The Dark Threads

by Jean Davison

  My God, what a Job’s comforter, I thought as I watched her shuffling away, stopping every now and then to rummage through ashtrays for tab ends.

  When Dr Prior asked to see me in the Quiet Room I thought it must be for the ‘good talk’ he’d promised, but he said, ‘I’ll only keep you a moment. First, how are you?’

  ‘Will you cut down me drugs?’ I begged him. ‘They’re making me too drowsy.’

  ‘Drowsiness is not a serious side effect,’ he said, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘But it’s awful being so tired,’ I pointed out, exasperated.

  ‘Well, just lie on your bed for a while when you feel tired.’

  How I wished I could. He obviously wasn’t aware of the rules.

  ‘Do you enjoy going to OT?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’m so tired and bored there. Do I have to go?’

  ‘No, not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, grateful for small mercies. Sitting in rows at the therapy workbenches reminded me of the factory assembly line, except it was even worse. In the factory each minute had passed, albeit slowly, but at OT it was as if time just hung about sleepily and lingered in the air mingling with the atmosphere of deep gloom that clung to the walls and ceiling, enfolded us like a shroud and dampened at source any spark of humour. It was the same in the ward to some extent, but nowhere had I experienced it more keenly than in the OT department.

  ‘Now, listen to me, Jean,’ Dr Prior was saying. ‘I’d like you to have a course of about six to eight applications of electric shock treatment. Don’t let the term “electric shock” frighten you. It’s a safe, simple procedure. A small electric current is passed through your brain but it’s all done under anaesthetic so you won’t feel a thing.’

  It was a bit better than Beryl’s version, but I still didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘We don’t know how it works,’ he said. ‘Only that somehow it shakes the mind up, lifting depression and enabling a patient to think clearly.’

  But I needed to think clearly now, so that I could understand what he was suggesting. And thinking clearly was far from easy when I was heavily drugged.

  ‘I can’t see how it could help me,’ I said, feeling puzzled.

  ‘Well, I think we should at least give it a try. Now if you’ll just sign this, please.’

  He produced a printed form from his briefcase and handed it to me with a pen. I read: ‘As this form of treatment is not without an element of risk we should like to have your consent to employ it …’

  As I tried to decide what to do, Dr Prior waved his hand. ‘This paper’s just a formality: there’s really no need to read it.’

  ‘What’s the risk?’ I asked, as this was not explained on the form.

  ‘There is no risk,’ he replied.

  I felt decidedly uneasy. He was telling me that the form did not mean what it said, was unimportant, and that it was unnecessary for me even to read it – but nonetheless my signature was required on it. I began reading it again while trying to ignore Dr Prior who kept impatiently pointing to the space at the bottom where he wanted me to sign. As this form of treatment is not without an element of risk …

  ‘Why does it say there is a risk if there isn’t?’ I persisted.

  ‘It says what? Let me see that form.’ He looked at it and frowned. ‘Oh, damn! I’ve given you the wrong one,’ he said. ‘Not to worry though. I’ll just amend it slightly then you can sign it.’

  He made some minor adjustments, as the form had obviously been designed for someone to sign on behalf of the patient, then he handed it back to me.

  ‘What’s the risk?’ I asked again. ‘It says there is an element of risk.’

  He drew heavily on his cigarette, and sighed. ‘The risk is in the anaesthetic, not the treatment,’ he said, ‘and all anaesthetics carry an element of risk but it’s so slight that it’s not worth worrying about. You don’t worry each time you cross a road but there’s far more risk in that. Now, just sign it there.’

  I studied his face carefully, wondering why he seemed impatient and evasive. I looked back down at the form. The words were blurred; my eyesight, previously excellent, had deteriorated rapidly in the few days since my admission, presumably due to the drugs. And I was so, so tired. In this strange mental hospital world, one’s self-determination and resistance could easily become dangerously low.

  ‘I only want to help you,’ Dr Prior was saying. ‘You do trust me, Jean, don’t you?’

  I still didn’t understand. But surely I could trust professional medical staff who wanted to help me.

  ‘Yes, I trust you,’ I said weakly, as he pushed the pen into my hand.

  I no longer trusted God. I no longer trusted my own thoughts and feelings. I supposed I had to trust somebody. So I signed.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ Dr Prior said, smiling.

  Good girl? Naughty girl? It didn’t matter whether a patient was thirteen or seventy-plus or anything in between, psychiatric staff still persisted in talking to us in those terms.

  Many years later I saw again the consent form I’d signed and remembered how Dr Prior, before realising he’d given me the wrong form, had said emphatically: ‘There is no risk.’ There was also a form signed by another patient that day which had obviously been filed into my case notes by mistake. On this, there was no mention of ‘risk’. Instead, it emphasised that an assurance had ‘NOT’ been given that the treatment would be administered by a specific practitioner (surely ironically irrelevant to most patients in the circumstances).

  Instead of setting off for OT the next day, I remained in the day room and started writing a letter to Mandy.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ You should be at OT,’ Sister Oldroyd snapped at me.

  ‘Dr Prior says I don’t have to go to OT,’ I said innocently.

  I could never have guessed the effect of these words. She actually shook with anger and her voice rose to a shriek as she informed me it made no difference what Dr Prior had said: it was none of his business! It was what Dr Sugden said that counted and he would listen to her about what she thought was good for me, and how dare I sit there and be cheeky enough to say I didn’t have to go? If I didn’t get out of her sight this minute and off to the OT block, she wouldn’t be held responsible for what she’d do to me. Who did the little madam think she was to expect special treatment compared to other patients?

  I stood up immediately to fetch my coat. And off the little madam went to OT.

  I woke up early the next morning despite the drugs and, fixing my eyes on the green light above, I thought: Today they are going to shoot electric currents into my brain. Why?

  I had to get up at seven but remain in my dressing-gown and have nothing to eat or drink. The next three hours were spent sitting in the day room silently waiting, and wishing the sky would fall to stop the day.

  The ambulance to take me to the ECT Unit arrived at ten. Inside were six women from other wards wearing dressing-gowns, and two young nurses. As we rode across the broken tarmac in the grounds the two nurses joked with each other while we, the victims of God knew what, sat silently, squashed together, alone with our ‘sick’ thoughts.

  We jerked to a stop outside a heavy wooden door and were ushered into the building. One sharp breath of fresh, winter air and then a stuffy warmth again with a faint smell of the now familiar cleaning fluid. I tried to understand this ‘sickness’ of mine. Was I a troubled teenager or a hard-core psychotic? In this mental hospital there was, apparently, no distinction. We were heavily drugged, categorised as ‘sick’, sat side by side making ashtrays and knitting dishcloths. Perhaps, too, we were all experiencing the same naked fear as we sat together on the wooden bench in this small, oblong waiting area.

  The elderly and most confused patients were frisked to check that all hairgrips, false teeth, glasses and anything with metal fasteners had been removed. A nurse appeared with a syringe to give us an injection in the arm; a
procedure which proved difficult since some of the patients chose to engage her in a cat-and-mouse game. I was one of the good, co-operative patients who smiled for the benefit of some frightened patients who were studying my face as she pushed the needle in.

  ‘What’s the injection for?’ someone asked.

  ‘It’s to dry your mouth so you don’t swallow your tongue and choke to death while you’re having a fit,’ the nurse explained coolly. ‘So if you don’t let me give you it you might die.’

  ‘Do you think that bothers us, you fool? We all want to die.’

  I tried to say, ‘No, not all of us. I don’t want to die,’ but the words froze on my lips and I couldn’t speak.

  After the injection came a half-hour anxiety-filled period of waiting, during which time there was nothing to do but sit and think. I thought about how my hospital stay was meant to be for a week. In my sleepy state it was hard to keep pace with what was happening to me. Without protest, or even much thought about it, I had resigned myself to a longer stay.

  And then my thoughts travelled back to what I was doing a thousand years ago. No, wait a minute; it wasn’t really long ago. Today was Thursday and a week last Saturday I was dancing at the Mecca with Danny, then on the Sunday afternoon Danny and I went to the bowling alley with Mandy and Pete and, on the Sunday night, we were dancing at the Mecca again. Then on the Tuesday, the evening before my admission, I was at the bowling alley with Danny. So that must have been … I counted the days backwards on my fingers … Nine days ago! How could that be? Only nine days ago. Another place. Another world.

  As the time for ‘treatment’ drew near we took turns to go to the toilets in the wooden cubicles with three-quarter-length doors that wouldn’t lock, and then a nurse passed a hot-water bottle round which was placed on the back of our hand to try to get the vein to stand out clearly. By this time my tongue felt too big to fit properly inside my dry mouth, my throat was parched, and I could hardly swallow.

  Another nurse appeared with a sheet of paper. She gave us each a number, arranging us to sit in a certain order. I was Number Seven. I used to think seven was a lucky number when I was a little girl. I remembered how it had once won me a huge box of chocolates tied with a red ribbon in a raffle. Strange how often irrelevant thoughts intrude at moments of crisis in our lives. All Number Seven meant to me now was that my agony of waiting was to be prolonged because I was the last in the queue.

  The nurse escorted Number One away. They disappeared through a double door. Silence fell over the waiting group, then someone said: ‘Oh God, we’re lined up like sheep for the slaughter!’

  My heart was thudding wildly as I stared at the closed door. It was about to begin.

  A few minutes after the nurse and Number One left, a scream like something out of a horror film resounded from the adjoining treatment room.

  ‘I’m going home,’ announced a middle-aged woman, standing up. She was Number Two.

  ‘Home? Like that, in your dressing-gown and slippers? You won’t get far, luv,’ smiled the male attendant who had been assigned to watch over us. It was Number Two’s turn next but she had run off down the corridor and was trying frantically to open the outer door to go ‘home’. The attendant brought her back. ‘Sit down luv. You are home.’

  Number Two sat down in her allocated position, placid now, saying, ‘This is my home? Oh Lord in heaven, help us all.’

  One by one we were led through the door from where the screams came. Never before had I felt more vulnerable than I did lying on my back, with a white-coated man bending over me, ready to interfere with my brain. I must be far sicker than I realised, so I’ve just got to trust them, I thought achingly, through the Largactil haze.

  ‘Count to ten,’ the white-coated man said as he pricked the vein in the back of my hand, which stood up prominently after the heat of the hot-water bottle. One. Two. Three. Four … A strange, onion-like smell clogged my nostrils and filled my head, sending my senses reeling violently. Up till then I’d been lying co-operatively and still, but now this dreadful sensation brought on a surge of panic and I struggled like a demon.

  ‘Naughty, naughty girl,’ a distant voice was saying – just like the school dentist had said when I’d fought him while being given gas. Don’t let them do this to you, don’t let them do it, a part of my mind was screaming. I was rigid with terror, knowing I must stop them. I must. I must … But someone or something was holding me down firmly in a suffocating blackness as dark as the grave. I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Powerless, overcome, I was hurled into oblivion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS NEARLY CHRISTMAS and I wanted nothing to do with it. Brightly coloured paper trimmings, streamers and balloons were festooned on the walls and ceiling, looking as false to me as the false hope they symbolised. If we need an excuse for eating too much or getting drunk, then why not call it celebrating the birth of a long dead Saviour, I thought cynically as I gazed at the large Christmas tree in the hall at OT with its silly baubles and stupid star on top; this farce called Christmas left me cold. But when we made trimmings – coloured paper chains from strips of gummed paper just as I’d done as a child – I wanted to cry: it was the happy, not sad, memories of the past which now pained me most of all.

  One afternoon at OT we were herded into the main hall to sing carols. At break Joan stood in front of me. ‘If they had known Jesus was the Son of God, they wouldn’t have crucified him, would they?’ Her fists were clenched ready to thump me if I didn’t answer.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t, would they?’

  She was making me think, damn her. I was too tired to think.

  ‘I don’t know, Joan.’

  She raised her fists higher. ‘Yes, you do know,’ she shrieked. ‘They wouldn’t. Would they?’

  ‘No, Joan, I don’t suppose they would.’

  ‘Then why didn’t they know He was the Son of God?’

  And so it went on.

  After break we resumed singing. Joan, who was sitting next to me now, was laughing and muttering senselessly as one possessed. My mind travelled back to two Christmases ago when I had sung these same carols in the bright, cheery atmosphere of the church Youth Leader’s house. I hadn’t thought then that I would end up in here. But I hadn’t thought a lot of things then.

  I had leave from the hospital for a few days at Christmas. My parents were given little plastic containers of pills to last me until my return on Boxing Day.

  At home my brother the bus conductor sneered. ‘People think you’re a nutcase when I tell them you’re in High Royds. The bus drivers and conductors on this route all know, ’cos why should I keep it secret?’

  ‘You can shout it through a loudspeaker from the rooftop for all I care,’ I said wearily, ‘but they’ll think it’s you who’s the nutcase for wanting to tell everyone.’

  ‘It’s not just you he talks about,’ put in my father. ‘He tells people when me and your mum haven’t slept together. Everyone knows our business, whenever we row, everything. People do think there’s summat wrong with Brian, and I think so too.’

  ‘Well, I’m the one who’s in High Royds.’ I was aware that a note of bitterness had crept into my voice.

  ‘I can’t understand why,’ Dad said. ‘You’re the sanest person in this family. Brian’s certainly got no sense.’

  ‘I’ve got more sense than Jean. I’m not a mental patient. Tell me, Jean, how does it feel to be a mental case?’ He grinned fiendishly then began tapping with a spoon on a milk bottle, but stopped when Dad threatened to knock his head off his shoulders.

  I went upstairs and transferred what I’d written on scraps of toilet roll at the hospital into my diary. I’d kept a diary for many years. Writing things down helped me to sort out my thoughts and feelings. It seemed important to try to continue doing this.

  I spent Christmas in bed sleeping, or sitting around the house in my dressing-gown, face unwashed, hair unkempt. I was
aware that my life was drifting downhill, but lacked the energy or motivation to exert myself. In this state I just took it for granted that I would return to the hospital after the holiday. My parents also accepted this, as was their way. There was one bright spot. Jackie called to see me. She had stopped taking her tranquillisers and looked well and happy. I was worlds of experience away from the teenager I’d been when I’d last seen her before my admission only three weeks ago, so it was encouraging to find I could still relate easily to her. My old sense of humour even peeped out of its hiding place. Perhaps things weren’t really so bad, I began to think hopefully. But the hope was stillborn.

  Back in hospital after Christmas, far from my drugs being decreased as I’d hoped, they were intensified, and I felt like a zombie. Truly, I had never felt worse, never even realised before that it was possible to feel so low.

  My parents visited and I could barely keep awake when trying to talk with them. I asked them to tell my psychiatrist that the drugs were too strong for me and he needed to decrease them.

  ‘But what can we do now you’re in here?’ Mum said. Her face looked pale and strained.

  I turned to Dad, but he shook his head. ‘Jean, love, he’s the doctor. We can’t tell him what to do.’

  Apparently my parents hadn’t even thought of asking to speak to my doctor. Danny had told them he felt they should do, and I think they were genuinely puzzled at Danny’s insistence. This was the sixties and my parents’ attitude towards the medical profession was probably no different from many working-class parents of that time.

  A few days later Dr Prior saw me in the Quiet Room for a consultation.

  ‘Please will you lower my drugs?’ I pleaded with him.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t stand it!’ I said, a note of despair creeping into my voice.

  ‘What can’t you stand?’

  ‘The way the drugs make me feel. Being in this place. I can’t mix with people so I feel isolated.’

  ‘Why can’t you mix with people?’