Doyle’s Progress Stories about life at a VA Hospital in the eighties. Going Up on the Hill I got an epic freeze at the job interview that afternoon, sitting all alone with five of these health care professionals staring at me, wondering what I could do for their patients. There wasn’t a smile in the room. The attractive black woman in charge of the inquisition handled my application as if it was contaminated, pushing it around in front of her with her index finger, and tapping on it impatiently as she waited for my answers. There had been this job and that job and this other job, she said, and I don’t understood where you are coming from, she said. I didn’t understand where I was coming from either. I just needed a job. Meeting Richard He had left his wife for dead,injured quite a few aides, and now he was ready to take on Pete, man to man. Life in Three Lower There were thirty-five patients there, and at first glance there didn’t seem to be a whole human being there. They all were supposed to have organic brain damage of some sort, some of it caused by meningitis or syphilis. In reality there were three or four people in there sane as you or I. The Bullpen 7 lower was homicidal-suicidal. Tough guys everywhere. There were faces in the aquarium window; medications going out, pseudo-Cheracol in little plastic shot glasses, semi-gloomy damage assessments from the charge nurse going off duty. C is for Charlie During the peak hours everyone eats in color-coded platoons. Aides and LPNs in white at their tables, housekeeping in blue at theirs, nursing in white, doctors in their lab coats in the quiet el with the view of the snow-covered forest. No one says you have to eat with your own kind, but that is how it works out. Afterword Martin was a VA psychotherapist who founded an experimental recovery program in the hospital. His work with VA patients spanned twenty-one years, from the closing days of World War II until the late 1980s. “ I was peeved and still am peeved because a program that was helping veterans was abandoned. The program worked well for about three years. But they killed it. There are things that work. Hopefulness works, kindness works, tolerance works.” copyright 2009, all rights reserved. The content may be downloaded for individual use only

Doyle’s Progress

Stories about life at a VA Hospital in the eighties.

I got an epic freeze at the job interview that afternoon, sitting all alone with five of these health care professionals staring at me, wondering what I could do for their patients. There wasn’t a smile in the room. The attractive black woman in charge of the inquisition handled my application as if it was contaminated, pushing it around in front of her with her index finger, and tapping on it impatiently as she waited for my answers. There had been this job and that job and this other job, she said, and I don’t understood where you are coming from, she said.

I didn’t understand where I was coming from either. I just needed a job.

Meeting Richard

He had left his wife for dead,injured quite a few aides, and now he was ready to take on Pete, man to man.

Life in Three Lower

There were thirty-five patients there, and at first glance there didn’t seem to be a whole human being there. They all were supposed to have organic brain damage of some sort, some of it caused by meningitis or syphilis. In reality there were three or four people in there sane as you or I.

The Bullpen

7 lower was homicidal-suicidal. Tough guys everywhere. There were faces in the aquarium window; medications going out, pseudo-Cheracol in little plastic shot glasses, semi-gloomy damage assessments from the charge nurse going off duty.

C is for Charlie

During the peak hours everyone eats in color-coded platoons. Aides and LPNs in white at their tables, housekeeping in blue at theirs, nursing in white, doctors in their lab coats in the quiet el with the view of the snow-covered forest. No one says you have to eat with your own kind, but that is how it works out.

Afterword

Martin was a VA psychotherapist who founded an experimental recovery program in the hospital. His work with VA patients spanned twenty-one years, from the closing days of World War II until the late 1980s.

“ I was peeved and still am peeved because a program that was helping veterans was abandoned. The program worked well for about three years. But they killed it. There are things that work. Hopefulness works, kindness works, tolerance works.”

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