THE LAST HURRAH

CSO's days were numbered and I had been hired to run the show over at TTC. I was just biding my time and utilizing the shit out of my new found verbal intervention magic when it happened.
My old unit was on shutdown and one kid was refusing to return to his room. Shutdown is the most extreme structure available short of putting someone on a wheel structure ( more about that later )They don't leave the unit, they are in their rooms unless it's group time, and group would focus on why they were on shutdown...usually it was a unit involved conspiracy involving contraband of some sort or sexual secrets...or really it could be anything.
Anyway, there was a group of neophytes( that we referred to as "FNG's" or "fucking new guy"...A phrase we nicked from Platoon ) working that night and this kid had them terrified.
He had broken a kitchen chair apart and was trying to break the lexan window that separated the office from the kitchen. ( where one of the staff had locked himself and called our emergency line...what a pussy )
So I go racing down to the unit with one of the relief CSO guys. He was a polio survivor and ran in a way that made you want to laugh out loud, but you didn't. He was a trooper, very brave.I did have serious reservations about him when he showed up at a halloween party dressed as Frankenfurter from Rocky Horror and did the sweet transvestite dance replete with polio stricken legs...ewwwwww:). But he was a good hand when it came to throwing down with the patients.Anyhoo...
We get on the unit and this kid is knocking chunks out of the kitchen counters and banging away at that lexan window like there was no tomorrow, all the while inviting his mates to come out and join the party. They didn't take his offer because the "goon squad" had arrived.
There was one terrified staff in the office and another one in the far corner of the dayroom. They weren't engaging this kid, he was in control.
I surveyed the situation...between him and me there were two four top tables, seven chairs and one former chair, a water fountain and a rubbermaid wastebasket.
Behind him there was the kitchen counter and the cabinets...he was boxed in.
The other kids were chanting to him to kick our asses from under their doors.
I started talking.
I had dealt with this kid before...he had kicked me in the nuts a year earlier up on the STAC ( short term assessment center ) unit. This encounter ended with him hitting the floor...HARD. He knew I meant business, but he was very amped up.
I tried all my lines, nothing was working...I inched toward him as I talked, moving the furniture out of the way. When I got to the vicinity of the wastebasket, I made my move.
I grabbed the wastebasket, held it up to my head and rushed him.
I was so focused on him that I had no idea there were six people behind me.
He hit the wastebasket several times as I advanced...don't believe the hype from rubbermaid...he cracked it wide open. But at least it wasn't my head.
He and I went up on the counter under the cabinets...two more guys hit us from behind and pushed us nearly through the wall, we pulled away from the counter and brought him (face first) into the floor.It was over, and there was a pool of blood spreading out across the floor from underneath his face. We had broken his nose. We didn't mean to. It was an accident.
With the exception of ripping that kid's necklace off in a rage of burnt out crazy, I had never willingly hurt a kid...well, that's a lie. I had hurt kids before with unauthorized (but very effective) techniques, but only to prevent them from causing serious harm to themselves or someone else.I won't tell you I didn't enjoy it either...but I didn't enjoy this...no sir. We had done this kid...this child serious injury and I was horrified.
He kept saying "You tightened me up Rob" "Big man" and shit like that...I thought I was going to vomit.We rushed him up to CSO and summoned the nurse. She reported it to the kid's therapist as suspicious. The kid's therapist ( someone I considered a close friend ) launched an inquiry. An inquiry as to whether I was guilty of patient abuse.
Since I was leaving in less than two weeks time and innocent, I was very outspoken throughout.
Somehow, in the documentation process, the rubbermaid wastebasket became a metal trash can, which became one of the more pointed questions...why did I charge at a patient with a metal trash can?
I said: For the record let me clarify that it was not a metal trash can, it was a rubbermaid wastebasket, which I employed as a shield as the patient was brandishing a wooden cross brace from a kitchen chair he had destroyed. I was protecting myself from a possible head injury.I had engaged the patient in extended verbal intervention, he did not respond. A restraint was the final option.
They asked: Why then, did this patient end up with a broken nose? And went on to infer that I had broken his nose intentionally.
I lost all decorum at this point and reminded the panel of the asskicking my nuts had taken from this kid in the past incident and if I had really wanted to break his nose I ( and I quote ) "would've punched it out of the back of his fucking head".
And then there was silence...of the stunned variety. I had shorted out the brains of several people with master's degrees...I was on top of the world. I then made a statement about the disbanding of the team that was in essence "I told you so" in advance. If they thought things were bad now, just wait till the sheriff's leave town.
I gave them the big fuck you and the horse they rode in on.
The file was closed as a no bill. No abuse.
I finished my tour quietly, with no more craziness. My last shift was a 3-11p, nothing happened. I went around at 10p to lock everything up and sweep the campus, but really I was saying goodbye.I left the lyrics to a grateful dead song (Ripple)in the communication book: "If I knew the way, I would take you home". I walked down the front steps into the parking lot at the end of my shift, I looked back at the campus I had known for all these years. I choked back the tears and drove off into the future.
I left a big chunk of my soul there. I was leaving my family.
I would take this experience and forge another.