It was when my mother called me to come down for my meal that I was found. Annoyed at what she thought was bad behaviour, she had climbed the stairs, marched to my room and, without knocking, unceremoniously flung open the door. There she was faced with a small child in her thirteen-year-old daughter’s body. At first the child refused to speak, just sat holding Paddington, and looked at the woman with something akin to bewilderment. Realizing that the mother’s initial anger was turning to worry, she tried to utter a few words. Her speech was different. Her voice was higher and her vocabulary smaller. For a few moments, my mother thought I was playing some sort of malicious game.
I can imagine her impatience, how she tried to snatch Paddington from my arms, how she shouted, forgetting that five-year-olds are more easily frightened than older children. But she had not accepted that that was who she was dealing with.
That realization came when the child in front of her opened her mouth and bawled, face red with approaching temper. My mother took a step back, still unsure of what was happening. Then the child ran across the room screaming and, as she had done at five, threw herself against the wall, filling the room with ear-piercing, anguished cries.
I was not witness to that or to my mother wrestling me to the floor and yelling for my father. Neither was I there when the doctor arrived and slid a needle into my arm.
I have no memory of the ambulance arriving or of the journey to the hospital.
I only know that when I woke there was no sign of my five-year-old self. I didn’t know she had ever been there. All I knew when I opened my eyes was that a woman’s face I did not recognize was hovering just above my head.
39
She told me I was in hospital, that I had been brought in the night before. She explained that I had not woken up when they had put me to bed, and that I had slept through the night. On and on she went in her calm, reassuring voice, which, within just a few seconds, had begun to grate on my nerves.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ I asked, and before she could answer, I blurted out another question: ‘How did I get here?’ As those words left my mouth, I felt a rising sense of panic. I had no recollection of the events of the previous night – and that scared me. It was much worse than the time Dave had brought me home, for then I had had some blurred images. This time there were none.
‘You came by ambulance last night,’ she said matter-of-factly. But that did not tell me why, and I clutched the bedclothes with hands that suddenly felt damp as my fear rose and I tried to remember. ‘Doctor will explain everything,’ she told me, when she saw the anxious look on my face. I tried to ask more questions, but she just patted my hand, said that the doctor would be along soon and that he would explain everything.
A cup of warm, milky tea was brought to me and I was asked if I was hungry.
‘No,’ I said. My stomach felt as though it had been invaded by a swarm of butterflies beating their wings.
No comment was forthcoming. Instead, after helping me to the toilet, the nurse told me to stay where I was and get some rest. The curtains were drawn round my bed as she left. On the way to and from the toilet I had caught sight of nurses in uniform and people in dressing-gowns, who must have been patients, but in my confused state they had hardly registered. Through the curtains I could see vague shapes of people and hear voices, but something stopped me pulling the curtain aside to see what was behind it.
As the nurse had indicated, a doctor arrived soon afterwards. Not a man with a stethoscope around his neck and a white coat: instead he was dressed in casual clothes, light trousers, an open-neck shirt and a jumper. He was younger than the psychologists I had seen before, fresh-faced with floppy brown hair that he flicked back. Brown eyes met mine as he gave a warm smile that was meant to reassure me.
It didn’t.
He sat on the chair next to my bed and told me I could call him Peter. ‘We don’t stand on formality here,’ he said, and added that he was a psychiatrist. I had already worked that out the moment he had introduced himself. Well, it stood to reason – his casual clothes and the use of his Christian name had given me a pretty strong clue that this was no ordinary ‘doctor’.
‘I know from your parents that I’m not the first one you’ve met,’ he said, ‘so there’s nothing to be scared of, is there?’
I wasn’t too sure of that. His job was to look into people’s heads and I didn’t want mine examined too closely.
I pulled up my bedclothes and looked at him with what I thought was a helpless expression. Whatever had happened the night before, I wanted to get out of this place. The fact that he was a psychiatrist told me what sort of ward I was in and I didn’t want to spend any time with crazy people. I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped he would be a pushover.
He wasn’t.
I asked the questions I had asked the nurse and expected to hear some soothing words that would put my mind at rest. Instead he glanced down at his notes, looked up and gave me another smile, one I didn’t trust.
‘I realise, Jackie,’ he said, ‘that you have a lot of questions for me, but let me ask you a few first. All right?’
No, it wasn’t all right, but he didn’t give me a chance to object.
‘Let’s talk about drugs, Jackie,’ was the first thing he said to me and, caught completely unawares, my mouth dropped open in shock.
I had a sinking feeling then that the conversation he had in mind was not one that I wanted to pursue.
I tried to play for time and turned what I hoped was an innocent face towards him. ‘What do you mean?’
It didn’t work.
‘Drugs, Jackie,’ he repeated. ‘The ones you’ve been taking.’
No point in denying it, I realized, when he told me marijuana had been found in my room.
Oh, wonderful, I thought. My mother must have had a field day going through everything. I had hidden it and the little packet of cigarette papers underneath one of the teddy bears. Of course, I didn’t know then that my five-year-old self had betrayed me by lifting them all down and leaving my dope and papers clearly on display.
‘And your mother found some pills,’ he added.
Bloody hell! I thought. She found those Mandies. Oh, shit!
I tried to bluff my way out of that. ‘They’re just painkillers,’ I said, ‘for period pains.’ Men, I knew, didn’t like to talk about girls’ menstrual cycles and I thought that would shut him up.
Wrong again.
‘Don’t take me for a fool, Jackie. “Mx” stamped on them means Mandrax. I suppose you’ve been mixing them with the dope.’
I looked at his face, which showed neither criticism nor approval. What I saw was an implacable determination to get to the bottom of the facts of my life.
It wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d imagined to pull the wool over his eyes. I knew when I saw the firmness behind his smile that I hadn’t managed, even for a second, to hoodwink him with my expression of innocence mixed with confusion.
‘Well, I did take them for pain,’ I protested, but I knew I was not believed.
More questions followed. They were so fast that I had little time to think how to answer them. Where had I got them from, who had given them to me and how often did I use them?
‘Just some kids I met,’ I said. Answering the second question first and ignoring the other two. No, I didn’t know their names, I told him, and, no, they were not at the same school as me. I had met them at a coffee shop.
‘How did you pay for them?’
Again I tried the innocent look. ‘They gave them to me,’ I said, for I certainly didn’t want to answer any questions about how I had found the money.
‘Come on, Jackie,’ he said. ‘I know a joint might be passed round but the Mandrax your mother found isn’t cheap, so you’ve got to be buying stuff, haven’t you?’
I told him that this was the first time I had paid for anything and that I had used my pocket money and taken some money from my savings. ‘I do get money as birthday and Chri
stmas presents,’ I said, with what I hoped was the right amount of righteous indignation.
Whether he believed me or not, he decided to move on.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘what do you remember about last night?’
I told him I had no idea what had happened that had caused me to be taken to hospital.
He told me a little then. ‘Your mother found you in your room playing with your teddy bears. You were acting as though you were only about five,’ he said, and this time his voice was guarded. I knew there was more that he was not telling me.
‘Has anything like that ever occurred before? Maybe after you took some pills. You know, sometimes they can make you see things that aren’t there, especially if you mix alcohol and dope with them.’
I thought of the tab I had taken, but decided not to share that particular piece of information with him. ‘No,’ I said emphatically.
‘Well, did you take anything last night?’
‘No,’ I said. But if he thought it was the drugs that had made me act the way I had, and if I promised not to take them again, maybe they would let me go home. ‘Well, perhaps I might have, I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I must have, I suppose,’ I said quickly. I babbled on a bit more about how I didn’t know they were harmful, they must have been what had caused my behaviour and I wouldn’t do it again. Then, pleased with my effort, I gave him a conciliatory look. Now he’ll have to let me go, because there’s nothing wrong with me, I thought.
Wrong! As far as he was concerned, I hadn’t got one thing right. My history went too far back and he was not in the least bit convinced that I was telling the truth.
Other questions were fired at me, and I realized that again he had seen through my subterfuge.
Bloody hell, I thought. Aren’t psychiatrists supposed to be kind rather than interrogators? Resentful at his lack of trust, I tried to slip deeper under the bedclothes.
‘Sit up, Jackie,’ he said, ‘you’ve slept enough. Now, you went to see your family doctor yesterday, didn’t you?’
I said nothing, for he clearly knew I had.
‘You told him you were depressed. Why was that?’
I clammed up. If he knew that, he already knew what I had told the doctor and I wasn’t going to add to it. I shrugged as much as the bedclothes would let me. ‘I suppose I was,’ I said eventually, then asked him the one question I wanted an answer to. ‘I feel fine now! When can I go home?’
He ignored that and returned to the subject of drugs. He said how harmful they were and that the people who had given them to me were not friends. It was a fact that people who used drugs themselves liked to get other people to join them. After the lecture he focused on my parents and how worried they were about me. I switched off. I knew that speech too well and it would end as it always did, with words expressing how lucky I was.
I saw him watching me. He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them as he studied my face thoughtfully. He’s trying to work out if I’m sick or just plain bad, I thought, and stared back at him with a blank expression.
I wasn’t going to let him see that I was scared.
‘All right, Jackie, you can relax. That’s enough for now,’ he said finally, after a long period of silence.
‘When can I go home?’ I asked again.
‘We’ll talk about that the next time I see you.’
I had meant what time, not which day.
‘I’m not going home today, am I?’ I said. I tried to keep my voice calm – a simple fact needed confirmation – but it didn’t come out that way. Horrified, I heard the shaky tremor and the high note of worry and knew they showed I was afraid.
He glanced at me and I saw a degree of sympathy in his eyes. That worried me more than disdain would have done. If he felt sorry for me, it meant he believed there was something wrong with my head. Didn’t it? At that thought the swarm of butterflies started fluttering around in my stomach again.
‘Your father’s bringing in some clothes for you, so you can get dressed as soon as they arrive. The nurse will show you around.’ And before I could protest that he hadn’t answered my question, he left.
As though on cue, no sooner had he made his exit than my father appeared. I suspected he must have been waiting for the doctor to leave.
‘How are you feeling this morning, Jackie?’ he asked, in the forced, bright tone that the nurse had used.
‘All right, I suppose,’ was the only answer I could think of, as he sat on the chair the doctor had just vacated. He seemed to be more awkward than angry, which I guessed, as she hadn’t come, my mother was. He looked tired and, if I could have thought of the word then, defeated.
‘Your mother’s packed you your dressing-gown and some clothes,’ he said, without mentioning why he, not she, had brought them. The worried look I so hated was back on his face. His fingers involuntarily rubbed the deepening crease at the top of his nose, between his eyes, and I saw that he looked suddenly older. I felt a pang of guilt, for I knew my behaviour had caused that.
‘Jackie,’ he said, ‘do you remember anything about yesterday evening at all?’
I shook my head. I remembered going to the doctor and coming home angry, but that was all. ‘No, what happened?’ I asked.
‘What did the doctor tell you?’
I sensed that he didn’t want to give me more information than I already had. ‘Not much, but he wasn’t there, was he? He just said that I seemed to think I was five.’ I looked at him nervously, wondering what else had happened that had made them send for an ambulance.
‘Well, you did seem a little confused,’ he said. ‘You gave us a bit of a fright. But you seem much better now.’
He told me nothing else. Instead he talked about how I wasn’t well and how the hospital would get me better again. His words were meant to placate me, but as he said them, I wondered if the expression ‘not well’ was a euphemism for something much more serious. I searched my father’s face for some sign of the true meaning, but it gave nothing away.
‘Have you found everything you need?’ he asked, once I had rummaged through the bag to see what he had brought. Underneath my clothes were my Walkman and a selection of cassettes. This touched me, for I knew that he, not my mother, had packed them.
‘My music! Thank you, Daddy,’ I said. Maybe it was because I had shown some gratitude that he suddenly remembered the girl I had been before I had turned into the problem child.
‘Jackie,’ he started to say hesitantly, as he placed his hand gently on mine. He seemed about to ask or say something significant, but whatever it was, he reconsidered. ‘Is there anything else you want brought in?’ was all he said.
No, I thought. I don’t want anything brought in. I want you to take me out of here. I wanted to say, ‘Please take me home. I’ll be good if you do,’ but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I mumbled that I didn’t need anything. Now I had a sinking feeling. Bringing things in didn’t sound as though my father had any intention of saying that I could go home with him in the foreseeable future.
‘How long am I going to be here?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Just until you’re feeling better. You’re in good hands, Jackie,’ he said. He looked at his watch, keen to escape being pushed further. He patted my hand and muttered something about a business meeting, then took out his wallet, peeled off a couple of five-pound notes. ‘In case you think of anything after I’ve gone,’ he said, ‘there’s a shop in the foyer. The nurse will take you there.’ Then, with an awkward look that barely disguised his relief, he got up and left.
Now it was the nurse’s turn to come into my space. ‘I see you’ve got your clothes, so you can get up now, Jackie. Let’s get you bathed first, though,’ she said, in the irritating bright voice I already loathed.
I pulled on my dressing-gown; wearing something of my own made me feel marginally better. She led the way to one of the bathrooms where I spent as long as I could, delaying coming out. I soaped every inch of mys
elf, lathered shampoo on my head, then ducked under the water to rinse it off. I splashed a lot to let her know I hadn’t drowned myself. But I couldn’t delay coming out for ever. A knock and the nurse’s voice confirmed that.
‘Time to get out now, Jackie,’ she called.
Cursing her under my breath, I climbed out and rubbed myself dry.
‘Now, dear,’ she said, handing me a hair-drier, ‘as soon as you’ve done that and put on some clothes, I’ll show you around.’
‘How long am I staying?’ I asked, thinking that she might know and tell me.
‘It’s up to the doctor,’ she replied, echoing my father’s words.
Suddenly the frustration of not knowing what was happening was too much. ‘What’s wrong with everyone that they can’t fucking well answer me?’ I yelled.
My outburst had no effect. ‘Come on, Jackie,’ was all she said. ‘Get yourself dressed.’
I glared at her, then grudgingly decided that my day clothes would be better than a hospital nightdress and my dressing-gown.
As soon as I had wriggled into my jeans and pulled a T-shirt over my head, I discovered that my Dr Martens were missing. Instead, a pair of soft-soled slippers was the only footwear in my case. ‘I haven’t got my shoes,’ I told her.
‘Well, you don’t need them in here, do you?’
Still wanting to put off whatever she had in mind for me, I told her that I wanted to go to the shop. ‘My father gave me some money to buy a few things,’ I said.
She raised no objection, took me to the lift and we went down to the ground floor. She walked so close to me that I knew she was not going to leave my side. That told me I had no chance of leaving the ward alone.
The shop, although small, seemed to stock everything: bunches of flowers for visitors who needed to make a last-minute purchase, paperbacks, toiletries, magazines, plus an assortment of sweets and fruit. Under her watchful gaze, I bought a magazine and, unable to think of any more excuses to waste time, I followed her reluctantly back to the ward. She then took me on the promised guided tour. First to the dining room, furnished with long tables and plastic chairs; she told me the mealtimes.
Can't Anyone Help Me? Page 16