into the market place

I’m strolling onto the second floor at New England Memorial Hospital around 2:50 to begin my three to eleven. There are four teams – two psychiatric, one substance abuse, and the adolescent. That last one holds my counselor position, and this Monday a young woman named Sharon runs up to me and says the staff are setting her up, accusing her of smuggling a bottle of wine onto the floor and drinking it, and she’s going to get kicked out, and she’s been working with me – one of my assigned kids – and she would never lie to me, and she swears she did not do what she’s being accused of. I know she’s telling me the truth, and I promise her I will take care of it.

Two days later, at the adolescent team staff meeting, I call out everyone, including my supervisor, and say they’re wrong and no way Sharon did it, and she needs to stay. We argue some. I’m off the next two days, because I’m working the weekend. When I come in Saturday at three, my friend Bob – a psych team guy – takes me aside and tells me Sharon has ended up confessing to Lynne, my supervisor – yeah she had the bottle and yeah she drank it. She’s been discharged from the program.

I do not exactly remember when my next superision is, but in there I’m hard on myself and can’t believe I’d been so wrong, and maybe I’m not right for the place. This was a long time ago, 1979, and I cannot say with certainty that those were my exact words or feelings. I know I felt really bad.

But, this is what happened. Lynne let me talk, and said we’d keep working on all the clinical stuff that’s a part of most jobs in the field. Then she told me this: “Sharon needed someone to believe in her.” She’s a broken kid, Lynne said, with little to no self-confidence. Maybe little to no self-worth. And you believed in her. That, Lynne said, mattered.

What are my stories in the world of showing up where help is needed, and asking how can I help?