The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (3 page)

The doctor left quickly after getting the necessary signatures and the following morning, Sylvia was wheeled down to pre-op to be prepped. Mr. Shipp, in an attempt to mask his worry suggested that he and his wife grab a bite to eat at K & W Cafeteria across the street. Neither ate more than a few mouthfuls and soon found themselves heading right back to the hospital where they could do little but wait. It was almost four hours later when Dr. Reid entered the waiting room.

“Relax, relax Sylvia did just fine. We weren’t able to save the ovaries but otherwise, she’s fine. She’s in recovery. They have her on the intensive care unit in Room 411, so we can better monitor her progress. But just as soon as she’s stabilized, we’ll move her to a regular room until she’s ready to go home. You might want to wait before you go in and see her. She’s in a pretty good deal of pain, so we’ve increased her morphine drip and she may be in and out of sleep,” Dr. Reid said.

“Thank you, sir,” was the best Mr. Shipp could offer as he extended his hand but there was no doubt he was profoundly grateful to the good doctor who had pulled his only daughter through.

As soon as the Shipps’ stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor, they heard the screaming. Ignoring it, they made their way to Room 411. The screaming grew progressively worse until both Horace and Beulah Shipp came to the sudden realization that the voice they heard was not just some patient deranged and out of control obviously with more than a medical problem but as they grew closer, they recognized the voice as being their own daughter’s.

Rushing into the room, they found a bevy of nurses and orderlies, shouting orders at each other. And in the middle of the melee, was Sylvia fighting with all her might and screaming at the top of her lungs. The head nurse shouted in turn at one of her subordinates.

“Increase the morphine flow!”

“It’s already maxed, Samantha. Anymore and it’ll kill her,” the young nurse shouted.

“Hold her hands then, while I strap her down,” an orderly screamed at no one in particular, as he grabbed one arm while another did his best to fasten the buckle on the strap. Sylvia’s screams only seemed to grow louder when she was strapped down. And Mr. Shipp, never expecting anything like this, had all he could do to get out of the way and eventually backed completely out of the room in tears. And then just as quickly as it all started, it ended. The screaming, the lurching, the attempts to battle the nurses and orderlies all stopped.

Sylvia, spent and exhausted, closed her eyes, then opened widely and stared at the tubes, which seem to emerge from every open pore. The orderlies and nurses finally breathed a collective sigh of relief. Little did they know just how brief their respite would be.

For the next two days, the high-pitched screaming continued. Each time the nurses entered the room, Sylvia would begin screaming frantically. If they opted to change the sheets, she would scream. If they tried to check her blood pressure, she would scream until after the third day of her screaming bloody murder doctors, nurses and orderlies would move to the other side of the hall in hopes that she would not see them as they made their rounds.

Her parents’ daily visits met with the same reaction. So taken back was Mr. Shipp by his daughter’s behavior that he would peek in the room making sure to stay out of plain eyesight and then spend the remainder of the visiting time in the waiting room waiting for his wife.

Steadfast in her love for her daughter, Mrs. Shipp endured the screaming and yelling. She had even grown accustomed to her little girl being strapped down to the bed so she wouldn’t—as the nurses so aptly put it—”
Wouldn’t cause harm to herself.”
Mrs. Shipp laughed at this one. “Shoot, they’re more worried ‘bout Sill causin’ harm to
them
if you ask me” she told her husband one day on the ride home from the hospital. Both laughed at that one. Sill would eventually calm down and Mrs. Shipp would then approach her daughter slowly, cautiously, so as not to alarm her. She would then take both of Sill’s hands in her own and talk to her softly, gently about friends, relatives and the goings on in the world outside of Room 411.

Sometimes Sylvia would sit and stare out of the fourth floor window at nothing in particular. At other times, her eyes would become fixated at a spot on the floor or the unopened orange juice container on her lunch tray. At other times, she was content to simply shriek and yell at the top of her lungs for the duration of her mother’s visits despite her mother’s attempts to soothe her. This Mrs. Shipp could endure. What ate at her very soul was that not once in the last four days had her daughter spoken a word and what was worse she didn’t seem to recognize her.

The screaming tirades against the hospital staff continued on a daily basis, and as Mr. and Mrs. Shipp concluded their visit on the fourth day following the operation, they were stopped at the elevator by one of Sill’s nurses. “Mr. and Mrs. Shipp I presume? Dr. Reid is on his way down from his office. I think he’d like to have a word with you concerning your daughter.” No sooner had she said that then Dr. Reid emerged from the elevator.

“Thank you, Susan,” he said, winking at the young petite nurse with the bright red hair. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Shipp. And how are you, today? Good. Good. I thought I might have a word with you concerning Sylvia’s progress. Do you have a few minutes? Good, why don’t we head down to the cafeteria? I’m starved.”

The good doctor led the way down the narrow hospital corridors, nodding to this person and that, stopping occasionally to talk about his golf handicap, then remembering the Shipp’s who trailed closely, an uncomfortable silence engulfing them, as they waited ever so anxiously.

“Oh, how rude of me,” he would say before stopping again to discuss the idea of increasing a patient’s medication, then off again, around another bend, before heading down another long and winding hallway. After what seemed forever, they reached the cafeteria where Dr. Reid held the door for the Shipp’s. Both Mr. and Mrs. Shipp had had enough cafeteria food to last them a lifetime so when the doctor offered, they politely refused. By the time they were seated, Mr. Shipp was so wound up, so full of worry and anxiety, that he was certain that Sill was near death and was already regretting not having had the strength to endure his only daughter’s screams. Still, what Dr. Reid told him next seemed almost worse than death. After tasting the healthy serving of Salisbury steak and licking, his lips in appreciation he turned to the Shipp’s.

“Well, as you know the operation was a complete success. Sylvia’s recovery is going as well as expected. She seems to be healing nicely. There is no excessive scar tissue forming around the incision and her vitals are back to normal. However, I am afraid that the trauma she’s experienced has left some far deeper emotional scars than we could ever have imagined. From what I understand, she has not spoken since she’s been here. This is not good. And the excessive screaming at first thought due to the operation is probably also due to the terrible ordeal she’s just been through.

I’m really worried about her emotional stability. And as you know, if your minds not healthy then it can alter what and how your body heals. Presently, she’s not eating. The nurses inform me that she hasn’t eaten solid food in two days and that can’t be good so I’ve recommended she be fed intravenously. Not eating suggests to me that she’s not fighting. She’s also made no effort to get up and walk around on her own or use the bathroom. We try to encourage this but she has not responded. In all honesty, I think Sylvia has lost the will to live.”

Dr. Reid continued to eat, scooping up another forkful of mash potatoes and sweet peas before continuing. “Sure you won’t have some? The Salisbury steak is better than my wife’s and she’s a pretty fair cook.”

Both nodded no.

“In any case, I’ve met with my colleagues concerning Sylvia and the direction we need to go and the general consensus is that we let her continue her recovery under the care of Dr. Henrik Divac, who is our resident psychiatrist and who’s located right next door in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. He is one of the premiere men in his field and if anyone can break through and release those inner demons that are plaguing Sylvia, it is he.”

Mr. and Mrs. Shipp were stunned by this pronouncement. “A mental ward? Are you suggesting our daughter be placed in a—mental ward?” Mrs. Ship asked almost incredulously. “Are you saying our Sylvia’s crazy?”

“Not by any means, not by any means at all would I ever consider suggesting that your daughter is crazy.
I prefer
not to even use the word crazy since it can imply so many things, none of which I think applies to Sylvia’s situation.

What I am saying is that the trauma from the rape can cause a myriad of rather unusual side effects, most being psychological. And, as a physician and surgeon, I am not qualified to do much more than heal physical ailments. But what I’d really like to see is your daughter regain her previous form as quickly as possible.”

But Mrs. Shipp hadn’t heard a word the good doctor had said. She was still hung up around the idea of her daughter being placed in a facility that as far as she was concerned housed nut cases and crazy people.

“No, no, no! Y’all ain’t puttin’ my baby in no insane asylum!” Mrs. Shipp yelled as the tears flowed down the side of her face. “No! Hell no! Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my baby that some tender, lovin’ care won’t fix.”

Mr. Shipp was horrified as well but had quickly come to the realization that there was little he could do to help his daughter who it appeared could hardly stand the sight of him. And, if they could help bring his little girl back to normal, well then, much as he hated her being in a mental institution, he had to agree to it, despite his wife’s objections.

The following day, ranting and raving, despite the injection of Demerol, Sylvia Shipp was transferred to the psychiatric ward of the Christopher Eliot Memorial Hospital. To no one’s surprise, neither Dr. Reid nor the staff appeared overly distraught when they learned of her departure.

Once admitted to the psychiatric ward, Sylvia’s tirades grew in intensity as well as frequency. Therapy, which she took part in twice a day, did little to quell these disturbances. And special rules were set up just to alleviate some of the friction between her and the staff on duty. Male staff members, for example, were not permitted within ten feet of her unless there was a life-threatening emergency. This was for their own safety; however, as she quickly earned a reputation for attacking any and all the male staff that attempted to approach her.

One particular evening, she even went so far as to throw her tray of food at a female orderly who sported a crew cut and had a fondness for men’s fashions. All in all, in the months following the operation, there was little improvement. Despite daily counseling and therapy the staff had yet to hear her utter an intelligible word.

If she was not staring off into space, her gaze usually remained fixed and distant. If, on the other hand, she did appear lucid it would come in short spurts before she would again begin screaming at the top of her lungs. At other times, she would scratch holes in her flesh in an attempt to get whatever it was that she thought was on her off of her.

On another occasion, a young man about her age, who was finishing his internship at a local university, was assigned to the ward, to accompany the psychiatric patients on their daily walk. Sylvia refused to walk on these daily outings content instead to sit in her wheelchair and collect different colored rocks and stones under the big oak tree. On this day however, she seemed much more enamored by the young intern. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him as he made his way from patient to patient. When he finally caught sight of her in the distance he could not fathom the idea of someone so young and as beautiful as she being in a psychiatric unit. When he could no longer resist his youthful curiosity drove him to find out first-hand what could possibly cause such an attractive woman as she to be committed to such a dreadful place. Whatever the reason, he was naive enough to believe that it had to have been a mistake of the grandest kind, perhaps a simple case of mistaken identity, or perhaps simply a faulty diagnosis.

Whatever the case may be, the best method of treatment in most instances was just a matter of exhibiting a heartfelt commitment to the patient and having a caring and empathetic attitude. Armed with these gleaming attributes, the young university intern approached the woman in the wheelchair gingerly. As he grew closer, she appeared to smile. He was sure now that someone, doctors, staff, someone had misdiagnosed her and probably had her committed out of pure jealousy because of her drop-dead good looks. Considering this, he walked over to the old oak tree abandoning everything he’d been taught at the university and much of what he’d been told by the hospital staff on duty.

Sylvia’s smile brought newfound confidence to the young intern and he quickened his pace. He was now no more than five feet from her when the first rock struck him below the right eye. The second rock cut his bottom lip, knocking a tooth loose. When he dove to grab her hand in an attempt to stop the onslaught, he found himself locked in a grasp like he had never known before. And then came the burning searing pain as her teeth locked on to his earlobe. She swung her head back and forth like rabid dog in heat. He could feel his ear literally ripping apart in her mouth. When he tried to free himself, he found both his arms pinned to his sides. A wrestler in high school, he quickly realized amidst the excruciating pain he felt that he’d never in his life been put in a hold like this. It took two orderlies, a security guard and two nurses to finally untangle the two. When it was finally over, seven stitches were required to reattach the earlobe and close the gash in his bottom lip.

The nurses in the ward say that despite a sedative Sylvia grinned for the rest of the day. The young intern, on the other had, did not return and it was later learned that he met with his advisor the next day to change his major.

Following the incident with the intern, there was little change in her behavior. However, her ranting and raving grew less frequent as the days went on. And after a time, she even allowed the male staff to approach. The doctors believed her familiarity with the staff was the reason she no longer went off. She still had a fit when her father came to visit and, though this disturbed him greatly, even he could feel and hear the expectant tone of hope in the voices of the staff.