Time seems to move fast when we are engaged in a task that utilizes our minds and bodies. Dr. Geoffrey’s life to the time that he accepted the job offer at Dix Hill was painfully slow. He had an uneventful life and he had designed it that way to avoid the potential for emotional distress. He had friends, but he never visited them in person, only spoke with them over the phone. He hardly left his house and he woke early in the morning to sit on his porch with a thick book about psychiatry or neuroscience and he smoked until the afternoon, when he usually ate lunch, then took a walk, before he returned to his house to sit, read and smoke until dinner.
From the time that he took the job, up until the day the first patient arrived, time seemed to whiz by for Dr. Geoffrey. He spent time in the large, singular building of Dix as it was being cleaned and renovated and he saw the entire two month process that transformed it from dark and abandoned into a bright and comfortable facility that felt like a place of peace and tranquility. There were five floors of the building. The first floor contained the reception area, a large cafeteria and kitchen, and a sitting room with couches, bookshelves, and a tv on one wall. The second and third floors had four rooms on each floor and part of the preparation of the building involved splitting the largest rooms on each floor into two rooms so that each of Dr. Geoffrey’s patients would have their privacy. There was a room for the security guards on the fourth floor, and a spare room for the nurse or college student to use if necessary. The fifth floor was the home of Dr. Geoffrey, complete with a family room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small kitchen area.
As work on the building was completed, Dr. Geoffrey finalized the scope and purpose of the work he hoped to do at Dix Hill. He decided to help patients who could benefit from short term residential psychiatric help, about four to six months, to be released to family or on their own recognizance. He screened potential patients for those with a stable medical history, but who suffered traumatic events that derailed their productive lives. Dr. Geoffrey had experienced this and he had held firmly to his sanity while he weathered grief to claw his way back to the life that he wanted for himself. He hoped that the first group of patients he chose would have positive outcomes so that he could do it all over again for ten new people.
The organizers of the job were excited about his plans, and Dr. Geoffrey was able to finalize and confirm a patient list well before repairs were done on the building. He didn’t meet each patient before they moved into Dix Hill, but he became familiar with them through case files. He chose people who had a healthy social life before their trauma and he hoped that the communal experience of living together would help with progress.
“Did you realize that everyone you chose went to the same college?” the female administrator who had initially interviewed him asked after a meeting with his bosses and representatives of the state medical board that had allocated funding for the project.
“Really?” Dr. Geoffrey said curiously as they walked to the elevator. He stuffed notebooks into his bag that was practically a cloth briefcase. “I didn’t really notice that. Honestly, I don’t think I even really paid close attention to education history.”
“It’s not a problem or anything, we’ve already cleared everyone for transfer once renovations are done, I just realized it when I was thumbing through the material. I think it’s a good idea, you chose ten people with problems you can identify and treat because not only have you done it before, but you’ve been through it as well. You’ve found patients you can help who have a lot in common with you, that’s a good first job back.”
Dr. Geoffrey was slightly taken aback by her frankness, she had implied many things with her observations, most glaring to him was that he needed something easy to avoid failure. But he knew that she didn’t mean offense, she was just a blunt speaker and he liked that about her.
“What school did they go to?” he asked her.
“Your alma mater, Western Carolina. That’s why I thought you did it on purpose, but you’re right, their education history isn’t all that relevant to these cases. You don’t know any of them, do you?”
“I don’t, no,” he shook his head very deliberately to convey his sincerity. “I’ve never met any of them.”
“Oh well,” the female administrator said with a shrug when the door to the elevator opened on the first floor. “Everything’s coming together, I really can’t wait to see it all up and going. I’ll see you again soon.”
When Dr. Geoffrey was back to his house where he lived before he moved into Dix Hill, he looked at each of the patient files and confirmed what the administrator had told him. They were all twenty or so years younger than him, none had ever lived in a town where he was living when he lived there. None of them looked familiar at all to him. But the administrator had been right, he recognized all of their stories and he would give his all to help his patients.
When Dr. Geoffrey moved into Dix Hill, it gave him flashbacks of his college campus when he arrived there for the first time and moved into his dorm room. He was happy and ready for everything to go well.
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