The Pause

by John Larkin

  Even though the waiting room is quite crowded, Sandra has a word to the receptionist and I’m wheeled through to a small consultation room. Sandra helps me down from the stretcher and into a seat. She then slips into boss-mode and orders her offsider to go and make her a cup of tea. As an afterthought she asks if I want anything but I shake my head as words are beyond me. I feel as though I’m holding her up, that she has more important things to be getting on with, sicker people to attend to, but as if reading my mind, she tells me that she will stay with me until the nurse appears. No sooner has she had her first sip of tea than that’s exactly what happens. Sandra wishes me luck and tells me that she is going to dance at my wedding. Although I keep my eyes glued to the floor, I think of me and Lisa getting married and Sandra doing some sort of spectacularly uncoordinated mum-dance at the reception and I manage a sort of half-smile, just to be polite.

  When Sandra goes, the nurse asks me what happened and I try to explain as best I can (I reckon I’m going to be doing a lot of that over the next few weeks). I don’t mention Lisa or The Kraken, Hong Kong, Great-Aunt Mary who’s long dead, or anything like that. Instead I tell her about my nerves. About them being twisted and contorted until all I can do is scream my silent scream and curl up in a tight ball. She tells me that she can give me something for the pain but that I’ll have to see the doctor first. Before she goes she wants my home number as well as my parents’ mobiles.

  ‘Can’t I just go home?’ I mumble to the floor. ‘Do they have to know?’

  ‘You’ve had a close call,’ she says. ‘And now we’re here to help.’

  I tilt my head to look up at her. ‘What sort of help?’

  ‘Sometimes when we’re young,’ she says in almost a whisper as if we’re in on a great conspiracy, ‘we have to be protected from ourselves.’

  ‘You mean a padded cell?’

  She shakes her head. ‘That doesn’t happen anymore. Well, not here.’

  She asks me if I want anything – tea, book, magazine. When I decline, she wants to know if I’ll be okay alone while she phones my parents and tracks down the doctor. Although I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts, I nod that I’ll be okay. For a little while.

  She nods her understanding, tells me that there are nurses just outside and a camera on the ceiling so I just have to wave if I need anything, and closes the door behind her – though it doesn’t appear to be locked. I don’t know what my rights are but I guess I’m free to go if I choose. Surely I can’t be held against my will. I do want to escape, though not out the door. I want to escape – from me, from the world, from my shattered mind and my screaming nerves, from what I almost did – so I curl up as small as I can in the chair and close my eyes. I drift in and out of consciousness but sleep, real, escapist sleep, eludes me.

  Outside the consulting room I can hear my parents talking to who I assume is the doctor. I don’t know how they got here so quickly, or even if they did get here quickly. Time has no meaning. I look down at my hand where I punched the tree. It’s a little swollen and it’s stiffened up a bit, but I don’t think it’s broken and I feel a sense of relief that it’s still connected to me and not lying on a railway sleeper somewhere, reaching out to me. I stretch out my fingers. They’re sore but they’ll be okay. People will think I’m mad anyway. Probably best if I don’t mention anything about beating up the local flora. They might just throw away the key. Hello padded cell.

  The door swings open. ‘Hey, Dec,’ says Mum gently. ‘What’s going on?’ Her soft touch tells me that she knows exactly what’s going on but is at a loss as to how to handle it (that dreaded pronoun again). It’s not every day your eldest child almost kills himself. She’s not trained to deal with it. Or to know what to say. Parenting manuals don’t really cover this.

  Mum, Dad and the doctor crowd into my little consulting room, stepping carefully on eggshells as they do.

  ‘Declan. This is Dr Hitchiner. He’s the psychiatrist at the hospital.’

  I look up and feel guilty about Mum’s smeared mascara.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I manage to choke out.

  She immediately drops down and hugs me, her body wracking with sobs. She tells me that everything is going to be okay. That she’ll protect me. That she’ll wrap herself around me. That she’ll quit her job if she has to.

  I tell her again that I’m sorry, but it sounds half-hearted, even though it’s not. I really am genuinely sorry for the hurt I’ve caused her. She doesn’t deserve this. What was I thinking?

  ‘You should bloody well be sorry.’ Dad joins the discussion in his own subtle way.

  Mum gets up and glares at Dad. ‘Shaun. There are times when we have to shut up and just listen.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs O’Malley. This isn’t really helping anyone.’

  Dad glares at the psychiatrist. ‘So we’re all supposed to pussyfoot around him now, are we?’

  ‘Piss off, Dad!’

  ‘That’s it!’ snaps Mum in what turns out to be the beginning of the end of their marriage. More guilt to shovel my way. ‘Get out!’

  Dad folds his arms. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Some things are just too important to leave to chance,’ continues Mum, ‘and I’m not risking this. So either get out, or I’ll throw you out.’

  Dad stalks out and Mum follows him. She closes the door behind them and basically tears him a new one.

  While Mum and Dad go at it, Dr Hitchiner attempts to ask me a few questions, perhaps hoping to draw my attention away from the divorce proceedings that have begun outside the door. I don’t really hear him as I’m too busy listening to Mum slicing and dicing Dad. When it comes to a verbal joust, an accountant isn’t going to be much of a match for a barrister at the best of times, but listening to their one-sided debate is kind of like watching Ironman taking on Mr Bean. It isn’t pretty. She tells him in no uncertain terms that he is to be either part of the solution, or else seek his accommodation needs elsewhere. Either way he isn’t allowed back in and no, she will not be taking a taxi home. He has to.

  He tells her that he doesn’t have any money, that he left his wallet at home. On hearing of Dad’s impoverished state, her sigh is so deep and long that for a moment I mistake it for the breeze. She must have had a fifty on her because when she comes back in it’s just her, or else Dad is hitchhiking home.

  I kind of feel sorry for Dad, in a way. He can’t tell me that he loves me. He’s never been able to. The only way he can deal with what’s happened is by getting angry. Getting angry with me. I realise that this is his way of telling me he loves me. That he’s angry at me for almost leaving him. How messed up is that?

  Mum and Dr Hitchiner take charge of my life. I drift into the background, content to let them. Dr Hitchiner will give me something that will take the edge off the anxiety. He recommends that I be admitted to the hospital’s emergency psych unit to get me through the next couple of days. After that he suggests a private hospital that will be better suited to my needs. Listening to them discussing my future, discussing various medications and facilities, I finally accept what should have been patently obvious from the beginning. I am sick. Desperately sick. And I need help.

  When you get a viral infection you can literally feel it entering your system. You start to feel off, get the shivers or the sweats, your temperature rises, you lose your appetite. Mental illness is different. It leaches into your mind like a thief in the night. You mightn’t realise you have it, even as you lay splattered beneath the wheels of a train, as you dangle from a rope in your bedroom, or as your severed arteries bleed what’s left of your existence into the bathtub. It is an insidious and silent killer. For the unlucky ones, it’s only when your body is being loaded into a drawer at the morgue that your family and friends backtrack and come to the agonising realisation that you were infected by the black dog. I’m one of the lucky ones. Now that it’s out of my blind spot, I see it for what it is. And it’s huge. It’s so big, in fact, that I can’t believ
e I didn’t see it creeping up on me. It took up residence the moment Aunt Mary disappeared into the mist and was let loose on the day I lost Lisa.

  The ward nurse shows me to my room while Mum and Dr Hitchiner talk about hospital options. There are four rooms on the ward, each containing only one bed. Clearly we crazies don’t like sharing. The other rooms are vacant at the moment, but the nurse assures me that it’s early and they are usually full come Sunday night – depression, and its close cousin anxiety, are obviously more active on weekends. This part of the hospital is all safety glass and stainless steel, its gleaming surfaces a stark reminder of the functionality of the place. The psych unit’s role is to keep us alive, get us through the first couple of nights, and move us on to a more long-term facility.

  I don’t know how Mum found the time, but somehow, following the phone call, she packed a little bag for me, which brings such a weight to my chest that I can barely breathe. The bag contains my PJs (boxers and T-shirt), toiletries, a few clothes and some books. My life cut down to the bare essentials. I think of an old man going into hospital for the final time, his life pared back to almost nothing, everything he’s earned and accumulated over the years counting for squat. He’s left with a toothbrush, a shaver, and an old robe as his life begins to ebb away. The only things he’ll need for the next plane of existence or oblivion are his memories.

  The nurse now goes through the bag that Mum lovingly packed while her mascara made a break for freedom and her world was crashing around her. She sorts through it with a fine-tooth comb as if somehow my mother might be complicit in my self-annihilation. I loathe myself for the pain I’ve injected into her heart, infected her soul with. The pain that came within a whisker of permanence. How could I have even contemplated it?

  The nurse sits me on the bed and removes my shoelaces. She does it as subtly and gently as possible but there’s an elephant in the room the entire time. When they’re under lock and key she shows me the bathroom, my Nikes flapping on my feet like flippers. The bathroom is more soulless stainless steel. The toilet doesn’t even have a seat. You’re obviously supposed to perch yourself on the thin metallic rim, or do what Lisa calls ‘hovering’, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. The opaque mirror is built into the wall and is either plastic or perspex. I guess they don’t want us either slashing our wrists or gazing too long at the shadows we’ve become.

  Back in the room I notice that the blind is sandwiched between two thick glass panes. You can adjust the daylight or the dark by turning a dial built into the frame but otherwise there’s no escape through either the window or the cord.

  Even though it’s still morning, the nurse helps me into bed and returns minutes later with the promised pills. I attempt to display an interest in my recovery by asking her what they are, but I couldn’t care less. Anything’s got to be better than this. She tells me that it’ll calm some of my anxiety and help me sleep.

  ‘It will take a little while,’ she says, ‘but you need to reboot. We all need to reboot sometimes.’ She smiles at me. ‘Not everyone gets a second chance. You’re one of the lucky ones. From this point on, each day is a bonus.’ She pats me on the leg. ‘Make the most of it.’

  I think she’s probably going beyond her job description by saying this but I know she’s right. I came so close to throwing my life away and so now I owe it to myself, my friends, my family, Lisa or the girls I’m yet to meet, and the children I’m yet to have, not just to survive but to prosper. But first I must heal. First I must reboot.

  I swallow my meds, already familiar with the language of the psych unit, and the effect that washes over me is almost immediate. It’s like gentle waves lapping at your feet on a blistering summer’s day. I want to plunge into the ocean and be carried away but Mum comes into the room to hug me goodbye and tell me that she’ll be back later and ask if there’s anything I need. I try to tell her that I don’t need anything, not even Lisa, but my speech is slurred, because of the drugs, because of the day.

  The pills gently unravel my twisted nerves so that I can breathe again. I try desperately to fight off the sleep it brings so that I can enjoy the effects a little longer. I reach for my phone to send Chris a text to tell him that I won’t be able to hang at the mall with him tonight. I see that it’s flashing. I pick it up and try to adjust my vision to the screen but the drugs aren’t helping my focus. I adjust my eyes enough to see that someone has sent me a text. I open it but I don’t recognise the number.

  Hey D. Hope you’re surviving.

  Mum took my phone.

  Email when I can. Love L XXX

  Through the haze of drug-induced semi-consciousness, I hardly even have time to process the idea that the text was from Lisa before sleep cradles me and carries me away.

  Here’s an interesting fact. You don’t exist. You can’t possibly. The author/mathematician Ali Binazir sat down and calculated the chances of your existence, sparing you the tedious necessity of having to do it yourself. At a mathematical level, your existence comes in at one in 102,685,000. Which is so close to zero it is zero.

  First of all there are the chances of your parents actually meeting. If your father was particularly sociable – and not too keen on sleep or actually doing any work once he got to the office – he could have met about two hundred million women before he turned forty, not including those who volunteer to appear as the studio audience in infomercials and should be automatically excluded from procreating. A slightly shy male, providing he doesn’t attend Star Trek conventions (which would disqualify him from procreating or at least meeting someone to procreate with) would meet around ten thousand women. Even allowing for these conservative odds, the chances of your mother being one of these women is about one in twenty thousand. Having then met, the chances of them getting along, hanging out, being attracted to each other, dating, marrying and staying together despite various incompatibilities and disputes is now one in two thousand. Overall, having come this far, the chances of your existing is one in forty million.

  Now let’s duck down to the biological level (your father’s happysack if you will) because it’s here that things start to blow out, so to speak. Your mother makes about one hundred thousand eggs in her lifetime. Mercifully she isn’t a chicken or she wouldn’t get a moment’s peace. Your father is even busier, producing around four trillion sperm during the years you could conceivably be conceived. So the chances of the one egg and the one sperm that made you actually bumping into each other in the darkened confines of your mother’s fallopian tubes are – wait for it – one in 400,000,000,000,000,000. That’s one in four hundred quadrillion, which is rather a lot. But that’s just your parents. You now need to track your unbroken lineage back four hundred million years, starting with your grandparents and ending up with some single-celled organisms floating around the primordial sludge. The chances of all that happening (your two parents, your four grand parents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents – keep going back four hundred million years …) come in at one in 1045,000. That’s a ten with forty-five thousand zeros after it, which is somewhere beyond mind-blowing. But then you have to remember at each step along the way, from grandparents down to the single-celled organisms – which are really not a lot of fun to be around though significantly more interesting than the studio audience of an infomercial – the same rule of the single egg and the single sperm meeting applies, which comes in at a jaw-dropping one in 102,640,000. That’s a ten with two million, six hundred and forty thousand zeros after it. So now we have to consider all that together. 102,640,000 × 1045,000 × 2000 × 20,000 puts your chances of existence at one in 102,685,000.

  All of which points to two patently obvious facts. Firstly, Ali Binazir has way too much time on his hands. Secondly, your existence is a miracle.

  And I abandoned the miracle of my own existence because I didn’t know how to ask for help.

  Time stopped the moment I entered the psych ward and so now I live in a sort of bubble. Disconnected fro
m the outside world. From reality. It’s as if none of this is real. It could be the drugs but I feel like I’m living a dream. Someone else’s dream.

  On my nurse’s advice, I’m sitting in the common courtyard outside my room giving my eyelids a suntan. I’ve never done this before and it feels okay. The warmth flowing through my eyes, through my body. This is what we depressives need, apparently: vitamin D. Vitamin D and not killing ourselves. It’s amazing how when you almost die it’s the simple things that matter. I don’t want to hoon through Surfers Paradise in a Bugatti Veyron, climb Mount Everest, or go to my year-twelve formal with a supermodel. I’ll take the sun on my face, a hazelnut latte (don’t tell Chris or Maaaate), a good book, a walk along the beach at sunset with Lisa’s fingers interlocked in mine. I had all of that and yet I still gave it up. Almost. Maybe because at that moment on the train platform, at my crossroads, I felt for sure that none of these would give me any pleasure ever again, and no amount of Bugatti Veyrons, Everest expeditions, or trysts with supermodels could come close to compensating for what I’d lost. Hope.

  I stare at Lisa’s message again:

  Hey D. Hope you’re surviving.

  Mum took my phone.

  Email when I can. Love L XXX

  She must have used her aunt’s phone. I can’t risk texting her back in case her aunt is anything like The Kraken.

  Lisa’s message positively drips with subtext. She hopes I’m surviving? Clearly she realised just how much her leaving was going to mess me up. Obviously more than I did. And of course The Kraken took Lisa’s phone. I should have known. Even though Lisa and I had bought her a new sim card just for us. That evil old scrote thinks there’s nothing wrong with beating seventeen shades of shit out of her own daughter, sending her to live overseas, and just generally hovering over her like a demented buzzard.

  Lisa’s banishment was ordered by The Kraken, and for the moment it’s easiest to blame my close call on the station and hospitalisation on her. If she’d stepped aside and let us be normal teenagers rather than the controlling, manipulative, racist old bag that she is, then none of this would have happened. Lisa and I would probably be sitting in Ciao Latte right now solving the world’s sociopolitical, ethno-religious problems over a chiller and giant cookie, instead of me being stuck in a psycho ward and her in a shoebox bedroom 4583 miles/7375.63 kilometres/3982.52 nautical miles away.