Sarah. Oh Sarah. She wouldn’t have known why she was feeling so aggressive or why her body was changing. He replayed the past few months over in his head, seeing it all differently. Funny how the same scenes seen with new information had a completely different meaning. He saw the fights, Sarah’s manic obsession with exercise, her aggression in bed, her skin breakouts, her sweaty body odour. All of it made sense. How could he not have seen it? He was such a fool. He had let her down. How she must have suffered. How she must be suffering now.
Tom had to get her out. Away from those mad people. Away from that pompous ass in the white coat who wouldn’t let him see her. She didn’t belong in there.
*
At that moment Sarah was quietly padding down the corridor of the hospital. For the past few nights she had been storing her sleeping pills in her cheek then slipping them into the toilet. While the women around her spent the night hours passed out in a drug-induced torpor, she had been paying careful attention to what went on in the creaky hospital between midnight and dawn.
There were three heavy security doors, one at the front near the reception desk where two night nurses were stationed, another at the back entrance where the security guard sat and one in the middle to keep the men from wandering into the women’s wards at night. Because of fire regulations the wards were kept unlocked.
Sarah’s ward was at the front of the building, separated from the dayroom by the main corridor. As long as she kept out of sight of the main desk, she figured she could get to the dayroom unnoticed.
She waited till she heard the cage door lock. That meant the nurse had done her rounds and was safely back at the front desk. Sarah crept out of her room and along the corridor. The only sound was the light swishy noise her bare feet made on the polished linoleum. She reached the section where the two corridors met and listened for a moment. The nurses were watching television and talking in low voices. Sarah crawled along on her stomach past their line of sight. The dayroom was around a bend at the other end of the corridor. She could no longer hear the nurses or the television. The only sound was the fruit bats chattering in the huge Moreton Bay fig tree outside the window. She quietly closed the door behind her.
At the other end of the room was the nurses’ office. It had three glass walls so they could see what everyone was up to and a window that looked outside. Sarah sorted through the pile of games in a bookshelf and selected a heavy wooden pencil box. Wrapping it in a crocheted knee rug which she found on a chair, she smashed a small pane of glass in the office door. The sound of breaking glass seemed loud in the empty room. Sarah crept back and opened the dayroom door to listen. Everything was silent. She expected to hear the security grille being unlocked and see the nurses rushing down the corridor armed with syringes and straitjackets, but no-one came. Relieved, she let herself into the nurses’ office.
She knew exactly which drawer she was after in the old grey filing cabinet. She wanted the one marked C–E, where she knew her file was kept. It was an old steel cabinet with warped drawers and Sarah was surprised how easily it opened. One tug brought it flying into her chest. She quickly located her file and moved across to stand beside the window where the security lights outside shone enough light into the room for her to read. It would be dawn soon and she knew she had to hurry.
Sarah opened the folder and started reading. On top was the report of her arrival.
Psychotic rage. Abusive. Her memory of that was sketchy and painful. She quickly moved on.
Parents absent. Patient aggressive when ques tioned. Sarah remembered that session. Dr Hubert sitting there looking down his beaked nose at her. She had never felt so powerless. They were such personal memories, so painful. Why should she have to talk about them to this stranger? Who the hell was he to ask her such things? She had found his attitude insufferable. He sat there asking the most personal questions, deciding her life for her. Writing it all down.
Stelazine. 5 mg capsules. 4 per day. Yeah right. Not any more, thought Sarah with satisfaction.
Fiancé Tom Wilson. Journalist. Battered partner? Seems to care for patient. Abusive relationship? Tom. He had been here? Sarah felt a rush of warmth. Why didn’t they let me see you? Oh Tom, I wish you were here now.
The last page was the results of a blood test. High presence of synthetic hormone, Limodol.
Next to it, in a different handwriting, was the query habitual steroid abuser?
Sarah gasped. What the hell? No, I’m not. They’ve made a mistake.
She remembered Tom’s stories on steroid abuse, the body builder he had met in Canberra who had beaten his wife in a roid rage. Sarah felt suddenly clammy. She sat heavily in a chair. Her legs felt weak and unable to hold her. Did she have steroids racing through her system? She pictured them as angry red little heads, coursing through her bloodstream, ready to attack.
The idea of them inside her, part of her, was abhorrent. She was repulsed by her own body. How would they have got inside her? She wasn’t shooting up steroids into her muscles. It made no sense. But something about it did. She had not been herself. For a while now. She had felt out of control of her emotions and her body. It had frightened her. She had justified it in all sorts of ways. Steroids had never occurred to her. But then, why would it? She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
Sarah closed the file. This didn’t make sense. It did, but it didn’t. She wasn’t sure what she would do next. Tell Dr Hubert? He already knew. And it didn’t seem to work in her favour as far as he was concerned. Sarah couldn’t see that Dr Hubert was on her side, trying to help her. She felt trapped within the system and he was her jailer. He thought she was a loon and that was that. Normal people didn’t fly into psychotic rages. She had stepped across a line, the line that separated normal people with all their rights from the rest, the ones who had lost their rights. She was in ‘the system’ now and normal rules didn’t apply. She needed Tom. He would know how to sort this out. She had to get out of here. She had to get to Tom. The thought of Tom made her want to cry. What had she done to him? Would he ever forgive her? Would he even believe her?
Oh Tom. Help me.
Sarah looked outside. It wasn’t long till dawn and the sky in the east had started to lighten. The fruit bats in the Moreton Bay fig tree were awake and chattering to each other as they prepared to fly off for the day. She supposed she should go back to bed. It wouldn’t help her cause if they found her in here. As it was there would be questions in the morning when they discovered the office door was missing a pane of glass.
But going to bed felt like giving in. She wasn’t sure she could face that bed with its scratchy white overstarched sheets and the mad mutterings of the other women. She didn’t belong here. She wanted to get out. She looked with longing, through the bars, at the world outside. She felt defeated.
She watched the fruit bats leaving the tree as they started their daily journey back to the Botanic Gardens. How lucky they were, she thought. She wondered how long it would be till she savoured that freedom again.
The huge old hospital building seemed to be asleep.
Sarah felt the frustration well inside her. She picked up the phone and dialled her own number. She heard her own voice inviting her to leave a message.
‘Tom,’ she whispered as loudly as she dared, ‘pick up the phone. It’s me. Please help me. They think I’m on steroids. I’m not. They think I’m mad. You’ve got to get me out of here.’ Sarah slumped to the ground, the phone still to her ear. ‘Oh Tom,’ she sobbed. ‘Tom …’
*
Thel was first out of bed. She was cleaning up the sugar when Tom appeared.
‘Leave it,’ he said sharply.
Thel looked at him.
‘It’s evidence … for the police,’ he said.
Thel’s eyes widened. Tom showed her the fine powder amongst the grains of sugar.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Ginny put steroids in here?’
Tom nodded. He told his mother what he had figu
red out, telling her about Sarah’s rage at the RTA and showing her his notes on steroids. Thel read about the side effects and thought back to Sarah’s edgy behaviour at the Mardi Gras.
‘Oh, poor Sarah,’ she said. ‘Why would Ginny do that?’
Tom remembered the episode in Ginny’s apartment, the look of crazed lust in her eyes, her mad ravings as she wafted around dressed in just an apron. He shivered with disgust at the memory, unwilling to reveal it to his mother.
‘That’s for the police to figure out.’
Thel stared at him. ‘Poor, poor Sarah. We’ve got to do something. Get dressed and then let’s go to the police.’
On his way to the shower Tom noticed the light flicking on the answering machine. He was surprised there was a message. He had turned down the volume so they could sleep. Had someone called through the night? He turned up the volume and stood frowning at the machine. Sarah’s voice was almost unrecognisable. Tom turned it as high as possible. Thel came out of the kitchen and stood listening as Tom played it for the second time.
‘Tom, pick up the phone. It’s me …’ Sarah’s voice was strained and with the effort of whispering it came out of the machine in a high-pitched hiss. There was no mistaking her desperation. Thel, looking small and vulnerable in Tom’s oversized bathrobe, put her hand on his arm. ‘… Tom, oh Tom, I am so sorry. For give me. Please.’
The line went dead and the answering machine tape whirred back to the start. Thel and Tom stood staring at it.
‘The police will have to wait. We’ve got to get her out of there now,’ said Tom.
Thel nodded. ‘What was their reason for not letting you see her?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t immediate family. I’m her fiancé but not considered family.’
‘Right,’ said Thel. ‘We’ll see about that.’
*
Ginny cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair and put on clean clothes, her movements focussed and controlled. Tom had gone. He didn’t want her. The fictitious world she had created around the two of them had shattered into a thousand tiny, sharp pieces. She felt them slicing through her from inside. They were like little shards of glass working their way through her soft and tender flesh.
He didn’t want her. He had pushed her away. Ginny absorbed the pain, savoured its white-hot intensity and directed it towards the person who had made this all happen. Sarah. That vain, self-centred bitch Sarah. Sarah the perfect daughter. Sarah the most popular girl in the class. Sarah with all the boyfriends. Everything that Ginny should have had and should have been, Sarah was. And she had no right to it. It was unfair. And it had gone on for too long. Ginny was going to put a stop to it. Once and for all.
She carefully checked the contents of her handbag as Sarah’s voice filled her bedroom.
‘Tom, pick up the phone. It’s me. Please help me. They think I’m on steroids. I’m not. They think I’m mad …’ Ginny paused to listen. ‘… You’ve got to get me out of here …’
She had heard enough. Ginny was pointing her little blue car out of the driveway just as Sarah’s anguished sobs filled her room.
CHAPTER 20
Sarah sat by herself on the bench seat near the pond, watching the family of ducks glide by. The sun warmed her face. She was far enough away from the nurses and other patients with visitors to be able to ignore the steady murmur of their conversations. Every few minutes a nurse would stroll a bit closer, just to let Sarah know she was still being watched. But they didn’t speak to her and if she kept her head angled slightly to the left, she could screen out their presence completely. By narrowing her eyes into thin slits, Sarah could make the high brick walls disappear, so she could pretend everything was right with her world and she was enjoying a sunny morning by herself at the Botanic Gardens. Tom would be along later and they would go to the restaurant in the gardens for lunch.
Tom would hold her hand, order her favourite wine and they would talk. Sarah played with the picture in her mind’s eye. Tom would tell her how silly she was to worry about hitting him. Of course it didn’t matter, he would say. There was nothing she could do that would ever shake his love for her. Then he would feed her sugar cubes, slowly, placing each one in her mouth and holding it while she nibbled. Then they would slip down their chairs and make love under the table, screened from onlookers by the crisp white linen tablecloth.
Sarah toyed with her fantasy, touching it up here and there, finally switching the love scene to the idyllic spot by the pond. Forget under the table, they would walk out after lunch and come here to the willow tree where Tom would take off her clothes piece by piece, kissing her feet until she was unable to bear the delicious sensations any longer and begged him to stop.
The vision lifted Sarah out of her misery but only for a few moments. As the picture faded of Tom and her entwined on the mossy reed bank, she was left with a large empty hole and such a feeling of sadness that she thought she would drown in it.
Then something caught Sarah’s attention and she opened her eyes wider. There was a rustling in the reeds, something moving. Briefly Sarah contemplated screaming ‘crocodile!’ and running for the gates, but she dismissed the idea as something only a mad person would do. The thought made her smile. Why not? What the hell? Maybe if she ran fast enough she would make it to the gate and, with the grace of an Olympic high-jump champion, could launch herself over the wall.
The rustling continued, spreading further, and Sarah started to become interested. She waited, sitting very still, expecting an animal to waddle out, maybe a duck. But it wasn’t an animal that emerged from the reeds. It was a human nose, followed by a head and long hair tied back in a ponytail.
Hingeman, as the patients called him, crawled with cat-like grace out of the bushes and along the ground. He seemed oblivious of Sarah but she knew that wasn’t true. He did his hinge act to get attention. It wasn’t a coincidence he was crawling out in front of her. He must have gone to great lengths to make his way unseen along the pond bank to where she sat.
Sarah called out, ‘Hey, Hingeman …’ But he wouldn’t look up. He kept his eyes firmly on the ground in front of him as he propelled himself soundlessly forward and past her feet. Sarah was disappointed. She would have liked to talk to Hingeman, to get to the bottom of the hinge thing, find out what the neuroses were that inspired this odd performance each day.
She liked Hingeman. Despite his unusual behaviour, he didn’t seem as mad as the rest, just interesting. He didn’t have that overly intense expression that so many of the patients had. Sarah wondered whether they came in that way or whether they were perfectly normal, like her, and became that way after too long locked up in here. The only way to cope was to go mad too. Go mad on the outside while staying safe and sane on the inside. It would be one way to keep yourself entertained.
Sarah wondered if such an idea was madness itself and was she, in fact, mad? How would she know? Clearly Dr Hubert thought she was. But maybe he was the one who was mad. Who was to say her behaviour wasn’t completely sane, given the circumstances? But what were the circumstances? She had steroids in her bloodstream. But how had they got there? Or, she didn’t have steroids in her system and someone had made a mistake, swapped her blood test results with another patient. Maybe it was Hingeman’s blood.
What did one British cow say to the other? What do you think of this mad cow’s disease? The other cow’s response: What do I care, I’m a helicopter. Boom, boom. And he’s a human hinge. And I’m not mad. Or am I?
Sarah desperately wanted to see Tom. He was her reference point. He would tell her if she was going mad. She didn’t trust Dr Hubert with her private musings. If he knew what went on inside her head she would never get out of here. Everything she said or did, even the way she looked at him, went straight onto paper and into her file. And then it became fact. He made her fancies concrete when she wasn’t sure that they should be. They were just passing thoughts. She was just as surprised as anybody at what popped into her head. Best to keep it to herself.
Sarah felt, rather than heard, a movement behind her. Ginny was standing by the seat. It looked as though she had been there for a while. Her face was grave and her eyes guarded. She was staring intently past Sarah at the pond.
‘Ginny?’
Sarah was so pleased to see a familiar face. She started to rise, expecting a warm, friendly hug, but something about Ginny’s manner made her stop halfway. Ginny didn’t seem to be able to bring herself to look at Sarah. Sarah wondered if Ginny was nervous about being in a psychiatric hospital. Or perhaps she was nervous of Sarah, now that she had been branded a madwoman. Sarah felt hurt.
‘Ginny, it’s wonderful to see you. Come and sit down.’
Sarah desperately wanted Ginny to relax, to be normal, her old friend again. She was a reminder that Sarah did exist outside the confines of these walls, that she did have a life.
Ginny sat down next to Sarah, smoothing her navy pleated skirt in a fan around her and patting it with small, jerky movements. When she appeared satisfied with the skirt, splayed neatly about her, she put her handbag on her lap, clasping it tightly with both hands. She looked so prim and compact that Sarah almost wanted to laugh. But there was something very unsettling about her manner. Sarah had not seen her friend like this before.
‘Ginny, are you okay?’
For the first time Ginny turned her attention to Sarah, swivelling her eyes slowly across to meet Sarah’s. She didn’t smile. She looked straight at Sarah with hard, dead eyes. Despite the full sun of the bright autumn morning, Sarah felt a chill run along her nerves just under the skin.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked again.
Ginny looked straight through her. ‘I’m not the one in the madhouse, am I?’ she said slowly and deliberately. Her words struck Sarah like a vicious slap.
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