A Brother Provoked
Saved by the Prince of India
His name was Bror (Swedish for Brother) and I was told by the other nurses that he had the mental age of a six-year-old. After getting to know him, I’d say they were right. But he was also one of the most perceptive and kind persons I’ve ever met.
When I look back at that late summer of 1968 — those months I worked as a temporary nurse at the Sankta Maria Mental Hospital in Southern Sweden — and especially when I remember Bror, I see him being led out of a ward bedroom where they had set up their mobile ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy, i.e., Electric Shock) equipment. I don’t remember seeing him enter the room for his treatment but I did see him being led out (he was a little unsteady on his feet after the electric ordeal) and when he saw me, he smiled. I must have looked worried about him for his smile told me not to worry, I’m feeling fine, he smiled. It’s all good. He may even have said something to that effect, I don’t remember. But I remember the smile, one of kindness, given for my benefit.
I remember asking the nurses, perhaps even the head nurse, why was Bror in this hospital in the first place. Well, for one, he could not look after himself and he had no family to take care of him. For two, he was an alcoholic who, if given a smidgen of a chance, would drink lighter fluid or paint thinner, anything even remotely alcohol-based or -like. He was addicted to alcohol, was the word I got. Incurably.
Over the first few weeks at the hospital, I sat down and talked to him quite often. He enjoyed our conversations and was always open and friendly with me, a good thing too for he was big and very strong and could have quashed me like a soft fruit had he had the notion to.
He would always say hi and wave if we met out in one of the many yards and parks or even at the mini-golf course (a game he was surprisingly good at). Soon we were, in a word, good friends. He knew I cared for him, and he valued our friendship.
One day he even confided in me that he had a girlfriend on one of the women’s wards in the hospital. Anna was her name. Lovely Anna. Lovely, lovely Anna. He’d see her whenever he could. Maybe they would even marry one day, he said, yes, that would be so wonderful. She was such a nice girl, Anna, they would be very, very happy.
He knew that.
One day shortly thereafter — it was gray with rain-heavy clouds, though not raining yet — the head doctor of the hospital (her name was Solti, and she looked like a huge turkey in a white coat — did this blob of a woman on stick legs) arrived on our ward for her weekly rounds.
This woman, Doctor Solti — and I am sure she is dead by now so I am not hiding her identity to protect the guilty — was (in two words) one of the most evil people I ever encountered.
As she strolled down the ward, junior doctors and senior nurses in toe, she was just about to pass Michael’s bed, when he said “Doctor Solti.” Loud and clear. And desperately.
She turned and faced him.
Now, Michael was a nineteen-year-old drug addict who had ended up in this mental hospital because there was no other facility in town that could look after him; or, let me rephrase this: no other facility could contain him. He had escaped every youth and/or foster home he’d been assigned to so far and throwing up their hands in despair the local authorities decided to “lock him up” at Sankta Maria.
So far so good, until the first chance Michael got to pull another escape which he took. Goodbye, Sankta Maria. Well, that lasted about two hours.
His next escape lasted twice that.
He had now been returned from his third attempt and seeing as locked doors and windows could not stay him put, the good Doctor Solti had decided to give him liberal injections of Hibernal (Chlorpromazine) to, in effect, render him psychically incapable of escaping — sort of chaining him mentally his bed.
They were giving him way too much of this stuff (is my guess), and since he was not actually mentally ill these injections made him ill. The way he put it to Doctor Solti once she turned around to face him was:
“Doctor, I cannot take any more of these shots. I cannot sit up, I cannot lie down, I cannot walk, I cannot rest.”
“Nor can you escape,” added the good doctor.
“I’m burning up,” said Michael. “Could you please, please stop giving me these injections.”
“Now, here,” said Solti, now pointing while addressing her cortege, “see how the injections have pricked the skin and discolored it. It’ll be less invasive, and not so hard on the skin if you inject the Hibernal at an angle, like so,” and she held up her hands to demonstrate.
“Please, Doctor Solti,” said Michael.
Which the good doctor utterly ignored.
“Please,” he said again. But by now that doctor had moved on to the next bed or beds. “Please,” he said again, to a whole set of moving-away deaf ears.
They all strode down the hallway while I looked back at Michael, deciding that I would help this guy (my age, actually) escape, sooner rather than later — which I did, but that’s another story. It was insane that they were using Hibernal on him just to prevent him from escaping. In-bloody-sane.
Then, glancing back into the hallway I noticed that Bror was approaching Doctor Solti, and as I certainly took an interest in this, I rushed after them as unobtrusively as I could, in time to catch Bror saying, “My girlfriend.”
The male ward head nurse, trying to impress Solti, I’m sure, cut Bror off right there, “There’s not going to be any drink, Bror. You know you’re not allowed to drink.”
“No,” said Bror, voicing his innocence, “I don’t want to drink. I want to see Anna.”
“Who is Anna?” said Solti.
“Anna Bergsten on Ward D,” said one of the nurses. “Bror thinks she is his girlfriend.”
“She is my girlfriend,” said Bror.
“No bottle for you,” said the male nurse.
“I don’t want a bottle,” said Bror. “I want to see Anna. I just want permission to go out today and meet her in the park.”
“I know all about your plans,” said the male nurse, “and all you want to do is find something to drink.”
“That is not, not true,” said Bror, getting a little desperate by now, close to tears from where I stood.
“Please,” said Bror, looking at Solti, who was looking at her watch now. This was taking up too much of her precious Solti-time.
“You’re going nowhere,” snapped the male nurse. “Get that through your thick head.”
And that did it for Bror: he snapped and took a swing at the male nurse. Solti, alarmed, stepped back. The male nurse swung back but missed as widely as Bror had initially. “I just want to see Anna,” he yelled.
I did not notice an alarm go off or anything but all of a sudden, the hallway was filled with men of all sizes in white coats and they all jumped Bror and wrestled him to the ground.
Bror must have thought that his days were numbered for he grew desperate and began fighting as if for his life.
Now, as I’ve said, this man-boy was big and pretty much sheer muscle. Four of five nurses could not contain him, he fought like a wild, cornered animal, yes, for its life.
Me, I’m too stunned to move. Bror had been so unfairly treated and provoked and now, of course, it was all his fault.
“Hey, Ulf,” yelled the male head nurse. “What are you standing there gaping for? Give us a hand. What do you think you’re paid for?”
Ah. So, this is what I’m paid for.
However, rather than joining the fray, I kneeled by him and grabbed the one hand of Bror’s that was not held, sat on, or otherwise subdued. I took this one lonely hand in my two hands and just held it: a true all-will-be-well grip. And at that, Bror — who somehow recognized my hands as the ones holding his — calmed all the way down.
The gang of white coats climbed off of him, and Bror looked up at me like a terrified horse — eyes mostly whites.
He didn’t say anything, but he emanated: “Thank you, thank you.”
A week or so later Bror came up to me and said he wanted to talk to me. Could we sit down in the day room perhaps, or even here in the corridor on this bench right here.
Sure fine.
We sat down, Bror to my left, happy, excited almost.
“You saved my life,” he said.
“You mean with…?”
“When all those guys tried to kill me when Doctor Solti was there. You saved my life then.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You made those guys stop killing me.”
“I just held your hand,” I said. “They stopped holding you down when you stopped fighting them.”
He didn’t hear this or chose not to hear this. Instead, he leaned toward me and in a whisper told my ear, “I know who you are.”
“You know who I am?” I turned to look at him, a little surprised.
“Yes, I know who you are.”
“Who do you know I am?”
Bror looked around to make sure no one was listening in, “The Prince of India,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you are not afraid of the elephants.”
I nodded, and said, “That’s true. I am not afraid of the elephants.”
“And you saved my life.”
“And I saved your life.”
“Yes, you did.”
I took his big hand and held it for a long time in the two of mine. Neither of us felt the need to say anything.
P.S. For my goodbye to Bror, read my The Memoirist story “The Puzzle Ring” here.
© Wolfstuff
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