Mad Worlds (14 page)

The next morning Mullen was in charge again. John realised he hadn't seen or heard Sarge for two days. Whatever the reason, the brute's absence was a blessing – as Heather would have put it. Heather, his once-darling wife he'd have sacrificed anything for.

The hopelessness was worst at nights, when there weren't distractions. Thoughts of killing himself usually came then, but were stolen away. Sometimes he could think clearly, but much of the time his mind was blocked. Like an alien force invaded his head and swiped the thoughts and images.

There was little relief from the boredom and inner torment as one wretched day followed another. Occasional arguments and fights were quickly broken up, with men sent to the cooler. These were light diversions; and he didn't get involved.

The week passed and there was still no Sarge, or Ginger. The ward was less sinister without Sarge. Men were talking more to each other.

George the author came and whispered in his ear one day, “They've taken my energy and I can't write. Mum's the word.”

He missed Ginger. Just the prattle was something.

Mullen – still in charge – shouted “Chisholm, no breakfast,” and had him sit in the dayroom until the doctor arrived. Electricity day?

Yes. John was summoned to the office, where Dr Singh listened to his chest and pronounced him fit to start ECT. He was escorted from the office by Clark and a fellow white-coat.

“Remember – the bog first,” Mullen yelled after them.

“Sometimes patients wet themselves in the Shocker,” said Clark.

This Shocker must be bad. But they called it treatment. Escorted to the bog, he peed as ordered to. He wouldn't be wetting himself!

He was taken along corridors into another room. Green-gowned men stood in a huddle. Aliens? There was a noise like buzzing or humming, and a funny smell.

“John Chisholm from Admissions, Doctor,” said Clark.

“Right. Onto the table with him, on his back – head there.” Doctor pointed.

This was the large table in front of him, that the green-gowns were standing round. “I can manage myself,” he protested, shaking off the hands grabbing him. As he clambered up (struggling only with his trousers), he saw it. A machine. Yes, the noise came from there. He lay down on his back.

“Shoes.” A different voice gave instructions now. His shoes were being removed. “Arms and legs.” Each arm was stretched out. A number of hands were jostling him, adjusting him. “In position,” a voice called.

He felt his wrists and ankles being clamped. And they were messing with his forehead – felt cold. A green-gown hovered above, peering into his face. “Open your mouth wide.” He did so and the green-gown stuck something rubbery between his teeth. “Ready for action, Sir,” said the green-gown.

Somebody was putting clamps on his head. Then –
phht
.

The helter-skelter ride was bumpy, shaking him as he whizzed round. Catapulted into the air, he hung onto a cloud. The angry fairground threatened to re-claim him, but the cloud whisked him away, then crumbled. Falling at speed, he saw dark mountainous waves.

He hadn't drowned. His mouth was dry and his head throbbed, with a ringing in his ears. Trying to think hurt his head, which surely had the insides sucked out. Sleep beckoned.

“Wakey.” His shoulder was being patted. He made to raise his hand, but it wouldn't move – like it was tied. No point in struggling. His back ached. He made to turn onto his side, but he couldn't. He was in chains.

“Chisholm.” The voice sounded familiar and intrusive. He tried again to turn over. Where was he? He opened his right eye to a white ceiling. Someone was tapping his shoulder. “Are you awake?” He opened both eyes. An ugly face stared into him and through him. It looked familiar. He tried to sit up, but some force held him down. The bed was hurting his back.

“You're attached to a trolley.” They'd read his thoughts. A trolley? “It's for your safety, in case you fall off.” Off his trolley – that rang a bell. “You're awake enough – I'll free you.”

He grunted. Hands were messing with his body.

“I'll help you down,” said the familiar-looking white-coat.

He was standing, with his head throbbing and vision blurred. His arm was being gripped by the white-coat.

“You can go to your bed for an hour,” the white-coat said. Okay, but where was he? He walked on jellied legs with his companion until a bed confronted him. “Take off your jacket and trousers and get into bed,” said the white-coat.

John did so, and sank his head into the pillow.

John had survived the electrical treatment. But two days later Mullen said another dose awaited. No use protesting that he'd had the electrics. Mullen laughed. “This is only the beginning.”

And indeed, every couple of days or so he was given a dose of the Shocker. He might get onto the shortlist for zombie of the year – moving from breakfast to the airing court, trudging round, to lunch, to the airing court again… The electrical punishment was unremitting. He was forgetting things, especially names.

“Twelve doses in the four weeks,” Mullen said at bedtime one day. “And now you've had number twelve. Tomorrow, my son, you see the consultant.”

The ‘my son', which John initially resented as patronising (though the man was surely old enough to be his father), had come to be reasonably welcome. ‘My son' signalled Mullen was in a good mood, and more disposed to talk.

“The consultant?” John queried.

“Yes, the consultant psychiatrist – the mind doctor we call ‘the god'.”

This was vaguely disturbing. “Why ‘the god'?”

“That should speak for itself.” And Mullen walked away.

*

Next day after breakfast, John was summoned to the office. He stood blinking, figuring out the scene in front of him. A white-coat on either side jerked him up to stand more erect as he eyed the small bird-like figure bowed over the desk. Familiar and sinister. The god?

“John Chisholm, Sir.” Mullen was seated, flanking the god.

“Hmm, he's had twelve doses.” The god looked round at Mullen. “Has he been a good boy, Mr Mullen?”

“Yes Sir. No further incidents. And we didn't start treatment until he'd fully recovered from pneumonia.”

The god nodded and turned to stare across the desk. More torture? “The patient looks more settled, less hostile.”

His thought,
I could wring your neck
, was simply dream-like. The grip tightened on his right elbow.

“Yes, Sir,” came from Mullen.

The god was studying the papers on the desk. With a sweep, he closed the folder and looked up. “Do you still hate your wife?”

His wife? He remained silent, struggling with jumbled thoughts.

“Continue the treatment and review in one month.” The god rose, waving his hand in dismissal.

He stumbled off with his escorts. Amid apathy and jumbled images burned a fire, deep within his being. Punishments would not extinguish this. Nay, they would fuel and strengthen it. Today
, survival.
Tomorrow
, escape
.

Aunt Jean – his beloved Auntie – was dead. Seventeen-year-old James Braid Macdonald could not then have known how pervasive her influence would be over his life's path. But for his aunt's sacrificial love and suffering, he would not enter psychiatry; nor would he, decades later, encounter Springwell Mental Hospital.

Back to this miserable day. In the still cool of the asylum's darkened room, young Jamie stood, his lanky frame bent over his auntie's frail shrunken figure, willing her through his blurred vision to breathe and sit up.

But that wasn't going to happen. Gently stroking her icy cold face, Jamie mused in sad reflection.

He shuddered to think of her dying within this wretched place, in God knows what misery, a prisoner amid demented ravings on that locked ward. He hadn't, though, actually seen her die.

Not like when Mum died. He'd been there, with her. The day after his eighth birthday, Mum had served up his porridge. She twisted round from the kitchen sink, said “Jamie, what do you –” Her face went absent and, clutching her bosom, she dropped to the floor. Curled up like she was asleep.

For a moment, Jamie thought it might be a game. Mum, a star in amateur dramatics – ‘until you came along' – would sometimes engage him in impromptu melodrama. That is, when she was in a good mood.

When she was weepy, she'd invite him to a cuddle as they looked at the grainy photograph of herself with the young soldier – “Your dad, killed at Cambrai when you were a wee bairn… you know, he had braw dark curls and a freckled face, just like you.” She'd go on to tell him stories about his dad. “He was daft on golf. When you were born, we named you after a famous Scottish golfer.”

But no. This had not been melodrama. The limpness of her body and the colour of her face signalled tragedy. The ambulance man's “No pulse; she's dead,” confirmed his fears. As the neighbour led him away from the body, numbness was ceding to desolation at the loss of his mum and best pal.

That was when Aunt Jean came to his rescue. Mum's sister, she took a train from Edinburgh to St Andrews the same day she got his neighbour's phone call. She stayed with him, in support and comforting, when needed – at his side through the misery of the funeral, while he remained a ‘brave boy' and didn't cry (in public). Uncle Frank came to ‘sort out the business end', then returned to Edinburgh.

Auntie stayed on – taking him some schooldays for a ‘treat' lunch at nearby Macarthur's Café, showing interest in his homework, encouraging him in his football (later, rugby) and golf. At Easter she took him to her house ‘for a wee break'.

One day, she asked how he'd feel about her and Uncle Frank adopting him. “We've no bairns and can't have any. We love you and we'd like to come and stay with you, Jamie. This house and what's in it would always be yours.” He said ‘yes' immediately. They sold their house, put nearly all the money into a bank account in his name and joined him at home. And she did a great job, as a sweet loving ‘second mum', for more than half his life.

Now, holding Auntie's cold lifeless hand, he wept silently. At least in death she looked peaceful. But what a tragic end, in this asylum and surely in torment.

For years, she'd been depressed, and often her mood was deeply melancholy. He spent hours talking with her, trying to lift her spirits – sometimes feeling his effort was useless, other times encouraged by “Jamie, these wee chats are a help.”

She would scream at Uncle Frank, a mild-mannered man, and bang things around. Poor Uncle Frank would look bewildered and retreat into pipe-smoking.

But she never screamed at ‘ma Jamie'. When most deeply depressed, she was fidgety and restless, kept sighing, and mumbling “Sorry, I should end all this.”

Her mutterings alarmed him. His best efforts to pull her out of this didn't work. Uncle Frank got the doctor in and she was taken to an asylum miles away.

He'd protested. That was the loony bin. But the doctor explained she needed to go there to help her nerves, or she might die. “And, laddie, it's called a mental hospital now – not the loony bin or an asylum.”

He got on okay with Uncle Frank these awful few weeks. They didn't speak much to each other, but shared the household tasks. He buckled down to his homework and kept up the rugby and golf. In everything he did, he could hear Auntie's gentle firm voice. “Jamie, stick at it. You'll do it.”

Last month (the third of Auntie's stay in the mental place) he'd insisted on accompanying Uncle Frank on the bus for the monthly visit.

“It's no place for youngsters.” Uncle Frank addressed him like he was still eight. “She's being looked after.” Uncle Frank lit his pipe.

“Uncle Frank, I'm coming along.” He had good news he must tell Auntie.

So to the loony bin he went. Feeling unwelcome at the forbidding locked front door, he trailed his uncle and their escort – staying well behind them, gaping at dingy smelly corridors. He'd stopped as a door off the corridor opened in front of him and a brown-coated woman wheeled out a trolley bearing laundry. He craned his neck, to glimpse inside a world of madness – of haunted-looking women staring his way, against a cacophony of wailing and shouting. Oh God, was his precious Auntie caged in here? The door slammed and keys jangled as it was locked.

Their escort halted outside a door with a sign saying ‘female visitors', unlocked it and showed them inside. “Wait here please.” It was vast, gloomy, cold. He couldn't see Auntie among the faces.

“They bring her in from the ward,” said Uncle Frank.

“Why can't we go there to see her?”

“Don't know. We might get attacked by loonies, I suppose.”

A hunched figure in drab clothing was shuffling towards them, escorted by a woman in a white coat. The white-coated escort helped the old woman sit down.

No! His beloved Auntie looked twenty years older, with her wrinkled face set in a mask of despair. Uncle Frank kissed her on the forehead, and stepped away.

“Auntie, it's me, Jamie.”

She didn't respond. He bent forward to kiss her and she turned her face away. Trying to cuddle her produced a grunt and her shrinking into the chair. Taking her hand and squeezing it didn't work either. She didn't return the squeeze, and withdrew her hand. She kept sighing, rubbing her hands together, and her eyes moved restlessly. She wasn't really looking at or communicating with him or Uncle Frank.

He must, though, tell her his news. He grasped her hand (firmly this time), and leaned over to speak into her ear. She shrank away from him, but he persisted. This news would be important for her to know – about the career direction she'd passionately encouraged. “Auntie, I will be going to Edinburgh to train as a doctor.”

He fancied he felt a slight squeeze of his hand. But when she looked his way, her eyes reflected only misery. What hellish nightmare world was she in?

He wanted to rescue her from this terrible place, but was powerless to do so.

“Time's up.” The white-coated woman was back, helping Auntie stand.

“What's wrong with my aunt, and what treatment is she having?” he asked.

“I think she's depressed. I'm only an attendant.”

“I want to see a psychiatrist about my aunt.” He didn't mean to shout.

He persisted, and eventually (with Uncle Frank) saw a white-coated elderly man with a careworn face. “She has involutional melancholia – a profound depression which affects mostly women in their middle and later years.”

“Is there a cure? And what treatment's she having?”

“There's no cure, or effective treatment. And because of the risk of suicide – she's very agitated – we're keeping her under heavy sedation.”

Why wasn't there a cure? The suicide stuff was scary, and he'd felt inclined to stay in that crazy place to watch over Auntie.

Now she'd died in there. An inquest would follow, and he wanted to know exactly what had happened. Could she have committed suicide? Had they killed her with too much ‘heavy sedation'? His beloved aunt had been in torment.

In his final moments with her, he took her hand, and closing his eyes, said the Lord's Prayer (as she had done with him that day Mum died). Then he gripped her hand more firmly and, bending to look her in the face, uttered loudly a vow. “I, James Braid Macdonald, will dedicate myself to helping people who suffer mental torment.”

He felt a tap on his elbow. The attendant whispered, “Aye. It's time to go, laddie.” He'd forgotten about his escort's presence.

“Aye.” So what if the woman heard his vow; and probably thought he was mad? In fact, he'd like to tell the world about his resolve. He squeezed his aunt's lifeless hand and whispered, “Thanks, Auntie. Good-bye.” He brushed his eyes and kissed her on the cheek for the last time.

He straightened his shoulders. “Thanks,” he said to his escort, and followed her along gloomy corridors to short of the massive front door.

She stopped and faced him. “Good-bye laddie. You remember what you promised your aunt.” Aye, he'd remember.

“Lachy, can you take over?” she said to a large white-coated man.

Trailing his beefy escort (silent but key-jangling), he strode down the path towards the iron gates between high walls. One day, he vowed, I will change all this.