Champ, had been refusing medications. Not just the ones for aggression and hallucinations, but also the ones for hypertension, increased cholesterol, and coronary heart disease. He had mitts for hands and sheets of flesh for lips. I don’t’ know when he went blind, but I imagine a life of knocks to the head reached some amount his eyes couldn’t recover from.
“Champ won’t take his meds. I can’t even get him to come to eat,” the nurse complained. It was dinnertime and the other men were heading to the cafeteria. The ward I was placed on was the geriatric ward. We were the place in the hospital where the ten percent of patients not helped by medications, therapy, or time are funneled into.
I went with her to Champ’s room. We found him in the process of destroying the place. He yanked on the curtains hanging between the beds and uprooted the lockers nailed to the floor. Using the wall as a guide for those big mitts, he felt his way around the space to find the next item to deconstruct.
“Hey Champ, I heard you weren’t taking your meds,” I say.
“Fuck that.” He jerks the cabinet door and the hinges screech as they are pulled from the wood.
The nurse looks at me and does a see-what-I-mean shrug. I shrug back.
“It’s dinner time Champ. Aren’t you hungry?” She feels compelled to try again, given my ineptness.
“Fuck that.”
“There’s chocolate cake,” she coos.
“Go ahead and eat. Don’t fuck with me.”
Once a patient’s illness causes them to refuse chocolate it was a whole new level of worry for me. “Come on Champ,” I plead. “You need to eat.”
“You need to haul ass and fuck off.” He finds a bed lifts the frame up off the ground and lets it smash down. He repeats the action several times and frowns as if he is annoyed by the racket he is creating. After he exhausts himself, he falls onto the mattress face first. He wriggles and burrows into the coverings.
A male staff member named Brick, one of the few men working on our male geri-ward comes to the door. Brick looks at us, silently asking permission to make an attempt.
We nod an agreement.
Brick was in his late twenties or early thirties and walked with a limp due to his own medical illnesses. Once at the patient’s bedside, he leans down with a wince. “Come on and eat Champ. You know I love you.”
“Fuck that.” Champ’s muffled voice surfaces from under the threadbare comforter.
Brick moves closer, near the area we now assume is where Champ’s face is. “Who loves you? You know I love you. Now come and eat.”
“Fuck that.”
“You missed me?” Brick laughs and lays down on top of the older man and whispers in the area of his ear. “Come get you some vittles.”
Champ tries to shrug Brick off. They wrestle playfully. I realize Brick is untangling the patient from the blanket he has cocooned himself into, as they tussle. With Champ free Brick sits the older man up in bed and puts an arm around the patient’s shoulders.
“Boy, what are you doing?” Champ’s head kind of wags.
“You know I love you.” Brick says as he dodges Champ’s left fist which is also free from the covers.
The punch goes wide. Brick wraps his words as much as his arms around Champ in a bear hug. “Who do you love? You love me?”
“Not you mother fucker.”
Brick stands Champ up and then they sort of teeter-totter down the hall to the dining room. Champ has to be cooperating for this to work.
“You know you love me.” Brick mumbles in Champ’s ear when they get to the door of the cafeteria.
Either the last statement or the smells seduce a swaddled Champ to smile for the first time. They wobble to Champ’s seat. Another worker is at the table where Champ’s food awaits. She taps Champ on the forehead, then leans in and whispers something to him.
Champ eats the chocolate cake first.
The love felt raw, imperfect, vulnerable, and celebratory all at once. Like I was seeing a visible representation of the primordial urge which caused two hydrogen molecules to bond with an oxygen molecule to create the first bit of water. We just come together. This was not my default position back then. But this sort of caring happened every day. It changes people, heals people more than anything I know.
Several years later, on a family trip out of town, I had some leftover work to do. My family waited for me in the car. Once I finished my notes and before leaving, I went out to the patio to say hello to the men during their smoke break. My family could see me from the car. One patient greeted me in the way he greeted a lot of people, which was to pick them up and wag them about. He was strong as a bull and sloshed me about like a doll for about thirty seconds before finally putting me down.
When I got back in the car, the kids were wide-eyed. “We didn’t think he was going to let you go, Daddy.”
Looking back now I don’t think he ever has.