Back in the Nuthatch

Hi there,

As you can see, I'm back from vacation. I'm glad to see that several spammers stopped by and commented on my last past.

Sometimes coming back can be a bit of a hard landing, since you have to pick up a whole new case load all at once, while also trying to get your head back into the game. So it's taken me a couple of days to get a chance to post.

Remember Arnie? (See my post entitled, "So, my day today..." [Again, I'd give you a link if I knew how]). He was finally discharged while I was away. Arnie is a 48-year-old homeless, former Really Bad Dude who now has dementia and a fondness for fist fights and heroin. Right before vacation, I had finally gotten a very promising lead on a nursing home for him. He also had a commitment hearing scheduled for while I would be away; while we thought it very unlikely, it's possible that a judge would order us to release Arnie on Arnie's assurance that he could look after himself. It seemed like better than even odds to me that he would still be here when I got back, but I made it a point to say a proper good-bye to Arnie, just in case. He'd been with us a long time (a few months) and I'd put a lot of time into his case. He'd salute every time he saw me, and I'd salute back and say, "As you were, soldier." Then he'd laugh and snap his fingers to some rhythm in his head each and every time. I'd grown rather fond of Arnie.

Arnie asked God to bless me, which I took to mean that he understood that I was doing what I thought was my best by him, even though he repeatedly expressed his desire to be discharged to the street. He knew I had been trying hard for months to find a placement for him, and, he'd say that he'd rather go somewhere than nowhere, but he was tired of being locked up and thought he'd be fine on his own. I had said to him many times that I wouldn't put him on the street unless a judge told me I had to, because I just didn't think he could keep himself out of trouble. And no matter how big a bad dude Arnie may once have been, trouble is now bigger and badder, I would tell him. I'd remind him that he came to us after having been beaten up with baseball bats by some young punks.

Arnie never went through with any of his threatened court hearings, and in the end was discharged to a nursing home. During his stay, I often wondered if Arnie would cancel the hearings because he realized on some level that I was right, or because he calculated that he stood to lose more of his freedom if a judge committed him, or if he was trying to exert some control over his life in the only way available to him.

But there was something about the look in his eyes as he invoked his God on my behalf that has me wondering if he canceled all those hearings, and let me keep looking for a place for him even though he hated being in the hospital, because he decided that having that feeling as though someone was looking out for him was worth putting up with the unpleasantness of being locked up in a nuthatch. That might seem like a sad compromise for Arnie, but, really, haven't most of us made a similar bargain in our own lives, and how many of us would again if the opportunity presented itself?

Madeline