Author's Note: This is a creative writing piece based on the short story the Yellow Wallpaper. This was written by my Friend Mary Cook
Day 1
The patient is
lucid but has a nervous disorder. The expected stay will be six
months or less. I will be treating the patient on the top floor with
tonics and bed rest.
Day 7
Patient is showing little to no
change. Husband makes visits to the patient often. He has yet to tell
her she is at Southern Mental Hospital for the Disturbed. I have
isolated the patient in the hope that she will not harm any of the
orderlies or other nurses.
Day 10
Patient recognizes her child,
but shows no further affection. Patient had manic-depression episode
afterwards. We will not expose her to the child again until recovery.
Bed checks revealed that the patient has been keeping some sort of a
journal. Mary, the nurse, has yet to discover where the patient is
acquiring the paper and pen.
Day 14
Patient is more tired
lately. She is sleeping more than usual. She keeps asking the nurse
to help her move to a lower room with rose wall paper. Silly woman,
there is no such room. I assume the husband is furthering her
fanciful idea that she is in a "resort house in the country." She
asks again and again why the children hated the room so. We do not
accept patients less than 15 years of age. The patient has not
written in the journal again.
Day 18
Patient is expressing
fantasy ideas about bureaus and old chairs. From these wild
mutterings I have decided to increase her medication to a greater
dose.
Day 26
The patient's mother and other relatives have
visited for the Fourth of July. The husband is not seeing any
progress and intends to send the patient to Weir Mitchell. That will
do no good for the doctor prescribes bed rest only. Patient is still
confused and even more tired than seems usual or normal.
Day
30
The patient wishes to leave the institution. The husband stayed
the night to make her feel more at ease. The patient seemed to be
catching on that she was in a mental institution, but the husband
contradicted that idea and we are now back to where we began with the
patient being distressed and confused. On a private note, the husband
seems to have taking a liking to one of the nurses.
Day
32
The husband advised his wife to sleep as much as possible. We
have prescribed her sleep medication: morphine and phosphates. All
this has served to do is to confuse the patients sleep schedule.
Oddly, the patient seems to have become defensive and does not wish
to allow the nurse or her sister-in-law in the room. I gave clearance
to the nurse to slip her a sleeping tonic and we searched the room
while she slept. We found nothing dangerous that the patient could
have been hiding other than the ever increasing journal entries.
After reading her entries, they show that the patient is extremely
confused and seems to have developed a fixation upon the wall paper
of all things. Odd. We have examined the paper and there are no
oddities in the pure white paper. It is the standard white wash so to
be easily painted over from patient to patient. The current patient
seems to be seeing odd patterns and arabesque shapes. I am concerned
that the patient may become a permanent resident. There is little
that we can do for her other than keeping her from harming herself or
other.
Day 34
The patients clothing has become worn and the
same color of the paint in the top room. She has taken up the habit
of leaning against and walking the perimeter of the room. I am
treating this disturbing tendency with more medication and
preparation of the chains and straight jacket.
Day 45
The
patient discovered today that there are other patients here beside
her. She expressed concern to her husband when she saw Old Mrs.
Whiticker hiding in the blackberry vines. The husband laughed the
thoughts away. I doubt the patient will express herself again. John,
the patient's husband, seems to now be courting Mary, his wife's
nurse and full-time baby sitter. Mary will be moved to a different
sector of the institution to promote proper staff-family-patient
relationships.
Day 50
The patient has begun to tear at the
walls. She appears to systematically be tearing away wallpaper, just
like her confiscated journal says. It is moments like these that I
admire the ability of the brain to entirely fool the soul and body.
The patient truly believes that there is an "evil wallpaper" and
that a woman exists behind the wallpapers bars. I believe the woman
to represent the patient's ravaged psyche and her mind beginning to
shut down to play entirely to the woman's fantasy world.
Day
55
The patient somehow found a length of rope and barred her door
with it. She calls out for her husband that the "threw the key out
the window and it is by the front door." She threw no key, but
instead all of her journal entries. Again her subconscious mind
wished to explain her actions. The orderlies managed to break down
the door and the husband rushed in. She was babbling nonsense about
the wallpaper to him and he fainted at the sight of the bloody walls.
It seems the patient ripped off her fingernails into the quick while
trying to rip off wall paper that was never there while the door was
barred. I called for the straight jacket and manacles to keep her
from further harm. After examining her hands, I discovered I could do
nothing for them. They will continue to bleed if we un-bandage them
and will not grow back if we do bandage them.
Day 60
The
patient has been moved to the long-term ward under heavy sedation and
a straight jacket. She will not be able to harm herself any longer.
Mary, the nurse, is being moved back to her original ward. The
patient's husband would be making visits to the institution to see
her instead of his wife. There is irony in the fact that he would
have been seeing Mary even more than before with his wife's move to
the long term ward.
