The Units

by Jamie Mackay

Chapter 3

  Tatum had set her alarm for six, but she was awake well before. She decided she might as well get up and go for her run so that she had lots of time left for getting ready. She had discovered that early mornings in Wainwright were not only quiet, but the sunrise was remarkable and the temperature was much more bearable than it would become later in the day.

  Back by seven, she stepped into the shower and enjoyed the warm water running over her face and relaxing her tense neck. Fresh from the shower, Tatum straightened her hair and put on her make-up, taking much more time and care with her appearance than she had over the past few days. She dressed in a blue tailored suit that her mother had bought for her as a congratulations gift for getting her new position.

  "Oh Tatey. You'll knock 'em dead," her mother had said.

  Tatum secretly hated when her mother called her 'Tatey' because she thought it made her sound like fried hash. But, at the same time, she loved that her mom had a secret pet name for her.

  To complement her fitted and stylish suit, she chose new pumps that she had gotten especially for her big day. They were high, but not too high; she wanted the others to see her as a professional after all. Tatum looked at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw.

  .

  Unable to take the stairs two at the time as she had the day before, Tatum carefully made her way down the elevator, ensuring not to catch and scuff the fronts of her new pumps. She hadn't yet had her coffee, and she was working on the assumption that on the lowest floor Milligan would be available with a fresh cup. She was not disappointed.

  "Holy Lordy!" Milligan said, "You sure do clean up good! Today must be your first day at the office?"

  Tatum smiled. She like hearing that she looked good, even if the person doing the appreciating thought the world of her even when she was in her oldest grubs.

  Milligan handed her a cup, black like he now knew she liked it.

  "Mmmmm, Starbucks, schmarbucks," Tatum teased as she appreciated her first sip "They ain't got nothing on Milligan's."

  Tatum finished her coffee down to the last drop and then picked up her briefcase. Unlike her outfit, the briefcase had been with her through all of her graduate training, and it looked like it. Still, she was unwilling to give it up. The case had been a gift from her grandfather when she started her graduate training. Her Grandpa was a quiet and gentle man who had passed away several years earlier. He had a Grade Eight education and had trouble understanding her need for "All that school". But still, he believed in her and he'd had the briefcase buckle engraved with the words "Upward and onward, baby". She would never use another case.

  Briefcase in hand Tatum said goodbye to Milligan and made her way down the few blocks from her apartment to the Units. The main road somehow seemed less long and eerie as compared to the evening past. In fact, with the morning sun shining through the branches and more movement about the grounds, it seemed almost inviting.

  Tatum knew just where she needed to go. She had scoped out the Administration Building during last night's run. It was the building just to the right of the main entrance, with a staircase only slightly less grand than the one that blessed the very front entrance.

  Tatum started up the stairs feeling both anxious and excited. She liked the way her heels clicked on the marble stairs. Funny, back home she'd climbed so many marble stairways wearing very similar shoes, but she couldn't ever before remember enjoying the sound.

  "Can I help you with something?" a friendly lady in the front office asked Tatum.

  "Hello, yes. I'm Dr. O'Neill. I'm the Psychologist from Chicago. I'm here to start my internship under Dr. Fraser".

  Tatum's voice wavered as she spoke; she was obviously more nervous than she realized.

  "Well hello honey!" the woman said with a smile "We've been waiting for you. I'm Anne, one of the psych nurses on staff. I'm just loitering in these parts; I usually work on the wings."

  Anne smiled at the younger woman who sat behind the desk while she made the comment about loitering. The young woman smiled back as if they had just shared an inside joke.

  Anne was a big woman, tall and heavy. She looked to be about fortyish and had her hair cut short, in a manly sort of style. Her hair was a mousy brown and she had large glasses, the type that had been popular in the nineties and went low, as if the wearer required glasses to see through the cheeks.

  Despite her overall minimally average appearance, Tatum thought that she had a few very attractive features. Her cheeks were a bright rosy red, a perfect complement to her shiny blue eyes, and she had the fullest, most contagious laugh Tatum had ever heard.

  "Well, they say that possession is nine tenths of the law. So, now that I've found ya, I'm gonna keep ya," Anne said laughingly.

  "First things first; let's get the paperwork out of the way. Marja?" she said to the younger women behind the desk "Where do we find the paperwork?"

  .

  Tatum filled out form, after form, after form. Income tax forms, beneficiary forms, non-resident forms, confidentiality agreements, blah blah blah. She had never before seen so many forms. She glanced at her watch. She had started at 8:30 and it was nearly 10:00. She hadn't even left the front office.

  "Well, I think that's it," said Anne. "When you're done this last one, we can start our tour".

  Tatum felt her excitement return at the thought of being able to finally see the rest of the facility.

  Anne glanced at Marja, "Can you buzz us through?" she asked of the younger desk clerk. Tatum heard a faint buzzing noise and the large wooden door beside Marja's desk easily pushed open. Anne and Tatum started down a large, wide hallway.

  "We'll start with the rest of the administration unit," said Anne. "Not much to see here really. Lots of office workers doing office worker stuff".

  Tatum felt thankful that her tour guide was so likable. She'd started in a lot of new offices through the years, and if the tour guide was less amicable, the first day could sometimes set the tone for the whole stay.

  Anne walked through the administration unit waving and nodding at the office workers littered throughout the building. Sometimes they stopped for Tatum to be introduced, and generally her introduction was met with smiles and friendly banter.

  "This is Dr. O'Neill," Anne introduced. "She's our new Psych intern; it's my job to break her in." Anne made the same joke each time.

  Tatum thought she had met about a hundred people. She remembered a few names, but she was no longer sure which name went with which face.

  .

  It had taken nearly an hour to work their way through the administration unit and Tatum was starting to feel hungry. She was also feeling a bit anxious to get on with the rest of her tour; she knew there were five more units to tour and she wasn't sure that, at the pace they were going, she would see any of them.

  "How about one more and then we head down for lunch?" Anne asked.

  "Sounds good to me," Tatum agreed, as they shared a laugh at the growling sound coming from Tatum's stomach.

  .

  Now this is more like it, Tatum thought to herself as they entered Unit Two.

  Everything on the Units was based on a tiered system, moving from the lowest risk to the highest. With Unit One being the Administration Unit, a non-clinical unit, Unit Two was considered the lowest risk clinical unit.

  The first thing Tatum noticed was the difference in ambiance. Unit One had been decorated, obviously quite recently, in trendy neutral tones, with updated fixtures and finishing touches including some decorative artwork and furniture. In comparison, Unit Two was barren, no artwork donned the walls and there were no ornamental pieces of any kind. Tatum assumed that the lack of ornaments was likely a safety consideration.

  In addition to the lack of decoration, the walls changed from trendy browns and sages to pastel green. Tatum quickly recognized that pastel green was evidently the code colour for the Unit. Patients wore pastel green issue. Charts were covered with pastel green cases. The only exception to t
he sea of pastel green was the ceiling, floor, and the smattering of mismatched institutional style furniture.

  Unit Two was considered the 'In-patient/Out-patient' Unit. Some patients came in for therapy or medication on a visitation basis, and some were in-patients who were considered to need only a temporary stay.

  "This is our lowest risk, lowest need unit," explained Anne. "Mostly people with generally treatable issues, those that need assessment, and those that feel they need some recovery time before going back out to face the world."

  Tatum eyed up the activity on the unit. There were nurses, orderlies, and of course patients, all wearing the requisite pastel green. The unit was designed similar to a prison that Tatum had once visited during a practicum in forensic psych, one large common room with a kitchen and many small rooms branching off from the middle. The lower tiers appeared to be intervention rooms and the upper tiers sleeping/living units.

  Tatum wandered casually into the common room, but privately she was hoping that she would get to see the goings-on in the smaller rooms. In the large common room there was a shared television, small tables filled with puzzles and other games, and large Lazy-boy chairs, each of them currently filled.

  "Hello, I'm Dr. O'Neill" Tatum said confidently to one of the patients. She'd had enough experience doing clinical work that she did not feel intimidated by the relative strangeness of her current environment.

  The patient looked at her with sad eyes and simply replied, "Hello Dr. O'Neill. No one will tell me when I get to leave. Can you help me leave?"

  "I'm so sorry," stammered Tatum, feeling slightly ridiculous for having engaged the patient in conversation to start with. "I can't help you with that right now; but... we'll see, okay?

  Tatum's heart went out to the sad stranger. She had primarily worked in out-patient wards; few times had she seen patients who were committed to treatment.

  .

  "Over here, hun," Anne called to Tatum. "Come meet Judy. She's unit head".

  Tatum wasn't sure what unit head meant, but she was certain that in no time, talkative Anne would definitely fill her in. Judy was of an age similar to Anne, but had a much less jovial approach to life. She was hard-faced and serious and gave Tatum only a polite, but icy nod when the two were introduced.

  "Unit Two is my unit," Judy stated decisively. "There's some hope for these ones."

  Tatum thought she had picked up on just a hint of empathy in her voice on her last comment. She wondered if Judy's cold exterior protected her from the heartache of patient suffering.

  "Come take a look," Judy instructed.

  Tatum diligently followed as Judy led her to explore the outer rooms of the Unit. In the first room Tatum could see a middle-aged gentleman dressed in pastel green meeting with an older-looking, presumably experienced, male therapist.

  "Jim's depressed," Judy explained. "Wife and kids all killed at once. Drunk Driver. Says he's got nothing to live for. He may have to move to U3, go on suicide watch".

  They moved onto the next room. The second room housed a younger man dressed in street clothes who was meeting with an employee sitting at a table alternate to the patient.

  "Sometimes we have public come in who want assessments, maybe for their doctor, or for work, or for whatever. Usually simple problems like learning disabilities. Stuff like that".

  Tatum thought to herself that she appreciated the explanation for the street clothes in place of the pastel green issue.

  "Onto room number three," Judy led.

  In the third room Tatum observed a group session. One older woman talking with a group of about five women, ranging from maybe twenty through forty or forty-five.

  "Our battered wives group," Judy explained. "Many of them come in here, not because they need in-patient treatment, but because it's safe for them. Therapy and assertiveness training while they're in here are only secondary benefits to the fact that they aren't getting the shit beat out of them every day."

  Finally they moved onto room four.

  "That's OCD Bob," Judy stated. "Does stuff over and over again and can't work cause he never gets anything done, but none of the crazy obsession crap that means moving to another unit. Martin's really good with him."

  Tatum presumed Martin must be the other man in the small room.

  "Martin's not a trained anything, but he calms Bob down and can keep him from washing, even if just for a little while."

  Judy paused and then said "Well... that's about it for the downstairs. Could bring you back tomorrow and it would be different people, same issues. You know; same shit, different day and all that."

  The group of three slowly made their way up to the upper tiers. The rooms in the upstairs all looked exactly the same, each had a bunk bed and a small toileting area blocked off by flimsy dividers.

  "On a good day we have 50 in here. That's what we're designed for. On a bad day, we stack 'em and have had as many as 75, 3 in each room."

  She continued, "We don't have mandatory anything in this unit, they can move about as they please, with the exception of making therapy appointments on time of course. We also get a lot of turnover, some check-in, some check-out; only a few on mandatory commitments in Unit Two, but lots of returnees."

  When Judy spoke of mandatory commitment Tatum got a shiver as she thought about the patient she'd spoken with earlier in the tour.

  "Well, that's about all she wrote," Judy summed up as they neared the end of Unit Two.

  Tatum and Anne thanked Judy for guiding their visit and then started to make their way back out through the main doors.

  "Hungry yet?" Anne asked as they started back toward what Tatum thought was likely the Administration Unit.

  Tatum glanced at her watch, it was after one, she'd completely forgotten about her growling stomach from earlier.

  "You bet. Is there a cafeteria or something?"

  "Follow me," Anne led Tatum back out to the area where Marja still sat at her desk answering phones.

  .

  Anne and Tatum grabbed lunch to-go from the cafeteria, and then Anne showed Tatum to the staff courtyard. It was similar to the rest of the grounds, perfectly manicured as if about to be the set of a movie. The courtyard had stately stone benches which provided the same type of stature provided by the marble staircases, but, as Tatum quickly discovered, they were less than comfortable to sit on. Plus, in the dry Saskatchewan heat she was slowly becoming accustomed to, they were much too hot.

  She and Anne decided to pull up a spot on the lawn and enjoy their meal.

  "Well, what do you think so far?" Anne inquired.

  "I've never been in an in-patient institution like this before. I've worked on in-patient wards in general hospitals, but this is definitely different; the patient types seem relatively similar though. Are we going to see Unit Three next?"

  "We can definitely see Unit Three this afternoon, but first I should probably take you by to meet Dr. Fraser since he's the one that hired you, I suppose he'll wanna know what he bargained for, hey?" Anne said with a smirk.