All of Me

by Kim Noble

  But every time I woke up things were just as bad. If anything, they were getting worse.

  Mum had made perfectly clear her feelings on the whole involvement of social workers in our family business. In her eyes I’d brought shame on the family. She was more interested in what the neighbours thought than solving any problem. Dad did what she said or nothing at all. The less time they spent in each other’s company the better. I didn’t mind. Anything for a quiet life. That was our family motto.

  Neither of them spoke to me about the hospital visits. It was as if they were pretending nothing had happened – even though it kept happening. Dad did what he could but his main contribution was accusing me of taking his pills. Day after day it was the same stuck record.

  ‘What were you thinking, taking my distalgesics? They’re dangerous, Kim. When will you learn?’

  ‘I haven’t touched your distalgesics.’

  That was normally enough to shut him up. He hated confrontation, even with me. Unfortunately that also meant there was no way he would take the hospital to task, I knew that, not even when they were kidnapping me every other week for God knows what reason. Neither he nor Mum seemed to have any interest in helping me cope or trying to stop the stomach pumps happening. Why not? Why wouldn’t they step in? It was as if they were blaming me.

  I realised I had never felt so alone in my life.

  School was going from bad to worse as well. In class I struggled to keep up. I would stare at the blackboard, then at my textbook, then at my friends, then back at the board, all the while absolutely nothing sinking in. What did the chalk words mean? Why was I on a different page from my friends? How come everyone knew what to write and not me?

  It was as though I’d missed the lesson where we were taught how to do it. It wasn’t just the time I missed being in hospital. Some lessons I had every day …

  There was always the option of raising my hand. Experience told me that never went well. This time I went for it.

  ‘I don’t understand, Miss,’ I ventured bravely.

  ‘Well, perhaps if you weren’t talking all through my lesson you’d follow it a little better.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking, Miss,’ I claimed. Immediately, though, I knew that was a mistake. I could see the hackles rise on the back of her neck.

  The worst thing about school was the time I spent in the orange room. I seemed to spend half my time in there for no reason. I was always finding myself incarcerated from morning till home time. And always for the same reason: absolutely nothing at all.

  Every time I discovered myself there it felt like another punch in the stomach. Another twist of the knife.

  Why were they doing this to me? What had I done wrong? They were as bad as the doctors. How were they allowed to get away with it?

  I knew kids who bullied other pupils – even when they were grassed up they didn’t get punished like me. I’d seen students do unspeakable things in class and not get half the orange room time that was always being dished out to me. How were teachers allowed to lock me up so indiscriminately? What had I ever done to them? Surely there was a law against it?

  I don’t know if they were related but after my first hospital sentence I seemed to spend more time in the orange room than ever. That was all I needed. Subjected against my will to unfathomable experiments at the hands of NHS psychos, then no sooner had I recovered enough to go back to school, thrown in this tangerine prison.

  I know it happened a lot because Mum mentioned it once at home. She must have been sent a letter. I tried to tell her I was victimised but she wasn’t interested.

  ‘You’re lucky they don’t throw you out,’ she said. ‘And then what will you do?’

  If I’m honest, other kids seemed to hate it more than me. My friends said it drove them mad staring at those four satsuma-coloured walls all day. I never experienced that. For me it felt like I was in and out in no time. I certainly didn’t spend the day reflecting on my misdemeanours, if that’s what they were hoping for. Not only did I have nothing to apologise for, I didn’t even remember leaving half the time, although obviously I did.

  I could have coped if I’d deserved to be there. If I park on a double yellow line today, I don’t like it when I get a ticket but I accept it was my fault. It would be a different story if I hadn’t parked illegally and I still got the fine. Any punishment is exacerbated when you don’t deserve it. An eye for an eye didn’t come into it when I was growing up. As far as I was concerned I had been the victim of bullying all my school life. Not by pupils. By teachers, by the head, by the system.

  That sense of injustice continued outside school. All adults seemed to have it in for me, whether I was at work, in class or shopping with friends. Worst of all, though, was the treatment I was subjected to in hospital. If it happened outside Mayday you’d call it torture. How else would you describe being drugged then invaded by coarse hosepipes? Being flushed out by water and saline? That’s what they told me they were doing and I believed them – I had the scars every time to prove it. How else would you account for the days of pain, the enforced imprisonment and – most unpleasant – those sneering faces of doctors accusing me of scheming for my own reward?

  What reward was that? What could I possibly gain from putting myself through that hell?

  Not all of the faces were so bad, I have to admit. Some of the nurses said nice things to me, I suppose, although I knew they were the ones who’d dragged me there in the first place so that didn’t count. It didn’t matter what they said. Dr Picton-Jones and Miss Kerfoot, the social worker, were the only ones who seemed to be on my side consistently even if I didn’t enjoy hearing some of the things they said. That didn’t matter. I would work everything out for myself. Then I would show them.

  Before I could do anything, however, I found myself face to face with the doctor once more.

  It’s happened again!

  That was the first thing I thought when I looked up and saw her face. She looked like she’d been talking to me. I must have been asleep. Couldn’t she tell? But I was here now. I looked around. I was in Ward 1 at Mayday. That much was obvious. That’s why the doctor was here – Ward 1’s other name was the ‘psychiatric ward’. I didn’t think there was a bed here I hadn’t been in.

  I tuned into what the doctor was saying. It was the same old guff about trying to understand why I do things.

  Here we go again.

  ‘What things?’ I asked.

  ‘You know very well. Why do you keep overdosing on your grandmother’s pills, and now your father’s medication as well?’

  Overdose?

  I desperately wanted to shout out: ‘I don’t! It’s a lie.’ I really needed to tell her, ‘They keep bringing me here and torturing me with that pipe. They’re experimenting on me for something. I don’t know what but they’ll say anything to keep me here. You’ve got to stop them!’ I had it all planned.

  ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ I announced defiantly. ‘I haven’t tried to kill myself.’

  The doctor smiled and her whole face lit up.

  ‘I know you haven’t,’ she said calmly.

  ‘But you just said I had.’

  ‘No, I said you took several drugs overdoses, each of which could have killed you. But I know that on each occasion you told someone what you’d done. If you’d really wanted to commit suicide you’d have kept it to yourself.’

  I don’t know how long I stared at her. I was having trouble trying to compute her words. Overdoses, suicide attempts and now non-suicide attempts. What the hell was she talking about? How was I the one on the psychiatric ward when she was coming out with stories like that? If anyone there needed help it was her.

  I resolved to get out of Mayday as soon as the doctor’s back was turned. I just needed to slip my shoes on and I could be out of there in seconds. I don’t know where I’ll go but it’s got to be better than here.

  It was as if Dr Picton-Jones read my mind.

  ‘You’ll be leaving here so
on enough, Kim,’ she said kindly.

  That knocked a bit of wind out of my sails. There goes the element of surprise …

  ‘But I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’

  I shrugged. Worse than being incarcerated here? I couldn’t see how.

  I was wrong.

  Before Dr Picton-Jones could reveal all, Miss Kerfoot the social worker came down to join us. We exchanged hellos and how are yous. Obviously I said, ‘Fine, thank you,’ despite feeling anything but. Then the doctor explained, ‘I was just about to inform Kim where she’ll be going from here.’

  ‘What do you mean where?’ I asked. ‘I’m going straight home.’

  ‘Not any more,’ Miss Kerfoot said. ‘That’s not working for you, is it?’

  ‘It’s fine!’

  ‘Well, we can’t keep having you back in here every other week, can we? One of these days you’re not going to be so lucky.’

  I wasn’t even listening properly by then. Not going home? What were they talking about?

  Miss Kerfoot was giving me her best supportive face. I recognised it from her collection of sympathetic expressions. ‘The doctor’s done her best to keep you out for as long as possible,’ she said, ‘but you haven’t been helping yourself. So I’m afraid you’ve left us with no choice. There’s a bed for you at Warlingham Park.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘That’s why Miss Kerfoot’s here. She’s going to help you pack your bags. I’m afraid you’re in the system now.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lights out!

  Hayley watched the woman’s lips move. The words sounded English but they may as well have been a foreign language. She understood what they meant all too well. What Hayley didn’t understand was why she was telling her.

  ‘This is a secure unit,’ the woman was saying. ‘You’ll be monitored twenty-four hours a day. You’ll be escorted to the toilet where you’ll go under supervised conditions and you’ll not be allowed a bath until further notice.’ She picked up a small pile of paper. ‘And oh,’ she added, ‘you’ll be wearing a paper gown for the first week or two. After that, if you’re really good, we might let you have one with pockets.’

  ‘Supervised’, ‘baths’, ‘pockets’? Hayley had had enough.

  ‘What is this place?’ she demanded.

  The woman laughed, walked over to the door and closed it behind her. A second later a small metal panel in the door slid back and she stared through the gap.

  ‘For the umpteenth time, it’s Warlingham Park. But you can call it home.’

  Imagine being dropped onto a film set and the director has just called ‘Action!’ The scenery is in place, the props are ready and everyone around you suddenly starts moving. The spotlight hits you, you’re the star.

  But you’ve forgotten your lines.

  I’ve lost count of how many times I felt like that. The last thing I remembered was speaking to Miss Kerfoot and Dr Picton-Jones. It seemed like a second later to me but they were nowhere to be seen. In fact, Mayday Hospital had disappeared. I wasn’t in Kansas any more.

  I didn’t panic. I did what I always did: played detective.

  What can I see?

  Nothing. Four dark walls. No windows. Worse than the orange room. No furniture apart from a grey, metal bed fixed to the floor.

  Am I in prison?

  I rushed over to the closed door. Where was the handle? How am I meant to open it without a handle? I pushed it – nothing. Then again, harder. The door didn’t budge. It was made of metal and from the dull thuds I was making, pretty thick.

  I’m trapped.

  Suddenly short of air. Prison or not, I have to get out.

  I banged on the door with my fists, faster and harder until I thought my knuckles would break.

  ‘Come on! Open the door! Let me out!’

  I was screaming now, aware that my voice had no echo in this weird room, and genuinely terrified. There’s nothing worse than the claustrophobia of a locked door. I was desperate now for some air. I was going to faint.

  Suddenly a small rectangular window, about eye level, appeared. A man’s face was peering in.

  ‘What’s all the fuss, Noble?’ he said. ‘I’ve told you: it’s solitary for you for another twenty-four hours.’

  Now where was I? How did I get out of the cell? It didn’t matter. I was just grateful to have escaped. But where had I escaped to?

  Okay, I’m at a table, a large round one, shared with seven other people, all grown-ups. We’re in a big room. Four or five identical tables. Fuddy-duddy décor in a really bad state.

  There was a plate of grey food in front of me, half eaten.

  Obviously a rundown canteen of some description, or a restaurant, but one I didn’t recognise. I couldn’t see any waiters so I couldn’t check their uniforms. The windows weren’t any help either. All I could see outside were trees and bushes.

  What else?

  The smell. There was something more pungent than the aroma from a kitchen. What was it? Then I realised. It was pee. The air reeked of old, rancid pee. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the carpet, from the chairs or from the diners themselves. Horrible. I pushed my plate away in disgust. There was no way I could eat now. Not in that room.

  What is this place? Am I in an old people’s home?

  That couldn’t be right. It just couldn’t. The people on my table, though, were much older than me.

  Anything else?

  The noise! The more I concentrated on piecing my jigsaw together, the harder it became because of the raucous din. I hadn’t noticed at first. It was the sound of fifty people talking at once – and nobody listening. I could make bits and pieces out. Some of it wasn’t in English. Some of it didn’t even sound like real words. One man was howling – not crying – literally howling as though he were trying to summon a wolf. Others sounded in distress. Angry, sad, upset, happy. Every emotion going was thrown in the mix. Every emotion, that is, except one.

  The one that was slowly creeping up on me.

  Fear.

  I genuinely had no idea where I was. All I could think of was Dr Picton-Jones’s chilling words: ‘You’re in the system now.’

  I looked again around my table. For adults some of them had appalling manners. Some were dribbling, some were playing with their food, some were spraying it everywhere. I wasn’t in McDonald’s.

  They’ve done it. They’ve put me in the nuthouse!

  I felt my blood run cold.

  I scanned the room. No one was walking around. I didn’t dare stand up. But how did I get there? Had they drugged me? And how long had I been there? No one was taking a bit of notice of me. That’s not how you treat a newcomer. Whether it’s school, Brownies or a job, you normally get shown around on your first day. From what I could tell everyone was pretty comfortable with my being there. Which meant I’d been there some time.

  How was that even possible?

  What are they doing to my mind?

  Actually, not everyone was comfortable with my being there. There must have been a cue to leave the table, which I missed, because suddenly half a dozen people leapt up and starting meandering around. They didn’t exactly look like they had anywhere to go but they didn’t want to be seated either. A few were shaking. One man’s tongue lolled from his mouth like a chewing camel. Some shuffled. The only person who looked like she had a mission was a large, middle-aged woman. I couldn’t help staring as she marched purposefully past my table. She must have noticed. She spun round and shouted in my face, ‘My son! What have you done with my son?’

  I nearly fell off my chair in fright. I honestly thought she was going to punch me.

  I managed to splurt out, ‘I haven’t seen your son, sorry,’ but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  ‘You’ve seen him, I know you’ve seen him. Where is he?’

  I looked frantically around the room for help. No one came. I couldn’t see anyone in a uniform among the scruffy throng. There was certainly no one looking like they wer
e about to step in to save me.

  ‘I haven’t seen him, I promise.’ My voice was barely audible now. It didn’t matter. The woman wasn’t listening anyway.

  ‘You don’t like black people, do you?’ she said, leaning in towards me. Whether it was meant menacingly or not, that’s how I interpreted it. That’s how anyone would have responded.

  The woman was so close I couldn’t catch my breath to scream. I could barely think.

  She’s off her rocker.

  That was obvious. But the problem was: how far off her rocker was she? Was she aggressive? Was it going to escalate? The woman was angry and twice my size – at least. I didn’t stand a chance.

  Just as I thought she was about to hit me, she took a step back and sneered, ‘You’ve never seen a black arse before, have you?’

  A black what?

  Before I had even processed what she’d meant, the woman just pulled her pants down and shoved her backside in my face. I was literally pinned to the edge of the table by her big, fat bum. It sounds funny now. I’m smiling remembering it. But not back then. At that moment, at fourteen years of age, I’d never felt so threatened in my life. And never so dirty. It was absolutely terrifying. Absolutely humiliating. And, for all I knew, absolutely a sign of things to come.

  Eventually a man in white appeared and escorted away the woman he called Sadie, still pulling her knickers back up, still shouting to the world that I’d stolen her son. No one asked me if I was all right. No one apologised. No one took any notice of me at all.

  A sickening realisation hit me: if no one bats an eyelid then her behaviour must be par for the course. On the plus side, at least she’d confirmed something: I had been sent to a proper asylum.

  Now I just need to get out.

  ‘Five minutes to lights out!’

  What?

  A woman, dressed in the same pale staff uniform I’d just seen, was standing by the door. But it wasn’t the canteen door. It was a different room entirely.