Free Slow Dancing with a Stranger by Meryl Comer Page A

control Harvey’s disturbing behavior, he told me. Other than the dementia, Harvey was still fit and strong and could lash out and hurt me. “The best thing you can do is remain calm and let us do our job,” he said.
    I had been put off the day before, but now I persisted. I tried to argue that I could be helpful. If I was allowed to come in early in the morning and stay longer at night, I could make sure Harvey didn’t get into trouble. It was clear they were short-staffed, and my presence would ease the burden on the nurses. The doctor never relented. I got permission to stay on the floor only during visiting hours.
    By the end of the day, with the drug out of his system, Harvey could again say my name. His eyes, though still glassy, seemed to focus when I put something like a meal directly in front of him. But he ate only if I fed or handed him finger food; utensils were too complex to manage. I helped Harvey through dinner. When visiting hours were over, it was hard to say good bye. “Good night, love. When you wake up in the morning, I will be right here,” I promised.
    Before I left for home, I talked him through our good bye checklist. I reminded him that I had asked the nurses to leave the light on in his room. I told him that I had left notes on the back of the door and the bathroom mirror with my phone number. I assured him that when he woke up, I would be right there with him. When I left the hospital that night, I wasn’t sure how much he understood. Tonight it was not only the numbing cold night air that kept me awake on the forty-five-minute drive home.
    By the end of the first week, my presence was an accepted part of the hospital routine. The nursing staff didn’t seem to mind that I arrived with them at 6:30 A . M . and was the last visitor out the door at 8:30 P . M ., when visiting hours ended. I tried to enlist the nurses as allies. Many mornings, I arrived with coffee and sweets, a treat for them after the long and difficult night shift. I relieved them of their chores by helping Harvey clean up, dress, and eat chunk-size food that I brought from home. I kept him engaged by walking the floors for exercise, letting them turn their attention to other patients. When the nurses took Harvey’s vital signs, I reported back to them how he was tolerating the different dosages of drugs that the doctors were trying. Often I felt that the doctors dismissed not only my observations, but even the nurses’ reports. Sometimes the nurses wrote in Harvey’s chart that he didn’t seem to be responding to a particular drug, but I noticed that the doctors continued to increase the dosage. When there was a serious side effect, they would slowly wean him off the compound and begin another.
    As a patient in the locked ward, Harvey was not permitted to leave the floor. Desperate to defuse his anxieties, I took him out to walk the halls. Patient rooms lined the perimeter around the glass-shielded nursing station. At the end of the hall was a large activities room with long tables and rows of chairs pushed up against the walls.
    There was a mix of patients. Some suffered from mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Others had bulimia or anorexia, depression, or had attempted suicide. Then there were those like Harvey, with memory and behavior disorders in need of a diagnosis.
    I soon became a fixture on the floor and often made conversation with family members and some of the patients, many of whom seemed lonely and eager to engage. Without my asking, they watched out for Harvey and volunteered details about how he was managed or, in their opinion, mismanaged by the staff. A young female anorexic with insomnia whispered to me that Harvey roamed the halls all night unsupervised. Almost all the drugs they tested on Harvey had troubling side effects: high fevers, vomiting, unsteady gait, slurred speech. What had started out as a few days in the hospital for observation