back into a curly ponytail. Through the one-way glass, Susan watched Sharicka reach forward and pinch the boy in front of her.
The boy whirled, snarling, “Cut it out!”
Eyes locked on the television, Sharicka appeared innocently startled by his sudden movement, and the boy slapped the larger girl behind her instead. The other girl screamed bloody murder.
The nurse dashed over, pulling the two children on either side of Sharicka out of line and scolding them. Susan could not hear her words, but her face looked angry. The two youngsters waved their arms and shouted in reply, loudly enough for Susan to catch most of the conversation.
“She pinched me. Really hard.”
“I did not! He hit me for no reason!”
“She did, too.”
“It really hurt,” the girl said, sobbing.
Through it all, Sharicka remained focused on the television, appearing an oblivious spectator to the entire process. Susan suspected chaos broke out a lot in Sharicka’s vicinity; yet, somehow, she never became directly involved in the matter. Susan made a mental note to watch the girl closely, starting immediately.
Susan grabbed up her palm-pross and moved to the head of the line. The July sun beamed down upon the rainbow-colored playground, with its plastic slides, ladders, and runways. The sandbox contained the airy, antibacterial sand that had replaced the grit and cat turds that had characterized Susan’s own sandbox experiences growing up. A rideable ditch digger filled most of one corner, with pedals and levers for the children to dig in the sand.
A nurse unlocked the door. Susan went through first. The children followed, some pausing to blink in the direct sunlight and cautiously study their play area of choice. Others charged through the opening, heading pell-mell for the welcoming plastic structure, with its turrets, play bars, and tunnels.
Sharicka funneled through with the rest. Though she had surely played there many times, she scanned the equipment with a seasoned eye. Susan could almost hear the gears spinning in her little head as she marched to the tubes and ladders, climbed a slide, and rode down the plastic surface, bumping loudly against the sides. She seemed almost wooden in her play. She did not raise her arms to touch the wind, did not make “whee” noises, made no attempt to engage her caretakers or peers.
Susan feigned a complete lack of interest in the children, trying to look as if she were focused exclusively on her palm-pross and had only come outside to enjoy the beauty of the day. Sharicka went down the slide a second time, kicking and elbowing the sides but making no verbalizations. When she reached the bottom, she dug the toe of her shoe into a well-worn indentation in the recycled rubber. Soon, she became engrossed in it, scuffing at it with both feet while the boy at the top of the slide waited for her to move out of his way.
It soon became apparent Sharicka had no intention of clearing the path. Susan looked for the nurse and found her pushing a tall, silent girl in a swing, oblivious to the quiet drama unfolding at the slide. Susan did not interfere. She wanted to see what happened next.
“Sharicka, move,” the boy called down to her.
Sharicka continued exploring the worn spot without looking up, though she had certainly heard him.
The boy’s patience waned. “Sharicka, I’m coming down.” With that, he started down the slide.
Sharicka did not budge. Susan saw her roll an eye in the boy’s direction, but she did not step out of his way.
As he reached the bottom, the boy twisted sideways, hitting Sharicka in the side with his hip. Her knee came up as they fell, delivering a blow to his groin. As they tumbled over each other, he collapsed awkwardly to the ground, while she rolled a bit, then exaggerated it into a long, skidding movement that made it look as if she had sustained a heavy hit. She shrieked.
The nurse came running. “What happened?”
The surrounding kids started talking at once, describing the events of the last few moments from various angles. As Susan suspected, certain details became clear to the nurse. Sharicka had gone down the slide first. The boy had gone next and smashed into Sharicka. Therefore, it must be the boy’s fault.
Neither Sharicka nor her victim added much to the discussion. She only smiled, seeming to revel in the lecture the boy got about slide safety and in the tender way he walked, and let the description of the events play out in her favor. She headed to the other end of the play structure and crawled into a tunnel.
For several minutes, play continued without a problem. Then a smiling wisp of a girl entered Sharicka’s tunnel. Susan heard a thump. In an instant, the girl came out the other side, seemingly propelled and crying wildly. She had a red mark beneath her right eye that would surely bruise.
Again, the nurse came running over. “What happened?”
The weeping girl attempted to explain, but Susan could not understand a word of what she said. Sharicka poked her head out of the tunnel. “She tripped climbing over me.”
“Whoops.” The nurse swung the sobbing girl into her arms and carried her to the opposite side of the structure. “We can’t have that.” She turned her focus to consoling the girl, who buried her face in the nurse’s chest.
Worried Sharicka would notice her watching, Susan turned her attention fully on her palm-pross for several moments, actually managing to type some documentation before she dared to look for the girl again. This time, she found Sharicka studying the sandbox. A boy sat alone in the middle, meticulously sculpting something Susan could not yet identify.
Relieved of her burden, the nurse took a seat on a bench on the opposite side of the playground. She rubbed her brow, looking harried and tired. The moment the nurse’s bottom touched the seat, Sharicka ran over and hurled herself into the nurse’s lap. Susan could not hear what she said, but the nurse laughed and hugged her tightly. They sat there for several minutes, talking, laughing, and embracing occasionally. Had Susan happened upon the same scene in a park outside of a psychiatric facility, she would have assumed them a loving mother and daughter team.
More telling for Susan, during the time Sharicka sat safely on the nurse’s lap, the remainder of the children played without interruption. No one cried or shouted in pain. Nothing required refereeing. Not that anyone could mistake these for normal, happy children. They tended to play alone rather than in groups. Like toddlers, each engaged in his or her own activity, often despite the potential playmates less than a foot away doing much the same thing. Some chose one repetitive activity, such as the boy who did nothing but ride one slide from the moment he arrived until playtime ended. But all strife disappeared with Sharicka.
The quiet lulled even Susan, who managed to get some actual work done while Sharicka and the nurse interacted. The sounds of swings creaking, of children chasing one another through plastic tunnels, was so peaceful after the crying and screaming that had preceded it. The warm sun and natural light seemed a welcome change from stuffy corridors and low-energy bulbs.
Then, an anguished cry rent the air. Susan’s gaze went instinctively to the nurse’s lap rather than to the sound. Sharicka was no longer there. Susan then looked toward the sobbing child, the same girl Sharicka had kicked in the tunnel. The nurse confronted the child and a boy nearby. Sharicka appeared to have had no hand in the conflict; yet Susan suspected otherwise. It stirred memories of her M-4 psychiatry rotation. A resident she considered a fabulous teacher had once told her, when trying to find the conduct-disordered child in a family, not to ask which one is involved in the most conflicts but instead to ask which child is always on the scene when conflicts occur. A child with a problem on the conduct spectrum, whether simple ADHD or full-blown Conduct Disorder, can cause chaos merely by entering a room.
While the nurse dealt with the current problem, Susan watched as Sharicka took a seat on the excavator. The boy in the middle of the sandbox had, by now, constructed a lavish series of roads, with hills and valleys, populating them with stone “cars” that ran around dry sand hills while he made motor noises. Susan watched, fascinated, as Sharicka’s digging drew closer and closer to the boy’s art. Soon enough, a new conflict would occur, with the boy screeching about his ruined work and Sharicka proclaiming it all a bizarre accident.
The glass door opened, and a unit clerk poked his head through it. “Dr. Calvin!”
Susan looked in his direction.
“There’s a call for you.”
That surprised Susan. Though accustomed to pages, she rarely received direct calls on the unit. If Stony, Clayton, or one of the nurses needed her, they used the Vox system. Only outsiders or consultants used the phone.
