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Show 85 My body snaps forward suddenly, beating, beating, beating anything in the way of my fists, clenched and fixed under my chin. Nurses rustling in their scramble to move the pillows to protect me. "I must calm down," I think, knowing that anger adds energy to muscle. I force my mind to think smooth thoughts: a small lake in the summer dawn; brown and white pebbles on the Pacific beach; cool water flowing down my dry throat. Hospital floors are sinister. They breed filth. They reek of vomit and industrial cleaner. My body is arching backwards once again and the black spots before my face momentarily hide the fact that I am on the floor. Injected Valium takes a long time to take effect. Thirty minutes perhaps. We have done this often in the past few days. But not always because of an irate neighbor. There was the intern who forgot to turn off his pager. There was the nervous orderly who dropped my lunch tray. There was the lost visitor who shoved open my door and slammed it closed again when he saw I was not his intended. I am rarely allowed in my wheelchair because nurses do not like to have their patients on the floor. They have to fill out reports about why and how their patients found themselves on the floor. I am measuring the mood of these nurses, witnesses to a doctor out of control with a patient in crisis. Are they angry with me because I insisted on getting in my wheelchair for the first time in weeks, now, at this freak instant of my neighbor's rage? Are they upset to have heard this \ |