Slice Spotlight Author: James C. Karantonis
A CRAZY EIGHTS CHRISTMAS
In 1966, for the Vietnam conflict the United States of America enlisted and drafted into service 300,000 young men and women. In the winter of 1967, soldiers found themselves at an army hospital in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, some as medics, most as patients.
December at the hospital was a time for holidays, the remembered Christmas and the forgotten Chanukah. Separate from the main hospital, across the narrow base road, enclosed by a twelve-foot-high fence, was a ball field and a building. The building, hidden behind a tree-lined knoll, contained army secrets: the psych wards. But it would soon be Christmas, a time for the rebirth of sanity.
On Ward 2A, beds lined both sides of the room, each with a blue blanket and its territory marked with a brown metal nightstand. The afternoon sun shone through opened wire-screened windows that lined both sides, giving the room a golden tone. You may open a window but you cannot go out a window. A holiday wreath of green fern with red ribbon hung from the opened half of the Nurses Station door. Its twin hung from the opened door to the TV room at the back of the ward. On this Saturday morning, patients were watching a comedy filmed before most of these soldiers were born. Abbott and Costello were making a mess of things in the outside world. Inside, Ward 2A was laughing.
An area was reserved at the rear of the ward for the late-night visitor expected on Christmas Eve. A large cardboard cutout of Santa in his sleigh pulled by reindeer covered the back wall. In front of Santa was a gift to the ward from the hospital commander, a freshly cut Christmas tree with its strong odor of pine.
This morning, on return from breakfast, while others went about their customary rituals, a new patient took the initiative and began decorating the tree. By some weird karma, when he checked in two days ago he was assigned the bed of a recently discharged soldier, also an obsessive-compulsive. On his first day here, the new patient smoothed the sheets and straightened the pillow as compulsively as the previous one. Medics had tagged him with the nickname Obsessive Godwin. Among themselves, the medics used nicknames as a crutch to recall the patients’ last names. Patients were always coming and going, and sometimes it seemed more came than went. The pet names weren’t cute sounding like Grumpy, Bashful, and Sneezy, but they worked.
A CRAZY EIGHTS CHRISTMAS
In 1966, for the Vietnam conflict the United States of America enlisted and drafted into service 300,000 young men and women. In the winter of 1967, soldiers found themselves at an army hospital in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, some as medics, most as patients.
December at the hospital was a time for holidays, the remembered Christmas and the forgotten Chanukah. Separate from the main hospital, across the narrow base road, enclosed by a twelve-foot-high fence, was a ball field and a building. The building, hidden behind a tree-lined knoll, contained army secrets: the psych wards. But it would soon be Christmas, a time for the rebirth of sanity.
On Ward 2A, beds lined both sides of the room, each with a blue blanket and its territory marked with a brown metal nightstand. The afternoon sun shone through opened wire-screened windows that lined both sides, giving the room a golden tone. You may open a window but you cannot go out a window. A holiday wreath of green fern with red ribbon hung from the opened half of the Nurses Station door. Its twin hung from the opened door to the TV room at the back of the ward. On this Saturday morning, patients were watching a comedy filmed before most of these soldiers were born. Abbott and Costello were making a mess of things in the outside world. Inside, Ward 2A was laughing.
An area was reserved at the rear of the ward for the late-night visitor expected on Christmas Eve. A large cardboard cutout of Santa in his sleigh pulled by reindeer covered the back wall. In front of Santa was a gift to the ward from the hospital commander, a freshly cut Christmas tree with its strong odor of pine.
This morning, on return from breakfast, while others went about their customary rituals, a new patient took the initiative and began decorating the tree. By some weird karma, when he checked in two days ago he was assigned the bed of a recently discharged soldier, also an obsessive-compulsive. On his first day here, the new patient smoothed the sheets and straightened the pillow as compulsively as the previous one. Medics had tagged him with the nickname Obsessive Godwin. Among themselves, the medics used nicknames as a crutch to recall the patients’ last names. Patients were always coming and going, and sometimes it seemed more came than went. The pet names weren’t cute sounding like Grumpy, Bashful, and Sneezy, but they worked.