How We Die on Quartz Ward – Short Prose

Quartz Ward is an old dinosaur. A two-story institutional monstrosity made with bricks made from the soil of the institution and granite cut from the surrounding countryside. It is the refractory ward home to thirty-eight long term residents considered intractable and untreatable.

The residents sleep upstairs in a dormitory reached by a narrow granite-block stairwell. The staff office is on the ground floor and the four staff on day shift meet the two staff working nights to receive a handover on the condition of the ward overnight and to share a coffee. Putting off the start of the day by half an hour.

The office is a small room which rapidly becomes overwarm and feels crowded, even in the short time it takes for the night nurse in charge to pronounce “all patients slept well.” Sometimes, the colloquial variation “Staff and patients all slept well” is used. Just for a laugh. It’s not a joke to tell out loud or in wrong company because some of the characters who work permanent night duty have day jobs as well, which is strictly frowned upon. Staff are not paid to sleep at nights. It is considered ‘active duty’, with rounds to check patients conducted every hour. Rumour has it, though, that if the nurse in charge of the whole hospital is doing a spot check at night to make sure staff are alert, the telephone rings in each ward in quick succession.

With handover finished, there is no excuse left, so staff wander off to attend their various tasks to prepare for the day and the most junior, which is me today, traipses up the steps to go around and gently or otherwise wake the sleeping patients and steer them towards the bathroom to get ready for the day.

“Oy, Freddy, are you awake yet?”

“G’day Jimmy. Come on, off you go.”

One by one they rise, stretch and fart, then wander to the bathroom to shower, leaving bedding in various states of tangle, perhaps soiled, one way or another. It is the junior nurses’ job to sort it all out.

Max hasn’t moved.

Max is middle-aged (whatever that means in a place like this), a chronic schizophrenic by diagnosis, mute and surly by disposition. He is someone to allow his personal space because the look in his eye and the prominence of his fisted knuckles don’t encourage close encounters. He consumes a truckload of Largactil every day, poured, as they say, with a trembling hand. He has an alcove to himself. No sharing.

“Good morning, Max. Wakey wakey.”

“Max…?”

Max is lying on his bed, naked but for an accidental modesty draping of his bedsheet. I have seen no movement. Not of his body responding to my voice, and not of his chest responding to the need to breathe.

Usually, the men on this ward will do their best to ignore staff, so the first call from the nurse — the first ‘wakey, wakey’ — will have them on their feet and moving without need of a further prompt. Often they will have been lying awake, sometimes in wet bedding, waiting for the call.

I touch Max’s foot, then his arm, finally his face. Cold. Max is as cold as he has ever been in his life. Ironic in the circumstances.

I probably should be hitting the alarm to summon assistance, commence first aid, get a response happening. Instead, I panic a little and do nothing for a while. Max is my first live corpse, so to speak. Then I go racing down the stairs to inform the nurse in charge.

The nurse in charge checks Max and confirms that it looks like he’s been dead for hours. Lividity at the base of the body can be seen and all that is required is to summon a medical officer to confirm death, arrange for transportation to the morgue and to complete the paperwork.

So, no drama but…

Never one to take things lying down (unless on nights himself) the nurse-in-charge swears a blue streak. He is not concerned that Max has died. Most likely that will turn out to be natural causes and more of an inconvenience than an issue. No, he is cursing the night staff who so obviously had not done hourly rounds to check the well-being of the patients, and who equally obviously had had a good night’s sleep themselves – just like the old joke.

That was going to take some explaining to the higher ups and make life difficult for all for a month. Maybe longer.

Later that morning Max commenced his final journey. Two strong staff had to manhandle him onto a stretcher, then around the bend in the stairwell, almost losing him on the way, first from one end, then the other, and once, almost rolling him off in the middle.

I watched the struggle and subsequent loading into the back of the food van that doubled as morgue vehicle in those days and thought my thoughts about life and death in Quartz Ward.