Auditory hallucinations: whispering voices, are they real?

An old lady who was small in size entered the hospital a few years ago. Her daughter visited her almost daily. She said that her mother would get so sick at home that she would not sleep for days. The less she slept, the more manic she became.

While making the rounds to check inside the rooms while the patients should be sleeping, I found this lady sitting on the edge of her bed with her hands resting in her lap. She smiled an unusual smile, “I’m fine,” she said calmly. I closed the door. Something told me to watch her closely, but every time she looked in her room, she looked at the staff with their hands resting in her lap, right on the edge of her bed.

She just couldn’t sleep, but she didn’t want to take anything to help her sleep, which was fine with me.

In the early days of hospital work, it was normal for only one or two employees to work in a unit overnight. I never thought it was safe, but each unit was understaffed.

I was around 90 to 110 pounds tops. However, he was known to display unusual strength in his manic days. When I opened the door around 3 AM and she was still sitting in the same spot, something in my mind clicked; this was not right. I turned on the big overhead light to see better than what my little flash light was providing. She looked at me wide-eyed and panicked. I asked him what was wrong and then looked down. The fingers of hers on both hands pointed to the ceiling in the most unusual way. They were bent and broken. I yelled for the rest of the staff to call for help as she got up to fight me. She had one finger left and she was determined to break it too.

I grabbed both of his hands and tried to separate them until the rest of the staff returned. He was going to break the last of her fingers. She grabbed her little finger with all her might, screaming, “No! Leave me alone, they told me!”

When help arrived and we called an ambulance to take her to the local medical hospital, she began to cry. I had to know, so I asked, “What the hell made you sit down and break your fingers?” She looked at me with a blank look and said, “They told me I had to do it or they would kill my daughter.” I asked him: “Are you not in pain?” She shook her head, “No, it doesn’t hurt. I saved her life; that’s what mothers do for their children.”

This patient’s voices were so real that she actually thought her daughter was in danger. She listened to them as if she were a hostage and I suppose that in a way she was.