“I’m a nurse.” The woman shouted back, “I want a real nurse. Don’t you dare put your Black hands on me!” She realized that even Black patients had internalized and reinforced the racial hierarchy at Crownsville and saw Sarah, as the only Black woman on the ward, as a signifier of inferior care. Sarah had to come to terms with the fact that she was working with hostile white colleagues, but also with people who had never imagined someone who looked like them would be allowed to walk through Crownsville’s doors as anything other than a patient.
