As I walk down this long, sterile hallway, I feel a strange sense of silence that is extremely unwelcoming. I feel like the walls are slowly closing in on me, threatening to swallow me whole. But that's probably just because it's my first day working here, and I am aggressively nervous. I round the corner and hear a faint scream from a patient from a distant corridor, which sends chills down my spine. I finally reach the front desk, where a plump middle-aged woman is sitting in front of a computer with a Bluetooth headset connected to her right ear. She's got short, fiery red curly hair that could only be accomplished from a bottle of dye. It suits her well, though. She smiles when I approach her.
"Hello, I'm Harley Evans, the new nurse."
Her face brightens like a lightbulb, "Oh, welcome, Harley! Come, follow me." She gets up from her chair and leads me to another corridor. She takes a left at the first door, and inside is a group of women. Other nurses, I suppose.
"Dr.Styles, this is Harley Evans." She says.
Dr.Styles, a younger man with dark brown curly hair and big green eyes smiles with massive dimples on either side. I had my interview with him a week ago, and we really seemed to hit it off. He's a super sweet man and I'm so glad I got a job here, at Bridgewood Mental Hospital, one of the best mental hospitals in Oregon.
"Welcome, Harley!" He says, then turns to a pretty blonde woman and asks, "Noelle, will you show her around? Give her her schedule and show her what to do? I've got a meeting to run to!" He pats my shoulder and tells me, "If you have any questions, these ladies won't bite. They look like it, but they won't. Trust me." He winks and prances out the door.
Noelle hands me a white scrub and tells me to change out of my blouse and blazer. She shows me to the staff bathroom and I change there. My dark brown hair was down, but I pull it to a ponytail so I don't need to deal with it anymore.
When I return, Noelle hands me my schedule and shows me around the massive hospital. This whole place seems so sterile and lifeless. Hopeless, almost. It makes me feel like people just come here to waste their lives away and the thought breaks my heart. But I need this job. I need to pay off my college funds and get my feet stable on the ground. I've just moved here, to Portland, Oregon, in a small rental on the outskirts of the city.
After discussing with Noelle what I need to do for my list of patients, I notice that my schedule revolves a lot around a patient named Niall Horan.
"Why do I have so much to do with Niall?" I ask Noelle.
She pauses briefly for a moment before answering, "He, well, he likes similarity and feels comfortable with one set nurse, so you're basically going to be his nurse."
I find this strange that they are putting a brand new nurse to one certain patient. It sounds a little bit risky, I guess. "Why me?"
She sighs for a second before answering, "He hates the rest of us," she says with a shrug.
We make our way down the long lines of white corridors until we reach the cafeteria, where Noelle takes me to the counter, which is lined with trays filled with oatmeal, oranges, and milk.
"This is where you get his meals. And then you come over here," and she leads me to a long line of lockers, where she opens one and says, "This is his locker, where we keep the patients' daily medicines and their personal items."
I look inside the locker, but there is only the pill bottles and nothing else.
"Why is it empty?" I ask.
"He doesn't keep things, I should say." She shrugs again, leaving me to wonder what she meant by that. Why wouldn't he have personal items? I get it that some mentally ill patients don't really have hobbies or things like that, but they usually have some kind of personal item.
After we walk back down the hall, we stop at the last one to the left. There's a small window on the white door so I can see through.
He's lying down in his bed with his back toward us, facing the wall. It doesn't seem that he's sleeping because he's moving his hands along the wall, with his fingers dancing around in perfect rythym.
"What's he doing with his fingers?" I ask.
"We think it's some kind of nervous habit. He does it a lot. Well, good luck." She sarcastically remarks and hands me the key. I take a deep breath and unlock the door.
He doesn't even flinch to the sound of me entering. He just continues to tap the wall and stare off into space.
"Niall?" I ask.
No response.
"It's time for your breakfast, Niall."
Nothing.
I set the tray down on the small desk next to the bed and sigh. I place my hand on his shoulder and whisper, "It's my first day here, please don't make me look bad." I say it in a begging way, but with a tint of humor.
His eyes move slowly to face me and he stops tapping the wall. I think a small smile grows on his face, but my eyes might be playing tricks on me.
He sits up slowly and I am finally able to see his face. His blonde hair lies messily across his forehead and slightly in his eyes, which are as blue as a the ocean. They've got yellow flecks in them, but only slightly. They would be quite beautiful if it weren't for the fact that they look so tired, so empty and hopeless. The skin around his eyes are darkened as if he hasn't slept in years, but there are no bags under them that would indicate sleeplessness.
He makes no eye contact and stares off into the distance, even though his eyes are aimed at me. His jaw is loose and his mouth hangs slightly agape.
"Niall?" I ask him cautiously, trying to gain some of his attention.
His eyes raise and meet mine, telling me that I have succeeded.
"Do you want some oatmeal?"
He looks over to it and shakes his head. I'll admit, it doesn't look very appetizing. It looks like off-white slop.
"Well you have to eat."
He sighs and reaches for the orange on the tray and slowly starts peeling it. He breaks the orange in half and pulls two of the slices out. He reaches his hand out and offers me one of the slices.
"Oh, how kind." I chuckle and take the orange slice.
He barely eats anything else, only like two or three more slices. But he does drink the whole glass of milk. I try to make him eat more, but he physically refuses by shaking his head and pushing the tray away from him.
"It's time for your medicine." I reach for his tray and grab the array of medicines before me. I read from his chart that he takes aripiprazole, which treats schizophrenia, escitalopram, for major depression and anxiety, and carbamazepine, which stabilizes his mood.
After taking the medicines, he lies back down on his bed and closes his eyes. I take that as my cue to leave and grab the tray and head for the door.
I'm almost to the door when I hear him mumble, almost inaudibly, "You didn't tell me your name."
I smile at the surprising action and reply, "It's Harley."
"Harley...." He yawns and closes his eyes again.
I close the door behind me and I'm embarrassed to find the other nurses surrounding the room in the hallway watching like hawks.
"What did you do?" Noelle asks astonishingly.
I'm instantly afraid I did something wrong, so I ask in horror, "What do you mean?" I feel my palms start to sweat so I rub them on my sides.
"He was, like... Calm!" She excitedly replies like a dog whose owner just came home from work all day.
I chuckle a little and I'm nearly speechless, "I don't know. He was just like that. What do you mean he was so calm?"
"Well, he's always been aggressive." She starts nervously, "Like, very aggressive. His schizophrenia has made him believe that everyone wants to hurt him, so he fights back. Ever since he got here he's tried to hurt everyone who comes in contact with him. And he hasn't spoken a word in three years since he got here."
I'm instantly angry that she didn't warn me of his aggression before I went in there. I haven't gotten a chance to read his file thoroughly, only enough to know his medications and dosages. I'm for sure going to read it all the way through as soon as I can. How could they not even warn me of his violence? What if he had tried to hurt me, what would I have done?
But she said he hasn't spoken a word in three years. But he spoke to me.
"Wait, you said he doesn't speak?" I ask Noelle. The other nurses are still here, listening intently.
"He's been completely mute, yes."
I furrow my eyebrows and reply, "But he spoke to me. He asked me what my name was."
I swear if it was possible, their jaws would have hit the floor. "You've got to be kidding me." A silver-haired older nurse states with her eyes wild with shock.
"No, I'm serious. He asked for my name and then he repeated it before falling asleep."
"He's never done anything like that. He likes you or something. This is absolutely amazing, it's something we've never been able to do." Noelle suggests.
He's been mute for years and suddenly decides to speak to me? I don't understand! I only gave him his breakfast and medicine! Maybe it's just a fluke thing. Maybe he just never speaks because he doesn't feel the need to. I doubt I will get anything else from him. I'm just a nurse, not a therapist.
********
I'm sitting on a picnic table's bench on the grounds out back of the hospital. The whole area is fenced in all around, and the grass is brilliantly green and cut nice and short. There's a sand pit to the left, far back in the corner with a few patients playing innocently in it. It reminds me of when I was little, a time of innocence and naïveté.
Niall is sitting with his back up against a tree, staring off aimlessly. He picks at the grass around him slowly. His head bobs up and down slightly, and every few moments his eyes will quickly divert to something I can't see. Probably a hallucination of some kind.
"You should try to talk to him." I hear a voice from behind me. Doctor Styles stands there with one arm grabbing his other elbow loosely, with his back leaning against the wall.
"Oh! I didn't see you, Dr.Styles."
God, he is so attractive. His eyes are so green like emeralds, the kind of eyes someone would dream of. They're surrounded by a thick array of long black eyelashes, which only make his eyes pop even more. His dark, chocolate hair is aggressively curly, but he wears it pushed up and back, away from his face.
He continues, "I heard that you got him to talk this morning. That's just unprecedented. Maybe you could get him to talk more. Oh, and call me Harry." He suggests, and the both of us look over to Niall, who throws a rock at an approaching patient.
That's my cue to go stop him and make sure he doesn't do anything else. Another nurse goes to check on the other patient while I check on Niall. Luckily the rock didn't hit the other patient. It would have seriously hurt the small, elder woman.
I run up to him, and he is leaning back against the tree staring menacingly at the frail old woman walking away.
"Niall, you can't throw things at people." I disapprovingly inform him and stand in front of his line of sight.
He says nothing, of course. He stares blankly off in the distance, so disconnected from reality.
His schizophrenia is very extreme according to his records. I haven't read the full thing yet, but I read a good portion of it before we came out here. His schizophrenia causes him to disconnect from the world, like every other schizophrenic. Most of them can control it and live normal lives, but sometimes their disease is too strong and it completely invades their minds, like in Niall's case. He also has extreme depression and gets violent anxiety attacks. One of those attacks lead to another nurse getting a long scratch down her leg, deep enough to draw blood. Ever since that incident, they have had to keep Niall's nails as short as possible so he can't hurt anyone else. He's been confined to a straitjacket on multiple occasions for extreme violent outbursts upon other patients or nurses. His outbursts usually occur when someone comes too close to him or moves to quickly towards him, or, for most of the nurses, when they try to do something to him that he doesn't want done. Like cutting his hair.
Apparently one time a nurse was trying to cut his hair and he elbowed her and the scissors cut her arm very badly. Needless to say, he didn't get a hair cut that day. He is also known to throw food at the nurses, mainly the biggest thing on the plate, the thing that could do the most damage.
He hears voices, which is normal for schizophrenia, as he said at a hospital a few years ago. Obviously before he stopped speaking. He said that the voices tell him that everyone is going to hurt him, and he needs to attack them to be safe. Those kind of voices are referred to as "demand hallucinations" because they're demanding him to do something. He also said he hallucinates visually, which is normal, and sees things like demons and dark creatures, and that he's afraid of them. He said that he sees bugs crawling on walls all around him and that dogs with red eyes will try to bite him. On many occasions, at his old hospital, he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and shaking, crying that there is something crawling on his skin, but obviously there will be nothing there.
As I stand here in front of him, I watch his eyes dart over to the right, and stare horrifiedly at something I can't see. He starts to aggressively shake his head as if saying "no." The movements are short and quick, and he starts rocking back and forth against the tree. His hands move to cover his ears and he tucks his head into his knees.
It's such a heartbreaking sight. He looks so terrified over something that can't actually hurt him, and knowing that I physically can't do anything about the hallucination kills me. I can only try to comfort him. And I do mean try. According to his records, during these episodes he gets extremely dangerous.
I cautiously squat down in front of him and put my hand on his left knee. "Niall?" I whimper.
He doesn't respond. He continues rocking and shaking his head with his hands over his ears.
"Niall, it's okay. Look at me. It's not real." I try to coax him, but it's no use.
I move my hands to his face. I know this is dangerous and he will most likely attack me, but I need to do everything I can to help this man. I have one hand on either side of his face and I gently pull his head up and out of his kneecaps.
"Look at me." His eyes are closed. "Niall, it's not gonna get better unless you look at me. I know you hear me." He reluctantly opens his eyes, and his pupils are giant, almost completely covering the bright blue. They're laced with great fear for about two seconds until he must have realized that it's just me, and they start to calm down.
His rapid breathing starts to slow, and his hands move down from his ears and hit the grass beside him. He stops shaking his head and he lazily rests against the tree.
"See? You're okay. No one is going to hurt you, I promise." I smile genuinely at the damaged man in front of me.
He smiles back.