The house phone is ringing in the distance. It is answered. Then my parents are panicking and falling over me. I feel my wrist being pressed, being held together, but it is just a symptom and it’s too late to fix the problem. I am broken now – let me go.
They talk and talk and cry but I don’t hear a word.
I see Daniel standing over me. “It’s time – follow me.”
So I get up and follow him out. We walk through the door and out onto the street.
“Am I going to hell?”
“No,” he says, “that’s where you’ve just been.”
He holds my hand and we skip down the road.
“Where are we going?” I am breathless.
“It’s an adventure.”
Then everything is white.
Part Four – The Resurrection
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death thou shalt die.
John Donne
Chapter Nineteen
The steaming water slams into every part of my body. This brick installation is different from any shower I have been in. There are no shower heads as such. Instead, two pipes run above it, countersunk into the ceiling with holes running all the way along. On one side of us is brick wall. On the other side is the glass screen through which we are watched. It stinks of disinfectant masking piss.
Steven stands next to me, checking me out as we both shower, his cock hard as it has been these last two mornings and evenings when we carried out this ritual. He makes no effort to hide the fact I am turning him on, even though we are under constant observation. How can I object? I sometimes find myself looking between his legs. I can’t get past the sixteen or so dark red scars on each of his skinny thighs and the twelve on each side of his chest that make me think of armadillo skin. My eyes are always drawn to the scars and there is nothing sexy about them, nothing in the slightest.
This is a ward in the hospital I was brought to be sewn up. The nurse has told me how lucky I am that they have this facility what with NHS cuts and everything. She's told me how lucky I am they got me here in time and how lucky I am I didn't damage the nerves in my wrist.
I'm obviously very lucky.
It’s a temporary holding place for patients but there are things about this place so distinct I will never forget them: the carpeting – everywhere here is carpeted, the floors, the walls, the door, and everywhere the smell of pine cleaning fluid; the silence, the profound perpetual silence – even the alarm here has a hushed tone, as if it were saying, Don’t worry, this isn’t something for you to worry about; being watched constantly, including on the toilet and in the shower – the nurse sits down on a plastic chair on the other side of the glass and watches us – I turn my back to her when I wash my arse so she can see me do it. Likewise, when I’m cleaning between my legs, I let her see me pull back and clean under my foreskin so she won’t complain I haven’t done it: I had one of her scrub downs when I refused to shower in front of her when I first got here – believe me – it’s something worth avoiding; and being watched, all the time being watched.
Steven said that people doing it for attention cut places where it can be seen.
When he started out that’s what the doctors told his parents, It’s just a cry for attention. I don’t believe that because he admitted that he started out that way himself, then it became more of an addiction. When the wounds got infected he didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t until the infection began to damage his heart and he keeled over at school that anyone knew the extent of what he’d been doing to himself.
Cry for attention – what a load of shit – the sort of thing said by people with no brain and no insight whatsoever. Hurting yourself is not a normal thing to do, no matter what the reasons are for someone doing it. It means that something is not right. Maybe it does mean someone needs attention but that in itself can be a life or death thing. I slam my head against things. That makes no sense at all until you need to do it.
That evening, Steven is moved out to a mental hospital (the same fate that awaits me when they can find me a place), which means my room now has an empty bed.
I wake up that night as a young guy is brought in by two orderlies and a matron. He kicks out, screaming for his mum, as red faced as anger will take him. The doctor who follows them in is cradling his nose.
My nurse gets up out of her seat and stops the doctor, pulling his hands away from his nose where the blood is running down his face. She pulls a tissue out of her pocket and starts to clean him up.
“Get him on that bed and dosed up!” says the doctor.
“It’s your own fault,” says the matron, “you should know better than that by now. Right in front of him when he isn’t restrained – don’t take it out on the child. You’ll be lucky if I don’t write this up.”
For a moment the doctor looks less powerful that I have ever imagined him. I can see how young and insecure he suddenly seems.
The nurses have the boy pinned down on the bed and it isn’t long before the screaming and kicking subsides when he reaches that point between exhaustion and defeat.
“He’s wet himself,” says one of the nurses.
The boy spits in his face, and then continues to cry.
It’s scary how familiar all of this is and how I came in almost the same way. After surgery – my arm in bandages. All I had left in me was anger.
They know how scared he is but they don’t give a shit. I wish I could go over and hold his hand but I’d doubtless get the same reaction. I know they’re only doing what they think is best for him, for us, but I hate them. I hate this place and I need to get out.
The matron prepares an injection and sits next to him. “Have you calmed down a little?”
He nods.
“We’re going let go of you in a moment and I want you to be on your best behaviour. I’ll give you a little injection and then you can go to sleep. Is that alright?”
He nods again. I can see from here how much he is shaking.
“Help him with his shirt.”
Between the boy and one of the orderlies, his shirt comes off.
“All right, Mark,” says the matron, “you’ll feel a small scratch.”
He’s asleep within seconds. The doctor and the orderlies leave.
Tomorrow I will talk to him and tell him not to worry. I’ll tell him how best to get by in here.
The matron helps my nurse strip him down, clean him and get him into a gown. I look at him as he is being washed. I pretend to be sleeping anytime either of the nurses look anywhere near my direction. There are no obvious marks on his body so who knows? Maybe I’ll find out why he’s here tomorrow.
My nurse spots me watching as the matron leaves.
“Do you need something to help you sleep?” It isn’t so much a question as warning. It doesn’t matter anyway; she goes to the drawer and gets me two pink pills and a plastic cup full of water. She watches me as I take them and then she sits down and watches me.
Chapter Twenty
Something about me has been removed. It’s not lost. I know it’s there and if I concentrate I can feel its edges. There’s a strange sense of calmness in not having a choice. I know they’re not going to hurt me here – I’m not talking about what it was
like at camp. It’s not even that I don’t need to think about things, though on these drugs even that is hard work. Its more like there’s a straight path ahead of me and all I can do is walk it. I don’t have any choices and its the best way things could be. I understand that.
I don’t know what drugs they have me on now but they have further subdued my feelings. Maybe the dosage has gone up. A doctor came in and spoke to me and told me I was suffering from depression.
I nodded.
The televisions above our bed come on at seven in the morning and we get up and shower. Mark refuses to take off his gown in front of the nurse.
“You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen a thousand times before, you know. Are we going to have a problem?”
Naked myself, I catch his eye and shake my head. He complies. I can tell he’s not gay – he doesn’t look at me once while we’re showering.
We dry and brush our teeth, then I put on fresh pyjamas and he doesn’t have any here so he has to have another gown.
It’s hard to get to know someone with a nurse watching everything you do. Steven talked and talked when I came in here but Mark seems as shy as me.
What’s my opening line? Are you all right? used to serve me well but since everything happened I know better than to say anything of the sort. It’s the kind of greeting that can open wounds.
The television and the other patient are all there is. There is no going outside. There are no computers or mobile phones. The only thing my parents were allowed to bring me were books and clothes and they only brought the latter – two sets of pyjamas and a set of everyday clothes for when I’m transferred.
Even going to the en suite toilet is no longer a solitary experience. There is no door, only a sheet of semi opaque plastic through which a silhouette is revealed of whoever is using it. Shitting was never designed to be a spectator sport.
“How long you been here for?” asks Mark.
“Three days,” I say.
He looks at my bandaged wrist.
I nod. I think he understands.
“I took pills,” he says.
“It’s better not to dwell on that,” says the Nurse.
And this is what Steven and I get any time we come close to talking about why we are there.
I haven’t been sectioned, just admitted by my parents, which means the same thing – I have no control over anything any more. I can’t leave. I can’t refuse any treatment. If I try to leave I will be sectioned. If that happens I’ve been told I can appeal against it if I want but I don’t need reminding of what got me here and that there is no way I’m getting out. The truth is, I don’t want to. I don’t want any choices any more.
The only thing I have control of is whether to see my parents or not. I’ve chosen not. They tell me when I get to the nuthouse proper I’ll be able to talk about the problems living with my parents along with everything else. For now, it feels like I’m being contained. I’m not a person. I’m a suicidal teen. I’m Mad Malachi – the morons at school were right all along.
We finish breakfast when another nurse comes in and tells me to get dressed. She hands me my boxers, socks, a t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms with the drawstring removed and trainers with the laces taken away.
The nurse looks at my chart. “Do you feel like you want to kill yourself?”
“I don’t feel anything at the moment.”
“Well we’ll give you a little something to relax you for the transfer.”
She gives me a pill I’ve not seen before and I take it as ordered.
Twenty minutes later, a tall, muscular man with thick black hair, a bushy goatee and tattoos all up and down his bare arms comes in and gets me. He is a giant out of a fantasy book. “Hello, Malachi. I’m Porter – I’ve come to rescue you and take you away to my castle.”
I laugh. The pill has relaxed me so much I can’t walk. I am put in a wheelchair and helped into a people carrier which has a driver up front. I experience déjà vu but I can’t place a memory. I am not unconscious. I am awake. I see and hear everything it’s just that my mind doesn’t seem to respond to it.
Porter gets in next to me and doesn’t stop talking the whole way through the journey. He is smiling and happy so I am smiling too. I giggle and laugh though not because of what he is saying (I don’t take in most of what he’s saying) but because he is giggling and laughing.
He tells me he’s a nurse on the ward and that I’m going to be very happy there because it’s so safe. So I don’t have to worry about anything apart from getting better. And I’m laughing and Daniel is laughing and Gareth is laughing. And I’m retching but nothing is coming up and the car seat won’t stop hitting my head.
Then he is holding me and supporting my head and I smile at him again. And I hardly notice as he puts me back in a wheelchair and we go into the new building, through the corridors and then into a room with a bed, a blue chair and a table and he lets me lie down and I giggle myself to sleep.
There are noises behind the door and then voices. The door opens and Porter looks at me. “You’re up then?”
“What did they give me?”
“Something strong. Don’t worry. All that is over now.
“I’m Porter. I’m the nurse practitioner who’s been assigned to you. So we’ll be seeing a lot of one another over the next few days. I’d show you around now but you’ll have a few people to see over the next few hours so it will have to wait until lunch.” He sits down on the chair by my bed.
The few people started with Doctor Black (who I’m to call, Robert) the psychiatrist. Porter takes me to his consulting room and then disappears.
Robert wears a crisp, navy blue suit and a tie with a cartoon character on it who I can’t identify. I sit in the chair opposite him and he asks me all the same questions Tanya did when I was at the hospital right after the first attack. Then he goes over my history and he already knows everything, though isn’t at all specific about what happened at the camp, only, “…and I see you suffered quite a lot of trauma there.” I’m not sure if that’s because he’s not ready to deal with it or he thinks I’m not.
He says I’m on drugs which reduce the chance of me experiencing anxiety. Antibiotics in case of infection which have been extended and renewed. He tells me the nurses will take charge of my medications including my PEP.
“Has your depression existed for a long time or did it come on suddenly?” From the expression on his face I can tell he thinks it’s the latter, which makes me wonder why he thinks that.
I think back to before the camp and my life as it was. Was I happy then? Something about being so close to all those new people must have changed me. I couldn’t be happy with my old life now. “I wasn’t unhappy but I was isolated.” That sounded lucid and coherent but it was such hard work to get to.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Out of place. What happened to me seems very unreal at the moment, like a dream I knew I once had. Then I know it’s there waiting for me. I think I like this place so far but I’m scared that I’m only in control because of the medications. I haven’t had an episode since I wanted to die but I don’t think they’re gone. I feel alone. Well I don’t now so much but I did the other day and...” I’m babbling. I can see he wants to speak.
“Do you want to die now?”
This is such a strange conversation. I laugh.
He gives me a second. I think he wants me to say something but I don’t. “Well it’s good that you feel like you like it here. I promise you that everything else that you’re feeling and everything else that is happening to you, we’ll do our best to help you through it all. For now, relax and settle in.
“I’m going to start you on anti-depressants as you have to come off the anti-anxiety medication in a week or so and it will take them some time to begin working.” He asks if there is anything we haven’t covered.
There is loads but I say no.
He tells me to go next door to another consulting room and there I meet
Mary, my support worker. She’s big and fat and Irish and smiles at me with her rosy cheeks. We only spend ten minutes together and she tells me she’s there to help out in any way she can. There’s only one urgent question, do I want contact with my parents? I tell her no. She says we’ll have a longer chat in a couple of days.
She takes me through to see a nurse who checks my vitals and takes blood.
Then Porter collects me and shows me around the place. All the corridors are painted in various shades of blue. There are places where random squares of wood have been placed and painted over in different shades of blue. The only things not blue are the white doors.
There is a day room with a pool table and a large TV, which is empty at the moment because everyone is at lunch. There are two main doors at the end of the main corridor which lead into the staff areas.
“These are always locked but there’s a phone if you want to talk to someone.” Porter picks it up and puts it down again.
Next to these doors are eight consultation rooms which I’ve seen already. Then there’s something that looks like a gym but Porter calls it an activity room. Then there are two classrooms.
We go to the dining room and eat lunch together. There are about fifteen other patients there and a lot of staff looking over them. It’s noisy with talk, laughs and cries. I don’t get to talk to anyone because Porter says I’m not allowed yet.
He tells me I’ll be in the acute section for a few days if everything goes well and then I’ll be able to mix with the other patients. It also means I’ll be checked on every fifteen minutes.
I’m not sure what to think about that. It sounds like I might be bored.
I get a sandwich and chips from the service bar.
Porter gets the same as me, though he complains. "Evelyn, you know I need more chips."
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer Page 20