Life in the Intensive Treatment Unit is very structured. At 9:15am every day there is a Community meeting, followed by supervised shaving.

In Community, counselors go over the rules, patients address concerns that they have about life on the floor, and daily goals are set. It often devolves into a few patients complaining about everything. Last week, one patient had a problem with the fact that patients are not allowed to chew gum.

Bipolar 1: How come we can't chew gum?
Counselor: Gum is contraband, and isn't allowed.
Bipolar 2: Well, nurses and counselors get to chew gum, it's not fair that we can't. Why can't we chew gum? We should be able to chew gum.
Schizophrenic 1: What flavors of gum are we allowed to chew?
Counselor: You are not allowed to chew any flavor of gum.
Schizophrenic 2: What flavor are you allowed to chew if you think you're chewing gum?

[And excuse me for referring to patients by their diagnoses. A nurse should always put the patient before the illness, but I thought the diagnoses somewhat relevant to the story.]