33

Sylvia

A lot of our patients were escorted in by the police—if they had been picked up in public, for instance—and this was how we got Delia.

It was a Friday night, just before midnight. February 23rd, 1979. The police had picked her up on the side of Highway 80, and two sheriff’s deputies were holding her by the elbows as they brought her in. She was shaking, dirty, and disheveled. It looked like she had been dragged across the ground. Bruises covered her arms like tattoos and her eyes kept darting back and forth. She kept looking over her shoulder when there was no need: we were in a locked unit.

She was talking really rapidly as if she was in a manic phase, saying over and over, “You have to hide me! They are going to kill me, you have to hide me, they are after me. They know everywhere to look.”

Even in the state she was in, I could see that she was beautiful. She had long, raven hair and perfect teeth. Her eyes were black discs, like obsidian, smoky and deep. She was stunning, and I would have the strange thought later: I can see why they took her.

Hattie was in charge of the intakes and in Delia’s chart, under possible diagnosis, she scrawled down paranoid schizophrenic, possible drug abuse. Before they left, the police told us that a trucker had picked her up ten miles out of town and had given her his trench coat, but that she had gotten scared and jumped out of his truck a few miles away from the hospital. Under the dirty coat, she only had on a torn slip. She had no personal effects, no ID, and when Hattie asked for her name, she looked back at the police and just shook her head, so Hattie marked down Jane Doe.

“Alright, we’ll take it from here, thank you,” Hattie said, dismissing the officers. She put me in charge of Delia, and together we escorted her down the dimly lit hall to a room, the other nurses casting glances at her.

Once we were in the room, Hattie gave her a thin gown and asked her to change behind the flimsy cotton curtain. While she dressed, Hattie got the shot ready—a high dose of Valium—but when we tried to give it to her, she folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “No, no, no!” she shrieked at us. “I’m not crazy. But you have to hide me.” Her teeth were chattering and she kept talking fast and wouldn’t calm down, so Hattie nodded her head at me and I held her arms down as Hattie slid the needle in her vein.

Almost instantly, this calmed her down, and I stayed with her until she drifted off into a fitful sleep.