Looking Death in the eye II

I was a staff member on the locked Psychiatric Ward in the Hospital at Camp Kue, so going to work started with unlocking the big steel door. After being run over by patients attempting to escape a couple of times, I learned to check close before opening the door. The guy that had held my job before me had been killed by a patient. My first duty when I took the job was to interview the patient. I asked him why he had done it, and he told me "I was convinced that he was going to kill me, so I acted out of self defense." It made perfect internal sense to him. He wasn't a bad guy once we had him properly medicated.
Paranoid/schizophrenic are the ones that are hard to deal with. Most psychotics are in such pain that they are non-functional. Add a little thorazine on top of that, and they are incapable of forming a complex thought, much less a plan.
T. was and Air Force enlisted man, who had a history of behavior problems. His Commanding Officer had had it with his disruptive behavior, so he gave him the most boring, isolated assignment he could think of. They gave him a loaded M16 and set him out guarding the perimeter of Kadena Air Force Base. After one too many joints, he decided that there were people out in the bushed, so he shot up the surrounding jungle. Luckily no one was hurt, but it earned him a trip to a padded room.
T was hard to control. Medications didn't seem to have a great effect on him, and he wanted what the wanted, and to hell with anyone who got in his way.
when I came in one morning he was in full rant. He wanted to go downstairs to the day room and play pool. "No T., you are not ready to go out there yet." So he picks up a trash can and throws it across the ward, and says "Now can I go play pool?" "No T., as long as you display this kind of behavior, you will not be allowed out".
So T. Picks up a chair and throws it into a window. Of course the windows were all security glass, with the chicken wire built in, so he busts up the window, but no big harm done "NOW CAN I GO PLAY POOL?". "No T. In fact you need to go spend some time in the padded room".
So when we went to put him in restraints, he ran to the back of the ward where his bed was and pulls out a 12" diving knife and says "You ain't putting me in there, I'll kill you all first".
We had a special number to call if things got out of hand, and a bunch of combat Vetran NCO's were supposed to come up and handle the situation. So they come upstairs and I let them into the ward and explain the situation. They look around the corner and here is this wild eyed guy standing in the middle of the floor waving a knife around. The staff is frantically getting everyone else out of the room and into a safe place. The "goon Squad" as we called them refused to go into the room.
One of the other Psych techs and I discussed what we were going to do. Since no one else seemed willing to do anything, we decided we had to. We came up with our plan and just did it.
We made an agreement, B. Would go for control of the patient, and I would make sure the knife was controlled.
We grabbed a mattress off of one of the beds. He held one end and I held the other. We rushed T. And just kept on pushing him backwards until we backed him into the wall, and pinned him there. While I grabbed the hand holding the knife, B. Grabbed T. Around the neck and choked the shit out of him. He choked him until he passed out, and I relieved him of the knife. When he would start to come to, B. Would tighten up his choke hold until he quit struggling. This only lasted a couple of minutes for the whole thing, but time has a way of stretching itself out when every second needs to be accounted for. It took a couple minutes for the Doctor to load up a hypo and get it into T. You are probably wondering where a psychotic patient got ahold of a knife. One of his "Friends" had smuggled it in for him when visiting. The "Friend" soon joined "T" in our care.
There were times when I held that job where I was afraid for my life, for very good reasons. It is one reason I can keep things in perspective now. Things may get incredible frantic, but I never feel that I am in danger of losing my life.