A Wink and a Grin

Courage is the bright shield of the human spirit. More than most people, a country doctor is privileged to see it close at hand. When I think of examples of special courage, Brad smiles back at me.

I don’t recall my first encounter with Brad. A childhood immunization? Some viral infection? He had arrived in town with his mother and two sibs, just one of Eunice’s children. She had left her husband behind in the far away metropolis where they had previously lived. Why had Eunice chosen Northpine? If I once knew, I have forgotten.

In a community the size of mine, free-floating local gossip supplies part of that background information on which a country doc depends, relationships, family schisms, stresses—character forming events, healthy or detrimental. Brad’s father was said to have been a professor at a college where avant-garde opinion held sway. He had purposely introduced his children to the glories of psychedelic drugs, in the form of LSD.

Brad became memorable to me when he was about sixteen. He was a strong rangy lad, darkly handsome.

To an isolated country doctor, office hours provide merely the structured part of his practice. Emergency call... nights, weekends, holidays... presents a more chaotic side to professional life. Thus it was that I was summoned to the hospital emergency room about ten that evening. Brad had been brought in by his mother. A pair of uneasy youths restrained him by the arms. He muttered steadily, random words and mere sounds, word salad. He twitched in constant motion, jerking his head from side to side, picking at clothing or at unseen specters around him.

Anguish tightened Eunice’s features and she tortured interlaced fingers. “They called from school this afternoon,” she said in a monotone. “I brought him home, but I think he’s getting worse. I can’t manage... it’s the way he was before when he took... I think he got into more LSD.” Her eyes sought mine, parent’s eyes pleading for understanding, eyes unable to hide fear and pain. “Don’t send him to a crazy hospital! He’ll sleep it off, he has before.”

Northpine was not the center of a drug culture. I acceded to Eunice’s request, ordering my uneasiness to be still, and admitted Brad to our tiny hospital. We had one room that could be locked up. The nurses and I draped the boy in a patient gown, got him into bed, and turned the key. I departed for the doctor’s lounge and a crash conference with my medical textbooks on how to ease someone down from a bad trip.

During the night, he shredded linen and disassembled his bed, including nuts and bolts, without benefit of a tool. We cleaned out debris and eased him onto a bare mattress laid on the floor.

During the next few hours, he showed no aggression toward staff members. Rather, he ignored us, tuned as he was to inner visions. Endless muttering. Vacant eyes. Constant, restless motion. The tears shed were by his family; he remained insulated within the murky universe of chemistry. Toward noon, he retreated into an almost vegetative state, curled up on his mattress.

Then...

The nurses called me just after twelve-noon. When they tried to feed him, he abruptly got up from his mattress and marched determinedly down the corridor, a pair of nurses dragging behind him like too-small boat anchors on a windy day. I arrived and latched onto the tails of his patient gown. I was no match for Brad’s strength. He pushed open the emergency side door and headed down the steep hill toward town. I dug in my heels.

“Brad! Stop!”

I was talking to the wind.

“Someone call the police,” I screeched over my shoulder.

November in my Northpine is chilly. I was in shirt sleeves, but I at least wore trousers and shoes. Wearing that far away look that excluded me, Brad strode on. One block. Two. A squad car and two policemen arrived. Burly lads. We steered Brad toward the backseat of the car.

It was obviously time to set aside any question of “letting him sleep things off in Northpine.” I sent him to a psychiatrist in Duluth, where Brad began the long climb out of a drug-induced psychosis.

A country doctor has what I consider both an advantage professionally and a joy personally. He sees his patients over an extended time. Brad returned home finally. Flashbacks waned, and he reintegrated himself into family and the community. We talked at length. He had no recollection of his stay in our hospital, nor of many of his days in Duluth. He decided that drugs carried for him a risk beyond acceptance. So far as I know, he never chanced another LSD trip. He buttressed determination by involving himself in Northpine’s active, effective AA program.

I like to think that whenever we met, his greetings, ever a wink and a grin, meant a special bond between us. I know how I felt.

Brad died a couple of years ago. He was a logger, used to hard work, and he had not “fallen off the wagon.” It is presumed that he had had a heart attack at the appallingly young age of fifty.

With permission of his family, I tell Brad’s story in a spirit of tribute. I have known few people during my years in medicine who fought harder, against a demon more relentless, and who succeeded better than did Brad. I cherish memory of that private, special wink and grin.