molly.com
Friday 1 September 2006
As She Tries To Run
Cecilia has great legs. All the girls on the floor say so. We sit in wonder at this woman in her sixties as she runs up and down the hospital corridor, her tight calves and bare feet belying the illness inside her head.
As best they can, the techs try to stay on her. Kevin used to play for the Seattle Seahawks, no joke. He’s a mountain of a handsome man and one serious dude to behold. But, money is tight and there are a lot of crazies to deal with, so attention gets diverted at times.
Cecilia is so insane no matter what they feed her with, the chemicals aren’t enough. She’s agitated all the time, and she sees fictions where most agree there’s um, you know – that thing called reality. This morning Cecilia thought our friend Carm was her daughter and that a nurse tried to hurt her, and the next you know Ceclia is up and screaming at the top of her lungs “Voy a matarte! Voy a matarte” and chopping the air so fiercely you could hear the wind being sliced.
Everyone knew she was escalating in her violence. The week before, she bit one of the sweetest ward nurses square on the arm. Today? She tackled a woman tech in her late 40s and get this – full bite into the poor woman’s cheek.
A human bite to the cheek. Pretty freaky to me.
I think of Cecilia and it rips me up to think this woman once so beautiful and in some ways still so perfect will soon be led away from this little corner of Tucson where people try to mend what’s left of their lives the best they can. But when there is failure – and whose failure is is that we can’t properly find treatment for the lost souls of this world, pray tell – the results will likely be that she spends the rest of her life in the state hospital up in Phoenix. Out there on 24th Street and Van Buren, you know.
Though my legs aren’t beautiful, I dream I am with Cecilia as she tries to run.
Filed under: faith(less), poetry & fiction
Posted by: Molly | 13:45 | Comments Off