HOW'D THAT HAPPEN? by Roberta Sve

I wasn't cut out to be a jailer, I never meant to be one and, as it turned out, I wasn't good at the job.

At three in the morning I said to my nurses' aide, "Come on, Annie, it's time to check room 108."

"Nothing but a drunk," she grumbled; heaving her two hundred plus pounds out of the chair to follow me down the hall. "He's been sleeping it off"

"You know we have to check every two hours."

"Big waste of time, if you ask me. He's okay."

I didn't know if it was Annie's personal distaste for intoxicated people, or if she resisted hauling her considerable bulk to the far end of the hallway more often than usual.

Due to lack of adequate jail facilities in the two small towns where I worked, those picked up for driving under the influence and those who were otherwise found in an inebriated state, were brought to the hospital locked room for an overnight stay. Certain protocols were in place. The officer had to remain until the patient I prisoner was in a hospital gown and determined that the person was not violent. Clothes were removed from the room and the door locked. For the first hour; vital signs had to be taken every fifteen minutes then every two hours after that. Those interventions gave the nurse the opportunity to assess any physical changes in the patient. Is he still breathing? Has he choked? Can he be awakened? And we always entered the room with another person.

Annie somehow reached the room before me and peered through the small window in the door. "He ain't in there," she said.

"Maybe he's in the bathroom."

"Take a look." Annie wore a wide grin, apparently pleased by what she saw.

The heavy window screen leaned against the wall; the bed that was stripped of its bedding, had been pushed to the wall and the end of a sheet tied to its frame. The remainder of the sheet disappeared out the open window. I unlocked the door and went in to look at the escape route. Directly below the second story room was an overhang above an entryway. A second sheet dangled limply, ending a few feet from the ground.

"Annie, go call the police. Tell them our prisoner escaped. I'm going downstairs to make sure he isn't lying injured on the ground."

"How'd that happen?" Annie asked before going to the phone.

"I didn't check the screen. It's supposed to be locked on with a key. Apparently, it wasn't and he figured it out."

A few minutes before seven, the day shift filtered in. One wide-eyed nurse rushed up to me. "Do you know there's a sheet hanging down over the west entry; right under 108?"

"I sure do. Maintenance was supposed to take it down before daylight, but, obviously, didn't do it."

"Lost somebody, huh?" chuckled someone else.

"I lost him, but the cops found him in less than half an hour. Pretty hard to blend in when you are barefooted, wearing a hospital gown."



On a warm summer night there was a big wedding, in the other small town where I was employed, and nearly all the residents attended the reception and dance that followed.

A zealous police officer decided the event provided the ideal opportunity to stop those leaving the party and check for levels of intoxication. He was smiling broadly when he escorted the bride's uncle into the hospital to be locked up for the night.

The officer's prize catch spewed out his anger. "Why didn't you just take me home? What a way to treat a person, I only had a few drinks. Go look for somebody that's really drunk. I'm going to report you, you. . . . Why am I different from any of the rest of the people at the party-go after the whole damn bunch, why don't you."

Unfair or not, it wasn't my decision. He had to be kept, so we took him to the locked room, which I had never used at this facility. I noted the back entry was just around the corner.

Each time we checked on him, he was either sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands, or pacing the room. When it was time for vital signs to be taken, he refused. "Nothing wrong with me, get away." Anger grew as the night progressed. "Damn snot- nosed kid, thinks he's so smart I'm gonua report him." The ranting continued after we shut the door.

About four in the morning we found the door wide open and the patient, prisoner nowhere in sight. But the police called me before I had a chance to report the escapee.

"Don't worry about your patient. He's home."

"Home?

"When Jake drove by in his cruiser, he saw a hospital gown hanging over the porch rail at Randall's house. It's only a half block from the hospital, you know." I didn't know.

"He was in bed sound asleep."

"How'd that happen," I asked the LPN that I was working with. "How'd he get through the locked door?"

She looked a bit sheepish. "I guess I forgot to tell you the door sorta sticks. When you think it's shut you have to give it another little jerk."

"Now you tell me. I had a detox escape at the other hospital last fall. I'm not especially good at this lock up thing. Maybe nurses shouldn't be jailers."

Roberta Sve 2010