First Days of Psych

I've been issued a key, for a mere $5 deposit, that will allow me into, and more importantly out of, the psych wards at the local psych hospital. My ward is special; it's the "forensics ward", aka "home to the people who are crazy in jail." Today, I sat in on the interviews of several patients who are also inmates. The stories I heard were incredible.

• There was the young man who calmly told us that the voices in his head told him he needed to go back to county jail, so he could get put onto the regular floor, where he could purchase a razor and use it to kill himself. Needless to say, he didn't get discharged today.
• There was a young woman with borderline personality disorder who burst into angry tears because the nurse dispensing medication was RUDE to her, that was a personal ATTACK, she wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong. This was a woman in her thirties receiving a lecture on how you can't control what other people do to you, you can only control how you react.
• Another young woman detailed her slow slide into drug-dealing after running away from an abusive step-father who shot her mother. When she was living in abandoned houses, she was sexually assaulted numerous times, leaving her with no idea who the fathers of two of her children were.
• A young man told us calmly about how he owned Microsoft, communicated with Halle Berry through the "ethernet" (which is the God-computer, the real God, and he's the commander, but he's about to retire at the age of 25), and he's been a comptroller since age 5, after he started several businesses. This poor man has smoked so much fry that it's likely that none of the antipsychotic meds will bring him back to a semblance of normal. Someone should put him on an anti-drug commercial.
• My favorite patient today, though, was a man who came to this country illegally because he believed that America has treasure buried underground--one has only to dig it up! From what I can tell, he was arrested hacking at the ground with a machete, hollering about buried treasure. I don't even know if they took him to jail first, or if they brought him straight to the psych hospital.

I keep forgetting to use the key to get into the interview room to talk to patients. I keep forgetting that my key has to let me out of each of the double doors to the unit--but only into one door. And is it wrong of me to be a little excited that I get to walk out of this place every day?

Don't do drugs.