The hallway walls on the twenty-first floor were bare, showing nothing but faded paint and reinforced tinted glass. I hadn’t been to this part of the hospital in close to a year but the maintenance carts and construction tarps to the left of the elevators did not seem to have moved. It was the highest floor in the building but I had long thought that the brown and taupe evoked the image of a dungeon, rather than the penthouse.
I pressed the intercom button to announce myself to the nursing station and sat obediently in the small waiting room to be let in. My eyes lingered for a moment on the sign next to the door – “Caution Opening Door; Elopement Risk” – and I grunted. The phrase had always struck me as odd, as though the staff were concerned that the patients’ first destination if they left the unit would be a seedy Las Vegas chapel.
Her therapist entered and greeted me with a smile and a handshake. We exchanged pleasantries and she led me through a maze of hallways to the meeting room. Our patient was seated next to the table, her mother and grandmother on either side of her and her infant brother bouncing on her lap. I smiled at the family and the two other social workers in the room and made my way to a seat across the table. The baby tracked me as I sidled between the chairs, his expression of skepticism strong enough to rival any teenager’s.
Don’t worry, kid, I thought. I hate having to be here as much as you do. Continue reading “Not My Place”
