The making of a Villain: Nurse Ratched

In the dimly lit halls of Belfry Psychiatric Hospital in Salem, Oregon, the air was heavy with a mixture of pain and unrelenting moaning of the sufferers within. Mildred Ratched, a dedicated nurse, had spent the better part of a decade caring for the lost souls that inhabited this place. Like a breath of fresh air, Mildred would breeze into the rooms administering medications. Delivering meals with a smile, she would often take the time to sit with patients while they ate. She would listen to them tell the tales of their tragic lives and offer words of comfort and encouragement. She had always believed in the healing power of compassion, but time took its toll. Trying to keep her professional life from affecting her personally, and vice versa, soon became insurmountable.

Mildred had lived a charmed life growing up in a family unscathed by the devastating aftereffects of World War One. Under the watchful eyes of two caring parents and an extended family who doted on her, Mildred was fortunate to attend nursing school. After graduating, Mildred married her college sweetheart, and they formed a strong bond through unconditional love. Together, they planned for their future. Mildred dreamed of a big house with many rooms full of children. Knowing how important it was to Mildred, her family and relatives were excited that she’d soon start a family of her own.

Mildred longed for children, and for years they had tried. Through the heartbreak of failed attempts, it seemed Mildred could never carry a child past the first trimester. They were close to giving up after experiencing too much disappointment when Mildred conceived. Afraid to believe this time would be any different, they waited to tell the family, but when the first trimester passed successfully, they celebrated.

Mildred was five months pregnant when tragedy struck. Kidnapped and tortured for nine days, Mildred lost the baby. The disappointment ricochetted through her family and bounced back, doubling Mildred’s self-hatred for having let everyone down. Unwilling to seek therapy, Mildred kept all the trauma inside. After the kidnapping incident, she returned to work seeking the structure and routine of everyday practices. Meanwhile, the absence of children and the traumatic kidnapping event had ripped apart the fabric of her happiness, leaving her a fragile shell. She was a vessel of despair under a façade of a caregiving human.

As she walked the corridors of Belfry, patients fighting battles of their own surrounded her. They came with their own stories—of trauma, rejection, and loss—and lately it stirred something dark and sinister within her. Mildred was exhausted, and the strain of unrequited motherhood twisted her mind. As time wore on, a darkness seeped into her heart.

Too often, she found herself caring for patients who were there for a short time, recovering from the loss of a child through some tragic event. Staring into the eyes of these convalescing victims, Mildred felt jealousy welling up inside. At least they had had a child, even for a short time. They had no right to be sad. She was the one who would never feel a life growing inside. She would never hold her own warm and fragile infant, alive and breathing. Mildred struggled to stay disconnected, but she was on the verge of breaking when the hospital admitted a new patient.

Sally, an unwed teen with fear in her wide, hollow eyes, had tried to take the life of her own child. Sally, who was being tried for child endangerment, was at the Belfry psychiatric clinic for treatment. Society was harsh and unacceptant of unwed pregnant women, and the girl had no one to support her. Instead of finding tender sympathy for the teenaged student caught in a losing situation, Mildred realized she harbored anger and resentment. She could only see the pain of her own hopelessness and empty arms. In her fragile mental state, Mildred snapped.

Sally was on a protocol of opium and morphine, two drugs regularly injected in the treatment of mental patients. With the goal of stabilizing her until she was well enough to stand trial for attempted murder, the hospital also gave her physical and mental therapy. Mildred felt Sally didn’t deserve the drugs that mitigated her suffering. Mildred thought that mental therapy was being wasted on someone unworthy. She was going to put a stop to it.

Late one day, toward the end of her shift, Mildred found her chance. She crept into Sally’s room to give her the routine dose, but she had increased the amount to a lethal level. In full transparency, Mildred would never be to blame for the overdose. The authorities would assume that the young girl had an adverse reaction to the drug. Mildred felt justification for her actions.

“If I can’t have children,” she hissed, as she watched them cart away the still, lifeless body of her victim, “then neither should she ever have the chance again.” With narrowing eyes, Mildred turned away, unnoticed was the thin smile that crept across her face.

Mildred’s descent into madness began that night. She became a twisted guardian of the patients who came and went from the Belfry. Convinced she was punishing the unworthy of crimes she invented in her mind, Mildred administered justice of her own. The patients who had once felt safe under her care trembled in her presence. Mildred would no longer approach them with tenderness but with a simmering cruelty that caught them off guard.

“You are here because society has rejected you. You are not here to be happy.” Mildred would say, her words dripping with venom. Her eyes burned with a mix of madness and desperation. During her worst reign of terror, Mildred would deny patients their medications when she felt they needed to be punished. Withholding their meals or them to keep them from therapy was among her other punitive acts. She antagonized her patients who suffered from anger issues and physically abused those with mobility impairments.

Within the walls of Belfry Psychiatric Hospital, where sanity ends and madness takes many forms, Mildred continued to inflict upon those unfortunate souls her own brand of treatment. There was no one to stop her. As head nurse of the psychiatric ward, Nurse Ratched held all the power.