The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head Read Online Free PDF Page B

outside room 6, I was so anxious and worked up that Judy Nelson, the head nurse, gave me a tissue to wipe my brow. Judy had been an E.R. nurse for twelve years and had seen hundreds of green residents like me struggle with room 6. She was in her early thirties, divorced, and really pretty. She also had the perfect balance of poise and sarcasm. Whoever divorced her was an idiot.
    Judy handed me the patient’s chart. “She’s a Jane Doe, around twenty. The cops picked her up babbling in the North End. I’ll have to remember that babbling’s a crime around here.”
    Judy’s casual attitude calmed me down, and I scanned the chart. The police had found the patient disheveled and wandering the streets of Boston’s North End, an Italian community less than a mile from the hospital. The emergency techs noted that she kept shrieking and pulling at her clothes during the ambulance ride over. Between screams she mumbled about how hot she was, although the outside temperature was in the forties. The techs had performed a brief examination and had found nothing abnormal, aside from her agitated and unusual behavior.
    I walked down the hall to room 6. Unlike the other E.R. exam rooms, room 6 had a door with a window covered by a sliding wood panel so we could check on psych patients before entering. I slid back the panel and saw a petite girl who looked to be about nineteen or twenty, standing on her head, stark naked. It took a moment to register. I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. Before I slammed closed the wood panel, I did notice that she was balancing herself rather well. I turned and stared at the gurneys and patients in the hallway, trying to process what I had just seen.
    “Are you all right, Dr. Small?” Judy asked.
    “Fine. I just want to check something in her chart here before I go in.”
    But I wasn’t fine. What did this naked headstand mean? Was there some psychological significance to it that I wasn’t getting? Was she trying to communicate something, or was she just completely out of her mind?
    “Judy, could you call a couple of security guards down here in case I need them? Also, please grab a gown for the patient.”
    I slid open the little window again. The patient was still doing a headstand and had a blank expression on her face as she stared toward the door. “Hello. My name is Dr. Small. I’m the psychiatrist on call tonight.”
    No response.
    “Can you hear me? I need to come in and ask you some questions,” I said.
    Again, no response.
    Okay, I was afraid to go in the room, and Judy was watching. Jane Doe’s bizarre behavior meant that anything could happen. She could become violent without warning. I imagined her lunging and trying to strangle me. On the other hand, her nakedness made her seem vulnerable, and she was probably scared too. I needed to interview her, but first I had to get into that room.
    I took a few deep breaths and calmed down, recalling that sometimes simply showing a patient that the staff was in control helped avoid a scene. Finally, Judy came over with a gown and two security guards, Joe and Carl. Both were local guys who loved teasing the residents and giving us a hard time. Having them around made us feel safe if patients got out of control.
    I spoke through the little window in the door. “I’m going to come into the room now with a nurse and some of our staff. I need you to stop standing on your head, please.” She didn’t move. I noticed her filthy, torn clothes in the corner of the room.
    “We’re going to place a hospital gown on the gurney. You have a choice to either put it on yourself or let the nurse help you.” I had been taught that offering unpredictable psychotic patients a choice sometimes distracted them from their hallucinations or delusions, essentially tricking them into being more reasonable.
    As Jane Doe continued to stare from her headstand, our troupe moved slowly into the room, which contained only a rolling stretcher and a metal chair.