The Other Girl

by C D Major

  The nurse from the interview that morning, Nurse Shaw he recalled, was walking towards him, wheeling a trolley, her shoes squeaking on the stone floor of the corridor. Declan paused for only a second before making up his mind.

  ‘Nurse Shaw,’ he called as she passed him.

  The faint clink of silver on the trolley as she stopped.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor Harris, I wasn’t paying attention.’ She jerked her head up, swiping at the loose strand of hair still poking out from her hat.

  He looked at her. ‘It’s all right, I didn’t meant to startle you. I was just wondering where we keep the patients’ records for Ward Five?’

  Her face fell immediately as he said the words, and he recalled her red-rimmed eyes from that morning.

  ‘In the main building. It’s all so dreadful, isn’t it?’ Her pale eyes already had a thin film over them, fresh tears about to fall. He noticed then her blotched skin, the ball of tissue in her fist.

  ‘It’s terribly grim,’ Declan agreed. ‘Would you like me to help?’ He gestured at the trolley.

  ‘That’s kind of you. I mustn’t. I should get on; we’re so busy this morning and Nurse Ritchie told me off for being a drip . . .’ She covered her mouth with a hand, her nails neatly clipped, as if she’d only just remembered who she was talking to. ‘She’s right, of course,’ she added, ‘but I can’t stop thinking about them all, locked inside, not able to get out. We’ve been so short since the start of the war and I wonder if we had more . . .’ Her voice was getting higher, faster, and the tears that threatened were now falling with abandon. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sniffed, pushing the tissue under her eyes.

  Declan reached into his pocket, glad of the freshly laundered handkerchief. He passed it to her and Nurse Shaw took it with a wordless nod.

  ‘You’re not being a drip,’ Declan reassured her. ‘You’ve every right to be sad.’

  Her face lifted a little.

  ‘Come on, reckon I can help you with that trolley. Just point me in the right direction and then you can show me where the records are kept.’ He used the voice he had recently adopted with patients and Nurse Shaw seemed marginally soothed.

  They moved down the corridor together, passing rooms that Declan had yet to discover, an endless web of offices, locked cabinets, supplies, corridors leading to different wards. The scale of the building never failed to impress him; it had been the largest building in New Zealand when it was first built in 1877. His father had been pleased he would work in such a prestigious setting, at least, even if he wasn’t quite a real doctor.

  ‘We’re here,’ Nurse Shaw said, handing him back his handkerchief.

  ‘Keep it.’ Declan smiled.

  She pocketed it with a quiet thank you.

  They moved inside and she led him across to a filing cabinet, showing him where the keys were kept, a small bunch inside a blue glass vase. ‘The current patients are in here. The numbers on the front relate to the ward, but people do move around and sometimes you might have to look at a previous ward. It depends how long they’ve been here, whether they get regular treatments. Doctor Malone keeps historic records in his office. Are you looking for someone specific?’

  ‘Edith Garrett and Martha Anderson.’

  The nurse nodded silently, the tears threatening again. ‘Thank God, at least, Edie . . . thank God. It’s one good piece of news from the night.’

  She moved across to a filing cabinet that had a five engraved on a small plaque. ‘You’ll find the most recent notes in here. I know Martha arrived two years ago – I’d only been here myself for a month or so. She was very unpredictable in those early days; it wasn’t hard to imagine her doing what she did to her husband. Some say that she might have, maybe, well . . .’

  Declan was barely listening, already pulling open the filing cabinet and moving to the letter ‘G’.

  ‘. . . that might just be gossip.’

  ‘And Edith?’ He found a faded tan-brown folder and drew it out, placing it on the desk behind him.

  The nurse looked wrong-footed for a moment before continuing. ‘Edie? Edie’s been here for years; she’s grown up here by all accounts. Since she was a little girl. She’s a lovely girl is Edie. Despite what’s been happening recently,’ Nurse Shaw continued, before Declan could interrupt to ask more. ‘She’s always thinking of other people. Oh.’ A hand went up to her mouth, and the eyes filled. ‘Bernie.’ She whispered the name.

  ‘Bernadette.’ Declan nodded sadly. ‘She was a patient of mine.’

  Nurse Shaw looked at him. ‘Oh, Edie will be devastated. She and Bernie were so close. Edie was like an older sister to her.’ Something seemed to break then and she crumpled in front of him, the sobs getting louder.

  Declan touched her shoulder lightly. ‘Can I get someone?’ he asked.

  Nurse Shaw shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes. ‘It’s just I keep remembering who was . . .’ She couldn’t finish the sentence and Declan understood. Thirty-seven women. He could smell the smoke on both of their clothes, following them through the labyrinth of corridors, trailing behind them.

  There was a distant voice and it was a moment before Declan realised it was calling out a name. Nurse Shaw straightened in an instant, looking at the door, as a faint ‘Nancy’ reached them. She pressed her eyes with the palms of her hands and stood up, smoothing her skirt. Declan looked over her shoulder at the door. ‘Do you need another minute? I could distract them.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll be fine.’ Then, in a firmer voice, ‘I need to be busy, to stop thinking about it all and help. I need to go.’ She went to move away, the tiniest lurch before she stuck a hand out and balanced herself on the desk. Then, swallowing, she made it to the door, a hand moving to her hat, tucking the errant strand of sandy hair back inside.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I hope you find everything you need.’

  Declan nodded at her once, feeling strangely older than his years when hearing his title. Only a few weeks ago he had been a medical student in Dunedin, the slightly disappointing son of a celebrated physician. Now he was Doctor Harris: a figure of authority. He turned back to the filing cabinet.

  He found a file with Martha’s name on it: the familiar heading on the medical notes, the stamp of Seacliff, the dates typed below. There were court documents and a photograph, slightly faded, the scalloped edges yellowed and curling. He traced his finger over a woman he didn’t recognise: rounded face, dimples in both cheeks, clutching the hand of a little boy tucked into her side. What had happened to her? He thought of Martha leaving the policeman’s interview earlier, all hollowed cheeks and angles, the silent fury. So different from the woman in this picture. He rushed through her notes, aware of the other file on the table that drew his eye, his fingers itching to reach for it.

  Edith. What was it about her? The way she had tilted her head, perhaps, the intelligence he thought he glimpsed in her gaze? Something about her small, sad smile, the way she had jumped from one emotion to the next, the last look as she’d been led away. Something intrigued him. He straightened the papers carefully with two hands, the folder not as weighty as he had expected.

  He dragged a seat across, lowering himself into it, trying to trace her story. There was her original admission form signed by her father, a pastor, and her mother, of no occupation. A brief confusing statement from Edith herself: comments about her family, her house by the sea, an older brother, a nasty incident – someone had hit her – and beneath it Malone’s diagnosis of multiple personality disorder. Then the notes skipped a number of years, leaping to some that were only a couple of months old: an increased paranoia, talk of hearing things in the ward, ramblings about a friend called Patricia, a new drug she’d been given, a suggested round of EST. Seizing a pencil Declan scribbled some of the information down, secreting the paper in his pocket, knowing Doctor Malone would not take kindly to him removing her file.

  Declan checked through the folder again, the chronology inc
omplete, the notes like reading a one-way conversation. The last page was a report from Matron on an incident that had occurred in the women’s dormitory between Edith and another patient. A note was attached with a paperclip to the top of it and Declan reeled at the words, forgetting the rest of the file.

  He reread the small note over and over again, his throat dry.

  ‘Leucotomy being considered: patient to be observed.’

  Chapter 6

  BEFORE

  Mother and I are visiting Mrs Boone in town. She’s been ill and Father has asked for everyone to pray for her in the church. Mrs Boone is very old and she has a house that you can’t see behind big high hedges that Mother calls ‘macrocarpa’. It has a stone driveway and a man who doesn’t speak opens the door and lets us in. It smells of the polish Mrs Clark uses when she cleans our bannisters.

  Mrs Boone is sitting in a high chair with a rug over her body and she can’t stand up when we go inside and sit opposite her. There’s a fire and the room is hot but Mrs Boone doesn’t seem warm, even under the rug. The man brings in a tray with a silver teapot and a sponge cake with currants and he hands me a plate with a slice on. My hands are all slippery from the heat and I forget to say thank you and Mother looks at me but it’s too late.

  The fruitcake is dry and a bit almost sticks in my throat. Mrs Boone doesn’t eat her cake.

  Mother asks her how she is coping and Mrs Boone’s voice is crumbly like the sponge and she has to stop a lot to get air in. The man doesn’t come back and I wish he would and could open a window. Mother is telling Mrs Boone about the Dunedin fair and Mrs Boone nods her grey head just once. Then Mother talks about the pretty flower arrangement and it is when I look up at it on the mantelpiece that I see the photograph.

  Next to the flowers in a glass vase is a photograph of a woman and a boy at the seaside. I think it is Mrs Boone when she was younger as her hair is sort of the same, a curl almost covering one eye.

  ‘Sea, sea.’ I point, eyes round, my legs kicking up as I speak.

  Mrs Boone follows my finger, a small smile making the lines on her face even deeper. ‘Arthur, my boy,’ she whispers.

  ‘I miss splashing in the sea,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Edith, you haven’t been in the sea.’ Mother carries on talking about the flowers, her voice louder, her eyes flicking to look at me.

  I can’t stop staring at the photograph, imagining all the colours even though the picture is just black and white. The blues of the big sky and water, the yellow of the sand, the soft pink of the inside of the shells. Like the picture of the sea in my bedroom in my old home, with the boats in. I had loved the sea when I was a big girl.

  ‘There were penguins,’ I remember.

  Mother and Mrs Boone stop talking. I can hear Mother’s breath leave her body in a whoosh. She says something quietly under her breath to me. I don’t hear it. I used to think everyone was like me. That everyone had lived before. When I first said some things, Mother didn’t get angry.

  ‘Penguins in the sea,’ I go on.

  There is a moment’s silence and then Mother laughs and tells Mrs Boone that I have a ‘colourful imagination’. I don’t know what that means. Mrs Boone says her son had liked the sea too. Mother is trying to look at me, her eyes round, not leaving my face. I look away, eat my cake, the sponge dry in my mouth, remembering the feeling of the sand between my toes, the sound of the waves as they pushed ever closer, the big row of rocks opposite the cave where the penguins would lie, jump, dip, the blue feathers clear when the sun was out.

  The cave.

  I think I might start crying, sitting on Mrs Boone’s sofa with the dry cake in my mouth. I can feel tears push into my eyes and look hard at the plate and the crumbs until the tears go away. But my chest aches when I think of the sea, hear my old mother’s laugh, louder and lower than my new mother’s, as she splashes her swollen red feet in the sea, looks at me over her shoulder.

  The cave hadn’t been scary then.

  ‘Chase me, slowcoach.’

  When we leave I can’t help looking back at the mantelpiece, at the photograph, suddenly desperate not to be in Mrs Boone’s house that smells of polish in Dunedin but to be back running along the sand barefooted in my old tunic, dodging the water as it sweeps in, hearing my old mother’s laugh as I chase her.

  Chapter 7

  NOW

  Declan slept fitfully, dreaming of flames consuming his bed, hearing others screaming for help, scratching hopelessly at the walls either side, the floor, needing to escape the searing heat, the stench of burning wood, fabric, flesh. He woke in the dark, reaching immediately for the glass of water by the bed, shaking a little as he raised it to his lips, imagining ash in his mouth as he gulped it down.

  He rested back against the iron frame, his hair sticking to his forehead, trying not to be drawn back there. He closed his eyes and it was Edith’s face he conjured. The small smile as she tilted her head: something in her expression. He wondered where she was sleeping, imagined her in a narrow-framed bed like his own. He shifted on the sagging mattress.

  Through a thin crack in his curtains he could see the night sky, thin clouds unable to dull the spattering of stars. He thought of Edith’s rambling admission notes and the twenty-year-old patient he had encountered, something niggling at him. Multiple personality disorder – was it really true?

  Then there was the note attached to the report. What had Edith done to warrant being placed on the list for a leucotomy? An operation that altered the frontal lobe, one that could settle a volatile patient but sacrificed their intellect and personality, sometimes robbed them of their life. Declan lay there remembering the studies: facts and figures, not real people.

  He felt a sliver of hope that it wasn’t too late: that he might be able to appeal for her case to be looked at more closely. Often patients were observed for a while, watched for their suitability. He still had time. With that tiny comfort he slipped back into sleep.

  Overnight the mood of Seacliff had altered. Adjusting the leather satchel on his shoulder he wound his way down the stone steps from his small room in the eaves, catching glimpses of the grounds through the high, narrow windows, the iron-grey sea beyond, careful not to trip on the uneven steps, the stairways always full of shadows. An unseasonable wind moaned outside, but aside from this noise he was aware of a strange silence that hung around the place. Unlike the hysterical jangle in the air yesterday, today it seemed that the whole building was spent: exhausted and unable to maintain the fraught atmosphere.

  He walked past nurses and attendants in the narrow corridors, most of whom he didn’t recognise, the open doorway of the patients’ filthy toilets speeding up his steps. The window of the dayroom showed it was empty of patients: a stained carpet, some squares of rugs, an assortment of different chairs, wooden, cushioned, most needing attention, a nurse arranging beakers and jugs on a flimsy pine table.

  He nodded at Matron, a formidable woman almost as tall as Doctor Malone, her height exaggerated by the white hat that stuck out like wings on either side of her head. She gave him a curt nod as she passed. ‘Good morning, Doctor.’

  He was nearing his office when he saw her, sitting in one of the high-backed dusty pink armchairs at the end of the corridor. Her head was turned away from him and she was staring out of the lead-lined gabled window, alone. One hand on the armrest, clutching it, her curly hair loose. He approached her, pausing for a moment, worried he would startle her.

  ‘Edith,’ he said in a quiet voice.

  The head twitched to one side.

  ‘Edith,’ he repeated, moving to crouch down next to her. ‘How are you?’

  She turned slowly to him, her eyes dragged away from the window and the gardens beyond. She was clean now, no trace of the soot that had coated her skin the previous day. Her cheeks were flushed, her brown eyes warm. He found himself staring at her features, opening his mouth, forgetting what he had wanted to say.

  ‘Are you quite well?’
he stumbled. ‘Do you need anything?’

  He noticed a mole on her neck, a mark on the smooth skin.

  ‘No, Doctor, thank you.’

  Her voice was soft as she answered, her whole demeanour calmer than in their first meeting a few hours after the fire. Declan wondered briefly which pills she might have been given.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘I did, thank you, Doctor. I slept in Ward Three, in the main building. I share a room now. Audrey snores a little, but I don’t mind.’ She added the last bit in a rush, her voice higher.

  Declan laughed at this, too quickly perhaps, too loud; she flinched at the noise, her head pressed into the pink velvet. He thought back to the policeman yesterday, the sudden smiles, the jerk of her head, the changeable mood.

  She twisted her body towards him. ‘I won’t say anything about it though, I won’t complain.’ She seemed uncomfortable in the seat now, her chest rising and falling a little faster. ‘I don’t want to be any trouble. Matron said . . . I don’t want more treatment.’ She said the last bit quietly.

  He had read in the file that she had undergone electric shock treatment only recently after an incident with another patient in the dormitory. Declan wanted to calm her. ‘I’m sure there’s no need to worry about that.’

  She didn’t reply at first, her slender neck simply turning once more to stare back out of the window. ‘I often worry about that, Doctor.’

  Declan swallowed, a foreign feeling of helplessness. What could he really promise? He thought of the note in her file; was she even aware of her fate?

  ‘At some stage I imagine you might benefit from talking about the recent event,’ Declan ventured, leaning forward, distracted suddenly by her scent: citrus and something else. He was still wondering at it when she replied.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, with a momentary bite of her bottom lip.

  Declan tried to find the right words, wanting to persuade. ‘It might be of benefit; you’ve been through quite an ordeal.’