A Justifiable Madness

by AB Morgan

  Mark was pulling out clothes from the bagful that Lewis had provided and nodding appreciatively at the quality. ‘Oh these are nice,’ he said as he found a brand new pair of Levi jeans. ‘You even bought the right size, you clever bugger.’

  Lewis steered Mark back to the business in hand. He let Mark know that he had received a phone call back from Richard Huntley on Friday, quite some time after Mark had seen him on the ward for the first time.

  ‘It was fairly late on in the evening when he called me,’ said Lewis, ‘but I’m glad he phoned. I like the man. He tells me he has your full consent to discuss your detention, your appeal, your treatment, and everything in fact, with me. You put this in writing for him I take it?’

  ‘Yes. Spot on. I needed him to be able to tell you everything.’ Mark was having a good rummage through the bag of most-welcome gifts from Lewis.

  ‘It was a good plan, because that man seems to have stumbled upon a possible illegal detention in your case, and he was planning to check out the facts before challenging this through the Mental Health Act Commission. I agreed to discuss with you how we should best proceed. My advice would be that we let Richard Huntley pursue this as he suggests. It will make a great story for you, and the research team will be thrilled.

  ‘If that’s okay with you, I’ll catch up with Richard on Monday or Tuesday, and let’s see how we go with your next ward round. It would be good if you can be off this Section of yours either way. We can still expose the illegal detention of course.’

  ‘I’m more worried that nasty piece of work, Dr Sharman, will put me in a position where I have to take medication, like it or not,’ Mark said. He then proceeded to inform Lewis about what he had witnessed, and about the rumours amongst the patients that Dr Sharman was the subject of scandal. Mark hinted that Lewis could perhaps arrange to set the research team a task to investigate this angle.

  ‘I’ll have one hell of a story then,’ Mark announced. ‘Detained illegally by a psychiatrist who was involved in scandal. Gold dust. By the way, how are the others getting on? Did they all get admitted? Is there anyone else, apart from me, under a Section?’

  Lewis had tales to tell in respect of Mark’s journalist colleagues and the researchers who had agreed to take part in the experiment.

  Linda, the heavy smoking battle-axe gossip columnist, had done a fine job of ensuring that she was picked up by the police, dressed as the Queen in full regalia and waving to her subjects. She was taken to the local police station and thence to a psychiatric hospital in Shropshire. Her antics had made the local papers. She had demanded that passers-by should curtsey and kneel before her. ‘She knighted one or two, right there in the street with the traffic stopped and jams backing up for a good mile or two,’ Lewis chortled.

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ Mark said. ‘I scoured the local papers, and there was not a single mention of any naked Messiah on the station in any of them. No CCTV pictures, nothing, and let me tell you, I put on one hell of a performance.’ Mark pouted childishly.

  Lewis, like any good parent, ignored him and continued with the update. The reports coming in were that Linda had taken to being in an acute psychiatric ward like a duck to water. Seemingly, she had sounded cheerful on the phone when she spoke to John Starkey, her editor at the Daily Albion, who was worried at first. ‘Cheerful’ is not a word used to describe Linda, not by anyone, and John Starkey thought she had finally cracked. But then it came to light that she had accepted Lorazepam from the nurses and loved the effect so much, that she was angling to get hold of at least one tablet on a daily basis.

  Lewis had to explain to Mark that Lorazepam was, ‘a benzodiazepine, addictive stuff that is, a bit like Valium. It makes you relaxed and carefree.’

  Mark struggled to imagine this, and grinned at the disturbingly unfamiliar thought of a cheerful, relaxed, and carefree Linda. ‘Blimey.’

  According to Lewis she had ‘plenty of fags with her’ and had even been out to the local pub with a couple of the other patients. She was heading rapidly for discharge home. The reports he received were second-hand ‘via Prof Hugo at the Institute.’ The arrangement was that Prof Hugo, Lewis, and John Starkey had divided the intrepid experimenters up between them and were keeping an eye on a specific number each. If possible, they were pretending to be visitors to get face-to-face access in order to double-check on everyone’s welfare, apart from that of Jock Mackenzie, the Scottish journalist.

  ‘Jock made a right fool of himself,’ Lewis disclosed, laughing as he told Mark the sad tale of Jock, who had insisted on carrying out his Monty Python-inspired admission attempt. He had entered a large indoor market in Derby dressed as a medieval knight of old, saying ‘Nee’ loudly, and galloping along using two coconut shells for the sound effects. This was exactly as he had described a few weeks previously in the offices of The Daily Albion. However, it turned out that the good people of Derby were so amused by him, they assumed he was a professional entertainer, a clown, or collecting for charity. An elderly couple had thrown money at him, as well as applauding. The police didn’t bother to show up because not one soul reported anything untoward, and Jock eventually made his way to the hotel where he had stayed the previous night. He checked back in, exhausted by his own efforts.

  Mark found this hilarious. Once he had stopped laughing, he then asked about Andy the researcher with the genius idea. ‘The one who planned to pretend he thought he had microchips implanted in his ears and was being monitored by the KGB,’ he reminded Lewis.

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s in. Under a Section 2 for the first couple of days, but as he was so well behaved, the consultant there took the decision to revoke his Section, and he’s an informal patient now. I’m not sure they fell for the story that he had found an insect in his ear, because he’s been given a diagnosis. Something along the lines of an acute and transient psychotic episode, I think. They’ve prescribed medication too, I’m sure.’ That diagnosis sounded complicated to Mark.

  ‘Charlie. What about my mate Charlie?’ Mark asked, genuinely concerned as to how well his friend was coping with being cooped up and undercover.

  ‘Oh, he did a great job!’ reported Lewis. ‘His jump-off-a-bridge idea worked a treat, but the poor man is way up in Newcastle and struggling with the accent I reckon. The other patients call him “the cockney”, and despite this, he’s well liked by the girls. But I’m not sure even he can handle those Northern lasses. He’s already been warned that the hospital is not the place for physical relationships.’

  Mark gave Lewis a querying look.

  ‘He was caught shagging in the toilets.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘’fraid so. A mixed-sex ward for Charlie may be a double-edged sword. While there are no discharge plans yet, he may get himself thrown out if he keeps getting caught in compromising positions. Anyway, he spoke to John too, and seems okay in himself, although he was not sleeping well, so he has joined Linda in the Lorazepam Appreciation Society. Are you on anything?’

  ‘No. I’m supposed to be taking Haloperidol ten milligrams twice a day, but I have refined the knack of poking it into my cheek with my tongue and I simply palm it and flush it down the loo much later on. The nurses are fooled by my tiredness, I’m knackered most of the time anyway, but my fellow patients are not buying it. They know, because I can’t produce the other side effects they have. The restlessness, I can’t keep it up. I forget. I can’t do the stiffness either.

  ‘Most of them don’t think I should be in here, they know that I’m a fraud, an interloper, an imposter. Apparently it works in the same way that gay men can tell another gay man. They simply know I’m not mentally ill. As the saying goes in here, it takes a mad man to know a mad man.’

  ‘I think they’re right,’ Lewis confirmed. ‘Personally, I think you’re all mad for agreeing to this little jaunt. You do realise we’re going to have a hell of a job getting you out of here within two weeks, don’t you?’

  ‘Mmmmm. I do.’

&n
bsp; 25

  An Unpleasant Smell

  Not dwelling on his own incarceration, Mark wanted to know from Lewis about the rest of the research, and how many fellow experimenters were in hospital in total. Most importantly, he was keen to find out if anyone had been discharged yet. He wanted to be the first one to get his stories into print.

  ‘The rest are all in, apart from Jock. We had a bit of a surprise in one case, although we should have taken account of the possibility. One of the young researchers, India? Indira? Is that her name? Yes, I think that’s right … she had no trouble in getting herself admitted, but there was no bed in her target hospital. So she’s ended up miles away, and would you believe in her hometown! So far, no one she knows has seen her or recognised her, but it’s a bit touch and go. None of the experimenters has been discharged yet. What we are finding though, is that the hospitals are quite different from each other, judging from the reports coming in, so it’s luck of the draw as to what experiences people will contribute to the wider picture. How are you coping with being here? It’s a bit drab looking, isn’t it?’

  Lewis scanned around at the plain painted walls of the room as if to make a point. ‘To be frank, I’m none too impressed by the green walls and green lino everywhere. And that smell of stale smoke adds a special tinge of neglect to the overall ambience of the place, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes it’s a bit drab, but the nurses and most of the other patients are an interesting bunch of people,’ Mark replied. ‘I can’t complain about the way they have treated me on the whole, and they are good at what they do, the nurses. A few are a bit half-hearted, and a number of the night staff enjoy a good sleep, I have to say. Mind you, it depends which of the staff nurses are on duty. Most are great … caring and thorough, and they check that everyone is safe and sound.

  ‘And, I have a named nurse,’ Mark said, sounding really proud of the fact. ‘I had no idea what one was when I first arrived, but she seems to take responsibility for what happens while I’m here.

  ‘You know, Lewis, until now, I hadn’t given this enough thought, but these patients in here, are incredibly vulnerable. We, the patients that is, rely on the nurses to do the right thing to help us, to guide us through the routines, the treatments, getting access to clothing, food, telephoning the outside world, and I suspect they take inventive steps to lessen the impact of the treatments.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Mark went on a bit of a rant. ‘Lewis, I have to tell you, there is a dictatorship at play here. A drug dictatorship.’ Mark explained. ‘Dr Sharman, the consultant, is a raving psychopath. He’s a nasty, vindictive, arrogant arse. The patients are petrified of what he’ll do next. That includes me. Can they go home? Can they see their families? Can they go out? What medication will he make them take?

  ‘The patients have no choice, because those choices have been taken away from them. We don’t have much of our dignity preserved in here. Would you fancy having to sleep in a dormitory or having someone hand you your razor, or check up on you in the bath, or deciding if you can or cannot leave the building? Bloody degrading. Shocking, Lewis, demeaning. You know, I’ve been toying with the idea of taking one of those Haloperidol tablets, so that I can actually experience what real patients are having to go through.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a wise move, sunshine.’

  ‘Yeah, well. What strikes me is that most of the patients know that they need to take medication of one sort or another, simply because they get ill again if they don’t. They plainly don’t want to take the cheap zombie shit ones Dr Giles Sharman is insisting they have. Oh sorry, Lewis! What a prat I am. I realise that you know this. I forgot, you used to be a psychiatric nurse.’

  ‘That’s okay. It’s good to hear your views. It’s why you are on this trip, after all.’ Lewis pulled out a pad and pen. ‘I need to write that consultant’s name down and get Prof Hugo’s researchers on to seeking out his background information. Having said that, I may be able to find out much faster than anyone else.’ Lewis looked at Mark with a conspiratorial smirk.

  ‘I’ve chaired quite a few conduct hearings at Medical Practitioners Tribunals, and it’s actually relatively easy to look up information relating to any doctor registered to practice medicine in this country. If this was a scandal, then I’m fairly sure it would’ve raised enough concern to go to a hearing. What did you say was the name of the hospital he worked at before?’ asked Lewis with his pen poised mid air.

  ‘If my memory serves me right, the name of the hospital was, Farley Hill, and it was 1987 when big Phil was there.’ Mark replied. Not that Lewis had any idea who Big Phil was or that he was Mark’s closest informant on the ward.

  Mark continued. ‘Dr Sharman was somewhere else between practicing there, and coming to this hospital. I’m in the dark as to where that might have been, but I’ll see if I can find out from the patients. Dr Sharman has only been here for the last six months or so. The patients don’t rate the man. His predecessor, a Dr B, was more popular and the patients continue to talk in glowing terms about him. I don’t know what the B stands for … an unpronounceable surname, I’m told. He was well liked, so I think it’s been a bit of a shock for everyone here to meet an entirely different character, but it also means that not all consultant psychiatrists are bad.’

  ‘My wife will be delighted to hear that.’

  ‘Shit. Sorry. Big foot in mouth moment.’

  Once Mark had finished sheepishly apologising for his mistake and inadvertent insult, he continued to ask for Lewis’s help. ‘If you can dig up some dirt about Dr Sharman, I would appreciate knowing anything you uncover. I’m dying to understand who or what type of person we are dealing with here. He’s making people’s lives a misery. Bloody tyrant! I was ignorant to the fact that one man could abuse so much power. It’s a revelation to me how he gets away with it.

  ‘I say that … I have seen him challenged by Monica, my named nurse, and I think she was badly burned at the ward round last Tuesday. She came out looking like she’d been through a mangle. Dr Sharman loves that position of power, and he loves himself. His suits are flashier than yours, and he checks himself out in any reflective surface he walks past, vain twat!’

  ‘Thanks for that insight,’ remarked Lewis with a slight laugh. ‘Joking aside, you could be in a risky position here. If you are required to take the medication and you refuse … you are, on paper, detained under a Section 3, and steps would usually be taken to ensure treatment, if you get my drift.’ Lewis then demonstrated a syringe being plunged toward his own right buttock, enlightening Mark as to the true meaning of his words. ‘Perhaps enforce would be a more accurate word,’ Lewis said, nodding. ‘I’m sceptical as to this consultant’s modus operandi, and I cannot for the life of me fathom how you have been placed on, and remain on, a Section.

  ‘I think, Mark, that you need to have an exit strategy lined up. If you get an opportunity, it may actually be safer for you to take your leave and go AWOL. Richard Huntley and I can deal with the legal side. Having said that, I will have to tell him the truth about the research experiment, if we get to that point. I’d rather do that, than leave you here at the mercy of … I don’t know what to say …’ Lewis struggled and failed to find the right words. ‘If you’re right, then this man could well be psychopathic, and if that’s the case then all the patients and most of the staff are potentially at risk, of bullying at least. At worst: harmful abuse. We do need to gather the evidence my boy, so get gathering and stop messing about chatting up named nurses.’

  Mark was surprised that Lewis had picked up about his growing interest in Monica. He couldn’t help it; he really liked her. It was easier when he had been mute. He didn’t have to worry about what to say, or how to engage her in a conversation. “Do you come here often?” would be an irrelevant clumsy chat-up line. It had been perfectly natural to watch her as she worked, and she was so easy in her manner that he didn’t feel shy around her as he normally would in the vicinity of an a
ttractive woman. Get a grip, man, he had told himself. This was no time, and certainly no place to be taking a fancy to a woman. Bum, thought Mark. Why here? Why now?

  Lewis looked thoughtfully down at the note pad that he still had in his hand, and asked, ‘Mark, have you got any written reports yet?’

  ‘Of course, but they’re in shorthand.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, unless it’s your own made up version.’

  ‘No. But it’s Teeline as opposed to Pitman. Most good secretaries can read it, especially if they are over fifty,’ Mark said with all seriousness.

  ‘Can you let me have what you’ve got so far, in the event that you lose it, or can’t get it out with you? I’ll have it typed up. Here, take the rest of this pad and interview whosoever you can about this dodgy consultant. I smell something most unpleasant,’ Lewis concluded.

  Mark eagerly made his way to the dormitory to collect his series of scribbled chronological diaries.

  When he handed them over to Lewis for safekeeping and translation into typed format, Lewis was made to promise faithfully not to hand them in for editing. Mark wanted to write the full story himself. ‘Oi, you just remember these are aide memoires, not finished articles! So don’t bugger about with them.’

  Lewis rolled them up carefully inside a newspaper, confirming that he would indeed keep his promise to Mark. He strolled out of the ward saying a smiling cheery farewell to the staff and patients that he passed as he left through the double doors towards the lifts and stairwell.

  Mark became temporarily downhearted when Lewis left to catch his train back to London, but at the same time, he felt more reassured that he was being kept an eye on by the research team.

  26

  Sectioned Again

  Mark’s feeling of optimism was short-lived. Straight after breakfast the next day, he was taken to see Dr Sharman, Dr Siddiqui, and the beige square lady social worker, Mrs Anna Brown. As a result he experienced an overwhelming sense of déjà vu as he sat down in front of them.