“Good morning Doctor Stozedwick, please come in.” I gave a small signal with my hands for him to enter. Over the years I had managed to suppress my anxiety to the point I almost looked emotionless. Not even my hand shook as I gestured for him to take a seat.
“Thank you Mr Slater, let’s both sit down and I’ll ask you a few questions. If you feel at any point you don’t understand the question, or you want a break, please let me know okay?” He asked as he took a seat on the chair.
I perched myself on the edge of the bed; it was uncomfortable to sit on as it was unmade but I held it in and gave him a smile. I contemplated how perceptive this doctor really was and if he was able to see past my mask and uncover the scared failure of a boy that was hidden behind it.
“Now Mr Slater, how long have you been certified as mentally unwell?” He asked this question with depth in his voice as he looked at me with enquiring eyes.
“Well, I found out on the day that they tried to kill me with that injection that I had been there for six years. Six years of my life wasted in that white hell!” My disclosure came out in an angry tone which I quickly tried to control. My face twitched from the exertion and I tried to cover it up by giving him a winning smile.
“Okay, Mr Slater, I think I should inform you that your sanity is not the only reason you were committed there. As you know you were accused on two counts of murder charges. You pleaded insanity and there was not enough evidence to prosecute you, to say you were the one who killed Sally and Sue. The judge accepted your plea of diminished responsibility by virtue of insanity and for you to spend time in a mental institution where you could be assessed and rehabilitated. If your results from my test show you to be sound of mind, you will be a free man, as the evidence presented in court with regards to the murders was circumstantial and insufficient to prosecute you with.”
He looked strongly into my eyes as we proceeded with the probing, detailed analytical questions, which were all a blur until he started asking me about my past. My answers were automatically second nature as the content didn’t trigger any emotions to stir the beast that lay within me.
“So tell me about your mother, father and your siblings, if you have any?” he asked. He settled comfortably into his chair as he waited for me to recite my life story to him.
Suddenly I felt very uncomfortable, the air thickened and I felt beads of sweat roll down my face. Discussing family dynamics was very awkward and at times a tedious task. The hospital monitor gave away my quickened pulse, so I tried to answer him in an overly animated fashion in order to distract him from the fact that the evil machine was picking up on my nerves. I assumed it had worked as all his attention was focused on me as he never broke his intense analysing stare.
“Well, my mother, Ann, was a loving woman, she loved to cook and drink, sometimes her love for alcohol would leave my father to feed us. She had the most amazing talent for storytelling, I could listen to her stories for hours. My father Richard seemed to take a bit of a back seat in bringing us up but I knew he loved me, even though I never heard it much. He was a quiet man but very clever. He worked all day and when he came home he liked things to be quiet. He did have a bit of an obsessive compulsive nature, much like me, but everyone has their weaknesses don’t they?” I asked him, revealing my obsessive compulsive disorder. I joked about it while assuring him that my disclosure should be seen as a minor part of me, not a crippling illness as certain “Doctors” loved to think.
The doctor proceeded to write down notes on what I had said, then he stopped to look at me with a puzzled expression. “You mentioned them bringing “us” up and yet you never told me about your brother or your sister?” he asked, fishing for details of potential siblings in my life.
“Demetrius was my twin brother and being identical we were physically a match, but extremely different in terms of character. We didn’t have a relationship of any kind. He hated me almost as much as I hated him, but now I’ve got someone who is trying to find him because I need to know if he is alive; I need to ask him questions that only he can answer.”
“I see,” he replied as he jotted down more words to his page of small scribbled notes.
After those awkward questions the others that followed were easier and time went by faster in comparison to those minutes when I was under pressure.
“Thank you very much for being so quick in answering all my questions and co-operating. I will be in touch.” He shook my right hand as he patted me on the opposite shoulder. He whispered in my ear, “I think I can let you know, you will be a free man very soon my friend.” He winked at me and left my room. As he walked out he let out a deep resonating chuckle.
Those words echoed in my mind over and over again ‘a free man!’ I had forgotten what that had felt like and loved the way it sounded.
No pills except for my heart medication, no nurses with fake smiles, no psycho doctors or injections, no more white hell! For the first time in six years I smiled, cried and laughed all at the same time. This is real, I am going to be free! All I need to do is find out if my brother is still alive and where my wife and daughter are buried to be able to say goodbye properly. I feel I will sleep easy tonight. Free from the mental hospital but also free from the cages of my own self-doubt.
Thinking about normal everyday life put me on edge, I don’t even remember the last time I had washed my clothes let alone bought food or looked after myself. Being alone and surround by other people, people I didn’t know made me feel sick. I had been here for so many years I guess I had unintentionally become institutionalized. I had no one to call or socialise with and I had no intention of making ‘friends’ as in my opinion, people were best kept at a distance. This place made you soft and lazy in a crazy kind of way. They didn’t like you making decisions, noise, and mess or pretty much anything other than taking their never-ending flow of pills. They had pills for everything in life but what they couldn’t supply in pill form was humanity.
The sad fact was, I would have given my right arm to be able to rinse out a cup or even hold one. We couldn’t be trusted so we got plastic everything that ended up in the bin, what a waste. I missed being able to go to sleep when I wanted to and not being forced to with a sleeping tablet. They also woke you at obscene times for the constant checks and to make sure we were still breathing. What can I say the crazy house was the biggest joke going and the funniest thing was that none of the staff could see it?
Chapter 12
Waiting Is A Killer
The day seemed lighter, easier and cooler. It must have been the best night’s sleep I’d had in years. Even my eyes no longer craved to be closed to reality. I welcomed the day with a new confidence of justice and self-belief. I am just a man in a hospital, no longer a mental patient being looked at, locked in and dosed up in the demented place that was my last home. This was the first taste of freedom I’d had in six years and it all started manifesting in my mind and soul.
A nurse brought my lunch to me. My plastered on smile widened my eyes creating a face of happiness only a psychopath could pull off. The food was delightful and the cake for desert was sweet. My clean slate was the cherry on top of the blacked out solitude I had endured and made my mind race with the endless possibilities of what was to come.
I decided to have a shower, it cleansed my skin as I scrubbed away the dry dead layers that had made my outer shell tough and unreachable. As the stream of water fell from the shower I closed my eyes and allowed it to glide down me like a wave of purity. When I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower I felt like a new man, maybe even the man I used to be.
It must have been about three o’clock when doctor Greendale entered my room with a big smile on her face.
“Hey, I hear that the test went well and that you’re not going back to that place. That must be the best news you could’ve hoped to hear,” she said as she walked around the bed to look at my charts. Her expression seemed sincerely happy for me as her eyes were cheerful and she disp
layed a smile from ear-to-ear.
“You have no idea. I feel lighter in my skin, and I do think I am genuinely happy.” I smiled warmly back at her. My paranoia of the staff here could be wrong I thought, although the voice at the back of my mind still remained, telling me to be careful.
“Your progress has been going so well I think we could definitely discharge you in a week’s time, as you are exactly on the right path to a full recovery.” She seemed to be excited for me. I thanked her for all she had done and she left the room.
I felt at ease within myself. I lay in a slow trance of curiosity, thinking what it was going to feel like when I was finally free. I felt so many emotions, my body was calm and yet shaking inside. I was well aware that I had become to a certain point institutionalised. Having the freedom to do what I wanted whenever I wanted was a bit overwhelming to say the least. There was so much that could go wrong, so many ways I could mess up. I had so many unanswered questions but I would stop at nothing to find the truth. Was this even real, will I end up back in that place, is there a part of me that wants to go back to the messed up hospital that had reluctantly become my home for so many years? I knew in my heart of hearts that I would survive, that’s what I had done all my life and this would be no different. I turned on my side and wrapped my arms around my body to try to slow my pulse down and tried to relax so my mind could continue to process the thought of freedom. The inner words of my mind echoed ‘I am free!’
At about three-thirty in the afternoon I called the nurse and asked if it would be possible to go for a “walk,” to get some fresh air. She agreed and we set off. I sat in the wheelchair she had offered me and we started down the hallway. By the main reception area there were a couple of women crying and I could overhear the doctor explaining to them that their family member had died despite their best efforts. This is what made me start to want time to pass quicker just so I could find out where my wife and baby girl were buried.
The corridors were wide and several pieces of art injected colour onto the light baby-blue walls. Plants were scattered about in random corners and made the place feel looked after. I reached down to my leg as pain struck down the nerve line.
The pain in my leg would come and go, sometimes it was bearable to walk and on other days the pain crippled me. My leg wasn’t always like this. It all happened when I’d been forced to go on a date with Jacqueline, a shy geeky girl who had been constantly asking me out. She had even come to the house to see me. Mother had commented on how I was being strange and asked what was wrong with me? She wanted to know why I didn’t want to go out with a nice, sweet girl from school. To be honest, she scared me. For one I could see past her facade of shyness and saw a lot of similarities between her and mother. Secondly, I had no interest in people for dating or anything sociable, I just wanted to be left alone to read my books.
It all changed one summer’s afternoon when Jacqueline appeared at my house with two tickets for the cinema. I had never agreed to go to the cinema with her but mother called me down from my room and asked me why I had left her waiting at the leisure centre for me? My explanations were ignored and mother forced me to go to the cinema with this girl. It was the most awkward experience I’d ever been forced to go through with another human being. She sat down in her seat and I did the same, leaving a seat between us. Jacqueline would move closer to me. I cannot describe how frustrated I felt with her invading my personal space. After moving three times in trying to leave a chair between us and her quickly closing the gap, I just decided there was no point and I was forced deal with it. When the film finally ended I walked Jacqueline home. It was obvious that she wanted me to kiss her goodnight when she leaned forward for one. I turned my face away and kissed her on the cheek. This in itself was well out of my comfort zone and character for me. She ran inside and slammed the door behind her. I could hear screaming and other voices growing louder inside the house. I was puzzled and started walking down the driveway when the sound of someone running up behind me caught my attention, making me turn round. It was Billy, well it was Billy’s fist in my face! Next thing I knew he lifted up a baseball bat and started swinging. With every blow I could hear the crunching sound of my bones cracking and by the time he was done my leg was broken and pulverised from his brutal attack. I cried as I tried to stand and I have no idea how I got home as I had blacked out from the excruciating pain.
Mother saw me crawling up the porch, dragging my bloodied, limp leg behind me. She took me to hospital eventually after she had interrogated me and prodded at my broken leg. Her face seemed more interested in the blood and swelling than the fact that I needed medical assistance. In fact she had tried to convince me that it would all be okay if I took some pain relief and slept it off. She was barking mad and I was in and out of consciousness. I think the only reason mother ended up taking me to the hospital was because father came back and told her someone had to set the bones right. Mother always wanted to please father and they both drove me to the emergency room to get x-rays. This resulted in me having a full leg cast for months. It took ages to heal and has always caused me pain even after all these years. I knew Jacqueline must have lied to her brother Billy and told him that I had done something horrible but I never found out what. No one would tell me. Even my brother when asked told me it was better if I didn’t know. The stares at school said enough and after that people left me alone more which suited me just fine. Mother was all about the image and therefore no one ever questioned Billy on his crazed attack, mother would tell the teachers or anyone who asked that I had fallen down the stairs in the house. Mother was very talented in diverting conversations so they wouldn’t stay on the subject of my leg for too long. Like anything else that happened to me it was easily forgotten to the point I had to remind mother about my appointment to get the cast removed.
The nurse pushed my wheelchair at a steady pace and I could hear the constant squeaking sound of the wheels rotating. It reminded me of Jake and his granny back in that white hell. I promised that I would force myself to go and visit them once this entire ordeal was over.
We slowly approached the main exit doors of the hospital when a strange feeling overwhelmed my soul; what if the doctor is wrong and I really am crazy? Stop it! Now I know I am not. It’s just those drugs that mess up your memories and make you doubt yourself.
“Here we are Mr Slater, where do you wish to go, just along the front of the hospital or around the back to the gardens?” she asked in a polite tone of voice.
“Erm, please take me around the back, I love looking at gardens. They calm me down and relax the senses if you know what I mean?”
“Yes, Sir, no problem. I think you will have the garden all to yourself, no one is here at this time,” she said smiling.
As we entered the garden I saw it was empty, no one here but us. She pushed my wheelchair to a bench and sat down after she had positioned me on the side of it and she kept smiling.
Suddenly, that smile which felt sincere felt fake. I started to feel the heat of anger rising all over my body. The anger became unbearable as she kept smiling, blackness engulfed me and I fainted.
I awoke to the sound of people talking, and there crouched down in front of me, were three nurses. My first reaction was to ask what had occurred while I was passed out. I cleared my throat and asked in one breath, “Where’s my nurse? What happened to me? I blacked out. What’s going on?”
Before I got an answer I heard someone running behind me. I turned the best I could in the wheelchair to see Doctor Greendale hastily approaching the scene.
“Okay, I am here, what’s her condition?” she asked the nurses in a confident voice.
I turned the other way and saw a nurse sprawled on the ground, the object of the other nurses’ attention. Doctor Greendale began to examine the unconscious woman.
“I think she’s been knocked unconscious, she’s bleeding here on the left side of her head,” an old nurse commented.
“Yes, you’re right,” the
doctor said in a thoughtful tone, one I had never heard her use before. “She’s breathing alright. Shirley, go and get a stretcher quickly, we have to get her inside to have a better look.” And with that the old nurse got up and ran round to the hospital entrance. I was completely confused, what had happened here? Was that my nurse on the ground? It looked as if it was.
Just as I tried to make some sense of what had happened, Dr Greendale stood up and looked at me with a highly reserved expression. She asked me the question I myself had been wondering.
“What happened here?”
I looked at her with a face of pure confusion and told her the little I knew. “I don’t know, she sat down on the bench on my right, it was very pleasant, and she was smiling. I started to feel hot, I passed out. When I woke up she was lying on the floor and these three nurses were looking at her.” She gave me a glance of helplessness as we waited for the nurse to return with the stretcher. I sat there looking at the two nurses and doctor who were looking after the injured nurse. They were trying to keep her warm until nurse Shirley returned with the stretcher. I for some reason did not feel sorry or sympathetic about her condition. I just wanted to get inside as it was starting to get chilly.
Their attempts to wake her up were futile and I could sense the smell of panic lingering in the air. Shirley placed the stretcher beside the nurse on the floor. They rolled her onto her side and then rolled her back onto the stretcher. One of the nurses wheeled my chair back to the hospital as the rest of them brought the injured nurse in on the sunken stretcher. We entered the hospital and I saw them placing her on a bed and wheeling her off; some of the nurses were crying, why I do not know. Was it the blood? Strange people. They are supposed to be nurses for god’s sake, they should be used to seeing things like this every day, all day.
Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Page 10