Against The Wall
That summer I was on the day-shift cleaning some shelves, one of my janitorial duties at the hospital, when two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were escorting a man down the hallway from the morgue. The man must have been in his early thirties, an officer on each side holding his arms. He’s looking down at the floor as they walk. Suddenly the man wrenches himself free, goes over and slams his hand against the wall really hard.
He yells, “That stupid kid! I told him not to swim there.”
One cop seems to get angry about the way the man pulled away so violently and the other cop starts to laugh, as though he’s embarrassed by the sudden emotional display.
It was strange: one angry, the other laughing. If you saw it in a movie you’d say, “That’s bad acting,”, but this wasn't a movie, it was real life.