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Abstract
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"Did you get your suicide blanket yet, doc?"
I shook my head and he put one in my hands.
"What is it supposed to do?" I asked.
"It's part of the hospital's mental health improvement plan. It's to help our wellness so we don't all go kill ourselves," he said dryly, "instead of adequate staffing and better pay." Sarcasm in a thick southern drawl has a special sort of charm and sting.
I put it on my desk. The charge nurse went on to hand out more blankets to the other emergency department staff. I ran my hands over the material. It was coarse and pilled. The edges were straight cut with no seams. It was the kind of thing you might buy at a Dollar General in a pack of 50.
What could this blanket do, I wondered, to save us from the despair of moral injury and institutional betrayal? Could it end the chronic microstresses that wear down even the kindest and strongest among us? I looked up at the waiting room board. There were 45 humans listed. Each of their names, their sources of pain, and the hours they had been waiting were a pinprick. Caring comes at a price. Apathy is the only way to avoid the silent reproach of the long wait times and patients stacked in chairs in hallways.
Could I throw the blanket over the monitor? Could it save us from the indignity of impotent good intentions? Could I wrap its coarse, gray fibers around me and curl up under my desk so no one would ask me any more questions? Could I roll it up and tie it around my ears and eyes so I wouldn't have to hear any more angry complaints from exhausted family members? Could I charge out the ambulance bay doors and run around the loading dock wearing it as a cape? Could I jump off the building and use the blanket as a parachute to catch the air and float me slowly down?
Maybe I could fold the blanket into the shape of a bird and sit with it in a tree. I would tell it all the ways the day was hard. I would show it all the tiny cracks that had formed today and the ones that were still healing from yesterday. The little blanket bird wouldn't remind me that being in health care is a privilege. It wouldn't imply that the problem was me, that I should be stronger. It wouldn't tell me to do more yoga and take care of my well-being. It wouldn't tell me to make sure I had good sleep hygiene after I had worked overnight and then slept fitfully all morning.
I could spread it on the grass of a quiet meadow and have a picnic on it in the afternoon sun. Just me and the air and the...
Language: en |