Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,14

for weeks until proper disposition could be made. Graceland did not treat dangerous psychotics in theory; the state maintained a hospital for the criminal insane, now euphemized as a forensic psychiatric facility, in conjunction with the state penitentiary at Russellville. A patient who required long-term hospitalization at Graceland was either found suitable for an open ward or transferred to a chronic care ward, where long-term hospitalization usually meant lifetime.

Macafee nodded to him through the glass of the nurses’ station, unlocked the door to let him enter. “Good morning, sir. Almost 600 hours; we’ll be waking them soon. Care for some coffee, sir?”

“Yes, thank you.” Marlowe looked through the glass. The nurses’ station was a locked cubicle placed along one wall to give an aquarium resident’s view of the communal ward. Already several of the patients were beginning to shuffle about between the closespaced beds; it was close enough to breakfast, which arrived with the day shift, that minimal activity was permitted.

“Any problems?” Marlowe signed his telephone orders in the ward orders book.

“No sir. Not after we put Mr Carnell to bed.” Macafee sometimes confused the ward with training barracks, but it was usually quiet when he was on night shift, and Marlowe disliked disturbances.

“How is Mr Carnell?”

“Quiet, sir. Sawyer’s checking on him just now.”

“I’ll just take a look myself.”

A short hallway led from the communal ward to the outside corridors. Connected by a door to the nursing station was a small room for supplies and medications. There was an examining and treatment room farther along the hallway, then toilets, showers, a patients’ lounge, and several seclusion rooms. Carnell was lying-on the bed within one of these; a wooden night stand was the only other furnishing. Sawyer was just coming out of the room.

“Good evening, Dr Marlowe—or good morning, it’s getting to be.”

“And let’s hope it will be a good day, Mr Sawyer. How is Mr Carnell?”

“He’s been resting quietly. Starting to wake up now.” Sawyer had had ambitions of a pro-football career before a high school knee injury scrubbed that as well as hopes for a college scholarship. He was ten years younger than Macafee and a good audience.

Carnell was muttering to himself when Marlowe bent over him. “Good morning, Mr Carnell,” Marlowe said, since his eyes were open. “How do you feel?”

“Damn you, Marlowe!” Carnell sat up sluggishly. “I’ve been locked up, robbed, drugged, I don’t know what! Do you think you’re running some sort of prison camp? I demand to be released from this zoo right now!”

“I’m sorry, Mr Carnell. Have you forgotten why you came here?” Marlowe’s voice was patient. “Try to remember.”

Carnell’s face showed anger, then growing indecision. His eyes began to widen in fear.

“Mr Sawyer, could we have that IM Valium order stat?”

“Yes sir. Five mgm, was it, Dr Marlowe?”

“Better make it ten.”

The chronic care wards were always on the second story of Graceland’s far-flung units. Marlowe supposed this was because Graceland had no cellars. Presumably, had there been cellars, the temptation to wall them off would have been irresistible. Marlowe supposed Graceland had never had cellars.

There were two basic divisions among the chronics: the ambulatory and the nonambulatory. The ambulatory could be trusted to leave their locked wards, perform acceptably under controlled situations, and return to their locked wards. The nonambulatory could not be trusted to function within acceptable guidelines. They remained in their wards, often in their beds, often only a dream from the chronic med care unit; spoon-fed gobs of pasty slop, when they could no longer handle spoons; moved to the chronic med unit when they could only be fed through tubes and IV’s.

They fed the ambulatory chronics three times a day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—the same as living souls. This meant they were herded from their wards three times a day, down the stairs (there was an elevator for each unit, and those who could walk, but not negotiate stairs, were granted this), and along the tiled corridors to the patients’ cafeteria. They moved along docilely enough, each regimented segment of quasi-humanity, herded along the long, long corridors by nurses and attendants.

Their clothes were shapeless garments that fit their shapeless bodies: not uniforms, only styleless wads of clothing donated by middle-class patrons who found salve for their consciences in charity bins for flotsam their guilt would not allow them to fling into trashcans. Some, who were habitually incontinent, might wear rubber (now vinyl) underpants, although it had been established with chronics that floors and clothing were more easily washed than could