At change-of-shift I heard the order,  and I had this despair blooming in me. She’d been my patient for a week, as much as anyone at my rank could be regarded as having a patient. We had the usual tasks to check off: grooming, packing, paperwork. I  worked evenings, and what hurts me now is how well I felt I knew her. Did she feel she knew me too? We had guidelines to follow: you could mention a few details about your personal life but not anything that was “too much.” Sometimes the other techs were Jill and Joe and they were sleeping together; sometimes the nurse was Gail and we were sleeping together. We used to go to Dove Lake at dawn in summer, and the water lapped cheerfully at our heels while we tried to forget she was married and I lived with my parents.  I’d known the lake since I was five and would go skating on it in deep winter; it was near my sister’s high school, in a swank Philadelphia suburb. Okay, I didn’t know my patient well; all I knew was that she was certain she would die when she got released. This despair wasn’t like losing my sister to her early death; this was sideways of that, a death that could be stopped, but they said there was nothing to be done. She was expert at hanging out in the day room, combing her hair for dinner. eating the right amount of food—whatever that was—getting on her pajamas in privacy, and coming to say good night. She knew she was safe here, she knew she was happy here (the oddest thing), she knew that someday, because she was actually well, she’d be discharged, and she knew her fate. “Patient states…,” I wrote in her chart. Years later, after a hiatus, she’d appear in my mind and say, “I knew I was right.” They used to say that our ward was locked so tight that even the staff couldn’t get out. They used to say that the walls had ears and eyes, and the only way to kill yourself was by jamming a toothbrush down your throat. Psychiatric Technicians: Even during their toiletries, remain within arm’s reach of your patient. But she didn’t want to kill herself; hell, when you think about it, nobody does.  We cut our wrists only when the war can’t be won. The day we let her go she was teary and smiling, the day we let her go she patted me on the shoulder as if it were not our fault, the day we let her go I walked her to the circle and she paused me with an outstretched arm and without turning stepped out to a car far enough away that I couldn’t see who was in there. As instructed, I wrote later the next day, “Patient released at 5:15 pm. Patient found dead at 11:29 am,” as if anyone would read it.