THOMAS DEAN: MAD HOUSE
Dogs or wolves will run a flock of sheep to exhaustion, pick out the weakest one and swoop in on the attack. It's an elementary rule of strategy. How long have I been in here in Davis Memorial Hospital? A year or two. What were conditions like on the outside? I had only a hazy picture.
I had my target Nurse Sally. Unlike other members of the staff, dressed in scrubs, Sally always wore the traditional nurse whites, preferring a dress over a pants suit. 4ft 11in 90lbs. soaking wet, Sally waited near 'The Portal,' to usher new patients from an incoming shipment to the nursing station, uttering her commands in nearly incomprehensible foreign squirrel yelps. At 5ft 1in weighing in at 95 pounds I could fit into her clothes.
The Portal was series of interconnected transparent acrylic enclosures running the length of the whole north wall where new patients were in -- processed for admission to the women's ward at Davis. An incoming shipment always attracted many of the girls held on the ward. "Jane," one of my ward-mates told me, "It's good Davis puts the newcomers on display the minute they reach here. Teaches the new girls there are no secrets here in Davis. Don't you agree, Jane?"
I smiled. "A secret is best shared by one."
"For all the time you spend in the library, you're unreadable -- like the sphinx," my ward-mate challenged me. "What do you learn there anyway? A way out?"
I sighed my name is Jane, plain Jane, but there was noting plain or ordinary behind my detention here as a political for attitude adjustment, a psychiatric specialty at Davis Memorial.
As my wardmate and I waited for the spectacle to begin, I fell into a rhyme, "Carried along by infernal ropes, cowered prisoner disrobed, showered, inspected and groped, enter ye damned abandon hope."
"Blither," my wardmate declared.
I sighed, nodding, silent agreement for I have learned it is better especially for a political to keep your own counsel.
How long ago, I mused, was I one of the girls in the hold wondering what would happen next? Did I stand in the hold, watching with eyes widened as a name was called?
When was I brought in here? I'm not sure. I was caught up in a roundup of politicals. Crammed in the holding area with the real nuts and criminals, I could see, among the politicals around me, defiance meld with apprehension, disbelief, and confusion. I felt bodies trembling and heard hearts pounding. The scent of fear rose as every name was called. An individual ordered forward hesitantly passed into the first air lock where she was unbound.
Typically, the prisoner stared at the red marks around her wrists left by the handcuffs before she felt her hands and fingers to restore the blood flow. The prisoner would thank the strapping orderly dressed in white utility clothes.
Ignoring the thanks, the orderly merely nodded the prisoner to advance into the second enclosure to be stripped. Receiving the command to strip from an orderly whose bulky white utility uniform could not conceal bulging muscles, almost all political prisoners yelped, "What?" Before the prisoner could protest further, the orderly's growled a promise to take shears and cut the girl's clothes off prompted the prisoner to begin undressing and tossing outer garments into a circular janitorial trash can, pushed at her by massive hands of the orderly. Most paused standing in their underwear, before at the orderly's grunt, bra and panties joined the rest of the garments in the bin. Standing naked, teary red-faced, hands across her chest, the prisoner plaintively asked, "what's next?"
In the next enclosure, the prisoner was sat in a chair bolted in the floor. "Eek," screeched most as their rear ends plopped on the cold hard steel.
In a pleasant voice, the barber, sporting the traditional white blouse, commiserated with the prisoner as he covered her naked body with a thin cloth, "Too bad rules don't allow me to put a pad on the chair. Cold steel may be a bit rough on the bare bum, but you need to hold still." As a robust orderly stood by, in seconds, the finest coifs were reduced to stubble.
"Don't worry, lassie," the barber assured the prisoner, "it grows back. Keep it short during your stay and you won't be shorn again."
Back in the holding area, a horrified prisoner watches the happenings up the receiving line. "Happens all the time," smirked an orderly in the holding area when I was brought through reception, "female patients cry more over losing their hair than losing their clothes. Think of it, ladies, upstairs, the guys you were brought in with lose more than hair. It makes them more manageable, less likely to -- think of straying."
At a nod, the prisoner was nudged forward into the next chamber where the outline of bare feet drawn on the floor around a drain indicated the place to stand under an overhead spigot. Down cascaded water so boiling hot, the prisoner yelped. The water abruptly stopped. For a full minute the stunned prisoner looked to the thong clad Nursing Assistant and pliantly awaited instructions. Suddenly torrents of soap bubbles fell on the prisoner. A fume rose from the tiled floor reeking of disinfectant and insecticide. A pause followed. Urging to rub it in, the aide chirped, "scrub -- a -- dub -- dub, sweetie."
Standing erect body covered in suds, the prisoner looked bewildered. "Don't stand there like a stone dummy, work it in," yelled the Nursing Assistant, "in your arm pits, under your boobs, up your sweet spot -- you got the idea, sweetie.' As the prisoner's arms moved rapidly over her body, the prisoner shrieked as she was pelted by cold water.
As I watched the first prisoner to inprocess in this haul of new inmates reach, my attention was broken by a friendly pat on the back. It was my partner smiling Merry who had reached into the slit in the back of my hospital gown to massage my back. "All that distinguishes the shower nurse from one of us is a couple of centimeters of strategically placed cloth coverings." Merry observed. When I shrugged, Merry added, "the shower nurse could be taken down and a prisoner could walk out in her garb."
"The Nursing Aide in the thong is about to hand the new girl the goo," I changed the subject, "to wax her legs and pubes."
Merry and I, linked hands, laughing as we recited in unison, "`Spill some goo on me,' the aides all say, "and I'll turn your skull into a cue ball.'"
I playfully massaged her scalp. "Your hair is coming back," I teased her. "You're well beyond your court ordered 30 day stay. With no calendars around here, you tell how long a person is here by the length of their hair."
"You keep your hair," Merry challenged me giggling, "at the two month level -- about the same length as Nurse Sally -- almost same color -- jet black. Is there method to your madness?"
"What a question to ask in a nuthouse!" I exclaimed.
Since her arrival, Merry and I had fun together here at Davis. Merry was a friend, my bunkmate, if you could call laying on the floor against one of the curtainless wall was a bunk. Davis had many problems. With all the upheaval outside, it had more people than beds. But even though Merry and I slept together since her arrival on a court referral for a 30-day evaluation which seemed to go on and on, I had to be on my guard. What was Merry suggesting? How far was she to be trusted?
"Nothing more entertaining than watching a new shipment humiliated," I looked around at the crush of bodies against the plexiglass, "to bring all the girls out to watch incoming stripped, shorn, studied, and inscribed in the registry."
"Misery loves company," Merry chirped. "Up comes the fun part."
In front of our eyes, the first prisoner was examined by the doctor. After cursorily checking her pulse, the doctor ordered, "Open wide." Depressing her tongue with an ice cream stick, he shown a penlight into her open mouth. "It'd be nice if the state gave me real `Ah sticks,' but the Eskimo pie that came off this stick was delicious.'"
When I came through, I told the Doctor, "The name Eskimo Pie has been discarded due to its racist overtones. The company dripped icy tears in self -- flagellation to atone for its politically incorrect sins."
"Huh," laughed the Doc, looking at the chart on his electronic notepad, "a political! Join one of the inclusion and diversity programs, spout the politically correct cue words, and you'll be out in a week."
I probably should have followed Doc's advice, but I preferred being by myself reading to self -- criticism, self -- reproach, and self -- abasement.
Like every other `patient,' I jumped when the cold steel of the stethoscope was held against my bare chest.
"OK, about -- face," the doctor came the next command in every exam, mine and the poor girl I was watching, "legs far apart, bend -- over and," he chuckled, "open wide -- this time -- at the other end." As one hand pressed down hard on her spine, gloved fingers penetrated her vagina. "It'd be nice," the doctor, righting himself, commented, "if the state bought me a gynecological table. The state believes in equality. Since the men don't need a gynecological table, neither do the women."
Patting the prisoner's bare bottom, Doc ordered her to hold the position. When the doctor, after changing gloves and dipping the new gloves in grease, rammed fingers up the girl's rectum, the girl gasped. Doc laughed. Giving her butt a good whack, the Doctor instructed the patient to right herself and shoved her toward to the next station, registration where identity was verified, prints and full -- length nudes taken front and back.
"Great bed side manner, that Doc," quipped Merry.
The startled prisoner stood in registration until the registry nurse growled, "Stand on the X on the floor, Straighten up, hands at your side, eyes forward. You're not posing for a gentleman's magazine."
