B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

  As I sank deeper and deeper into depression, I began to lose my grip on everything. I turned up late for work at the antique shop one day and when the boss got cross I just told him to ‘fuck off’. Although I knew he had been doing me a favour by giving me the job, he had also been using me as cheap labour and I didn’t like the fact that he was now judging me. I stamped upstairs to the café and found Lulu having her lunch.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she wanted to know when she saw the expression on my face.

  ‘I just had a bad night,’ I told her, slumping down in the next seat.

  She could see that I was down without asking any more questions and she insisted on taking me home with her that afternoon.

  ‘You’re not to go back to that terrible place,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a room here you can have.’

  I soon realized that there was only one bedroom and it turned out she was offering for me to have her bed and she would sleep on the sofa in the other room. At first I absolutely refused, but she wasn’t going to accept my protests. ‘I always end up sleeping in the sitting room anyway,’ she said, dismissing the generosity of her offer. ‘It makes no difference to me.’

  This time I gave in and agreed. There was something so comforting about being with her and talking to her. She had a friend called Peggy who lived opposite and the two of them had all the time in the world for me. Colin was a bit fed up that I wasn’t around and accused me of neglecting my mates, but I knew Lulu was right: that I wouldn’t be able to pull myself together as long as I was living in that area with him and Trisha and the rest of them. I needed a bit of time to think and work out what I should do next.

  My reading and writing had got pretty good by this stage, and I had discovered that I could draw as well. I would spend hours with pencil and paper, just doodling, trying to undo the muddle of thoughts in my head. I did a portrait for Peggy, which I was very pleased with.

  Part of my problem, I decided, was that I wasn’t mobile. I needed to have a car. I know now that I should have taken driving lessons and got a licence first, but I didn’t realize that was how it worked and I had learned the basics from driving the tractor on the farm. I saw a very old Ford Granada for sale on the side of the road for a couple of hundred pounds and I had just enough money in my pocket, so I bought it and Colin taught me a few rules of the road.

  Despite all Lulu and Peggy’s hard work in trying to distract me from my inner demons, I was still struggling with depression and I decided one Saturday morning to take the train back down to Cornwall to pay a visit to the family and see if that would raise my spirits. I didn’t think my driving was good enough for me to take the car, and I didn’t have enough money for the petrol anyway. I was still drinking much too much and for some reason I decided to get off the train at a random station before reaching Penzance, having consumed most of a bottle of vodka. There was probably no logical reason for choosing that particular stop, because nothing I did had much purpose or logic at that time; I was just drifting around in the world in a drunken fog trying to find where I was supposed to fit in, cursing God for making me so ugly and unattractive that nobody would love me, feeling sorry for myself.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Descent into Madness

  It was late at night and I remember ricocheting around the streets and eventually passing out beside a building somewhere; then there is a blank and the next thing I remember is being woken by the sound of a metal door clanging back. I opened one eye and saw a police sergeant looking down at me. With a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I gradually realized I was in a police cell without the faintest idea what I had done or how I had got there. I couldn’t even remember what town I was in until he told me.

  ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I moaned, clutching my throbbing head.

  ‘Got a hangover, have we?’ he teased. ‘Come on, we have to book you in now. You were so pissed when you came in we couldn’t do anything with you.’

  I gingerly lowered my feet to the floor. I didn’t want to make any fuss until I could remember what I had done and until my head had stopped hurting. Was I in big trouble? Had I put a brick through a shop window again? Or was it something even worse? Was I going to end up back in court or in prison? As I followed him meekly out of the cell, doubled up with the pain in my head, I tried in vain to force my brain to bring back the lost hours of the previous night.

  ‘Right,’ the policeman said once he was behind his desk and had his papers out in front of him. ‘We’re charging you with impersonating a police officer.’

  ‘What the fuck have I done?’

  I couldn’t believe it. Surely I would remember doing something like that?

  ‘You were banging on the door here, making a right row,’ he said, ‘demanding to be let in because you were a police officer.’

  I concentrated as hard as I could but nothing he was saying rang any bells. There was still only a huge blank space in my memory between passing out in the street and waking up in the cell.

  ‘We thought you were a trainee copper with a problem at first,’ he said. ‘Till we ran your prints through the system. You wasted a fair bit of our time before we realized who you really were.’

  ‘Honest to God,’ I said, ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  Fortunately I had finally learned enough to cooperate in situations like this rather than giving them a load of cheek. They must have been able to see the funny side of it and they ended up just giving me a caution for impersonating a police officer under the influence of alcohol.

  ‘But you’re asking me to admit to something I don’t even remember,’ I protested weakly when they asked me to agree to it.

  ‘It’s either that or we’ll have to charge you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  I just wanted to get back out into the fresh air and avoid having to go into any more cells. The paperwork was duly done and I was sent on my way.

  The first thing I needed as I stumbled back out into the street was to find a drink to try to clear my head and stop my hands from shaking. I bought a bottle of vodka and took a deep swig, immediately feeling better. One swig was never going to be enough, though, and I took several more. Within a short time I was back to feeling numb and my head had stopped throbbing, but even the alcohol couldn’t raise me out of the depression that was now gripping my insides like a vice. I felt almost physically sick with misery and loneliness.

  I was walking around the town in a daze, with no idea where I was, and found myself back up at the railway lines. I stood for a moment staring at them, trying to make sense of my thoughts and to bring my eyes into focus. I didn’t want to live any more and this seemed like an obvious way to put a stop to the pain. I decided I would just lie down on the track and wait for a train to come along and end it all. What was the point of going on? I was no use to anyone and no one loved me and I just kept getting into trouble. Every time something good happened to me, like Andy taking me on, I would mess it up by moving on. I was never going to find whatever it was that I was searching for and it would only be a matter of time before I found myself back in prison, and I didn’t want to live a life like that.

  Because it was Sunday everything was pretty quiet as I settled myself down on the track to wait for the next train.

  ‘Oi, you!’ A loud, angry voice penetrated my thoughts. ‘Get off the track!’

  I looked up and saw a man in uniform coming out of a signal box a few yards away. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn’t even noticed the signal box was there.

  ‘Fuck off and leave me alone,’ I slurred.

  ‘Come on, lad, move it.’

  He took a firm hold of my arm and tried to pull me off, so I took a wild swing at him with my bottle.

  ‘Right,’ he jumped back. ‘I’m calling the police. This is British Rail property. You’re trespassing. They’ll get you off.’

  I didn’t care who he called because I assumed I would be dead by the time they arri
ved. I was too drunk to even work out that he would have changed the signals to stop any trains coming until he had got me off the track. Through the blur of vodka I saw the police coming a few minutes later. This wasn’t what I wanted. This could only lead to me being locked into another cell.

  ‘Fuck off!’ I screamed at them. ‘Leave me alone.’

  I pulled myself groggily to my feet, smashing the now empty bottle on the line and waving the jagged end at them as a weapon in my left hand as I swayed back and forth. They immediately backed off, realizing that I was capable of causing them some serious injury if they tried to rush me.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, lad,’ one of them said. ‘Drop the bottle so we can talk.’

  They started to move towards me, very slowly, as if they were trying to creep up on a wild animal.

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ I screamed, ‘or I swear I’ll stab myself.’

  They took no notice and took another step closer, so I plunged the broken glass into the right-hand side of my chest.

  ‘Fuck, he’s done it,’ one of them shouted. I looked down and there was blood gushing everywhere, but I couldn’t feel any pain. It was almost as if it was happening to someone else.

  ‘I’ll do it again if you come near me,’ I said, staggering on my feet, willing myself to stay upright. I was just sober enough to know that if I intended to kill myself I had done it on the wrong side and I needed to change hands if I wanted to reach my heart. I tried to take the bottle in my right hand.

  The police didn’t hang back this time: they launched themselves at full speed. One of them grabbed my hand and threw me to the floor. The blood was now pumping out of me in a fountain, drenching all of us as we struggled on the ground. I could hear them shouting, but it was starting to sound as if they were a long way away.

  ‘Get an ambulance!’

  They were trying to handcuff me to stop me punching and fighting at the same time as trying to staunch the blood and keep my heart going. I was having trouble breathing, having pierced one of my lungs. I could actually hear air escaping from the hole. After a few moments of struggling to get free of the police, I slid towards unconsciousness, even though they were slapping my face to try to keep me with them until the ambulance got there. I was vaguely aware of the sound of sirens. The traffic on the railway bridge had to be stopped so that they could get as close as possible. I was aware of the paramedics coming down on to the track and trying to stop the blood, and then I let go and drifted away.

  The next time I woke up I was in an unfamiliar room again, for the second time that day. I was in a bed and I was aware of machinery all around. I tried to sit up and couldn’t understand why I was unable to. It took a few seconds to work out that my wrists had been strapped to the sides of the bed. I soon realized it was a hospital room, not a cell, but I was a prisoner just the same, tied up and unable to resist if anyone wanted to do anything to me. A thousand old fears came rushing to the surface, but as I tried to push against the straps and sit up, a massive wave of pain shot through my chest, knocking me back down on to the pillow gasping for breath.

  When I was able to muster the strength, I looked down again and saw there was a tube going into my lung. There were stitches all round the wound in my chest and there was blood coming out into a bottle. I later discovered they were trying to drain the lung of blood so that they could re-inflate it. As I took in more of my surroundings, I realized I had a drip going into my arm and I was on a heart monitor as well. There was what looked to me like yellow dye painted on my skin. A nurse came into the room and noticed I was awake.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Undo my hands, please.’

  ‘I can’t do that, darling.’

  ‘Please,’ I begged, desperate to be able to move around a little and not to feel so trapped.

  ‘I just can’t, not until we can be sure you won’t do yourself any more harm. Is there anyone I can call for you, to let them know where you are?’

  ‘No.’

  There was no one to call. The only people who might have cared would have been Sue and her family, or Lulu, and I didn’t want to bother any of them. I wasn’t their responsibility and I didn’t want any of them to see me like this. A doctor came in and introduced himself, although he didn’t tell me at the time that he was a psychiatrist.

  ‘How are you feeling mentally?’ he asked.

  ‘How the fuck do you think I’m feeling mentally?’ I spat. ‘I’ve got my hands tied and I can’t move.’

  ‘That’s for your own safety. When your treatment is finished here we will be transferring you to the local psychiatric unit. You are being sectioned under the Mental Health Act for a twenty-eight day period, so that we can assess you.’

  It sounded a lot like another prison sentence to me.

  Once he had gone, the nurse came back in and I pleaded again for her to release my hands.

  ‘If I do that, you have got to promise to behave,’ she said, ‘because if you do something to yourself I will be to blame and it will cost me my job.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, after a moment’s thought. ‘That’s fair enough.’

  She undid me and I rubbed my wrists.

  ‘I hate those bastards,’ I said, nodding towards the doctors outside. ‘They’re saying I’m mad. I’m not mad.’

  ‘Darling,’ she said with a sweet smile, ‘you stabbed yourself with a broken bottle.’

  ‘It was the drink,’ I said, although I could see her point, ‘not me.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be getting any of that in here.’

  Cutting out the alcohol so suddenly was a terrible shock to my body, even with the medication they gave me to try to help, leaving me shaking and sweating and drifting in and out of consciousness over the following days. I hadn’t realized how badly addicted I had become. Once I was through that, and had had the tube removed from my lung and the hole sewn up, they were ready to move me to the psychiatric hospital. Two enormous psychiatric nurses turned up to make sure I got there and didn’t try to do a runner on the way. I could see they were not the sort of men that I would want to piss off and so I behaved myself and they were both really nice to me as a result. I had no idea what this place they were escorting me to was going to be like, but I didn’t feel optimistic.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bids for Freedom

  The other patients in the psychiatric unit were a real mixture of ages and types. I had been expecting the worst when I heard that was where they were taking me. In fact everyone else seemed pretty friendly, and no one tried to bully me or be nasty, but from the moment I walked through the door I was trying to work out how I was going to escape.

  I noticed that none of the windows opened more than a few inches and there were two sets of locked doors to get through, with two big male nurses standing guard at all times. There were high fences all round the perimeter of the grounds and cameras everywhere. I could see it was going to be a challenge.

  A doctor came to check up on my wound as soon as I was admitted and he seemed quite pleased by its progress.

  ‘Can I go then?’ I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he smiled. ‘We need to keep you here for a while to try to work out what is wrong with you.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘That is a bit debatable, isn’t it, Joe? You plunged a piece of broken glass into your chest and could easily have killed yourself. And if the police hadn’t stopped you, you would have done it again into your heart.’ He nodded towards the scars on my wrists. ‘And that’s another thing we need to talk about, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you? It’s my body. I can do what I like to it.’

  ‘It is our business because we don’t want you to die.’

  I heard what he was saying, but I still didn’t get it. I still thought it was up to me what I did to myself.

  ‘You have asthma too, don�
�t you?’ he continued.

  I nodded.

  ‘Fancy stabbing yourself in the lung if you have asthma,’ he joked. ‘That was a bit silly, wasn’t it?’

  I couldn’t really argue with that. The nastier I was with him the pleasanter he became, so I gave up after a bit. In time I came to realize that the doctors were all able to be charming and relaxed with us because it was the nurses who had to act as their enforcers. He told me I was going to be on suicide watch, which meant one of the nurses had to follow me absolutely everywhere I went, including the toilet. Every time I left a room he was right behind me, never taking his eyes off me. It was really winding me up and making me angry and uncooperative.

  Although I wasn’t much of a smoker myself, I realized that the other patients were congregating in the smoking room, so I spent most of my time in there, trying to stave off the boredom of having absolutely nothing to do for most of the day. I don’t know what I was expecting the other patients to be like, but I was surprised by what a cross section they were. There were quite a few anorexics, both boys and girls, and there were some elderly people as well. There was one girl, Rebecca, who had the most incredible mood swings I have ever seen. One moment she would be totally silent and withdrawn, and the next she would be bouncing about all over the place like a kangaroo, literally jumping up and down and racing round the room. There was a little old lady called Eileen, who always had a white handbag clutched to her and was convinced that the Germans were invading.

  ‘The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming. We must prepare ourselves. We need to get ready.’

  There was an old guy called Fred, who was always puffing on a cigarette and had virtually no short-term memory at all. As well as smoking them himself, he would give cigarettes to anyone who asked and then when he ran out he would swear to the nurses that he had been robbed. Holly was a timid little teenage self-harmer who was too scared to even make eye contact. All she ever said was ‘I’m sorry’, which, sweet as she was, didn’t half get on your nerves after a few hours. God knows what had been done to her in the past to make her so anxious to apologize all the time.