The Dark Threads (5 page)

‘I'm going insane,' I said, bending forward and covering my face with my hands.

‘Nonsense!' Pastor West said. ‘You're as sane as I am.' He paused, then added, ‘Though, heaven knows, I don't know if that's any consolation to you.' This made me smile in spite of myself.

‘I'm in need of help,' I said again.

‘Jean, why do you keep saying you're in need of help?'

‘Have I ever seemed aggressive?' I asked.

‘Aggressive? Definitely not,' he replied. ‘It's not in your nature to be aggressive.'

‘Well, have I ever given you the impression that I've a chip on my shoulder or that I feel everyone is against me?'

‘No, not at all,' he said. ‘Why are you asking?'

I was asking because I was trying to understand Sister Oldroyd's comments. I was asking because I couldn't see why I was being given ECT and drugs. I was asking because I was trying to salvage something of my crumbling sense of identity.

‘Oh, it doesn't matter,' I said. ‘It's not important.'

After tea I saw the three patients nearest to my age, Maria, Sheila and Tessa, go into the Quiet Room. Knowing what I must do, I didn't allow myself to pause at the door, lest my courage would fail me.

‘Mind if I join you?' I asked, trying to sound casual, as three pairs of eyes looked at me. They greeted me with friendly smiles and didn't seem to notice how awkward and shy I was feeling. I began to relax. We were sitting on the floor looking through some pop records discussing our favourites when Connie stuck her head round the door and said Sister Oldroyd was looking for me. Sheila grinned when I pulled a face. ‘She's a right cow, isn't she? We've noticed how she picks on you.'

‘If she picked on me like that I'd tell her to bleedin' piss off,' said Maria, the girl who, a few days earlier, had been proclaiming she'd had intercourse with God at Lourdes and was the chosen vessel for the second birth of Jesus.

Sister Oldroyd opened the door and glared at me. ‘So there you are. Go get a bath. It's been filled.'

Most of the other patients, it seemed, simply told a nurse when they wanted a bath and I, too, would have bathed regularly without needing to be told, but she always sought me out like this. Today it was particularly annoying because I so much wanted to stay and talk with the others, having at last found the courage to approach them. But I sighed and obeyed. After all, what point was there in arguing? What point was there in anything?

When I'd been packing my case to come into hospital I'd packed my favourite soap, talc and perfumed bubble bath. How ridiculously unnecessary these things seemed now, for having a bath was no longer the leisurely, lingering pleasure I'd previously enjoyed. The first time I'd entered the bathroom I'd been disconcerted to find I couldn't lock the door, nor could I get any water out of the bath taps to adjust the temperature of the already filled bath. No sooner had I stripped naked when a confused patient wandered in and out of the bathroom. Then Sister Oldroyd peered round the door and stood there for a while, silently staring at me as I eased myself into the water. Shortly afterwards, a nurse came with scissors and asked if my toenails needed cutting. I hated these humiliating, and in my case needless, invasions of privacy. Privacy: perhaps I shouldn't have expected anything so precious as that in a mental hospital.

One day Lynette, a small hunch-backed woman sitting opposite me, refused to eat her dinner, saying she felt unwell. Sister Oldroyd tried to ram food down her throat then, to my surprise and horror, when Lynette vomited into the food on her plate, attempted to force-feed this back to her before dragging her, screaming and crying, from the dining area.

I stared down at my plate eating mechanically, desperately trying to ignore the stench of vomit wafting up my nostrils, so fearful was I of feeling unable to eat and being dealt with in the same way. Along with nausea and anger I felt a sense of shame to discover that I was capable of witnessing such assaults on another person without taking action. Should I have intervened? But how could I?

I was leaving the medication trolley after taking my pills when Sister Oldroyd swooped on me and opened my hand, almost clawing insanely at my palm, in an attempt to snatch something from it that was not there. On finding nothing, she looked surprised, hesitated, then grabbed and opened my other hand. After eyeing me up and down suspiciously, she abruptly turned and walked away. I was aware of the other patients looking at me and felt hot with embarrassment at becoming the centre of attention.

Sister Oldroyd's job was obviously having an adverse effect on her. Of course we were all bound to have an effect on each other – staff on patients, patients on staff, patients on patients. But at least the staff could go home when their shift was over, whereas patients remained in close proximity at all times.

An argument between two patients progressed one teatime from shouting across the tables to throwing crockery. Lynette started crying but Andrea smiled complacently as a flying saucer whizzed past her ear. She told us, almost proudly I thought, that this was nothing compared to the fights in a ward where she was once transferred after trying to hang herself with a scarf.

It was surprising that there weren't more fights even in our showpiece ward, considering the stress we were under, herded together day after day in such an unnatural environment. Perhaps the humiliation of being under the supreme power of the staff kept us all subdued and passive.

CASE NO. 10826

Remains rather withdrawn; not so preoccupied with religious conflicts. Thought problems are not very prominent but still disturbs the patient – ‘I do not yet know – who am I', ‘Confused about heaven and hell' etc. Seemed to be more concerned about not being able to mix well. Prominent thought-block is being expressed with distress. Has gained some insight but not sufficiently. Asking for discharge. She is taking very little interest at the occupational therapy or the ward routine.

Dr Prior

CHAPTER FIVE

T
WICE A WEEK
I received electrical assaults on my brain. Lightning flashes. Convulsions. Blast it all out, forget everything. I slipped off the ladder and couldn't stop falling. I awoke the same but not the same. A searing pain inside my brain. Branded.

I heard someone moaning when they were being given ECT. I was sitting outside the treatment room, nervously twisting my fingers and thinking of the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘I Am a Rock' as I awaited my turn.

‘Don't worry,' a nurse said to me. ‘She can't feel a thing because she's unconscious.'

The moans were terrible; the most poignant, eerie sounds of protest I'd ever heard, springing deep from a woman's unconscious mind. Would I soon be moaning like that? Even the rocks can't remain silent.

During one ECT session there was a group of students peering over me ready to watch my convulsions. Just before being seized by the dreadfully unpleasant sensation I always experienced in the seconds before losing consciousness, a wave of resentment hit me as I gazed up at the sea of curious faces. But I resisted the temptation to yell at them: ‘I hope you enjoy the goddamn show!'

It was at the ECT block where I saw thirteen-year-old Debbie again, who had been moved to another ward. At first I didn't recognise the pathetic, drooping figure who was sitting in the waiting area, white-faced and trembling.

‘Now don't be silly, dearie,' a stiff-uniformed nurse was saying, offering a tissue to Debbie. ‘It's nothing to be scared of. You won't feel a thing.'

‘It's all right for
you
to say that,' a small, shaky voice protested. ‘You've never had ECT, have you?'

‘No, but I do know what I'm talking about,' the nurse said, confident in her textbook knowledge. How could she know, damn her? I thought indignantly. How
could
she know?

My heart cried out with pity for Debbie who knew so much so soon. What, in the name of sanity, was she doing in this place? Dear God, she was only a child.

My fear of ECT gave birth to a gut-twisting anxiety. Admittedly, the treatment itself, being administered when anaesthetised, was painless. But imprinted in my memory is the sensation of lying helplessly as the injected anaesthetic seared my brain and played havoc with my senses before the blackness of oblivion. I tried hard to remain relaxed after being given the anaesthetic but that was like trying to suppress a strong survival instinct; not once did I succeed in ‘going gently' into the night.

Next come the after-effects; the post-ECT fog. It's bad enough being given drugs every day, which make you feel dim-witted and slow, but add to this the disorientation following an ECT session and you're living through a nightmare. First, you wake up and wander round with other confused, dressing-gown-clad patients in a daze, not knowing what day it is, what time it is or where the hell you are in this planet of pain. You try to think clearly, realise you can't and fear you must have finally gone completely crazy. Back in the ward, it's difficult to remember the simplest of things, such as the location of your locker, bed or the toilet. You don't want dinner. If you can manage it while Sister isn't looking, and if you can remember where it is, you empty your food into the slop bin, but then the after-dinner drugs rumble around queasily in your empty stomach. Along with your usual drugs there are two extra pills. These are painkillers, which are supposed to take away that dull, sickening pain inside your head, but you're lucky if they touch it. You long to lie on your bed, to escape in sleep, but instead you must face your usual afternoon stint at OT.

And sometimes, while still in this post-ECT fuddle, you wonder what they are doing to your brain. Poor brain. Doped and shocked. Numbed and stunned. Has it been damaged? The mental hospital environment is one that can greatly endanger a person's physical and psychological well-being; that's not being paranoid, it is a fact.

‘What can I do? They are trying to kill me,' says Eric, a young man I see at OT who, I think, has been given a ‘paranoid schizophrenic' label. ‘They watch me closely to make sure I swallow the poison and if that doesn't work then they'll do it by electrocution. If I don't kill myself, they'll murder me.'

Eric must be very sick to talk like that, I realise, and yet his words do seem to make sense in this place. More sense than the words of the staff. I sympathise with Eric's dilemma.

Meanwhile, Mabel rocks back and forth, Deirdre mutters obscenities, Mary laughs and laughs, Lilly sucks her thumb for comfort and Gary plays with his genitals. I am sitting quietly staring down at the small coloured tiles on the workbench used for making ashtrays or sticking on to bottles to make table-lamp stands. I am remembering how, when first admitted, I looked for signs of sickness in other patients behind what I thought was a façade of normality, but now I find it easier, even when watching patients displaying bizarre behaviour, to see the ‘normality' behind the ‘sickness'. Normality? Sickness? What do these words mean? As I stare at the tiles till their colours blur together, I am coming to believe that the dividing line between ‘normality' and ‘mental illness' is a very fine one.

Danny came to visit me one afternoon when, only a few hours earlier, I'd been given ECT. I tried to pull my thoughts together to make sensible conversation with him.

‘Yes, I know. You've already told me that a few minutes ago,' he said, his soft brown eyes full of pity.

‘It's the ECT,' I explained quickly, anxious to let him know I wasn't crazy. ‘It makes you forget things, but only temporarily.' At least I hoped the way I felt would be only temporary.

I remembered how before my admission Dr Sugden had said I was ‘heading for' a nervous breakdown. That's why he'd wanted me to come into hospital, wasn't it?

‘Danny, I'm scared that I'll go … that I'll have a nervous breakdown,' I said, squeezing his hand.

Danny shook his head knowingly. ‘No, you won't. Not now that you're in this hospital where they can prevent that happening.'

I stared at him in surprise. He might just as well have said: You won't have a nervous breakdown now because you're under too much stress.

‘But it's
awful
in here, Danny,' I confided. ‘I look at patients in OT who are laughing and talking to themselves and … and I'm scared I might end up like that.'

He frowned. ‘Well, look at them and think you're
not
going to end up like that. Be determined not to. Don't give up, Jean. Promise me you'll keep fighting against it.'

Dear Danny. He tried hard to help me. He came to visit me often at first. When he couldn't afford the bus fares, he managed to borrow a pushbike and cycled the seven miles through bitter winter winds to arrive at the hospital, red-faced, hands chapped and numb with cold. He put his beloved guitar aside for a while and got a job in a shop. After finishing work, he'd rush straight to the hospital to arrive promptly at visiting time. Then we would sit holding hands, me falling asleep or withdrawing into a private world of despair – what dismal company I must have been. Danny was a Catholic but he went to a meeting at my old church and talked with Pastor West in an attempt to understand me better.

‘All the candles I light at church and the prayers I say are for you,' he said, which reminded me of how selfish my own prayers had become. ‘I lit one for you this morning.'

‘Thank you,' I said, unable to share his faith but warming a little at the thought of my tiny candle flickering in the cold and darkness of a church, silently testifying that if people care for people, there will always be hope.

* * *

I kept careful count of each ECT session, marking the wall behind my bedside cabinet with a pencil. I dressed on Thursday, a morning the ambulance was due to take patients from our ward for ECT, greatly relieved that my course was finished.

‘Get undressed! You're having some more shock treatment,' Sister Oldroyd said. Just like that. Not a suggestion but a command.

‘I've had eight,' I reminded her.

‘Yes, but you're no better.'

I couldn't deny I was no better; I'd never felt worse. But I didn't see how shooting electric currents into my weary brain could help me.

I tentatively asked her why she wanted me to have more and she replied curtly that her reasons were none of my business. Anger broke through my lethargy despite my passive, drugged state. None of my business? It was
my
brain.

‘I'm not having any more shock treatments,' I told her. This was my first act of assertiveness in the hospital, my first attempt to gain some control over my life.

‘What? Oh yes you are,' she said. The note of confident authority in her voice chilled me. But how could I live with myself if I meekly allowed this to happen?

‘No, I'm not,' I said.

She stared at me open-mouthed, then she said angrily, ‘You'd better go home then. I've had enough of you.'

‘OK. I'll go home.'

‘Right. When your parents next visit, let's just see if they'll agree to you going home with them.'

‘I'm sure they will,' I said as she walked away. But I wasn't sure of anything. I was trembling at the thought that she might be able to persuade them it would be best if I stayed.

I tried to remember the wording on the ECT consent form I'd signed and realised it hadn't specified how
many
treatments I was agreeing to have. And I remembered Beryl's strange, crooked smile when she'd said, ‘Voluntary. Ah, yes. What does that word mean in here?' Well, what
did
it mean? I'd heard others say since that ‘voluntary' patients who don't conform to the wishes of the staff could be ‘sectioned', in other words detained and treated against their will. Could that happen to me? Could I be forced to have further ECT? My stomach muscles tensed up in a painful spasm; I gripped the bed end. Lord, no!

After breakfast, Dr Sugden arrived on the ward. Since arranging my admission, he had never been to see me, but I gathered he was still ultimately in charge of my treatment. As he was leaving, he nodded to me.

‘I'll see you tomorrow,' Dr Sugden said.

I shook my head. ‘I'm going home when my parents come this evening.'

He stopped. ‘I wouldn't advise that.'

‘I don't want more ECT. My parents don't want me to have any more either.' This last bit was added on impulse because I sensed my own views and wishes about my treatment counted least of all. The truth was I didn't know my parents' views about ECT and would have been surprised if they had any. I knew full well they would never have even thought of asking what ECT was and how it was supposed to help me. It wasn't that they didn't care about me but it was just the way they were.

‘How many have you had?'

‘I was told the course would be six to eight applications and I've had eight.'

‘You've had eight?' he asked, stroking his chin.

I nodded. ‘And my parents don't want me to have any more,' I said again, remembering that Maria and Tessa, both about my age, said they weren't having ECT because it was against their parents' wishes.

‘Well, you're not to have any more, but why this talk about discharging yourself?'

‘Sister Oldroyd said I've to go home if I won't have more ECT.'

‘I'm sure she didn't say that,' he said, looking at me sternly as if I was a tale-telling schoolgirl.

He called her over and confirmed with her that I'd had eight shock treatments, then he asked if anything had been said to me about having some more.

‘Well, Doctor, I did put it to her that perhaps she could be helped by having a few more.'

Sister Oldroyd's mannerism, her tone of voice, everything, was totally different now that she was talking to Dr Sugden. She twisted her fingers, bowed her head and spoke softly. She was deferential, but I realised something else as well. She was scared.

‘Did you tell this patient she must have more ECT or go home?'

Sister Oldroyd shook her head. ‘Oh no, Doctor, of course not. I merely suggested that more treatment might help, and she flew off the handle.'

‘Was anything said about her going home?'

‘I only pointed out that we want to help her, and that the sad thing is she might just as well be at home if she won't accept help.'

‘I don't want this patient to have more ECT,' Dr Sugden said.

‘Yes, Doctor,' she said. Then she turned to me with a sugary smile that was so false it made me want to puke. ‘We'd like you to stay here until you get well. You don't have to go home just because you don't want more ECT. Nobody is trying to force you to have ECT, dear. Whatever gave you that idea? You must have misunderstood me.'

‘That's not what she said before,' I told Dr Sugden, then I turned to her full of the anger of weeks of bottled-up feelings about the injustice I'd seen and experienced: ‘You know very well that I didn't misunderstand you.'

‘Hey, that's enough from you!' Dr Sugden said, pointing his finger at me and, with these words, he walked out of the ward and Sister Oldroyd went into her office, leaving me standing there alone with flames of anger burning inside until I could no longer contain them. I rushed to Sister's office, barged in without knocking, and said: ‘But you did say I'd to have some more ECT or else go home. You did.'

She was sitting at her desk with her head bent forward and, at my entrance, she looked up, startled. What she said next couldn't have surprised me more than if she had tap-danced on the desk.

‘Well, if I did say that,' she said, brushing her fingers across her lined forehead, ‘then I apologise. I'm sorry.'

She looked tired and pale. No longer the strict, efficient sister but a woman bending under the burden of a difficult, depressing job. I wondered if she had genuinely wanted to help people at the start of her career, only to become hardened and disillusioned over the years. What was this woman
really
like behind the stern mask? Her apology, if that's what it was, stunned me and I didn't know what to say. In my confusion, I mumbled, ‘Well, I'm sorry and I apologise too.'