Puppets and birds.

I'm like a bird

I'll only fly away

I don't know where my soul is

I don't know where my home is

~ Nelly Furtado

________

I heard a ruckus and found you standing up in the door frame. Yelling out into the hall at the top of your lungs.

F-BOMB! 

F-BOMB!

F-BOMB!

I'm not even sure what you were so mad about. But you were mad. So mad that your colorful choice of words drowned out any black and white issues that you needed to communicate. The lady in the other bed in your room looked scared. I just wanted you to settle down.

Your actions fit certain parts of what some would expect of you from your history. A hard life and a stronghold of crack cocaine addiction. In and out of the hospital for complications of both. So you hollering out of the door and into the hallway gave people that same unease as walking by an erratically behaving addict on a downtown street. 

But see, I had spoken to you long enough to know that there was more to you than the words someone probably uttered under their breath. You were charming and intelligent. Witty and insightful. And you knew all about Atlanta history which, to me, was really cool. I wanted you to calm down. Calm down long enough to perhaps get some help this time. 

F-BOMB! 

F-BOMB! 

F-BOMB!

I placed a hand on your shoulder. A bold move, I know, but I knew that deep down you were a pussy cat. Or rather a feral cat backed into a corner but one who had already smelled my hand and knew I was a friend and not a foe. 

"What's going on?" I asked.

"I gotta get the --F-BOMB-- out of here." That was your answer. Then you said a lot of things that didn't quite connect for me. Something about how you once had insurance and how you were born at Grady. All of it suggested that you felt like you deserved a more VIP treatment than what we were giving to you. So I apologized and asked you to sit on the bed.

"I'm sorry, Miss Manning," you said. "I'm sorry."

I looked you in the eye. "That's okay." 

I sat beside you on your bed and asked a little more about why you were so upset. Still, even with you sitting calmly it wasn't making sense. None of it. So eventually, I stopped trying to make it fit into my own logic and just listened. I didn't reason or anything. I just sat there hearing your flight of ideas floating around that room. 

The lady in the next bed seemed to relax some.

So we had a heart to heart and eventually you were calm. You apologized some more and things seemed better.

As the afternoon progressed, I kept finding you out of your room. In the hallway near the vending machine. Near the elevator. And once all the way outside in the smoking area. Pacing around and talking loud. 

We had bonded so I walked right up to you and told you what I was thinking. "I don't want you to use. I don't. You are scaring me being out here like this."

"I know, Miss Manning. I'm not gon' do anything. It's just cigarettes," you said.

But I knew that this part was out of your control. Your body was just a marionette on a string and crack cocaine had the whole puppet show staged and blocked. 

Act 1 - The elevators, Act 2 - Something else.

"I'm leaving for the day. We still have work to do on you. Don't go, okay?" I said it that way because I feared your puppeteer would have you dance right down the street and around that corner. I had to at least try.

"Okay, Miss Manning. Okay," you replied. I could tell you wanted to mean it.

So I waved good bye to you and shook your hand tight. And when I did, I noticed the burns on your thumb from holding glass pipes. And that? It put a shiver through me because I knew that what caused it was a big mountain and me and my little bag of Internal Medicine tricks was the tiniest of mole hills.

But so what. I had to at least try.

This morning when I came to work, your room was cleaned out. The bed was made and ready for a new patient. I hadn't discharged you. 

"Where'd he go?" I asked.

"He flew," someone answered. 

You flew.

So yeah. I guess the puppet show went on whether I liked it or not.

F-bomb

F-bomb

F-bomb

***

Now playing on my mental iPod. . . . I love this song so, so much.