In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was hired as a full-time health care biohazard worker. My charge was to clean up biohazard contamination. In most instances, I only had to decontaminate a small area of blood, fecal matter or sometimes both.
This began to change as the year came to a close. I was being called in for decontamination more frequently, and to the same location. As it turns out, there was a young man who had been cutting himself over and over again.
I can’t remember the exact day, but the hour never escapes my memory. It was 10:35 p.m.; I had been asleep for close to 40 minutes after working a 15-hour shift, when an officer roused me from my sleep. I was needed in the health care unit.
It took a few minutes to orient myself, but soon I was back in the HCU. The sergeant for the graveyard shift was briefing me. He was an ex-military man with a stout build. He was bald, clean-shaven and hypermasculine, but today his dark brown complexion appeared pallid, his eyes weary.
Speaking softly, he placed a gallon of bleach, a roll of large bags and a box of extra-large surgical gloves on the counter. “Make it work,” he said.
As I turned to leave, he sank into his chair and thanked me for coming. His behavior seemed a little odd for a routine cleanup. I understood why as soon as I opened the door to the infirmary. Immediately I detected a thick scent of blood — that metallic, pungent essence. It stopped me in my tracks.
I stepped inside the brightly illuminated infirmary and closed my eyes, before pressing on with my cleaning supplies.
About 10 feet from the infirmary door was a chain of bloody shoe prints. My heart thundered in my ears as I followed the trail down the hall to a cell door, which was partially open.
I peered inside. It was like something out of a horror movie. Blood was splattered on the walls and the conjoined stainless-steel toilet and sink. There was nowhere to step without touching blood. I froze, staring at that pool of maroon.
Small patches of gauze lay across the stagnant fluid, wadded into dark red balls. They looked stuck in a trail of motion, as if someone had hastily tried to wipe up the fluid then abruptly stopped. The coagulated masses reminded me of charred meat.
Suddenly, a small hand gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. It was a nurse. He said something to me, but my mind was still far away. Noticing my distant look, he repeated himself in a whisper:
“He still had a pulse when we rushed him out of here, but he’ll need a transfusion to survive this one. I think he’ll be OK.”
“By the way,” he continued, “sorry about the gauze and the footprints in the hall. I know that it makes your job much harder, but we were in a panic.”
He turned and walked a few steps towards the nurse’s station when I remembered something I needed.
“Do you have a bio—”
“Biohazard suit?” he said abruptly, finishing my question. “I’m sorry, but no.”
(When I first began the job, there were several such suits available within the nurse’s stations throughout the health care unit.)
“What about some Scotch tape and maybe a little help covering my body in these large plastic bags?”
He answered yes before disappearing into the nurse’s station. He returned to the hall moments later with an arm filled with different types of tape. He hurried over to me, dropping several rolls of tape and asked, “Now what?”
I looked at him as I detached several large bags from the roll of bags that I brought with me. I stuck one leg into a large bag and pulled it taut.
The nurse proceeded to help me wrap my body in plastic. He closed all the openings with tape. When we were done, the only parts of me left exposed were my hands and head. The nurse produced a white and red N95 mask that was still sealed in plastic. He then showed me how to put the mask on properly, as well as how to take it off. Then he was gone. I put on five pairs of surgical gloves, opened some large bags and went to work.
Four hours later, I was drenched in sweat, exhausted to the core. The room and the hall were sanitized and I was given the rest of the day off. I was later told that the young man lived; he had reportedly been placed in a new cell so that he could be watched continuously for his own safety.
One day the young man overheard a few of us talking about the Chicago Bears, and he promptly jumped right in. The acoustics and design of the health care unit — shaped like a big donut with the nurse’s station in the middle, surrounded by cells — made it so at first I couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. But we could hear each other. He shared that he was the young man who had unsuccessfully tried to take his own life by cutting himself a week or two earlier.
Immediately, my mind went back to that cell, the blood, the smell, the foreboding that penetrated the air.
Then I spotted him across the donut, his face peering out the cell door. There was an officer seated in a chair in front, which indicated the person in the cell was on continuous watch for his safety. I lightly engaged him and his face lit up with excitement. He was pretty knowledgeable about football, so our conversation went on for hours, with my leaving periodically to complete a work-related task, then returning.
The officer assigned to continuously watch the young man was shocked but also thrilled. As long as the young man was happy talking, the officer wouldn’t have to worry about him trying to hurt himself.
