“Damon, I’m here!” I said, embarrassed.
“It’s okay, mate,” Frank said, whether to me or to Damon I wasn’t sure, “we’ll soon be there.”
Damon seemed not to have heard me. “How many cylinders is this car?” he asked the driver in the same ingenuous voice.
“Four. It’s amazing what the Japs can do with four cylinders these days.”
“It’s not as fast as my Mazda. That’s four too!”
“Yeah, you’re right. The Japs are getting the hang of sports cars. That Mazda RX7, it can move all right. Great looking car too!” the driver added.
“Much better than this one!"Damon replied.
The driver laughed in the darkness, “You’re right. These are just cheap transport, nuthin’ more.”
“Not so bloody cheap either!” Frank said.
At the sound of Frank’s voice Damon lapsed into silence. The car slowed suddenly and we drove through an open gateway set in a high wall and into a huge, inner courtyard, its three sides composed of a sandstone building a couple of storeys high. Except for a dim light at each corner and one over a doorway on the far side, directly opposite the gate we’d entered, the courtyard was in blackness, the illumination only managing to throw pools of triangular light into each corner and light the doorway in the centre. Though the words “Insane Asylum” are old-fashioned, they were what came immediately to my mind. This was exactly how such a place would look. We had arrived at Ward 4. No place in any psychiatric institution in Australia is quite like Rozelle’s Ward 4. It has the big reputation for being tough.
Frank rang a buzzer and we waited and, after what seemed like a couple of minutes, the door was opened and two men stood facing us, one wearing a nurse’s uniform and the other, another very big man, dressed like Frank in a white jacket. Frank didn’t appear to know them and handed over the piece of paper the doctor had given him. “This is Damon Courtenay,” he turned to face me, “and his father.”
“May I come in with Damon?” I asked the male nurse.
“Sure,” he said, smiling, “for a few minutes anyway.” He glanced at his watch, “It’s late, almost midnight, the ward is asleep.”
“Righto, we’ll be off then, Mr Courtenay,” Frank said.
“Thanks, Frank.” I turned to Hans, “Thanks, Hans.” I watched momentarily as they returned to the car and I wondered, briefly, how I would find my way back to the admission centre.
“Come with me, Damon,” the nurse said and indicating the strait-jacket smiled, “We’ll take that thing off when we get upstairs.” He raised his eyebrows in disapproval. “I’m sure you don’t need it. It’s part of the procedure, that’s all.” It was a clever introduction to their relationship; he was trying to assess Damon’s state of mind, while at the same time initiating the seemingly light-hearted jollying, which we were to learn was very much a part of keeping the tension down among the psychiatric patients.
Damon hadn’t said a word since he’d stepped from the car and now he didn’t react to the reassuring tone. The nurse seemed not to expect a reaction and turned and began to climb a set of narrow and rather steep cement stairs which led directly upward and to the right of the door. The big orderly nudged Damon, indicating that he should follow next and, as Damon did so, he stepped behind him so that Damon was positioned between the two men. Damon’s bad leg normally made it difficult for him to climb stairs; now, in the strait-jacket, unable to place his hand against the wall to steady himself, it made it more so and the orderly supported him by holding him under both elbows from behind and urging him up with encouraging grunts.
These are not bad men, I thought. Damon’s going to be okay.
At the top of the stairs, which I seem to remember turned sharply left at one stage, we entered a long corridor lit from the ceiling by a series of naked bulbs set into those old-fashioned light shades we used to call Chinese coolie hats when I was a child. They threw sufficient light to light the corridor quite well, while at the same time making it seem just short of being well lit. The polished rubber flooring kicked back a strip of dull light down the centre of the corridor and the whole feeling was very old-fashioned and institutional. I can’t remember clearly but, if you told me the walls were apple green and the ceilings cream, I would probably agree. The feeling, anyway, was depressing and the squeak of our feet on the rubber floor added to the feeling of loneliness and isolation from ordinary outside things.
We passed through a set of double doors into what seemed like a small hall with a central space and a number of doors, about four on either side, which I immediately realised were cells not much wider than the doors themselves. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors and, in one corner, a glass office with a small desk and a swivel chair and also a couple of upright chairs. The desk was pretty untidy, covered with papers, as though it belonged to several people, none of whom was responsible for its upkeep. The phone rang and the nurse picked it up. “Yes, he’s arrived. Yes.” He seemed to be listening. “Yes, okay, I understand.” While he was on the phone, the orderly asked us to sit down and he immediately started to untie Damon’s strait-jacket, his strong hands pulling at the ties as though they were nothing.
The nurse put down the receiver and, turning to the swivel chair at the desk, he spun it so that the back rest faced Damon, then he sat astride the chair with his elbows leaning on the back rest. His attitude was deliberately casual and he waited until the orderly had removed the strait-jacket and Damon’s hands were free. Damon shook his arms momentarily, then crossed them and started to rub the circulation back into both his upper arms.
“I’m Sister Johnson,” the nurse said, using the term now without gender in Australian hospitals, the title merely denoting a nurse of senior status. “This is Bruce,” he added, not following with Bruce’s surname. He extended his hand to Damon, who ignored it and continued massaging his arms. Sister Johnson hesitated fractionally before turning the swivel chair slightly and extending his hand to me.
I felt immediately more confident. In our long experience of hospitals the nursing sisters were, with few exceptions, salt of the earth types much more important than the doctors, generally very professional in their care and certainly truly caring of the patients’ welfare.
“Hello, sister,” I said, extending my hand and shaking his; turning, I did the same to Bruce, “Hello, Bruce.” Bruce had placed the strait-jacket over his right arm and now he hurriedly changed it over to his left and extended his huge hand. If anything he was even bigger than either Frank or Hans.
“He’ll be okay,” he said nodding down at Damon.
Damon still hadn’t spoken and I was beginning to worry that he was building up a head of steam. Damon was a naturally polite person and it would normally have been impossible for him to ignore a greeting of this kind.
Sister Johnson swung the swivel chair back again to face Damon. “We’re going to give you something to help you to sleep,” he said quietly.
“What?” Damon scowled, looking up at Sister Johnson.
“Mellaril. I admit it’s a strong sedative, but it will help you.”
“You mean it will help you,” Damon shot back.
“Yes, that too,” Sister Johnson admitted readily.
“Is that what they tried to give me before?”
Sister Johnson smiled, “You guessed what that phone call was all about. No flies on you, Damon.” He paused, then added in a quiet voice, “Yes, that and one or two other things, but we’ll keep it strictly to the Mel-laril, okay?”
“I don’t want any pills!” Damon protested.
“Please, Damon, do it for me?” Bruce said unexpectedly.
We were both taken by surprise and Damon and I looked up at the big man, “I’ve had a shit of a day. I don’t want to be up with you all night,” Bruce said, shrugging his broad shoulders and smiling. “I got pissed Christmas Day, I feel bloody terrible.”
It was ingenious and brilliantly timed and I realised that the two men worked in t
andem. Later, we would come to know Ward 4 as an isolated and dangerous place, an atmosphere of enormous tension and frenetic movement, with a feeling of constant and overwhelming crisis. During the day it was filled with screams, sudden frantic yells and violent outbreaks. The orderlies, such as Bruce, were all young and strong and seemed impervious to tension. They seemed only to be present when needed, though they were in truth constantly around. They never raised their voices and used a technique of jollying and good humour to contain the patients and, in a curious way, to look after the inmates’ dignity, no matter how crazy a patient appeared at the time. It would be easy to make these men seem brutal, but it would be quite unfair – they did a remarkable job under the circumstances. Though this didn’t make Ward 4 any less a nightmare.
Now Damon looked up at the big orderly, his eyes suddenly cunning, “What if I don’t take this Mellaril?” he asked.
Sister Johnson laughed, taking the pressure off Bruce. “Then we’d have to give you an injection which we’d prefer not to do.”
Damon grinned, his face again showing cunning. “You can’t do that! I’m a haemophiliac, it will make me bleed!” It was the same small boy’s voice he’d used in the car coming over.
Sister Johnson looked quickly up at me and I nodded my head, confirming.
“My dad’s going to report you all to the Prime Minister!” Damon added, looking smug. “I can make a lot of trouble for you.”
“Please don’t, I’ve had a shit of a day, Damon. You’re not going to make me sit up with you all night just because you don’t want to take a little pill are you? Know any good jokes?” Bruce said, grinning down at Damon.
“Only if you let me have a cigarette! I’ll only take the Mellaril if you let me have a cigarette.”
I sighed inwardly. The two men had neatly averted another crisis.
Sister Johnson smiled, shaking his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Damon, there’s no smoking in this ward. We would, Bruce and me, but we can’t, it’s strictly no smoking, mate.”
Damon’s mood swing was so sudden it took us all completely by surprise.
“I want a fucking cigarette! That’s all I want, a fucking cigarette! You can’t stop me, you fucking bastards, you can’t stop me. I WANT A CIGARETTE!” He screamed this at the top of his voice and then started to wail, “I-WANT-A-FUCKING-CIGARETTE!” He was on his feet looking around for the door of the office, where Bruce stood calmly, his arms folded.
“Now mate, you can have a smoko in the morning, no cigarette tonight.”
Damon ran at him, his fists flailing the air. “ALL I WANT IS A CIGARETTE! WHY CAN’T I HAVE A CIGARETTE?”
The walls seemed to come alive and people began to chant, “I want a cigarette! I want a cigarette!” The chant seemed to come from everywhere, “I want a cigarette! I want a cigarette!” The chanting continued and someone started to scream. Then a voice seemed to rise above the rest, “GIVE HIM A FUCKING CIGARETTE, YOU BASTARDS!” it shouted through the walls, “HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO SLEEP?”
I looked around startled and realised that the doors I’d passed contained patients and that the wall beyond the office must hold a ward of some sort because most of the noise was coming from that direction.
“Jesus!” Sister Johnson said. He shot from the chair and reached over the desk to remove a key from a rack on the wall, then he moved towards Bruce who backed out of the door, taking Damon in a bear hug against his chest, his legs off the ground. Sister Johnson brushed hurriedly past them and crossed the corridor. He stopped two doors down from the small office and quickly opened up.
I’d followed them both out, more as a reaction than with any sense of purpose. Panic-stricken by Damon’s unexpected outburst I shouted, “STOP IT, DAMON! BLOODY STOP IT!” I’d momentarily lost all sense of my son’s predicament, I only wanted him to stop shouting. To stop using foul language. I wanted it all to stop, to go away, to never have happened in the first place! I was burning with shame at his behaviour.
Damon was kicking his legs in the air, struggling frantically, still yelling, “I want a fucking cigarette!” Voices from elsewhere continued chanting and banging on the walls and doors. Damon’s struggle was pointless. Bruce held him in his enormous hug, the expression on the orderly’s face unchanged; he was completely in control. He glanced at me and winked. The wink was obscene coming at that moment, but it had the instant effect of stopping me in my tracks and silencing me. I suddenly felt tremendously, overpoweringly, ashamed of myself. I thought I would break down, my knees cave in on the spot, then I had the impulse to turn and run. I began to shake and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to control my bladder.
Sister Johnson turned the door knob and the door swung open to reveal the tiny lighted cell. It seemed to contain only a low bed made up army style, the blankets pulled tight. Bruce carried Damon across the corridor, moving backwards so that Damon couldn’t try to prevent them entering the cell by placing his feet on either side of the door.
Sister Johnson held the door, which opened outwards. Bruce stopped just short of the door and seemed to lift Damon higher and then toss him into the air, flipping him around at the same time, much as a child might a rag doll, so that when he caught him again, he was holding him horizontally in his arms, like a small, indignant child carried in his father’s arms. He moved through the door quickly and, bending down low, placed Damon on the bed.
All this seemed to be happening quite naturally and without haste, as though Damon wasn’t sobbing and struggling, the task merely routine. I now realise that young men such as Bruce are there because of their enormous strength and the fact that they are impervious to stress, that an incident such as this is a daily, perhaps an hourly, routine for them. Bruce was simply doing his job very well without exercising the luxury of an oversensitive imagination. He wasn’t making judgments but, like any other job, was just getting through his shift. Bruce stepped backwards out of the tiny room and Sister Johnson closed the cell door immediately, locking it. I could hear Damon sobbing violently, “All I want is a cigarette. Please!” He sounded like a heartbroken child.
I was standing helpless in the centre of the corridor. This time Damon was truly off my hands for the holidays. I felt suddenly terribly heartsick, so overcome that I started to weep deep down where no sound comes from, where no tears exist at all, just a terrible ache that seems as though it is going to break through your chest leaving a hole the size of a football. All around me the walls were chanting, “I want a cigarette! I want a fucking cigarette!” Somewhere a woman started to wail, a baying, keening sound like a trapped animal.
I felt Sister Johnson’s hand on my shoulder and his voice close to my ear, “I’m sorry, Mr Courtenay, but you can’t stay. You have to go now.” He had his hand hard against my back and was moving me down the corridor, along the passageway with the Chinese coolie hat lights. I realised vaguely that Bruce was also at my side, gripping me by the elbow and that we were going down the stairs. Bruce pushed forward as we approached the bottom of the stairs and started to unlatch the door, a fairly lengthy business of locks and chains. It swung open suddenly allowing a puff of cool air into the stairwell from the dark courtyard beyond.
“You can come and see him tomorrow. Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.” Sister Johnson patted me lightly on the back. “He’ll be okay. You’ll see.” His voice was firm and I was suddenly conscious that they were making me leave. The sound of the patients chanting upstairs could no longer be heard.
“I can’t leave him, not now! Not while he’s like that!” I stupidly pointed in an upward direction to the top of the stairs, panic gripping me again.
“Tomorrow, Mr Courtenay. You can come back tomorrow,” Bruce said, pushing me firmly and not too gently through the door and quickly pulling it shut again. I heard him latching it, the scratching of chain on steel and then the sound of their footsteps hurrying back up the cement stairs.
I stood outside in the courtyard; above me the midnight stars shone –
not many, Rozelle is too close to the city lights for the stars to burn through. There were only a few, a few mangy stars in a dark heaven in which I was certain no God lived whom I knew or cared about.
Twenty-nine
Damon Takes Charge of the Mad House.
I arrived at Ward 4 around mid morning the following day, bringing with me five bottles of AHF and Damon’s transfusion gear. I was certain he would be in agony, in a really bad way from the hammering he had taken at the hands of the police. To my surprise, he had only one small bleed in his thumb and while his shoulder, where they’d forced his arm up behind his back, was stiff the flesh around it wasn’t hot to the touch, as it would have been if there had been a severe bleed in progress.
The bleeds, which had occurred during the five weeks since he’d become manic, were all relatively small ones and none of them had transpired from the deliberate and often severe knocks he’d taken. The mind is a truly strange mechanism but, since his childhood, we’d known that bleed followed bump as surely as night followed day. Now Damon’s bleeding pattern had mysteriously changed; he’d become largely impervious to the big bumps and severe battering which should have put him into hospital, while the regular little spontaneous bleeds, the “domestic bleeds", thumbs, ankle, wrist, big toe, the odd finger, continued as ever before. Just why and how his mania should prevent the more serious bleeding occurrences remains a huge and still unresolved puzzlement.
This time I wasn’t taken upstairs to Ward 4, but to what seemed to be a recreational centre where some fifteen or so patients, all fully dressed, though some rather strangely so, sat around or paced up and down or stared vacantly at a television set with the sound turned down too low for anyone to hear easily.
The people in the room all seemed to be alone; no patient seemed aware of the others; even though some sat in groups, they were not communicating with each other. It was as though they’d been placed in position, props in a stage setting who had been told not to move a muscle or blink an eye until further directed.
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