It was still drizzling when I got off the bus and walked the three blocks to the mental hospital. I opened the first door my key would open and I heard the heavy door close behind me. I felt safer and thought for a moment on this irony. But it wasn’t until I got to the lock ward where I worked and observed the patients that the full impact of this situation hit me.
The patients were quiet that night, many expressed concerns about what was going on outside. The sound of guns going off sent many to their rooms and away from the common area that had large windows. My shift started at 11 pm that night and so the fireworks and guns reached a climax not long after I got to work, with the coming of the new year. I don’t remember another time when what was happening outside in the city had such an impact on the people inside the hospital. The third floor at Lafayette Clinic was quiet that night and all of the patients seemed more sane, the standard having shifted briefly. I felt like my trip to work, was a travel through a battle zone to safety.
Lafayette Clinic
It was a familiar commute for me to work to Lafayette Clinic near downtown Detroit, the small research mental hospital. I was hired as an “Attendant Nurse 03" my title. I took two buses a cross town bus and a bus toward town. The fact that I worked midnights made the commute a little longer than it would have been during the day because the buses ran less frequently.
At the bus transfer point a wide boulevard, I had about a twenty minute wait for the next bus and I frequently walked to a twenty-four hour hamburger/coffee dinner across the street from my bus stop. At 10:30 pm it was an interesting diverse crowd of mostly misfits, single men of various ages. The small diner was always filled with smoke and banter, conversations between the customers and the young thin attractive black women behind the counter. As interesting as the customers were the women working behind the counter. By necessity they had each fashioned a protective shell around them, the only way a waitress could survive their shift at the dinner.
Like a costume or uniform these women wore their protective shield they had created growing up in the city as attractive young women. The uniform or persona was there long before working at the diner. At the diner the persona was repeatedly tested, the shield challenged and then perfected. I admired and marveled at their skill and cool and thought to myself that my job at the mental hospital on the locked ward would be a vacation for these women. No doubt I too was on the waitresse's radar although I just observed the interactions and at most ordered a coffee and kept my thoughts to myself.
This night, new years eve, I stayed in the bus shelter where the wide boulevard Warren met Gratiot another major street. I was surrounded by concrete. A chilly drizzle fell from the low steel grey sky reflecting the city lights. Gun shots were going off around me, people shooting guns into the sky, their celebration for the new year. The shots I heard were near and far away. It was in Detroit where I had learned to distinguish between a loud bang, like a fire cracker and the sound of a bullet. My bus shelter felt like a fish bowl with only gravel, graffiti, and broken glass nearby. I realized that I was squeezing the transit transfer in my hand.
