Sometimes Hazeline wants to touch her patients – those who need it most, for whom touch has been perverted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sol sits weeping on a bench, his application for housing having been denied for the 16th month in a row. Ordered out by Judge Pritchard, all that has stood between his release from Red Ward is the community placement agreement: that little slip of paper granting him another shot at life in the outside world.

 

I’ll never have a place will I? he says softly. Makes his peace with it, fidgeting with his watch. Then: Does such a place even exist? His hands catch his face as he continues to sob.

 

Hazeline scoots closer in her rolling chair. What he says isn’t rhetorical. Everyone everywhere believes in the capacity for change, just not in their immediate neighborhood.

 

In the end, she settles for therapeutic jargon, backing away, assuming once again a professional distance.

 

Next month, she says. It’s a good answer.

 

Sol smiles, knowing the drill. Thank you, he says. He means it.

 

How she tries.                Next month.               A lie but a kind lie at least.