By I am a psych nurse, and work in a facility that treats acute disorders. I am on night shift. After the patients are stabilized, they either go home, are sent to rehab, are sent to long term care facilities, or the state hospital. We get the worst of the worse. I swear I once witnessed a woman who was not only mentally ill, but possessed. She would eat spiders, and become extremely violent at the drop of a dime. She would seem catatonic at times, and other times would discuss religion with the other patients and staff. When she had moments where her mind was clear, she was extremely depressed and fearful. One night, we heard her roommate screaming frantically from their room. A couple of us ran as fast as we could and flung the door open. Her roommate was so terrified, she was pressed up against the wall practically paralyzed with fear. The woman was lying under her bed, which would have been difficult to do. The beds are so low to the floor, someone would have had to lift it up while she wiggled underneath. When we pulled her out, her body and face were contorted and rock solid. One arm was across her chest with her hand twisted, the other arm behind her, with that hand also twisted. Her head was turned toward her back farther than any natural position I could think possible. Her face was frozen in an expression I cannot describe. Her eyes were wide open. She had wet herself. She looked like Emily Rose. We could not get her to relax. We called for EMS immediately and described it as a seizure, although she had no history of a seizure disorder. We were finally able to get her lying in a natural position and able to relax. She started to come to, and finally closed her eyes, but started mumbling incoherently. After EMS took her to the ED, we sat and talked with the roommate who refused to go back to bed, and eventually we moved her to another room. She said that she woke up and saw the woman walking out of their bathroom. She turned toward the wall, began to convulse, turned into several contorted positions before she locked into the one we found her in, she said the bed lifted up, and the woman just sort of “fell underneath it” but couldn’t really describe how. We all sat at the nurses station terrified for the rest of the night. I hope I never see anything like that again in all my life.
One day my patient said “Your dad just called me and he needs to tell you something”. I just blew her off. She was confused and my dad had just passed away. The next day she said had a new message. “Your dad just called and he needs to tell you something”. Both times she told me this I had just come back to my floor from the cafeteria eating lunch. This time I told her to stop saying that. That my dad was dead and I didn’t think it was funny. She just looked at me and said “He told me to tell you not to go to lunch tomorrow so he can talk to you”. The next day after lunch I went in the woman’s room and she said “He called and said what you are looking for is up north”. I had been looking everywhere for his car title and found it “up north” at his safety deposit box in the town where he had his summer place.
