And the answer is...crazy

Crazy or not here I come? Yeah. More like batshit.

I do not know what happened in my hospital last night, but for some reason, the whole place went nuts. Er, nuts-er. I got called to come write orders to put someone in seclusion or restraints eleven times (I think the sum total of all my other call nights put together was four S/R calls). I had to do emergency forced medications on two patients. I got five whole minutes of sleep (I think). I got called twice for Miss "Please Don't Make Me Stay Here, I Don't Want To Kill My Mama No More" (whom I admitted on a previous call), whom, the first time I got called, I could hear here screaming and pounding on the windows of the adolescent unit two or so blocks away when I left the Maximum Security unit (also a separate building). I spent a good portion of my night bouncing between said maximum security forensics unit (so, too crazy to be in prison, to dangerous for free society) and the adolescent unit (which, if you ask me, is the more frightening unit - man, adolescents scare the hell out of me!). I got one call about a woman who, they told me, "went to the quiet room." Now, there is an option where patients can essentially take a voluntary time out, so I assumed this is what they meant (especially because I was calling this nurse from the squalling din of the adolescent unit). Until they called me back 45 minutes later to make sure I was coming to sign the seclusion order (which has to be signed within 1 hour of initiation) - turns out she'd needed to be carried to seclusion by four people and had in fact assaulted one rather large male nurse. Oops. And then this morning I got called because a rather young gentleman I'd admitted to the Gerontology unit, who when I admitted him was so sedated and stuporous I couldn't get him to stay awake through a whole sentence, had just threatened to beat a nurse with his cane. What else could I say, except, "Oh, good. He woke up"?

Oy...welcome back!