"I was about to leave when the ASHO Ethics Officer came up to me. He said there was no door on the room where all the OT folders were and that I would have to guard that door for four hours. Silently I followed him to the very bowels of the Cedars, the morgue where the folders were. I felt as if I was now dreaming, I couldn't believe this was happening. I wasn't even an OT, yet I had to guard all the OT folders.
Let me describe the morgue. It had not been cleaned out. There was the scale for weighing the bodies, the huge stone table where the autopsies were done. Drains for blood, etc. There were no lights. I was left to sit on a milk crate in the dark, with racks and racks of OT folders all around me. The floor was covered in trash and there was no fresh air. It smelled of death, really stank of death and chemicals and dissection. For the first hour I just sat. Then I realized it was very cold down here. So I walked back and forth for the second hour. My mind was blank. I knew I could look in all the folders but I didn't care. I couldn't have cared less what was in them. Suddenly during the third hour I was aware of shadows in the corridor beyond me, they were people. Slowly I realized that an entire group of people lived and worked down here. I was so tired it took me a long time to realize who they were. Then it hit me. The Cedar's RPF. They lived and worked down in this stinkhole. This was their Org. Then I really found out what had happened to them. Filthy, tired, skeletons appeared before me and started begging to see the OT folders. I thought I looked bad, but I looked beautiful compared to them. They crowded around me pushing and shoving, then the mood turned ugly. They started hitting each other to get into the room behind me. I realized then what had happened. They had been totally broken. They were animals, not humans. I saw four of my friends, one a Class Nine OT6 fighting to get by me. They were punching each other in the face, pulling hair, kicking. And way down in this cellar, no one could hear them, no one cared. Someone suddenly hit me hard. I realized they were turning their anger on me, they would beat me up to get to the folders. I guess in periods of deep stress we all go a little insane. Survival of the fittest. From somewhere inside my tired brain, strength came. I stood up and with all my TR's as in as they had ever been, all my training on control of groups came back. "Friends", I said, "Believe me, I am your friend. By some strange fate I am not with you on the RPF. But believe me if you don't get out of here right now, I know you will be punished. Go now before it's too late." And they ran away into the dark. When I sat down, I was trembling all over. Because the real intent of my message had been for them to get out of the hospital. Leave Cedars. But I don't think any of them got the message."