The room was delightful for a hospital and the only screams were from people in pain, not from people who thought someone or something was out to get them.
Lunch was amazing, even better than in the psycho hospital. Chicken and mushroom soup, which was so tasty and thick, breaded chicken accompanied with creamy mashed potato and topped with a garlic sauce. The desert was the best bit; apple pie with ice cream. It was like staying at a hotel!
I gazed out the window and saw that the weather looked dark as water filled clouds crowded the skies. I thought it might rain. I loved to lie in bed listening to the rain, I found it almost meditative.
I lay down in bed and fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt of flying people who had come from another world, they were telling me the secret of flying but the scene change quickly and then I was in a restaurant waiting for my food, when the waiter brought me my plate it had a note on it saying:
Eat my life and I will eat you,
You think you are one but now we are two,
Made me jealous, I kill your life,
Your little daughter and your disloyal wife.
I woke up confused, disorientated and scared. How had I raked that up? Who was getting in my mind? I lay motionless in the bed until the nurse approached me.
She actually looked, well, normal. No strange features, or weird make up, or demented dispositions for that matter. Seeing these normal people made me realise how bizarre the ones at the crazy house really were. It’s amazing what you can get used to, I thought to myself. It almost felt like I was on some kind of T.V show and all the nurses here had some script they were reading from. It was all highly suspicious, how come these nurses were ‘nice’ and the ones back at the quack farm were so messed up. I guess I had dealt with them for so many years they had in some bizarre way become part of my normal existence. I promised myself I wouldn’t let my guard down for one moment in this place, no I shall be cautious as time has shown me over and over again that only a fool trusts what he can’t control. While they read their well-rehearsed lines I shall gladly play my part in their play but I will sleep with one eye open and take all that they tell me with a pinch of salt. This time I will uncover the truth even if I have to go insane to find it!
“Time to take your heart medication sir. In a while your supper will be here and then later on Doctor Greendale will be by to see how you’re doing.” She handed me some pills and a glass! Yes, a glass of water to swallow them down, could I be trusted with such an honour of normality?
“These pills look different to the ones they give me in the loony bin,” I said to the nurse as she looked confused and stared back at me. I shoved them back at her with a frown of disapproval clearly displaying my paranoia.
“I don’t understand, this is the medication written down in your file and the doctors have confirmed that this is what you need to take, maybe they were giving you a different kind over there. That might be dangerous,” she said as she beeped for the doctor on her pager. There was a high pitched beep back within seconds. “She says she’s busy but she will be by later.”
The nurse also informed me that if I wanted to get some fresh air just to give her a shout and she would take me down to the garden in a wheelchair. I thanked her and she moved on with the medication trolley, the wheels screeching on the well-polished floor as she pushed it along.
Well played I thought to myself, this nurse was clever. I had no idea what pills she was trying to give me or who she was paging and let’s not forget the swift change of subject. Suddenly she was being so helpful and willing to take me outside. Who is this nurse, really? Too nice, too helpful and too polite! I know for sure that even when all seems smooth on the surface, cracks lay just beneath it. I think this nurse could definitely loose it, she had the makings of a real nut job. I had noticed she would look to the left a lot while she spoke to me and touch around her mouth. I know enough about body language to be aware that that was a big give-away, she was either lying to me or hiding something. Her jumper which she wore over her uniform had stains on the cuffs that had been wiped deeper into the fabric and she looked like she had no regards for her appearance. She must be single! No one likes a liar I guess.
The heavens had just opened up as rain started to fall, slowly but surely it increased in intensity until it beat strongly against the glass windows. Rain is such a beautiful thing to behold. It’s almost poetic and there is a certain comforting feeling it gives you when it’s cold and wet outside and you are warm under the covers in your bed.
The sheets in this hospital were of way better quality than the ones I had to fight with for so many years in that other place. Even the small scabs that adorned my skin from the constant itching had nearly all disappeared. I couldn’t remember the last time my skin had felt so smooth. This in some way made my old scars more prominent and intensified my obsessive tendencies.
As a child mother used to wash us in the bath, scrub us with bleach and cut our toenails so short our toes would bleed for hours and our skin roasted within itself from the chemical burn. Worse still the socks would stay glued on as the platelets tried to make the blood clot to be able to scab. Mother never liked to see our cuts, scars or burns when it came time to wash us. She would say out loud that we were not clean enough and leave the bathroom only to return with wire wool. She would spend hours scrubbing at any discoloured or raised parts of our skin trying to remove it. This would make the old cuts bleed again. I would be sat in the freezing water shaking as I could feel her scrub away each layer of skin. I don’t even know if mother realised that most of the scars and burns our bodies displayed were of her making, maybe she didn’t care.
I allowed myself to slide in and out of trauma and past events. Had I ever really experienced something real or was my childhood just a sign of what my life would hold for my future?
I fell into my past memories. Penne had just been admitted for smothering her new born baby. This woman was innocent looking but had such a sinister air about her. She would tell everyone that it was a cot death and she was heartbroken after it happened, but there was something that never sat quite right about her. I would catch her hoarding any magazine that had pictures of babies in it and at times acting like a child herself. I questioned if in fact she had multiple personalities, even in the diaries she kept her style of writing would change frequently depending on what mood she was in. It was a stormy night just like this one. She was in the hallway and the nurses had gotten fed up of telling her to go to bed. She looked dishevelled, her blond hair was greasy and pointing in all directions. Her mascara had ran from crying and was smudged across her face where she had carelessly wiped away her tears. I remember coming out of my room to try to find where the crying was coming from, that’s when I saw her.
She was curled up in a ball rocking back and forth while muttering to herself. She was holding an old rag-doll upside down, cradled in her right arm. She was clasping it tightly pressed against her chest. The doll’s eyes had been ripped out and words had been written all over the body in red ink. Words such as ‘I hate you,’ and ‘die,’ were the most common to appear. The plastic in the throat of the doll had been melted and tampered with to make it look uneven in its various levels and textures. The poor doll had started to look just like her.
I had tried talking to one of the nurses on the ward that night but they just told me she can do what she likes as long as she doesn’t disturb anyone else. I knew their response was just because they were on a night shift watching a film and they wanted no interruptions. I returned to Penne, her eyes were blue and her face had unpronounced features, like a child I guess. I sat with her until her crying stopped and then she started laughing, the sound filled the halls and confused me. What was so funny? She leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear.
“I killed him on purpose, don’t tell mother, promise me you won’t tell mother.”
Suddenly the flickering light in the hallway blew and died. All I had imprinted in my minds-eye was the crazed loo
k in her face as my eyes adjusted to the dimmed light … she was gone.
I stood up and walked back to my room puzzled, who is this woman and how could she kill her own child?
No one knows what happened to Penne after that night. There was an investigation and several of the nurses got sacked as they had fraudulently filled out the hourly patient checks while watching a film and never bothered to actually check the patients.
This woman’s presence always sent a shiver down my spine, I bet she ran away, unless someone killed her and it was all a cover up. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened in that mysterious place. It wasn’t hard really, relatives would come at first but after time less and less until not at all. Loosing someone was easy and convenient especially if they needed the space. For example Rachael Burn, she had come in drugged out of her face saying that both of her parents had died in a car crash and she had somehow managed to survive. She had always hated herself for being the only one and felt guilty. The thing is that Rachael wasn’t insane, she was just messed up emotionally and only needed some support. I had seen on several occasions the nurses expressing to each other that she didn’t belong in there and it would be easier for them if they didn’t have to play mother to an orphaned teenager. She had even tried to ask me for help several times. She said she was scared of what they would do to her and according to Rachael they had made their plans for her disposal very clear but who would ever believe it to be true. One day her bed was nicely made up, her door was wide open and she was nowhere to be seen. When I asked the staff where she had gone they simply told me that she had gone back home with her parents. This was one of the sickest explanations I had ever heard, they were dead! Unless what they meant to say was that she had joined them in death …
My mind came back to reality and was now distracted by the squeaking of the food trolley. Dinner time already? I looked at the time, it was seven o’clock. It’s a bit early but I am pretty hungry, I thought to myself, as the hunger pains became obvious to me. The smell of food travelled into my room and stimulated my senses. The question of what they had prepared made me very hungry, very quickly. After ten minutes the trolley was at my bedside and a guy about six foot tall, very skinny and with an obvious acne problem cleared my slide-over-table.
“Today you can have a nice vegetable soup to start followed by chops and mash, finished by juicy strawberries. Enjoy!” he said, as he placed them on my table quickly, then rushed off to serve the other patients. I did find it quite amusing how he sounded like a waiter; he possibly had even been one in the past and I guess that manner of speaking had just stuck with him. I could tell he had had braces when he was younger because when he smiled he was consciously curling his lips over his teeth, trying not to reveal them. My brother had developed the same habit.
I got stuck in even before my eyes had a chance to acknowledge what I was placing in my mouth. It was delicious and the strawberries were the best bit. I hadn’t eaten anything this nice since before I had entered that depressive place. They filled my mouth with their sweet juicy flavour and by the end I was as full and content as a pig in mud.
I called for a nurse and she came over to my bed quickly. I wanted to go down to the garden to relax after my wonderful dinner.
“Can I help in anyway, sir?” she asked me, twisting her sliver bracelet.
“Yes I feel like I could go for a little fresh air now if that’s okay?” I asked but she hit me with a wall of resistance.
“I’m sorry sir but it’s too late now, I will take you tomorrow if you’d like?” She tried to make me feel as if all was not lost.
“Okay, that’s fine. Sorry for disturbing you, tomorrow is fine,” I voiced in a disappointed tone. I knew her offer earlier was too good to be true. Maybe playing nice gets a bit exhausting for some after a while, could this be her cracks starting to show I wonder?
She walked away and shut the door behind her. The door was flat wood with a rectangular shaped glass panel on the right hand side, below which was a chrome handle. I got up and peered out through the glass trying to see people passing by just out of pure curiosity. I saw something, or rather someone. It was such a strange moment, almost as if I was looking at myself in the mirror, as he looked just like me. No it can’t be me, I told myself and went back to bed where I slowly drifted off into a deep sleep.
I dreamt of my brother for the first time in years. We were having an argument and he was jealous of the life I had, particularly the fact that I had married and had a child. The dream got clearer and we were talking about my daughter and how I had found out that I was not her biological father. It was all coming back to me now, the sadness I felt as I told my brother. He had never died. We had both made it look that way. He had changed his name and ran off to another country so he could be free from our parent’s watchful eyes. This is why I never needed comforting when he had ‘died.’ I had not thought about this for years; this crucial bit of information had been lost to me. It barely felt real to me now, but was it real? That was the question.
I woke up feeling the most confused I had felt in years. Was my daughter the outcome of a clandestine affair? Had my brother really died? Why was I now recovering these memories after they had been suppressed at the base of my mind for so long? It had seemed so real and yet I did feel reluctant in accepting these ‘memories’ as the truth.
My mind had been twisted by the drugs used to ‘calm me down’ and the cells in my brain were uncooperative at regaining facts. It all seemed twisted in one aspect or another, a mere shadow in the place of truth.
At this point the doctor entered my room holding several objects. “Hello Mr Slater, I am going to need a urine and a stool sample from you,” she stated as she handed me some small containers. She checked my temperature, pulse and blood pressure on the clipboard that hung at the foot of my bed. She nodded. “Yes, you do seem a lot stronger and your heart has made a good recovery. Just so you know, the tablets the nurse tried to give you this morning were correct and important to keep your blood pressure within safe margins. They looked different because they were giving you a cheap, unapproved version of your prescribed medicine at the psychiatric hospital you were in. I still want to monitor you for a while, to make sure there are no signs of permanent damage.”
She seemed precise and to the point. My head was saying no based on my past betrayals but in my gut I felt the unfamiliar feeling that I could trust her.
“I will tell the nurse to come by in the morning when she has a few minutes to take you to the toilets so you can try to get these samples for us to analyse,” she said as she smiled and left my room.
She reminded me of a room-mate I had in college, a plump girl with a pretty face and an amazing mind but suffering constantly from solid rejection from the boys. They were all shallow and heartless towards her. She eventually got over boys and fuelled all her efforts in being the best she could be. Nancy was her name and she was also very organized which made her the only housemate I never had an argument with. I missed her in a way as she always knew the right thing to say and was always there for me if I needed a shoulder to cry on. I wonder how she is, if she’s married and had all the children she intended to have. It seemed I had lost contact with all the people I knew. I was never used to having friends and when I did I didn’t know how to keep in touch. I had become such a loner that people never really stuck to me or I to them.
The morning passed slowly and I desperately wanted to get outside for some fresh air but instead I just relaxed in bed listening to the rain. At about eight o’clock the nurse returned to my room, she seemed exhausted as she entered, walking slowly.
“Oh, you’re awake, good, I will take you to the bathroom now so you can try to get those samples we need,” she smiled and helped me get into the nice new modern wheelchair. My leg was feeling fine and I was perfectly capable of walking but it was the least she could do after she let me down with my medication. That was what she was here for after all, to take car
e of me. I sat down slowly and placed my feet on the supports.
“Okay! Let’s go,” she said in a motivating voice. As she wheeled me down the long corridor I looked around to see if I could spot that man I had seen before, the one that looked like me; but nothing. We reached the toilets and she wheeled me in, allowing me to get on with my business. I filled the two containers, screwed the tops on and handed them to her. She wrote my name, number and date-of-birth on them and asked another nurse who was walking by to take them to the lab. She briefly smiled at me and then took me back to my room.
“Try to get plenty of rest, your body has been through a lot and sleep is the best thing for it,” she said as she helped me into my bed. I still felt quite weak. She pulled the smooth covers over me and walked out the room closing the door behind her.
The sheets smelled like a fresh sea breeze and were so soft against my skin; compared to the ones in the psychiatric hospital, these were pure comfort incarnate. What can I say, I felt like I was the main character on the Truman Show, just waiting for the penny to drop. This was all too nice, too clean and too pathetically cheerful for my liking. What were these people so ignorantly happy about anyway? Anyone who has to clean asses and collect mud samples shouldn’t be this happy, it was so sickly sweet that it was completely obscene!
As I rested I remembered another fragment of memory I’d forgotten. My brother Demetrius had died, for real this time and the memory started to become clearer. It was two weeks after my brother and I had had the irritating conversation about my wife and her infidelity. I received a phone call from the police stating that he had been involved in a skydiving accident. The parachute failed to open properly and his body had hit the ground, killing him instantly. What would possess a person to jump out of an aeroplane with only a piece of material connected by ropes as their only safety net? It was the dodo effect of extinction from sheer stupidity all over again. They had checked his records which showed he had changed his name and realised he was my brother, the one they had thought drowned so many years ago.
Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Page 8