MEMBER GROUPS.
PATIENTS
Not only do they make up the largest percentage of Milbury Hospital's population, the patients housed here are the sole reason for its existence. Individuals of every color, race, age, gender and psychological caveat can be found within the flagstone walls, led through its weathered gates by means of the justice system, worried kith and kin or flat-out deception. Some persist in maintaining that they are sane; others have silently resigned themselves to the fact that none of them will ever leave; still more rail on about the wildest conspiracies that would be easily dismissed in any place other than Milbury. The most dangerous spend their days and nights in the strictest of confinements, locked up in restraints for the good of humanity. While barbarian therapies and monotonous work team placements are in place to draw them out of isolation and supposedly "cure" their ailments, all are tormented by their own personal infernos, created by the horrors that plague their minds--and their hospital--day in and day out.
DOCTORS
One has to wonder what kind of professional would willingly work in an environment so drenched in misery and fear. The psychiatric profession is still in its infancy, and all-too-often it contains the sort of doctor who's a bit too eager to experiment, as evidenced by the track record of Milbury employees. They are expected to see a certain number of patients a day and keep office hours, but some forsake the rules in favor of delights such as the bar at their living quarters, which takes the form of a series of low-rise apartments (all doctors are unaccompanied during their term at Milbury). Doctors range from the naiive and eager to the sadistic and cruel, but no matter their inclination to their practice, all are effectively trapped in the somber stone complex due to new legal rulings on the health profession that now make it difficult for physicians to transfer out of the psychiatric field or even change hospitals. In a sense it's almost underwhelming, the way that their last chances of escape have been snatched away by something as decidedly undramatic as government bureaucracy.
NURSES
If the hospital's board of directors is its Congress, then it follows that its nurses are its police. These women (and only women) have by far the most contact with patients, doing the grunt work such as administering medication, shepherding the masses to mealtimes and confiscating contraband. Underpaid and overworked, many care very little for their profession, often daydreaming of what their lives could have been if they'd taken a different fork in the road; a few others, however, become almost friendly with the patients they see on a daily basis. Some would claim that the more involved ones carry out much more "talk therapy" than any of these newfangled psychiatrists are paid to do, but those individuals are far and few between. Nurses live and eat in separate buildings; they are housed in groups of four in small cottages that, while cozy enough, are quite spartan in their accommodations. The Nurse Matron's office is located in the front of the hospital next to Reception, but good luck trying to find her there.
STAFF
Past the medicine carts and hospital beds, one finds the rest of Milbury's staff quietly keeping the establishment afloat and self-reliant. Orderlies, security, receptionists and cleaning staff all fall into this "kitchen drawer" category, as do the various professionals (including farmers, seamstresses, cooks, dairy workers, gardeners and repairmen) that oversee work teams and tend to the vital functions of the self-sustaining complex. Staff live in an inordinately tiny "village" located adjacent to the hospital complex, each house in the community looking exactly like the next. All those who live in the village work for Milbury Hospital in some way and have work contracts for a specified number of years; living here indefinitely would cause even the sanest to go mad.
