Harold from San Haven

“OK, we’ll see you this afternoon, sir.  Once again, I’m sorry.  Sure. Goodbye.”

After hanging up the phone, the forlorn nurse returned down the long, sterile hallway, which reeked of ammonia and was silent except for the light patter of rubber-soled shoes and the flickering buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead. With a set of clean linens, she entered the room and began her preparations.

Evelyn Barker was an employee at the San Haven State Hospital since she was 21-years-old when it was still called San Haven Institute for the Feeble-Minded.  It was her first job after she finished nursing school.  She moved from Nebraska less than a week after graduation and married a local farmer less than a year after that.  A widow by age 29, Evelyn never had any children, and she never remarried.

A person does not necessarily become accustomed to the tragedy of these souls who were sent to live at San Haven, either abandoned by families that do not care or given up by ones who cannot provide, they just become numb to the desolation and despondency.  Water heads, pinheads, and the ones who can’t even speak their own names, some here for decades, some only for a short time before succumbing to a merciful death, all bellowing an endless entreat for comfort they never knew or love they no longer remember.  Evelyn became listless to much of this infinite bedlam, but it were these silent ones, who made no petition, no protest, no clamor for affection, who held her heart.  Taciturn and tranquil, these were the ones for whom she wept, praying for them to live but thanking God when they didn’t. 

One such young boy arrived at the hospital in 1922, shortly after Evelyn.  Harold Heschland came to life in the fall of 1921, born with a hole in his spine greater than the one it left in his doleful mother’s reluctant heart.  Caring for the five other children she gave birth to, and mourning for the four who died in infancy, Harold’s mother knew she could not provide him with the attention that would be required.  Even though most in Harold’s condition wouldn’t survive a brief childhood, his parents felt his few years spent in existence would be more comfortable at San Haven then at home, and so after a muted trek nearly two-hundred miles across the prairie, young Harold became a ward of the state.

~

When she first began her daily interactions with Harold, feeding him, changing him, the occasional stroll across the hospital grounds, Evelyn understood a child with his malady would be only that; a child never growing into an adult, either physically or mentally.   

Months and seasons passed by, soon becoming years.  Harold’s mother came to visit him about every six months: once in the spring after the snow had cleared, usually around Easter, and again on his birthday, which was after the harvest season and before the snow.  Mr. Heschland occasionally accompanied her in the beginning, but eventually she would make the trip alone or with one of her young children.

Clara Heschland would greet her son with a tearful smile, hugging his seemingly lifeless body, bucolic and latent in his bed of endless rest.  After feeding him, she would wheel Harold outside and read to him until mid-afternoon, often from the Bible she always carried with her, occasionally from a storybook brought along by one of Harold’s siblings.  Once back in his room, Clara would sit next to his bed and share all of the news of his family back home, crying and laughing when telling the stories, while Harold lay motionless aside from the occasional blinking of his arid and insipid eyes.

After the tragedy of her husband’s early death came upon Evelyn in the summer of 1930, she devoted more of her emotional self to the patients in her care, perhaps as a way to cope with her loss.  As the hospital expanded to include a wing dedicated to people suffering from tuberculosis, her time spent with Harold and some of the others was depleted, but nonetheless, she often found time in her day to stop by and say hello. 

~

The air was much cooler that morning than expected for a mid-summer day on the Great Plains, and with no sun or wind to dry it, the grass was still wet with condensation.  The birds flittered silently among the buildings, landing in their nests built beneath the roof overhangs.  Nurse Barker happened to be at the reception station when the call came in, the shrill ringing echoing throughout the first floor in the early morning calm.

“San Haven State Hospital,” said the receptionist, followed by a brief pause.  “Yes, ma’am. I understand…I’m so sorry for your loss.  OK.  Thank you for the call.”

“What was that all about?” asked Evelyn.

“That was Harold Heschland’s sister.  She said his mother, Clara, has passed away.”

“Oh, I see.” Evelyn appeared to be choking back tears, which seemed rather surprising to the young receptionist.

“Well….I’d like to be the one to tell Harold the news.”

“Do you think he’ll even understand what you’re telling him?”

“No, I don’t….but I feel like I should, anyway.”

Harold Heschland, who as a young child was left at the hospital to live out his seemingly limited life in relative comfort, was now almost 18-years-old, and he managed to outlive his grief stricken mother.

Evelyn came to know hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients in all her years at San Haven.  None changed as little as Harold.  Less than three feet in length from head to toe, he only grew several inches since his birth, and much of that was in the brief time he had at home in the beginning of his seemingly inconsequential life.  Never a word spoken, never a tear shed.  No smile, no emotion, never a sound that amounted to more than a weak cough or a heavy breath.  No joy, no sadness, no sentiment or shame.  The shift of his eyes from the doorway to the window was seemingly the only capable function of this young man.

On her way down the hallway toward Harold’s room, Evelyn stopped abruptly and buried her head in her hands.  After briefly sobbing to herself, she entered the bathroom to wash her face, splashing the cool, sulfurous water on her swollen cheeks.  Collecting her thoughts and emotions, the nurse continued down the corridor to relay the tragic news of his mother to Harold.

On that early morning during the summer of 1939, Harold Heschland cried.

This, of course, took Evelyn by surprise.  After a brief moment processing the situation before her, this young man, no bigger than an infant suddenly crying out a guttural wail, coarse and dull, streaks of tears running down his face, all seemingly out of nowhere, she collapsed to the floor a bawling mess.  Gathering herself off the floor, Evelyn took the now whimpering boy in her arms and sat in a chair facing the window, rocking him gently as she gazed out through the wire-mesh screen at the overcast sky.

~

Harold spent his eighteenth birthday without any visitors, and there were not any the following spring either.  The next year on his birthday, he was visited by his sisters, Sarah and Inga, and his brother, Henry.  It would be the last time Harold had company.

In the first week of October, 1942, an orderly entered Harold’s room to change the bedding and found him cold to the touch and with a bluish color to his face.

Evelyn Barker had the day off and was at home that morning, still meandering about the house in her robe and slippers, finished with breakfast but only half through the paper.  After the call from San Haven, she cried briefly in her bedroom before getting dressed and driving to the hospital.  She wanted to be the one to call the Heschland family to inform them of Harold’s passing.

It was Henry who drove to San Haven that day, pulling up in his cherry red Chevrolet sedan in the mid-afternoon.  He went inside to the front desk, informed the receptionist that he had arrived, and then walked back through the main doors to wait outside for Nurse Barker. 

“Hello, Mr. Heschland?”

“Please, call me Henry.”

“Hello, Henry.  I’m Evelyn Barker; I believe we’ve met in the past. I’m…I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.  Yes, I remember you from the last time.  My ma told us about you also.”

“Yes, well.  I remember your mother, she was a wonderful, loving, person.”

“That she was.  Too bad ol’ Harold probably never even knew it.”

It was then that Evelyn decided to tell Henry her story about the day of his mother’s death, a story she only shared with a few other close friends at the hospital.  After a few pauses to hold back tears, the story was finished, and Henry stood silently for a moment to absorb what he had just been told.

“Oh, my,” said Henry.  “I had no idea.  Do you think always knew what was going on? What was being said?”

“I used to think there was no way, but I’m not entirely sure anymore.”

After a few minutes, an orderly came through the front door carrying the diminutive, languid body of Harold Heschland, wrapped in fresh white linens and handed him to Henry.

“Well, thank you, Ms. Barker, for all you’ve done for Harold.  I guess I’ll be on my way.”  Henry turned and, cradling Harold with one arm, opened the back door of the sedan and laid him down.

“You’re welcome, Henry.  We all loved Harold.”

Henry gave a slight smile and nod to both Evelyn and the orderly, then sat behind the steering wheel. After starting the car, he drove off with Harold resting peacefully in the back seat.