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The door to the hall slammed open and Harvey, the Psych Tech, his longish dark curls flying, bolted out of Dr. Hartee's office. The dark eyes of the Psych Tech burned with rage as he turned and hurled one last rebuke at the large complacent figure still seated behind his desk inside the room.
"Rita's levels were toxic and you knew it! You won't get away with this anymore!" Harvey whirled sharply and sped down the hall, intent on exposing the doctor's mischief. He was still moving so rapidly as he passed the nurses' station a few corridors away that papers on the counters fluttered in a breeze caused by his passage. Heads turned in his direction, curious about his haste. But the small figured man in navy blue jeans and the lighter blue tunic of the Psychiatric Technician did not stop to enlighten them. The staff soon resumed their daily chores.
Harvey skittered to a stop at the ward exit. Dark hair falling forward into his face, he fumbled for the magnetic card in his tunic pocket, grasped it and inserted it into the slot next to the door. The lock was released; Harvey pulled the heavy metal door open and darted out of the Psychiatric Ward. The door swung shut and automatically locked behind him.
Back in his office, the shaggy head of Dr. Hartee was motionless in front of the window behind his desk. His pale blue eyes stared reflectively out at his office through thick-lensed glasses for a moment. The walls to the right and to the left of the desk had been fitted with shelves from floor to ceiling and filled with books on psychiatry, psychology, bound medical journals. Glass doors shielded the slightly allergic Hartee from the fumes and dust surrounding the aged tomes.
A doorway cut into the shelved wall to one side opened into a smaller adjacent room which contained patient files. Against the wall opposite to the desk a pair of small burgundy colored leather couches were positioned on either side of a central door which opened into the corridor. On the walls above the sofas hung Dr. Hartee's framed medical degrees and diplomas: one from his undergraduate college in biology; a master's degree in neurophysiology from another prestigious university; a medical degree from a world famous private medical school, with a specialty in neuropathology; degrees in psychiatry, psychoanalysis. Dr. Hartee was well endowed mentally and professionally.
A brocaded armchair was positioned cozily close to one corner of the desk. There was plenty of room to maneuver comfortably through all the neatly arranged stuff in this office.
Dr. Hartee's hands remained still on top of an open file on his desk for a moment longer. A photo of his wife and two children smiled up at him from one side of his desk, but his attention was elsewhere. He picked up the telephone on the opposite side of the desk and phoned Security. His call was answered by the Chief of Security in his ground floor office. Dr. Hartee spoke quietly to him.
In response, the Chief issued orders. Guards were alerted at all the hospital exits. When Harvey appeared on the ground floor in the easily identifiable blue tunic of the Psychiatric Technician, he was apprehended by the burly capable men of the Hospital Security Staff. Sputtering indignantly, the Psych Tech was held firmly and led back into the hospital but away from its more populated areas. The small company proceeded through a maze of deserted passageways and onto an elevator which rose to the Psych Ward on the top floor. Using a special pass key, one of the uniformed guards opened the elevator door into a corridor inside the restricted ward.
"What are you doing? I work here! There is some mistake! Let me go!" Harvey had been expostulating and struggling in vain against the combined strength of his two escorts. The guards had been warned that he would resist in such a manner; therefore they ignored his irate protestations and insistence that he was an employee, not a patient--they did not know him. They hauled Harvey out of the elevator.
A few yards from the elevator, the three men arrived at the office of the head of Psychiatry, the very office Harvey had departed just moments before. Dr. Hartee, a crisp white lab coat covering ill-fitting navy blue slacks and crumpled blue long-sleeved shirt, emerged. The doctor's unkempt appearance contrasted starkly with the antiseptic order of his office. He motioned the guards to follow him.
The small party progressed to an empty confinment cell three doors down from the doctor's office. They entered the 8x10 foot windowless room. The only furniture inside was a bed with leather belts and buckles attached to strategic edges. At a gesture from Dr. Hartee, the guards threw their contentious captive onto the bed and strapped the leatherware into place. Harvey's squirming ankles and wrists were fastened, each to a corner of the bed. A longer strap secured his waist.
"Hey! What do you think you are doing? Stop this! I work here! Don't listen to Hartee--he's a crook! Unfasten me and call the police!" Pinioned and screaming his wrath, Harvey's terse phrases gave way to curses. The guards waited inside the room, not really hearing anything that was said, until Dr. Hartee had injected the wriggling, noisy figure on the bed with a very large dose of a tranquilizing drug.
"What is that stuff? You guys, don't let him do this to me! Hartee, you won't get away with this! Hartee, I'm telling!" In less than a minute Harvey's verbiage and physical exertions had subsided. The doctor thanked the guards for their conscientious assistance with the recalcitrant Harvey. Then the guards turned to depart.
Dr. Hartee continued to speak as he exited the room with them, "I don't know what came over him. He burst into my office without an appointment and lapsed into a psychotic episode. You saw his failed psychomotor control. It's a good thing you managed to stop him from leaving the hospital. In his manic state he could have caused injury to himself or to some one else. The medicine I injected will block his postsynaptic responses, slow him down. Then, I will be able to help him."
The guards in their grey uniforms, nodded absently, uninterested in deciphering the jargon offered as explanation for the distasteful duty they had just been called to perform. Out of Dr. Hartee's view, they rolled their eyes at one another as they returned to their separate ground floor posts via the nearby elevator. As their paths did not often cross, they would not see each other again soon; there would be no chance to gossip together about this episode.
Left behind in the Psych Ward, Dr. Hartee did not return to his office. He continued to lumber along the corridors; his massive size precluded a speedy gait. The walls were hung with framed prints of medieval scenes: elaborately costumed men and women--and horses: equestrianed horses amid packs of hounds pursued desperately fleeing foxes for sport; jockeyed steeds raced toward finish lines; great stallions at rest in stables, breeding in meadows. They were scenes of bygone eras in British history and portrayed favorite themes of Dr. Hartee.
At the end of this corridor, he turned and proceeded down another, its walls were more typically void of decoration. When he reached the end of this hall, he turned into yet another corridor. This one exhibited a little more bustle than the previous hallways. One or two nurses and orderlies could be seen flitting from room to room accomplishing various routine work. Toward the middle of this hall, Dr. Hartee arrived at the nurses' station for the Psych Ward. It was so distant from the Department Head's office suite that the recent commotion there had not been overheard by anyone h
ere. At the station, Dr. Hartee reached over an unattended area of the countertop and procured a chart for Harvey's room. To this he entered background data and an order with a pen from the lapel pocket of his white medical staff jacket. While he wrote, he peered over the top of the chart and considered the staff assembled at the station who were busily absorbed in assigned tasks. Finally he stopped writing and called one of them over to his side. The stout nurse he had indicated was a new employee who had just begun her shift. Like most of the ward staff, this nurse was a shade past trim. Dr. Hartee handed her the chart and gestured in the direction of the isolation cell, muttering gruffly, "New patient." She took the chart from him and turned to go. No further communication was necessary. Processing a new patient was a typical routine.
As the new nurse stepped away, the doctor looked down at his wristwatch and announced to the generally preoccupied workers that it was time for his field rounds. This was not an unusual procedure and no one paid him any particular attention. Whereupon Dr. Hartee walked over to the exit door across from the nurses' station. He inserted his magnetic card into the wall slot next to the solid metal door. When a blinking light indicated that the lock was released, Hartee opened the door and left the ward. The door closed and locked automatically behind him. He continued forward to the elevator bank just outside the restricted Psychiatric Ward.
Back inside the ward, the new nurse found it was a long walk to her recently assigned patient. When she finally arrived, the young woman entered the confinement cell cautiously. She had read the chart which stated that the patient it contained was in a violently psychotic state and had to be maintained on antipsychotics until his condition had stabilized. That meant intravenous feeding, medication, and fluid drainage tubing had to be set up and monitored until the patient could be roused safely to consciousness. When the medications had been successfully juggled to create a more malleable state, the patient would be easily manipulated verbally and would not require physical restraints.
The nurse warily eyed the inert patient on the bed. Encouraged by his stillness, she carried out the doctor's recommended procedures, first quickly removing the patient's clothes, unfastening and refastening the leather restraints limb by limb to do so. His olive toned skin seemed pale against the white sheet. He was not a large man; realizing this, the new nurse was even more reassured, believing he would not pose much of a threat if he were awake. She covered the naked prostrate stranger with a lightweight sheet and then went out of the room to get intravenous and catheter equipment. On her way she deposited Harvey's folded garments and personal possessions into an assigned patient locker.
As she returned to the patient's room she remembered how flattered she had felt to be personally approached by the Chief of the Ward and asked to care for such a difficult patient. Striving to deserve the confidence placed in her, she filled Dr. Hartee's order to the letter, relieved that the patient offered no resistance. It was so much easier to insert the catheter into the urethra of a sleeping male.
As she started the IVs, the nurse noticed that the prescribed drug was a new psychopharmacological marvel. She was impressed with this which she interpreted as evidence that Dr. Hartee exerted the mental effort required to learn of advances in psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Not that she would have complained if she had noticed anything unusual about the prescription or the treatment. She was a divorcee with two children to support. She had applied for this job because it paid more than other positions in the hospital; she did not concern herself with a reason for the higher salary. She needed the money and she would not do anything to jeopardize the financial security this job offered. She completed her tasks with efficient competence and left the room. The door locked automatically as it closed behind her.
The Psych Tech was on Dr. Hartee's ward, unconscious and hooked to hospital equipment, for just a little while. In that time only a few of the staff entered his room. Typically impersonal, they focused on the chart, the equipment statistics, and ignored the patient who was, after all, asleep. Supine, out of his usual costume, with the distinctively large eyes closed, his voice silenced, and his face slowly shadowing with the daily growth of his beard, the Psych Tech was not recognized by any of his fellow employees.
By the end of the next day, Dr. Hartee had arranged to transfer Harvey to another hospital on the grounds that his present facility could not maintain the continual monitoring required by this patient's potentially dangerous condition.
Three young and athletic orderlies, requisitioned from Obstetrics, helped to transfer the still dormant Harvey from the bed with its leather accoutrements onto a portable emergency cot. The cot and wheeled IV poles were rolled out of the confinement cell. Dr. Hartee followed closely behind, carrying Harvey's clothing and personal belongings in a hospital-issue plastic bag. The orderlies had not been in this area of the hospital before and required close direction from the supervising doctor.
The little entourage was on its way to the same elevator which had deposited the hapless Harvey into the recesses of the Psychiatric Ward the day before. Approaching a room along the corridor, Dr. Hartee glanced at the patient inside who was facing the open door. It was Rita who sat there; the same Rita to whom Harvey had referred in his earlier confrontation with Dr. Hartee.
The Psych Tech knew Rita from the nearby university where he had taken a course the previous semester to maintain his hospital job skills. He had met her at the library during a planned study break. Rita also was taking a break from studies in her major, Drama. One evening, they entered the snack bar area at the same time. This area was set apart from the quiet library rooms on a sublevel of the building. Both students were eager for any sort of diversion from their respective mental disciplines, however brief, and so they greeted one another. Harvey enjoyed the tall slender redhead's chatty amiability and arranged to meet with her again during his next study session. The two continued this habit for the duration of the semester. Even though they got along famously, Harvey never thought of dating Rita because she was so much taller than he.
Harvey was not in school the following semester and lost touch with his new friend. Therefore, he was truly shocked to find her in a devastated condition in his ward at the hospital one day toward the end of that semester. He had not been able to talk with her; she was incoherent. In fact, he had barely recognized her because she had grown about five dress sizes larger than when he had met her. He checked her charts and kept watch on her long enough to recognized that something was out of order. He had gone alone to confront Dr. Hartee with his suspicions. Harvey's efforts on behalf of his friend proved ineffectual. Unbelievably, that man was so adamantly obtuse about Harvey's inferences that the Psych Tech had become enraged.
And so here Rita still sat, strapped to a chair, her head and neck tensed forward in a peculiarly Mongoloid posture. She was unable to move freely, not only because of the leather straps, but also because the drug coursing throughout her body suppressed her brain's control over normal muscle function. Her mouth, dry and cracked, hung open. Her tongue darted over her lips in a useless effort to relieve the interminable sensation of thirst. Rita's bright blue eyes, the pupils contracted to pinpoints, stared vacantly at the figures moving like shadows in the doorway. Her vision, blurred by the action of the prescription on her central nervous system, could distinguish no one familiar.
In fact, the blood levels of the drug prescribed by Dr. Hartee were so high that all of Rita's neural impulses were largely blocked before they ever reached her brain; and vice versa, her brain could not direct her body. Rita could not even call out a coherent greeting. Soon the doorway was as unoccupied as before.
Dr. Hartee's party reached the elevator without ever passing the nurses' station. As they waited, only one of the orderlies noted silently the unusual addition of paintings hung on the walls but he did not discern their subject matter. When the elevator arrived, they all entered the cabinet and descended to the level of the loading dock. After the cot cradling Harvey's body had been slid into a waiting ambulance, Dr. Hartee thanked the orderlies for their assistance and dismissed them. They returned to their duties and to the familiar faces of their coworkers on the third floor Obstetrics Ward.
Dr. Hartee then directed the ambulance to drive to a distant hospital where he, as a major stockholder, also had practicing privileges. Scrupulously attentive to his patient, the doctor rode along.
Dr. Hartee checked his patient into this new hospital setting through the Emergency Room. He personally supervised the admission and assignment of a ward and room for Harvey. He neglected to list on the admission papers that Harvey was an employee of the primary admitting hospital. In fact, he omitted that there was a prior admission for an emergency psychiatric crisis in another hospital.
In his new room in this next Psychiatric Ward, the unconscious Harvey was soon hooked up to new IV and catheter appliances. In this second hospital, Harvey was a complete stranger to all the staff. The likelihood that he would be recognized was considerably diminished. In this Six-Week Lentenite Health Maintenance Complex, Dr. Hartee, as a major stockholder, was on the Board of Directors. There was even less chance that any of his decisions would be closely scrutinized or challenged.
Within four days from its introduction, the prescribed drug seeping intravenously into Harvey's body would establish an addiction. It was at this phase that Dr. Hartee, a Psychiatric Ward Chief, planned to notify Harvey's relatives of the mysterious psychosis to which the unfortunate Psychiatric Technician had succombed.
In the western tradition of literature, stories such as this one have happy endings. Therefore, this story is... yet to be concluded.
Featured story written by A. Marie Terek
If the reader notices any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events, bear in mind that it is not the so much the author's intention to harm the innocent as it is to expose the guilty, most especially to themselves. Furthermore the treatment practiced herein by the character Hartee is unworthy of imitation because it can cause death and permanent injury. In this author's opinion it should be considered criminal malpractice and punishable by law.
