A Fool, Free

by Beate Grimsrud

  I have to go into the hospital every third week for my depot injection and prescriptions. I’m doing some film work, Harald and I are going to finish cutting the film about Kiril. We’ve taken the equipment with us out to the cottage. I feel less stiff than I did last summer. Think, as I have done so many times before, that I’m better now. Feel strong. Sleeping well, running and have got lots of energy and enthusiasm for work. I go into town, have lunch with my care coordinator, Olof, as planned. Then I go to get my injection.

  Erik doesn’t want to. I tell the nurse, but am persuaded. Then she says that I have to sit down and wait. ‘You need to talk to the doctor,’ she says. I say that I have to get back to the country as I’ve got work to do. She persuades me to wait. As it’s summer, there are only locums on duty. The doctor is young. He sends for another doctor that I’ve met before. They say that I have to stay in the unit. I say that I’m fine and that I have to go back out to the cottage to finish the film cut.

  When I realise that they’re serious, I get frightened. I start to shake. Can they keep me there? They can keep me there. My fear escalates. I have to get rid of the voices by boxing myself in the ear. I try to keep them under control. But now I feel pushed into a corner.

  I refuse to go upstairs to the unit. ‘Talk to Olof,’ I say. ‘We’ve just had a lovely lunch together.’ I’m not ill. I feel completely clear-headed. ‘We’ll call the police if you don’t come with us voluntarily,’ the doctor says. I don’t get up. Then two muscular summer temps arrive. They carry me down the corridor to the stairs then up into the unit.

  I am absolutely desperate to get out and back to the cottage. They claim that I didn’t have my injection, but I did in the end. I pull down my trousers and show them the plaster on my butt. Olof comes up to unit and tries to talk to the doctors. Says that he knows me. But they persist. I sit on the floor in the corridor and a kind nurse keeps me company.

  Then I start to get twitchy. I want to leave. I’m like a fish in a net. The more I twist and turn to free myself, the more entangled I become. I know that, but I can’t help it. They call the doctor on duty, the night staff have arrived. We go into the TV room to talk. I don’t want to talk. The boys shout at me that I have to escape. But I’m sitting right at the back of the small interview room. ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’ I’m up quick as a flash. Step up and over the table in my dash to escape. The duty doctor shouts at me to come back. I don’t obey. I don’t obey anyone.

  This is all wrong. I, who am so obedient. ‘Sit down,’ they shout behind me. Run, I think. I realise that I’ll get more injections. I don’t want any injections. The nurses leap to their feet and catch me and hold me down until more come.

  I’ve got my room at the end of the corridor. Number thirteen, the one I’ve had so many times before and shared with Kassandra. She’s not here. As I’m carried past the staring patients, one of the nurses says: ‘Take your injections and behave like a normal person. You’re sick in the head. Sick in the head, do you hear?’ I’m wrestled down onto the bed. The sister comes. I count four syringes, plus the one I got earlier in the day. I’m not going to wake up to a lovely day.

  From my medical journal: Undersigned called to unit where I am told that pat is troubled, banging her head against the wall.

  Undersigned tries to talk to pat who tells that the voices don’t want her to take the medicine. She doesn’t want to take it, jumps up onto the table and walks away. Bangs her head on the wall. Reason for prescribing enforced medication is that pat refuses all suggested help. After consultation with duty staff, the undersigned administered:

  Inj. Cisordinol Acutard 50 mg/ml, 2 ml i.m

  Inj. Cisordinol aqueous solution 10 mg/ml, 1 ml i.m

  Inj. Akineton 5 mg/ml, 1 ml/m

  As well as Stesolid Novum 5 mg/ml, 2 ml i.m

  The next morning, I call Lolo and tell her that they’ve kept me in for no reason. My speech is slurred. My mouth can’t keep up. My neck is stiff. Lolo gets angry and wonders why they’ve done it. ‘I’m going to report them,’ she says. ‘Say hello to Harald and say I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ I tell her. ‘I have to sleep now.’

  I’m woken by the locum doctor in the afternoon. He says that the side effects from the medication are so serious that he can’t discharge me. He’ll come back again tomorrow. I can’t talk properly. My whole body is stiff. This is what they’ve done to me.

  Mental state: Alert. Good formal contact if very tired. Emotionally present. Hallucinatory behaviour, not suicidal. Pat is so heavily medicated that she would be a danger to herself without care. Unmotivated laughter as previously seen when I have met pat in unit. Thinks she has been sectioned. Acute polymorph psychosis with symptoms of schizophrenia (F231).

  Two days later, I leave. I am still heavily medicated and Lolo and Harald are furious when they see me. ‘You were fine when you left us, now you’re a complete mess!’ The side effects last for a whole week. My body feels stiff and alien. My mouth twisted. I sit at the kitchen table and unfold finger after finger as if I were ninety years old. Once again, I’m passive. My mouth doesn’t do what I want it to, but I’ve got nothing to say anyway. ‘You, who’s always got something to tell, come back,’ Lolo says. She, Harald and Tim have written a complaint the head of the hospital, but I’m not allowed to read it. They get a swift and apologetic reply. But the big boss doesn’t know how long it takes to recover from that kind of shock medication. First the physical effects. Then the psychological. Now I have to start from the beginning again.

  I get a letter in the post. The handwriting is shaky. Written by an eighty-five-year-old woman:

  I dreamt about a lot of unconnected words last night. As much as I tried, I didn’t know what to do with them. Then an author came. Who elegantly picked up word after word and made the most wonderful sentences. They shone and sparkled and gave me thoughts I had never had before. Pictures to be looked at from every angle. With this delightful dream, I slept on into my eighty-sixth year.

  When I woke up it was my birthday. My husband was standing by my bed holding a tray with flowers, a candle, coffee, toast and a beautifully wrapped present. It was your latest book. I’ve now read it and it was just like my dream. You make magic with words. I found the sentences I dreamt about in your book. They shone and sparkled. Thank you for the thoughts I’ve been given. Just wanted to let you know. Live well.

  ‘The reality of the world is created by us. Everyone who wants to be real must be unbound,’ says Prince Eugen. Emil and Espen have no idea what he means. Erik pretends to understand. I don’t know what to do other than write it down. That’s my freedom.

  Love is a passion for words. A love that is not threatened, bound or unbound. I am never alone, I just need to make the most of it. It’s the little boys on the tip of my tongue. A distortion of language. Words on paper make sentences that give meaning. Emptiness is unfree. Freedom is pain and joy. Dig, give and live.The drawn bow of illness. I am an arrow, not a lunatic.

  The only difference between me and a mad person is that I’m not mad.

  I give a talk at a secondary school. Giving talks is one of the things I love best. Standing on the stage, reading and talking about my writing, sharing serious moments and humorous moments with the audience. I am a storyteller. I tell with my whole body and don’t use a manuscript. I’ve written down key words at home and practised with them.

  I’ve got so much experience now that I can take the talk in different directions depending on the atmosphere in the room and what comes into my head. Should I tell them this story or that one, use that example or this one? It’s such a great feeling to be caught in a kind of safe uncertainty. I have an agreement with the boys that they won’t disturb me. They will get my full attention both before and after if they just keep quiet during the talk itself. On this particular day, they don’t do as we’ve agreed.

  When I’m in the middle of reading a text about a dyslexic boy, they all start talking. I can’t hear myself. I try
to keep the thread, but don’t manage and have to stop. Say that I’m not feeling well. This has never happened before in twenty years. I’ve travelled the length and breadth of the country. I go to the unit. Not empty and not happy.

  In the evening, I sit in the corridor and chat to a Finnish nurse who’s on the night shift. He’s a typical macho man, but today he’s unusually gentle and kind. A guy comes towards us down the corridor. He’s got a spark in his eyes. He greets me. He often goes to church and talks about the support he gets from the congregation. He sometimes even helps them by selling second-hand clothes. He hesitates a moment and looks like he’s about to sit down. Is he envious of our heart-to-heart? ‘You...’ he says to the nurse. ‘You... I’m going to get you.’ Then suddenly he punches him in the middle of the face. The blood starts pouring. The nurse puts his hand to his nose and throws himself to the side where I’m sitting. We’re both spattered in blood. I instinctively try to protect my bag and MP3 player.

  It looks like the nurse’s nose is broken. The staff come rushing, the young man shouts: ‘I’ll be restrained voluntarily.’ They wrestle him to the floor, get the restraining bed and strap him in. The bed stays out in the corridor with some screens around it. The nurse stands up and drips blood all the way down the corridor. He goes to A&E. The nurses wipe the floor and try to keep the patients away from the corridor. Ask them to go back to their rooms so they don’t witness the chaos of the man being restrained. I sit covered in blood on the sofa, feeling shaken. Am given some toilet roll and rub my bag vigorously. The stains won’t budge.

  Was it chance that made him hit the nurse and not me? I don’t think so. I’m up all night and ask the staff on the night shift how the nurse is. I’m not told anything. The day after, the guy who hit the nurse is taken away by the police and sent to a forensic psychiatrist. I don’t see him for several years. And then he is fat and puffy from all the medication. He looks downcast. ‘It was too hard in the state hospital,’ he says. ‘But now I’m out and have started going to church again.’

  Olof and I go to a course about hearing voices. There are five other women there with their care coordinators. I’ve never talked to others before about what it’s like hearing voices. On the first day, we have to write answers to lots of questions, including when the voices first appeared. No one has asked me about this before. And I haven’t thought about it myself.

  I think and Olof writes. We even have to write down our medical history. It’s hard. It’s the kind of thing you’d rather forget. I sit with Olof all day and recall things that I’ve never had to formulate before. The next day, the course leaders have written up a summary of our answers. They read them out to us and they have become stories.

  I find it very difficult to listen to the others’ stories. It hurts too much. Then my mobile phone rings and my publisher tells me that I’ve been nominated for the August Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Sweden. The worlds collide. I finish the call and listen to a woman’s story about how the voices came to her when she was forced to flee from Iraq. The joy of my nomination remains outside, while the others’ stories bore their way in. A sweet girl tells us how the voices popped up when she was being sexually harassed at work. None of them have jobs. They go in and out of hospital. One woman says that she often hears voices when she turns on the taps. I recognised that one. It’s Espen.

  I am so moved that I can’t stay in the room, and have to rush out. It’s cold comfort to hear how hard it’s been for them. Is there any future for their dreams of a job and education? I drink some water, pull myself together and go back in. Then my phone rings again. I’ve also been nominated for the equivalent prize in Norway. It feels completely absurd. My books live a life outside of me, and touch people far away from me and far away from my illness.

  There are two lectures the next day. It seems to me that they mainly talk about the fact that they’re not going to talk for long, so there’s time for coffee breaks. What does that say about us? It’s all wrong. Even mad people need input and quality, not all that rubbish about us resting all the time. When the course is over we get a couple of papers that the course leaders have written based on what we’ve told. ‘Events in your life that may be the cause of your voice.’ That is when the idea of writing a book about the voices starts to germinate.

  Don’t know if I learnt anything. If the voices will fade out. But one day I’m going to write a book about it all. If I dare.

  I’m sitting on the train north. Met Jonathan in the morning and had a good start to the day. I’m going to give a talk. I’m met at the station by the organiser, an elderly man who explains that the promised meal at a restaurant will now be at his home instead. So I can meet his wife. She is very fond of Norwegians.

  What organisers seldom think of is that you need some peace and quiet to prepare for a reading, and they often organise something social instead. I sit in his home and look at the photographs of Lofoten in the midnight sun. Then we go to the venue where I’m going to give the talk. There are already a lot of people by the cake stall, mainly older people. ‘Looks like it’s going to be full tonight,’ he says happily, and it is. Lots of questions and lots of laughter. I even get the obligatory question as to whether what I write is real. I reply that I’m an author and think: are you all real? In closing I say that they all have to cross their fingers because I’ve been nominated for both the August Prize and the Norwegian equivalent, the Brage Prize, which is to be announced in Oslo the next day. They promise. In my excitement over the good reception, I’m about to read another piece, but then stop myself. Better to leave them wanting more.

  The organiser drives me back to the hotel, which is in the centre of the small Norrland town. I’m given a piece of paper with the door code, a ‘Here you go and goodbye.’ It’s winter and cold, dark outside on the street and dark in the hall. It’s an old house. I fumble for the light switch, take a step in and then jump. There’s a piccolo in uniform standing on the stairs. I reverse out through the front door. When I’ve stood out on the street for a while and he hasn’t come out, I try the door code again and look in. It’s a statue. I sheepishly slip past him and up into the hall. There I find a light switch. There are paintings and things everywhere. Several stuffed animals that force me to think straight so fear can’t creep in. On one of the signs it says: Rooms 1–10. Next to Room 7 someone has written ‘Eli’ in chalk and there’s a key hanging on the hook. I sort myself out and get into the narrow bed. Once again alone in a hotel, I think, with a piccolo out in the hall as the only company. Where’s the hotel manager?

  I listen to the wind and try to tell myself I’m never frightened. I remember something Mum said: ‘To think that none of my children are scared of the dark when I am.’ If I could be frightened, I would be. Pull the duvet up over my head. Maybe Mum wasn’t right. Maybe some of her children are scared. Maybe she can’t decide for us any more. I’m curious about me. About whether fear will creep up on me. Right now it’s stalking about trying to decide. I don’t think it’s my turn tonight. Breathe more and more carefully.

  The next morning I make my way to the station in the snow. I’m taking an early train directly to Arlanda, and then a plane to Oslo and the award ceremony. I race through a snow-covered Sweden. Isn’t it going a bit too slow? I don’t know how fast trains should go, but my whole body feels that there’s something wrong with the speed. The stops are too close together. I mustn’t miss my plane. I’m all dressed up, have got myself ready to go straight to the party. Five minutes before my plane is due to take off, we arrive at the airport. I run with my suitcase, force my way to the front of the queue and beg to be let through. ‘It’s too late if your plane leaves in five minutes,’ the staff tell me. They have no idea that I’m going to an award ceremony and that it’s important. I ask again. ‘No,’ is the answer. I ask again. ‘Let me see your ticket.’ She swipes my card. ‘Your plane has been delayed by half an hour. If you run, you’ll make it. I’ll call the gate.’

  I�
��m up in the air and can breathe again. I made it. This is a sign. I will win the prize for the best book of the year.

  I’m sitting on the metro on my way to Janus. The police are after me. I can feel it from the walls. The radiation from the corner in the kitchen. That I’m being watched. The warm pulses hitting my body. They know that I’m sitting here now, I think, shaking. They’ve got surveillance cameras everywhere.

  When I get off there are people everywhere. Someone’s going to let off a bomb, I have to drop my bag and run. Or do we have to lie down, the thought races through my mind. Like when I was on the savannah in Botswana. It was me and Torvald and two unarmed local guides, a small private aeroplane and a canoe trip away from civilisation. They rattled off in broken English what we had to do if we met any wild animals. If it was a lion, we had to stand still. If it was a female with cubs, we had to let them sniff our legs. If it was a hippopotamus, we had to run for a tree.

  We stood there in the heat and listened and realised that we would never manage to remember what to do in the different situations. Fear would override our memory. You should definitely run, unless anyone gave other orders, took the lead. Will anyone do that now? Say where we should run or that we should all lie down. Does it mean that I have to take the lead?

  I’m crushed on the escalator. The police are watching my every move. When I come into the therapy room I see surveillance equipment everywhere. Janus sends what we talk about to the police. He writes it down once I’ve left. I look around uneasily. The pattern on the Persian carpet is impossible to understand. I’ve stared at it many a time. Is it child labour? From which end has it been made? The pattern is only nearly symmetrical. Apparently it shouldn’t be absolutely perfect, so as not to compete with God.