"Crazy times call for crazy people." [Jeffrey Scarlett's Journal, September 2012]

Jeff awoke at 11:00am. He walked up the 300W (third floor, West Wing, where the young mental patients were kept.)

He was one of three clinicians monitoring ten young mentally-ill patients in temporary 24-hour care. Although it was Saturday, and he did not usually work weekends And he reveled in his job. He was the type to become restless on weekends without his job to focus on.

Jeff made rounds. He asked patients about their progress. Helped them focus on their goals. And he entertained each of them with a different joke every day. ("What do you call a fish with no 'eyes'?" Answer: "A fshhhhh.")

One patient was named Dallas. She was 19, still too young to be in the adult wing of the psych ward. Dallas was extremely young and not too bright. She had a wan face, and her heart in the right place at all times. But she had not progressed, and remained in the hospital after three weeks, as compared to the normal stay of ten days.

"Dallas, how are you feeling today?" asked Jeff in the sing-song, bold voice he used only for the patients he knew best.

"Why are you here so early in the morning?" she asked meekly. "You usually don't come in so early."

Jeff focused his attention on his clipboard to feign focusing on something else.

"They did tell us what was happening on the news," continued Dallas. She was the rare nineteen-year-old who cared about things other than herself. "What do you think?"

"I'm thinking I have no idea what we're going to do with all of you if this spreads," he answered. "Now, let's focus on you."

Around noon parents began to show up to take their kids home from the coming scare, but the hospital could not release patients before their stay was up. A disaster had not yet been declared in the state of Georgia, so protocol required them to stay.

Simultaneously, on the first floor the ER's waiting room filled with people who were concerned that they had a fever. Supposedly, this was an early symptom of the outbreak. And patients waited for hours because doctors were overbooked. Waiting areas became packed, forcing some to wait in the wings. A general hysteria began to arise.

Parents of his patients began to visit and then refuse to leave without their kids. Mothers, mostly, back from work in their white collared shirts and work uniforms banged on automatically locking doors. Hospital security had the write to apprehend such violators, but they did not have the resources to control all of the calamity in the hospital.

Jeff waked to the hospital manager's room to request a plan. In the process, he was shuffled like a clam into the waiting area, and forced against a wall near the entrance.

A seven-foot-tall man, with and a potbelly, began pushing people out of the way. "I need to get out. I need to get out!" rang his guttural voice. He began taking swings, and took down a security guard. A

A man Jeff recognized as an anasthesiologist snuck up from behind the giant and injected a needle into his right buttox. The mans eyesbecame glassy, and then closed as his body slumped to the floor, helped down by the doctor and some bold volunteers. "Damn meth head," said one of the secretaries.

The manager was completely consumed, so by the time Jeff climbed the stairs back to 300E, eight of his ten patients had left with their parents in the confusion of the hospital. Only Dallas, whom Jeff knew was long estranged from her parents, and a ten-year-old boy remained.