Fear Strikes Out by Jim Piersall & Hirshberg

Author:Jim Piersall & Hirshberg [Piersall, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2074-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN YOU LOOK OUT the window of the violent room in the Westborough State Hospital, your eye first catches sight of a huge water tower, which is set high on a hill and dominates everything around it. The tower is close by the hospital and perhaps a mile in from the Worcester Turnpike, one of the main highways leading south and west from Boston. I drive over that road often in the wintertime, and whenever I pass the water tower, I say a prayer. I pray for Mary and I pray for the children and I pray for all the people who still must see the water tower only from that other angle and, most of all, I pray that it will never again happen to me.

How many prayers have I whispered as I looked out the windows of the violent room! How many times have I repeated the Rosary in the shadows of that tower! How often have I fixed my mind on prayers to God and St. Joseph and St. Anthony while I fixed my eyes on the tower outside! St. Joseph, patron saint of the family unit, is my favorite. St. Anthony, my name saint, is patron saint for the recovery of lost objects—and I had been on the very edge of losing everything.

That water tower was my friend while I was struggling back from oblivion and it is still my friend, the symbol of prayer and hope and all the things that helped me in my successful battle to recover my wits and banish the fears that had sent me so closely within its sight. When I see it from the highway, it reminds me not of Westborough and the violent room and the old trouble, but of prayers that were answered to a degree far beyond my happiest dreams. When I pass it today, I feel spiritually refreshed and mentally relaxed.

My first memory of Westborough was a flood of sunshine, streaming in from the window facing the water tower and so bright that I tried to shade my eyes with my hand. But I couldn’t reach up, so I turned my head away. I tried again to cover my eyes with my hands, but I could only move from the neck up. I was securely strapped to a bed, and a man I never remembered seeing before was peering thoughtfully at me. When I focused my eyes on him, he said, kindly, “Time to eat.”

I tried to struggle up to one elbow, but the straps were tight.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In a hospital.”

“What kind of a hospital?”

“You’ve been a very sick boy.”

“What am I doing here? How long have I been here? How long will I have to stay?”

“I don’t know,” the man said. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“Who are you?”

“An attendant. I can’t tell you anything.”

He moved off, and I twisted my head so that I could see part of the room. I was in a sort of alcove, off what appeared to be a fairly good-sized ward.

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