by Kim Noble
The ward was split in half for group therapy. Half a dozen of us went with Dr Young, the registrar, the rest with someone else. Overall control for the ward came from Professor Julian Leff.
I don’t think a lot of the patients had much experience of therapy prior to those sessions. They struggled with the rules and the incessant questioning and analysis, whereas I’d seen it all before. If anyone had asked, I could have predicted the therapist would sit there, nodding, umming and ahing, and peppering everything with ‘I see, I see’ and the classic ‘And how did that make you feel?’
I was right. But I still had to get through it and try to convince these idiots that there was nothing wrong with me so I could go home.
Mum didn’t come to visit, although Jennifer did and so did Dad. The Maudsley wasn’t too far from his new house, so he was a regular sight. He was never as embarrassing to talk to as Mum – who sometimes struggled to hide how uncomfortable she found being among my fellow patients – but we’d been through the whole patient-and-visitor role for so long there wasn’t much left for us to talk about. Still, at least he wasn’t weird. One of the other girls in Ward 3 was regularly visited by her dad but, if you ask me, he was the one who should have been a patient. He’d barely say a word. He’d just stand in the lounge, near her chair, and pose like he was a ballet dancer caught mid-dance. It was fascinating to watch. He had such grace, such poise, like a bird, but what the hell was he doing? I wasn’t surprised to see him on television years later but he was a painter, not a dancer.
The Maudsley has had its share of celebrity patients, actually, and while I was there I shared therapy groups with someone with royal connections. I wondered if she was being kept there by the same lies as me.
No one looked exactly pleased to be there but some coped better than others. We were all sitting around doing nothing as usual when there was a big fuss out in the corridor. That wasn’t new. But the screaming was worse than anything I’d ever heard in Warlingham.
There was a crowd blocking the door by the time I got there. But I was just in time to see a man outside completely on fire. He’d obviously tried to kill himself but I don’t think he’d been prepared for the slow pain. He was haring up and down, flames pouring off him like the Wicker Man.
Oh my God, he’s going to die!
Then out of nowhere a nurse shoulder-charged him and they both went down. A second later he was wrapped in a blanket being rolled over and over. The fire was out. He was alive. It had taken about five seconds.
It’s only in an emergency that you see what people are really capable of. Who’d have thought Ward 3 staff knew what to do when someone immolates himself? They also had a procedure to prevent escapes.
The Maudsley was a big hospital and you were allowed to wander, by and large. The entrance to Ward 3 was at the top of a flight of stairs, but if you got through the door there was room to roam. With permission you were even allowed to venture down to the shops. Dare to touch the stairs without clearance, however, and the flags went up. I saw a lad flash past once. He was young, athletic and really motoring. I thought, There’s no way these staff are going to catch him.
A nurse came flying out of her office but she didn’t even try to chase him. She just ran to a button on the wall and hammered it. A second later alarms pealed throughout the building. That was the lockdown signal, I realised. That was the cue for certain staff on every floor to drop what they were doing and head into the corridors – to stop whoever was making a break for freedom.
It was an incredible sight to behold. Staff in white coats appeared from every corner and literally jumped on the poor guy. We called them the ‘A-Team’. Nobody ever got past them although plenty tried.
I was accused of it once. As if! But I suddenly found myself being manhandled back up the stairs by two giant orderlies. They were hurting my arm.
‘Get off me!’
‘And let you try to run away again?’ one said.
‘You may as well let her go. She won’t get far at that speed.’
‘Yeah, you’ll have to be quicker next time, love.’
Nod and smile. Nod and smile.
Three weeks, four weeks – I don’t know – but some time later I found myself back at home. I didn’t feel healthier. I didn’t look any different.
What was the point of that?
Still, I didn’t have time to waste on worrying about my weight. I had things to do, starting with finding a new job.
Sometimes things just fall into place, don’t they? No sooner had I thought about it than I discovered I had a new job – even if I didn’t know how it had happened. Still, you can’t look a gift horse …
That smell! The bodies, the urine, the Dettol.
The familiar claustrophobia of panic was overwhelming.
No, not Warlingham!
Where else could I be? I took a second to study the room. The patients looked older. The layout was different. The TV was newer and bigger. It wasn’t George Ward. I wasn’t in the peephole cell. That made a change. So where was I? And why was one of the older ones asking me to help her up? And how did she know my name?
Weird.
I think I’d been there about ten minutes before I realised I wasn’t a patient – I was a member of the staff. It was an old people’s home – which explained the smell – and I was a carer. For once I’d be following other people, making sure they were where they had to be. This time the boot was on the other foot.
I was excited, actually. Warlingham had shown me how these institutions shouldn’t be run. I had the chance to make a difference. I really thought I’d found my vocation. That didn’t last long.
One of my jobs was getting the old dears washed and bathed. I just had to run the bath, help them with their clothing if necessary and then hang around in case they got into difficulties. The old ladies were really sweet – senile as you like, but lovely. Some of them reverted to kids in the bath water. It was really lovely to watch.
The men, on the other hand, just reverted to evil so-and-sos. The first old boy I took there, Eric, told me he was too decrepit to wash himself. His words, not mine. ‘Beverley, your predecessor, always washed me,’ he said pathetically. Like an idiot I believed him.
I got hold of a sponge and told him to stand up. While he held onto the safety rail I scrubbed his back, legs and stomach and arms as briskly as I could. When I finished I threw the sponge back into the bath and dried my hands. In the mirror I noticed Eric was still standing.
‘You’ve missed a bit,’ he said.
When I turned round I noticed something else was standing as well!
It was staggering how many randy old buggers there were in that place. They all tried it on at one time or another. The home leader just laughed in my face when I told her what I’d been doing. ‘They’re having you on,’ she said. ‘If they can’t wash themselves then they don’t get washed. That’s the rule.’
There was one exception. One bloke had some sort of infection and his testicles had swollen up like tennis balls. I was told by a nurse that I would need to wash them for him. I agreed but when the old boy took down his pants I nearly gagged.
No way!
I hated working at that home. I think the patients were treated well enough but I’d spent enough time in institutions. It wasn’t pleasant being there, especially with the familiar stench of pee and bleach. More than that, there are only so many times you can have your backside slapped by an eighty year old. So one day I just threw my blue tunic on the supervisor’s desk and walked out.
It felt good leaving. I literally just walked out the door and never returned. How many times I’d wanted to do that at so many other places. The only problem was what to tell Mum.
The next morning I was in my car. I don’t remember getting there. I don’t remember driving to the top of our road. But I do remember waiting until nine o’clock and thinking, Mum will have left by now. Then I drove back home and went inside. When she returned nine hours later she assumed I�
��d been to work.
We carried on like that for about three weeks. I’d leave for work, wait for Mum to go past, then shoot back home. My cover was only blown when Mum asked for my housekeeping money and I had to tell her why I didn’t have any.
Not again.
I recognise some of the walls, the beds, the nurses – even some of the patients. I was on Ward 3 at the Maudsley. Dad was next to me, talking to a doctor. They were discussing my weight. I tried to tune out but it was impossible. I needed to eat more, they said.
Yeah, yeah.
I needed to stop being sick.
Heard it before.
I needed to focus on being healthy.
Same old story, same old lies.
If I didn’t I could look forward to a lifetime of institutional care.
Now I’m listening!
I promised I’d behave. What other option did I have? The only problem was not knowing what I’d done wrong in the first place. If you don’t know that, how can you avoid doing it again? I became a bag of nerves. Making my bed, brushing my teeth, contributing to the therapy sessions – were any of these acts on the ‘mustn’t do’ list? Was I doing them right? It was like walking on eggshells and knowing one of them was really a mine primed to go off at the slightest touch.
Worst of all was the suspicion that when the mine went off I could be nowhere near and still get the blame – and that’s exactly what happened.
‘Well, that won’t fill you up,’ the nurse laughed wearily. ‘You’d better spit it out.’
Where did she come from?
‘Spit what out?’ I replied. ‘I haven’t eaten anything.’ That was the God’s truth. I hadn’t had a crumb all day, not even breakfast, I suddenly realised.
‘Come on, you know what I mean. The paper. Don’t tell me you’ve swallowed it.’
She held one hand out under my mouth and with the other picked up a magazine from the table in front of me. It was open at an article on food. There were scraps of pages screwed up all over it.
Someone’s been having fun, I thought.
Then I looked back at the nurse, who now had both hands on her hips.
‘Look, Kim, you’ve got to stop eating paper.’
So that’s what this is about. She thinks I made this mess?
‘I haven’t eaten any paper. Don’t be stupid!’
‘Kim, love, you’ve got ink all round your mouth.’
The paper episode got me kept in another few weeks. They said it was part of my disorder. Not my depression or my dissociation or one of those other made-up diagnoses. My anorexia or bulimia – I can’t remember which. It didn’t matter to me. They were both as untrue as each other.
There was no point in fighting it. I knew how it worked. They accused me of something, I promised to behave, we had therapy for a while, then they let me out. Over the next few years this happened, on average, once or twice a year. When I wasn’t inside the hospital I was visiting Dr Murray Jackson in out-patient, listening to one wild claim after another. Trumped-up charges every time, from having breakdowns at work to claiming the television was giving me signals. When Professor Leff had told me that one I just laughed in his face. He didn’t flinch, just wrote something in his notebook.
Trying to juggle a normal life knowing that at any moment I could be scooped off into the Maudsley was almost impossible. Almost – but not quite. I still found time to have a drink. Of course, when Dr Jackson found that out, his notebook received a new load of scribble. The next thing I knew I had a new diagnosis to add to my collection: alcoholic.
For once I couldn’t disagree. In the outside world I always seemed to have a glass of Pinot Grigio in my hand. It wasn’t the best tag to have on my medical records but, I realised, it was better than being called bulimic.
Nobody has ever been sectioned for being drunk.
But they have been locked up for schizophrenia – and that was coming my way next.
‘Pratt’ by Ria Pratt
To find out more about each artwork featured in All of Me, please turn to the back of the book.
‘Ken’ by Ken
‘The Art of Starvation’ by Judy
‘Lost in Play’ by Ken
‘Thinking Man’ by Abi
‘The Naming’ by Dawn
‘Reaching Out’ by Bonny
‘Aims’ by Suzy
‘Golden Kabbalah’ by Key
‘Longing Rose’ by Judy
‘Mystery of the Prayer’ by Anon
‘Hangman’ by MJ
‘Oh!’ by Suzy
‘Silent Blue’ by Patricia
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My own place
The delivery van thundered down the congested south London street. Parked cars were lined bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. Pedestrians flitted in and out of shops and houses. Julie had to be alert. Any one of them could suddenly dart out in front of the van. It happened all the time.
As she pulled up at traffic lights, Julie used the red light’s pause to sift through the paperwork on the passenger seat and double-check the pick-up address. Just as she thought. She’d been there a hundred times. The van could probably find its way without her.
Amber. Green.
Van into first, then through the gears to fourth, Julie crawled away. She needed the third turn on the right. Ready to signal any moment.
Then she noticed the car in front. It was trying to tell her something. She studied the license plate. It was as clear as day. It was saying ‘turn left’.
Change of plan!
The squeal of tires trying to cling to the road as the van skidded into a sudden turn brought shocked stares from passers-by. A cacophony of horns joined in a second later and there was angry swearing from a man who’d been halfway across the road.
Julie heard it all and didn’t care.
She had to obey the messages.
She pulled up behind another car, a blue one, and waited for further instruction. It was there, in the license plate as usual, the letter ‘R’.
That means ‘right’.
So that’s where she turned, less suddenly this time but still without warning the car behind.
Julie had forgotten about the delivery. She was following a more important mission now. The messages were coming through loud and clear. The next one was the most unmistakeable of all.
‘C.Y.E.’
It could only mean one thing: ‘close your eyes’. Without a second thought Julie obeyed.
She was travelling at almost thirty miles an hour.
Cars have played a regular part in my life. The sound of Dad roaring up our road and those tense moments afterwards wondering if he’d make the bend at that speed is one of my clearest, earliest memories. Mum’s accident changed the dynamic in the house for ages. She was the strong one, the one in charge. Having her out of commission made everything wrong.
Then there was the fact I was given a driver’s licence without ever having taken a lesson – although I was going out with the instructor at the time.
Speaking of boyfriends, I was going out with another guy when my next four-wheeled memory occurred. My little car had a problem so I called a mechanic to come and have a look. He was a good-looking chap and so when he asked me out I said yes. Of course, he turned out to be married – although that wasn’t the only reason we only saw each other once.
He picked me up in his car – even though he’d fixed mine now – and we drove out to Epsom. It’s a bit more picturesque than certain parts of south London but I’d have been happier with somewhere closer. I thought maybe he was trying to impress me – although he probably wanted to get far away from being possibly spotted by his wife!
We had a nice night actually. My wine glass was always filled up, which was the main thing. As we drove back along these narrow lanes through Banstead, the road was so twisty, it was bend after bend. There were no streetlights and either side of the road there was a high grass verge that made it look narrower still. If anything came
the other way both cars had to slow down to make sure we didn’t touch.
Everything was fine, romantic even. Then we saw the headlights.
It happened so quickly I couldn’t even scream. There was a car on the other side of the road – and another one overtaking it and heading straight for us.
Where could we go? There was nowhere. Everyone slammed on their brakes but it was too late.
The next thing I remember is scrabbling for the door handle. I had to get out. I was sure the car was going to explode. That’s what happened in films. It was pitch black; all the headlights had been smashed. I didn’t even know where I would run. I couldn’t make out up from down.
Come on! Open!
The handle turned but the door wouldn’t budge. It had been smacked too hard. Then I realised we were up against the grass verge. Panicking I shoved it with my shoulder, hard, and felt it give. I did it again, and again. Finally there was just enough of a gap for me to squeeze through. I just managed to get through, oblivious to the nettles and damp grass scratching my face, and pulled myself out. I didn’t give two hoots about my date, that much was clear. I just wanted to get away.
Half running, half staggering into the darkness I heard screaming and crying. It was like being back in Warlingham. Like being in the dreaded lock-up area on George Ward.
Suddenly there were lights and the sound of an engine. A car pulled up. Instinctively I went over but when the doors opened I froze. Three terrifying-looking punks were clambering out. They were dressed in black from head to foot with studs and pins sticking out of everywhere. There’d been a lot of bad press at the time about people like this. I looked behind me. Was it too late to run back?
I learnt a lesson that night. Never judge a book by its cover. Those kids were so sweet. They took me to their car and made me sit in it while one of them ran to the nearest house to call an ambulance.
‘Are you sure? I’m bleeding. It will get all over your car.’