Public Hostage: Public Ransom – Inside Institutional America
Chapter Twenty-One: Injuries
After three years inside the bleak, hopeless buildings of Willowbrook, nothing made me sicker than the jolt of having to face a new injury. Something in me changed over time. My tolerance for facing the ceaseless flow of gashes, burns, fractures, and massive bruises eroded and finally gave way. This occurred in direct relation to my growing understanding of why these injuries happened.
And as I was pitched deeper into the bowels of the warehouse from infant service to teenagers to adults, the magnitude of violence multiplied tenfold.
I remember vividly preparing myself in medical school for horrible things that a health worker must see and correct. I persuaded myself, over time and by gentle conditioning, that there was nothing too mutilated or offensive to approach rationally, to see as a complex disruption of parts—blood vessels, nerves, skin, organs, tendons—each with a precise name and place. What is working, what is destroyed? Where does this or that part belong? Reassemble, connect, mould the injury back together.
What I did not or could not prepare for, what drove me to wild rage, disgust, and fear, was being helpless to stem the tide of injuries when the source was so tangible, so preventable, so inevitable, so clear. More than anything that tripped my fury and frustration was the incredible attitude of the institution and all its workers toward injuries.
Nothing more exemplified this attitude than the wry, mechanical tone of voice of the supervising nurse over the telephone when I was on night duty. "Dr. Bronston? There's a laceration in Building 22, one in Building 8, a burn in Building 20, and two temps (people with fever) in Building 12." That was all; a synopsis of four of five hours of the consequences of life for the hostages. Just as simple, cool, and matter-of-fact as saying, "There's a cloud in the sky," "The time is six o'clock," "I spilled a glass of water," "The phone is ringing."
Never, never could I understand that attitude just telling me that somewhere among the stone, lying somewhere on a steel bed there in a treatment room, tied in a sheet, was a person torn, violated, washed in agony; an innocent somewhere on those 340 acres of grass, trees, and stately brick buildings. "A laceration in 27." That was all . No urgency, no anguish. God, what working there has done to my coworkers!!!