Lisa Jacobs, in her creative nonfiction piece “March Manic” (Intima Spring 2019) describes a long shift on a psychiatric unit. She is “beyond exhausted” to the point of having questioned her own grasp on reality.

As a case manager in a Baltimore City hospital, I once spent hours attempting to find placement for a homeless 19-year-old addicted to heroin who needed long term IV antibiotics. When I asked if I might call her mother she replied “I don’t give a fuck” but retracted her permission as I was leaving the room. I pretended not to hear. The next day I was told she had signed out AMA (Against Medical Advice). a colleague said, “Get over it. She was a waste of time and resources.”

We are expected to maintain a professional distance. Keep our cool. Never show emotion. After my daughter’s suicide (“Hold You Closer, Tiny Dancer,” Intima Spring 2021), I briefly saw a therapist, one highly recommended by a friend. During our three or four sessions, she remained devoid of all emotion as I wept my way through boxes of tissues. I knew she was a mother as she once took a call from her child’s school during a session. I brought a picture of my daughter, some of her art work, an essay she’d written. I needed this therapist, this helper, to show me she understood what an unfathomable loss this had been, not just for me, but for the world. Had she been willing to shed a single tear with me, I’d have thought of her as human. Someone who understood. Who actually cared.

Dr. Jacobs’ willingness to pursue her patient, to sit on the pavement, to cry, to allow that shift in power from patient to caregiver touched me deeply. I believe Jacobs is someone with whom my daughter would have connected, like Aviva, finding purpose, even if momentarily, through the grace of stepping outside her own pain to comfort another.

While a practitioner could not and should not engage on such an intimate level with all patients, for whatever reason, exhaustion, new skis appearing out of nowhere, the alignment of the planets, March madness, Lisa Jacobs let down the shield of “professionalism” in order to connect. In doing so, this lady psychiatrist queen may have saved a life.

Eileen Vorbach Collins is an RN from Baltimore. She earned her BSN from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in pastoral care from Loyola University. Her writing has been published in the Santa Fe Writer's Project, Reed Magazine, The Columbia Journal and elsewhere. Her essays have received the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction, The Gabriele Rico Challenge Award, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. She is working on a collection of essays about bereavement. Read more about her work here. Her essay “Hold You Closer, Tiny Dancer” appears in the Spring 2021 Intima.