulance’s siren had brought back to her the trauma of getting pregnant the summer before her junior year. And when she started showing out, despite her best efforts to conceal the baby bump, her parents confronted her with, “Who is the father?”

“I don’t know,” said Rachel.

“WHO, we demand to know, WHO is the father?” shouted her father.

“I can’t tell you,” said Rachel.

“IF YOU DON’T TELL US YOU AND YOUR ‘IT’ CAN LEAVE AND GO TO HELL!” screamed her mother.

“My brother raped me, four times,” said Rachel.

Her mother slapped Rachel in the face. Her father punched her in the stomach. “You are a sick whore!” he said. “Go to your room and start packing right now. You’re going to have that thing somewhere else and you are never to come back here.”

Reeling in her bedroom Rachel had a miscarriage on her bed.

Rachel’s mother cursed her for the mess she made.

Her father dropped Rachel off at the city’s hospital.

Rachel’s mother laughed and cried all the next week. She was still laughing and crying the next weekend when her son came home from college.

“Listen to this,” she said, “Rachel told me you raped her four times and you got her pregnant!”

“Mom, you know Rachel is one very sick puppy.”

“An extremely sick puppy who we will never see again,” she said.

“Mom, she made her own bed. now she can lie in it.”

“Not her bed! Someone else’s!!” said her mother. ”What a whore!”

S6.

Rachel’s Admission

“Sweetie pie, what is your name?” asked paramedic Marie sitting next to Rachel, as the ambulance tore ahead.

“It’s Rachel! Just Rachel.”

“Rachel, what is your last name?” asked Marie.

“Ouchie!! My jaw hurts too much when I talk.”

“We can give you something for that Rachel. But, before we can sort out what’s going on with your jaw, first, we need to get started with your last name.”

“Doe. It’s Doe.”

“Okay, Rachel. Rachel Doe. Okay, Rachel Doe, we are taking you to the hospital.”

“Fuck! I fucking hate hospital gowns,” she said, holdong her jaw.

“We are going to take good care of you as best as you let us,” said Frank.

Rachel raised her head to get a better look at Frank.

“EEEK!” she cried. “Look, over there, there’s a rodent on my foot!! Get it off me!! Kill it!!” she screamed.

“No, Rachel. That’s not a rodent. That’s your boot.”

“Ouchie! Thought so,” she said. “I can’t talk anymore because my jaw feels broken. And I think I have a couple of loose teeth too.”

The ambulance reeked like one big fart of three day old alcohol.

“This is going to be a tough one for someone ‘back home,” said Frank.

“That’s why they pay hospital social workers the big bucks,” said Marie.

“Fuck the social workers,” said Rachel.

The ambulance parked at the entrance to the hospital emergency room. The security guard wheeled Rachel in the gurney into the buzzing waiting room where there were shooting victims, heart attack and stroke victims, auto accident victims, children with broken limbs, and an elderly man crashing with diabetes. The paramedics conferred with the triage nurse, giving her an anecdotal account of Rachel’s status and mood.

“All we were able to gather from her was that her name was Rachel Doe. She said her jaw was broken. And, she’s obviously intoxicated.”

“That tells me nothing,” said the triage nurse. “I can’t even give her acetaminophen.”

“I need a fucking drink!” Rachel shouted but nobody seemed to care.

“Please keep her strapped all the way down,” said the Triage Nurse.

Fortunately for everyone Rachel passed out. She was wheeled into Emergency Pod #7. One hour later the Hospitalist arrived. She used an a loud voice to rouse Rachel: no response. “RACHEL”: nothing, not a twitch.

She tried foot tickling to no avail.

Then using three fingers she firmly pushed in Rachel’s sternum. The pressure accomplished the goal.

Rachel responded. “What the fuck are you doing? Who the fuck are you? Where the fuck am I?”

Before the Hospitalist could explain anything Rachel moaned, “My fucking jaw is killing me.”

“That’s why you are here. Let me get you an ice pack.”

The Hospitalist came back with an ice pack.

“Why am I tied down?” asked Rachel.

“That’s our standard procedure in your case.”

“Fuck you,” said Rachel.

“Okay, Rachel,” said the Hospitalist, “Now I’m going to ask you some questions so we can help you, okay?”

Rachel frowned and shook her head in the negative.

“What is your last name?”

“Doe!”

“What is your date of birth?”

“I plead the fifth!”

“Okay Rachel Doe, when was your last drink of alcohol?”

“Yesterday.”

“Rachel, are you allergic to morphine?”

Rachel smiled and shook her head in the negative.

“I’d like to give you morphine. Morphine will stop the pain. To do that I will first have to insert a small catheter, a tube, into a vein in your hand. It will hurt for a second when I do that. Then I can start an IV line with the morphine. Do you agree to allow me to do this?”

Rachel nodded in the affirmative.

The drip did its job. Rachel slept for two hours. When she woke she found that she was still strapped. The night shift was just about over. The Hospitalist came back before leaving and once again roused Rachel and asked for her last name and date of birth.

“Bitch, I refuse to give out any more information,” she said.

“Okay. You just relax. I’m going to get the social worker for you. He is a very nice man – good looking too. But don’t tell him I said that.”

“I did like the morphine,” said Rachel.

The Hospitalist had the Triage Nurse page me on the Adult Psychiatric Unit. I hustled down to the Emergency Department.

“A woman by the name of Rachel is in Emergency Pod #7,” said the Triage Nurse. “All she gave us was her first name and she said she had a broken jaw and loose teeth. She also reeks of alcohol. Please see what information you can get from her.

“Okay,” I said.

I shook the curtain on Pod #7, saying, “Hello in there,” I said.

“What!” was the response.

“Hello in there, may I come in?” I asked.

“Whatever.” That sounded so familiar, that, “Whatever.”

I introduced myself and asked her for her name.

“Rachel Doe.”

“Ms. Doe, how are you feeling.”

She didn’t respond. I smiled and asked again.

“Hey retard, I heard you the first time. Well, my jaw’s broken and I’ve got some loose teeth. So, how do I feel? I feel like shit and when I get out of here I’m going to have someone kill my fucking boyfriend.”

“How would you kill him?” I asked.

“Oh you are so dumb. I was kidding.”

“Oh,” I said. “So how can we help you?”

“Just get me more morphine.”

“Okay. I’ll see about that. We’d like to get a picture of your jaw and see what’s going on there,” I said.

“No fucking pictures,” she said. “And, you’re not good looking at all.”

Having established an open line of communication I asked Rachel if she’d give me her last name.

“I’m a freaking BAD ASS. I’m a POWERHOUSE. I’m like a POW.”

“I see that,” I said.

“I’m going to puke,” she said.

She turned her head and puked on the floor. I didn’t stick around to see what she was going to do next. I went to the Charge Nurse to tell her what happened.

“Dear God,” said the nurse, “Is it a full moon or what?” She called the janitorial department. When #7 pod was cleaned I went back to Rachel.

(I was fighting not to treat Rachel like an object.)

The curtain was open. Rachel was unstrapped and on a clean gurney.

“You, get me a telephone,” said Rachel.

“Okay, Rachel. But could you tell me what were you doing out in the rain?”

“I was being chased by homeless people, reckless people, criminals, beggars, and lots of people with guns! It’s a fucking war zone out there.”

“You are safe here Rachel.”

“Lions and Tigers and Bears; Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!” she said.

“Would you like anything else besides the telephone?” I asked.

“Do you have a mirror?” she asked.

“I’ll get one for you,” I said.

I returned with a small cosmetic mirror.

“I want to see my face,” she said.

I held up the mirror for Rachel too have a look.

“OMG!! I look like Daffy Duck!! My upper lip is the size of a crescent moon!!!” she hollered. “Just give me morphine pills and I’m out of here. I have friends that will take me in,” she said.

“If you stay here, we can get your jaw back to normal,” I said.

“Me, me get back to normal? I don’t want normal.”

“Rachel, where do you live?”

“Anywhere and everywhere. Now, that phone.”

“Okay. Just one more question. Rachel, do you have any family?”

“I once had a child.”

“Where is your child?”

“Some center,” said Rachel.

“What’s her name?”

“Gretchen.”

So, I had kept my promise to Gretchen.

Human caretakers have the capacity to be the worst caretakers in all of creation and leave the shredded pieces to feed the next generations.

S7

Scratching the Itch

Rachel used the phone to call Justin. She told him where she was. She asked him to give her one more chance. “Would you please come and get me? Just come here say you are my brother and that you want to visit me.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Justin, please they are killing me here,” she said.

“Okay. Just this once,” he said.

Rachel gave him the confidential password she had selected: “Venus”.

Justin arrived at the hospital E.R. He told a Security Officer that he was there to visit his sister, Rachel. The officer went to the Triage Nurse who came out to Justin. Justin gave her Rachel’s password.

“Okay, I’ll walk you down to your sister.” With the sound of a buzzer the two entered the long room of pods and walked to #7.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” said the nurse.

Justin closed the curtain.

“Hi,” said Rachel. “Thanks so much for coming.” She reached out her hand to him and he grasped it.

“Rachel, what happened to your face?”

“Oh yeah. Some accident: I broke my jaw after you threw me out for no good reason,” she said.

“Hmm,” he said. “Why did you call me?”

“Please, oh please, get me out of here.”

“Are you serious? After what you did to us? Your face is broken and you need their help.”

“They give me morphine. That really helps. When I got here I was totally fucked up. I’m so fucking ready to get the hell out of here.”

“Seems like this is a good place for you,” he joked.

She grimaced, which hurt, and said, “My heart is racing out of my chest.”

“Rachel, after everything, You are so fucking deranged and you make me fucking crazy,” he said.

On some level Rachel knew it was a sick, sick situation. But, she thought, what are my options? Another man? Homelessness again? A State Asylum?

“Please, help me, my face will heal itself like the last time,” she said.

“The last time”? he asked.

“My ex broke it.”

Justin shrugged and sighed. “Which one?”

“I’ll change. I’ll change for you. I promise on my Catholic Word of Honor.”

“You cannot be trusted,” he said.

“I’ll stop drinking. I swear on my word to God.”

That clinched the deal.

“Okay,” he said.

The Triage Nurse opened #7’s curtain and said, “Five more minutes.”

“In five minutes I’ll be out of here. I’m leaving now with my brother.”

“You’ll be leaving against Medical Advice,” said the nurse.

“Oh my. I’ll go to hell I’m sure.”

“I’ll wait outside,” said Justin. Rachel got up and put on her clothes.

On the ride to Justin’s apartment they passed a Walgreens.

“Please, please, Justin, Sweetie, pull in there. My jaw is starting to kill me again. I need pain relief.”

She gently stroked his arm. “They don’t have morphine. But, vodka will do it.”

Justin pulled into the Walgreens parking lot. As he turned the car off the she touched his shoulder. “Thank you darling,” she said. Against his better judgement, as if he had one, Justin got out of the car and returned from the store with its cheapest quart of vodka.

Rachel twisted open the metal top of the bottle and took a life-without-change gulp. And another; and, another. Her jaw started numbing. She fiddled with her loose teeth.

Back at the Justin’s apartment she went to his room and changed into a pair of his pajamas. Then she went to the refrigerator and pulled out the sole tray of ice and cracked it open into a baggie. So, with it, and her half full bottle of vodka, she went into the living room and plopped her favorite film, “Silver Linings Playbook,” into the DVD player.

“Oh. Happy!” she said to herself as she crashed on the couch. Her jaw was nearly numb.

“Yay! My favorite movie! Jennifer Lawrence has so much emotion in her face and her character. I’ll toast to her. She acts crazy so naturally. She gives me goosebumps. She is a bad ass! A fucking bad ass!! So am I. I appreciate women like that. IT TAKES A LOT TO TAKE THIS KIND OF PAIN AND STAY STRONG.”

The goosebumps reminded Rachel of her home with her ex Brian and her two kitties, Twiggy and Benny. One day she had tried to walk them with leashes. She remembered it was hilarious; they just sunk to the ground, scared to death. She changed Benny’s name to “Long Hair Nuisance Kitty.” Rachel frequently had to pull poop out of his ass when it was lodged in his fur. She gave up the kitties to an animal shelter after her divorce. The giving up memory reminded her of her daughter, Gretchen. With her movie playing, and her nurse bottle, Rachel went off in another round of abandonment.