About Michael
by Anne C. Woodlen
“Mindfulness, the capacity to be here, to witness deeply everything that
happens in the present moment, is the beginning of enlightenment.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“You must make the unjust visible.” Mahatma Gandhi
“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi
to come back, but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up
to you. Marian Wright Edelman
Michael is ten years old and has freckles. He was a skinny kid wearing a tank
top and too-big shorts on June 16, Father’s Day, when he came to me in CPEP and
asked for a drink. CPEP is the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program at
St. Joseph’s Hospital. I had been admitted to CPEP on Friday night, but that
morning they had locked me out in the hall and I was sitting in an interview
room. I had no drink to give Michael. There were no cups, nor any drinking
fountain.
The next time I saw Michael, a man had tied down his feet, and was tying his
wrists together with something black, then pulling his wrists over his head and
tying them down while Michael screamed in terror.
This is called “four-point restraint.” My friend came to visit me and heard the
screaming. My pastor saw the child tied down.
The NYS Office of Mental Health did a study of restraint and seclusion policies
at mental health facilities and concluded that if an institution has a policy of
restraint, then it finds the need to use it; if it does not have a restraint
policy, then it never seems to have patients who need such restraint.
When I was at Benjamin Rush Center, a private psychiatric hospital, I was told
that if they need to restrain a child, they do it by having a staff member sit
cross-legged on the floor and wrap her arms and legs around the child; the child
is restrained with humanity. Among other things, the child can hear the adult’s
heartbeat and feel her breathing, which has a calming effect.
Later, after they had untied Michael, I went and sat with him while he had
something to eat. Dr. Alou came in to talk to him, so I left.
The next time I saw Michael was around midnight. Michael had been admitted to
the back, and I had been allowed to return to my room. The child came to me with
his arms outstretched. I hugged him and got him a drink. Then I sat with Donna,
who looked like a suburban housewife, but she talked strange. I don’t know what
was wrong with her.
I saw Michael again in the morning, Monday. He was in the bed in the first room.
The morning nurse, Kathy, and the night nurse, Anthony, were shut up in the
medication room, counting meds. George Van Latham was supposed to be on the
floor but he wasn’t there much. Eddie is 20 years old, 6’6” tall, and weighs 420
pounds. The day before, Eddie told me that he had been arrested for violence
three times, that he had stabbed his brother, and that he was going to stab his
brother’s baby. When Michael came out of his room, Eddie pressed the child to
his side, with his arm around him. Nobody could have gotten Michael away if
Eddie turned mean. (The day before, Eddie threatened to hit me; that’s why they
locked me out in the hall, and the day before that, the security men were
getting ready to put Eddie in four-point because of the way he was acting.)
When George came back, I was afraid to tell him about Eddie holding on to
Michael because the staff get mad if you do, but Michael was cold from only
having a tank top, so I asked George if he could get something warm for Michael.
He said no, he didn’t have anything.
Next thing, Donna took Michael into bed with her. She’d slept on a cot in the
day area. Michael was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. Donna was
snuggled up next to him with her arm across his chest. Nobody was around.
There was a man there who looked like a biker. He had long dark hair, a
jacket-shirt with the sleeves torn off, and tattoos. I was crying. I thought
that maybe if he would just walk with the child, Michael would be protected. I
asked him, but he went and lay down on his bed. The man’s name was Al. Later he
told me that he’d been in Sing-Sing, Attica and other places for drugs and
weapons and killing somebody.
In the afternoon, an older woman with a hearing aide in her left ear came and
took Michael away. Jesus said, “. . . and whoever gives even a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones” will not lose his reward. I keep thinking about
what Jesus did to the moneychangers in the temple, and wondering how he would
tear up the place if he saw what was done to Michael.