Sean Lovelace
Sunday. The long meandering road, almost cinematic, emerald kudzu forest, low sun through scraggly pines, flickering shadows, shards of light. Psychiatric hospital, on the tip of a rural, jagged peninsula. A secure facility, in theory. Locked. But damned if some teenager didn't unsecure it, with a sudden kick to the keypad, somehow jumbled up the innards. Door yawned open. Alarm bell screamed. Two adolescents—both city kids pleaded down from juvey, both my patients—ran hard for somewhere else; past the gymnasium, down the sloping shoreline, now stood up to their necks in the muddy, thrumming water of the Tennessee River. I watched them from the grassy bank with five other faculty, two nurses, a CNA, a couple of MHAs (Mental Health Associates) who for once were very content with the nature of their pay grade.
"Come on in, you're gonna freeze!" I yelled.
A wind kicked up, clanging the flagpole by the rusted BBQ grill and the smoker's picnic table. I shivered in the dank air, muck and flood. One of the boys clutched the other, steadied his footing. Yelled back, "No. We. Not."
"You're going to die!" I said.
"Who cares?" The other waved wildly to the hospital. "We'd rather be dead than back in there!"
I could already detect it in the voices, a light slurring: hypothermia. The cold or simply the sheer fatigue of holding in the slurping flow. It wouldn't be long. My heart raced; my mind outraced it—crazy what you'll say when a doomsday clock is ticking.
"Come on now!" I yelled. "Come back in and we'll let you go."
"No-you-won't!" one of them moaned. "We're never getting out of here. You're going to tackle us and put us in seclusion!"
I spread my arms, palms open. "We're not going to tackle you!"
I scanned the shoreline, the brown, rushing river. For what? An angel, or a hypodermic of Ativan? The restraint key in my pocket? Useless. "What's their names?" I hissed to a nearby MHA.
"Caleb, T.J.," he spat. He was a tall, pale kid with a mullet. Looked about age fourteen. His eyes spun about like a carnival. Like he was enjoying himself.
"Caleb! Caleb, we're not going to tackle you!" I yelled; my words snatched by the wind. "Come on, Caleb! I give you my word. Just come on in!"
I gasped. The smaller one went under. Then reappeared five feet downstream, sputtering. The taller one swayed; I could sense his feet slipping. Now their heads bobbed, two dark buoys. Sliding down the current. We trailed on the shore, yelling what I can't remember: Prayers. Promises. Utter gibberish. The type of desperate nonsense people mutter when in thrall of high fever. I kept thinking of nursing school, all those stupid textbooks, all those endless classroom hours, dreadful mornings of clinical dawn, some cold and alien hospital hallway, harsh lights, odd smells, beeping machines and intercom static, sleep-deprived, floating. There must be some theory I should recall, I thought, my head throbbing; some diagnostic formula, medical term, therapeutic words, a chant or mantra…
They went under. Reappeared. Went under. Thrashed in the current, then staggered up from the bank, slathered in mud, slipping, grasping bluish hands towards us. Hacking for breath, eyes wide and quivering, lips in a grimace; maybe to say something, a curse? An apology? Maybe even thanks? Who knows? Not me. Because we tackled them right away. And locked them both into seclusion.