Читать книгу The Baby’s Cross: A Tuberculosis Survivor’s Memoir - C. Gale Perkins - Страница 10

Fear of the Dark

The night was frightening to me—the darkness would start to settle in, then the stillness. The children sobbed, calling for their mothers. The nurse would come in and say, “Silence, everyone!” Her shadow was clear on the dark brown floor in the moonlight; my heart would beat faster from the fear. All of a sudden I would hear a squeaking sound as the big green gate that led to the porch was opened. My crib faced a set of double French doors the staff used to bring the cribs onto the porch in the daytime. At night, I would see witches coming through the gate. They would be laughing, talking and shaking their fingers at me. I would take the sheet and blanket and wrap it around my head and cover my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see them. They would sit in the corner by the doors and laugh and talk and I would scream! This would bring the nurse on duty to the ward as by now all the children would be awake and screaming. The nurse would come to my crib, pull the blankets off my head, and ask what the problem was; when I would tell her about the witches she would say that it was my imagination and tell me to go back to sleep. This happened over and over again; one night the nurse came in and pulled the blankets off of my bed completely. She said I could not have them back until I stopped screaming and waking everyone up. It was hard to lie in the crib without the blankets; the fear would swell up in my heart. I held my hand over my mouth so the nurse could not hear my sobs. My tiny body was trembling inside the heavy plaster cast that encased it. Tears would flow silently down my cheeks onto the sheets until finally I would fall to sleep from exhaustion.

Waking in the morning, I would find myself not only soaked from tears but also from urine. The coldness during the night without the blankets would cause me to wet the bed. This always meant that I would be punished. Punishment consisted of being isolated. No one could talk to me; I could not play with any of my toys; a screen would be placed around my bed so I could not see the rest of the children. When the medical director made rounds with the charge nurse, they would tell me what a bad girl I was for creating a disturbance and that as long as I continued to do it, I would be punished. When night came I was again without covers. I was told that there would not be a sheet and blanket for me until I learned to stop screaming and upsetting all the other children. At four years old that was a pretty hard thing to do. I was able to hold back the fears and the screaming for a few nights, then fear would return and I would be repeating all the same things again. When I tried to figure out who the witches were, I realized that they looked like some of the doctors and nurses. In fact, they looked a lot like the ones that I was fearful of in the daylight. My biggest fear was they would open the doors and come in and get me.

I tried to hear what they were talking about. I was afraid to look directly at them in case they saw me. I would hear them talking about surgery for my friends Angie and Rosemary, who had already moved to the big girls’ ward. Also, they talked of the girls who were going home. Oh, the longing in my heart that it would be me. I never heard them mention my name.