Blink of an Eye (2013) (25 page)

You get assessed when you first come in and they decide what treatment to start, then you keep on seeing either a doctor or the psychiatrist maybe every second or third day except weekends. But in between, all the staff in the unit are assessing you all the time, not just whether you take your medication but how you relate to people and if you join in with things and if you eat the food, which is revolting. Some people here have eating disorders and it really can’t help: if you haven’t got one when you come in here, you’ll probably have one by the time you leave. The staff, they’re always asking how you’re feeling and encouraging you to think about the future. Getting stronger and going home.

There isn’t any set pattern to the sessions with the psychiatrist. Though she usually asks me if I’ve had any suicidal thoughts or impulses. Today I say no. Then she asks me how my night was.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I slept a bit better.’

‘What would you like to talk about?’

‘I don’t know.’

There’s a pause, and we let it stretch out a bit, then I say, ‘I had a dream about the accident.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘There was Alex and me, we were in a boat, not a car, and we were trying to steer it but it kept going the wrong way. Then it was just me, I was all alone, and there was a bump and the boat changed into a car. I got out and looked underneath and there was a body there.’ I feel a bit sick as I say it. ‘And I drove off. That was it.’

‘Did the dream wake you up?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how did you feel?’

‘Dirty, rotten.’ It’s something I’ve said before. The sense that there is something spoiled in me.

‘Anything else?’

‘Frightened. I was running, even though I was in the car.’

‘And Alex wasn’t in the car with you?’

‘No.’

‘You said there was just you, on your own. And we talked about isolation the other day. Do you feel isolated?’

‘Pretty much.’ This makes me tearful. ‘Apart from Mum and Dad and Becky, I suppose. And I miss Alex.’ Sometimes I think maybe I’ll get back in touch with him again.

‘But not Suzanne?’

I shake my head; my stomach cramps at the thought of her. At her dislike of me, her disapproval.

‘You said before that you are angry at how Suzanne makes you feel?’

‘Yes. She only has to say some little thing and it makes me feel lousy.’

‘That’s an old pattern?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in the past, how would you respond if she said something that hurt you?’

‘I’d answer back or brush it off but inside I’d be really upset.’

‘Answer back?’ she echoes.

I smile. ‘Like she’s a teacher or something.’

She nods. ‘What would you like to change?’

These are the hardest questions. Whenever I’m supposed to look ahead or think of the future, my throat closes and my eyes burn. ‘I want to feel all right again and I don’t want to go to prison. I want everything to change.’ I shake my head. ‘I want to rewrite history.’

She gives a half-smile, even though I’m getting upset. It’s reassuring in a funny way. People here aren’t scared of shows of emotion and that helps make them less scary.

‘There’s an exercise I’d like you to do.’ She reaches for a piece of paper from the side table and hands it to me. ‘Take this with you and draw a picture of your family, stick figures, whatever works, but I want you to do it without thinking too much about it, in just five minutes. And don’t alter anything. Bring it next time. Okay?’

We have an activity room where we do art therapy and music and that. I often go there to avoid the telly, which is on all the time in the lounge; sometimes I get the urge to punch it out, then I would be Miss Popularity. I never could draw, but they have other stuff here too, like modelling clay. I do that. I remember Suzanne and me as kids spent hours with Play-Doh, making little meals, cakes and pizzas and spaghetti shapes, with the machine thing that we had; like a giant garlic press. It smelt of salty marzipan. I used to lick my palms afterwards to get the taste. When I think of that, I feel like crying.

Soon I’ll be allowed visitors, and after that the plan is to discharge me. I’m not ready to go home yet, even though it can be stressful living like this with a bunch of strangers. And it’s hard to sleep. One of the girls, bit younger than me, she has these episodes, screaming in the night, seeing things crawling on her. She wakes everyone up. She’s a bit like Grandma, having delusions. At least it’s good Grandma’s in a home and not a hospital. Good for us more than for her; she’d probably not notice the difference. Sometimes I think this is good practice for going to prison. But I guess prison will be much worse. Heavier, darker. I don’t have to share a room here, I suppose that’s one big difference. We’re in a new building; most of us have a single room with en suite. The main thing here is the boredom.

It’s like being marooned or something. Like I’m on a raft, floating far away from my previous life. I can’t imagine seeing anyone in here from out there. And in here people don’t know who I was. Only who I am now. The one who ran into the little girl, the one who made a serious attempt to end her own life. A mentalist.

We’re all in the same boat, so no one’s judging me. Some of the people make me laugh; we all try and cheer each other up and look out for each other. Some of them seem quite tough, but you know they can’t be really or they wouldn’t be here. There’s a sort of tenderness; does that sound naff? But there really is. We’re all fragile and we’re kind to each other.

Lots of time we spend outside, in this little garden area, all enclosed. Most people smoke, the staff as well, and although there are notices everywhere about it being a non-smoking environment and no smoking on hospital trust property, they let us do it outside.

I am now very good at Scrabble.

I’m not looking forward to seeing Mum and Dad really. I just feel so shitty. They’re gonna be so hurt by what I did, and I can’t ever put that right.

I
was on shift the next weekend and it was busy, dealing with a man who was mentally ill and threatening to knife himself at his sister’s house. I attended with the police and got him sectioned. I couldn’t help thinking of Naomi, of course, though she was a voluntary admission, choosing to go in after her overdose.

Sunday we had a call out to a family where the police were arresting the mother for supplying drugs. She had three kids under five needing emergency foster-care provision as Dad was in prison and she was estranged from her family.

The woman was understandably distraught, screaming, ‘You can’t take my kids, you can’t take my babies!’ while I tried to calm her down and explain that it was only a temporary measure until she was bailed and able to look after them. In the longer term, though, she’d be facing time in prison if convicted, and then she would be separated from them, possibly for years.

There were three police officers there. The arresting officer made a great show of disgust and impatience at her behaviour, raising his eyes to heaven and sneering. In general we have good relationships with the police – they understand our role and vice versa – but this bloke was an exception. He’d written her off without another thought: drug-pusher equals scum. He’d have seen her transported, the kids given up for adoption, quick as you like. But every case needs judging on its own merits. Some drug-users would let their kids starve (literally) rather than spend drug money on food, but others manage to care for their kids quite adequately, as do some alcoholics. Where the family unit is supportive and nurturing, the only thing achieved by removing the children is catastrophic long-term emotional damage to all those involved and consequent social and criminal problems. My initial impression of the kids was that they were clean and well fed. The place was messy but not dirty.

I managed to get her to stop shouting and sobbing and explained what would happen next. One of the officers came with me while I sorted out some toys and clothes for the children. We took them downstairs. The mother was already in the police car by then, the other two officers standing beside it smoking.

I caught the tail end of the arresting officer’s remark: ‘. . . by dangerous driving. Horrendous.’ He practically jumped when he saw me, then jutted his chin out and said more loudly than necessary, ‘All sorted?’ I could feel his disapproval and imagined the way he’d talk later:
She swans in acting like the Big I Am and her own kid was pissed out of her skull and ran over a nine-year-old.

I nodded, unsmiling, and got the children in my car. When I meet new people and tell them I’m a social worker, this is the situation that springs to their mind. But the greater part of my job is checking that children are safe, cared for and fed. Children are removed if offences have been committed against them, but we’ll find family to help whenever possible. I’m on the fire-fighting end of it. Emergencies. Long-term decisions about permanent removal are never made on a wing and a prayer; there are reams of forms to be filled in, assessments to be made, reports from other professionals to factor in. And sometimes we get it wrong. We are only human.

Though you’d never think that to read about us in the papers or see us vilified on TV. The public, the opinion-makers, the politicians want it every which way. We must be immediate, decisive, fearless in acting to remove children or disabled people or the elderly from harm, yet we are expected to do so with inadequate staff and resources, and when we fail to protect a child, no matter how manipulative the parents or carers have been, we are savaged. Regarded as do-gooders, as bleeding hearts, we are sneered at as agents of the nanny state, the faceless bureaucrats who snoop around and tell tales and break up families. We are the Cinderella profession. The overriding stereotype of a social worker is the person tearing a child from a weeping mother’s arms. A bogeyman in office clothing.

The next time I saw Suzanne was to babysit while she and Jonty had a night out for their anniversary. It had been in our diaries a while and I rang the night before to check their plans hadn’t changed. Neither of us mentioned our argument over the phone.

Jonty was still getting ready when she let me in. She looked lovely, in a red silk dress and heels, her hair up in a French twist.

She showed me where Ollie’s bottle was in the fridge and how to use the bottle-warmer, which looked like some piece of space travel kit. She was talking a little too quickly and I knew she was on edge. She told me at some length about the restaurant they were going to, and then said, ‘How’s Naomi?’ I knew this was what she really wanted to talk about.

‘Okay, I think. Better than she was.’

‘Good. I am sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘About, well . . . everything. Letting you down. I just overreacted, I suppose. Didn’t think it through.’

I nodded, wondered if she’d say more, but that was it. She went to fetch her shawl and chivvy Jonty along. I brooded over it all evening. Would she apologize to Phil, too? Had she any intention of saying sorry to Naomi for abandoning her? Naomi wanted to steer clear of her sister as far as I could see. Maybe that was for the best. She was an adult, after all.

By the time Suzanne and Jonty came home, raving about the menu and the wine list, I had decided to let things slide. The ripples from the accident had affected all of our relationships, not just our individual dealings with Naomi herself. They had weakened my relationship with Suzanne. She would still be a big part of my life, but I could see who she was with a clearer, keener eye, and a more critical one. I thought that Ollie would be the filter for our love. That we’d stay close through sharing affection for him.

When I come home from the mental health unit, Mum makes us sit down, the three of us, and talk about it. Dad isn’t sure: ‘Carmel, do you really think—’ but she interrupts him. ‘We need to face this, be completely open about what’s happened. Not tiptoe about, or shove it under the rug. That doesn’t help anyone. Now . . .’ She looks at me, all in practical mode, but her hands are shaking. ‘We love you very, very much . . .’ There’s a lump in my throat. ‘. . . And I understand that things must have felt . . .’ she struggles to find the word, ‘. . . unbearable, but we will do everything we can to help you get better.’

Dad just nods.

‘It’s important to keep some structure in your day,’ she says. ‘So, no lying in bed till lunchtime. And we’d like you to cook once a week and help with the supermarket shop. And do one of the chores.’

I used to do the hoovering and Suzanne used to do the dishwasher. Then when Alex and I moved back we didn’t really do anything. Well, we did our own washing and cooking.

‘The dishwasher,’ I say.

They don’t want to leave me alone in the house at first. Sometimes I go with Dad to the shop, and he finds little jobs for me to do, like sorting out the guitar strings or rewriting the price lists or cleaning. Sometimes I forget what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a side effect of the tablets. Like being smothered in a duvet, everything’s muffled and numbed. My mind slips away all the time, like one of those random carrier bags blowing down the road, snagging on things but not for long. Aimless, empty.

I’m glad that I don’t feel so much any more. It’s the only way I can manage. I have sessions at the outpatient mental health clinic. The woman there, I like her, she never pushes me and if I start to get stressed she lets me talk about something else.

Each session she has to ask me the same things. ‘How have you been this week?’

‘Okay,’ I say today.

‘Any voices or visions?’

‘No.’

‘Suicidal thoughts?’

‘No.’ They’re further away, they don’t dominate like before, but they’re still there. Like a stream burbling in the background. Sometimes they get bigger, bloom large as if a quick zoom has magnified them. Like if there’s a knife left out on the kitchen counter or when I’m putting a scarf on, when I get a new bottle of tablets. Let me count the ways . . .

‘Do you feel that you’re making progress?’

‘Yes. I haven’t watched the news or anything, and I’ve been out every day, just walking.’