The Deepest Cut (2 page)

‘Mr–'

‘Call me Chris,' Dad said. He was staring at me with one of his looks. A threatening one:
Say anything to make me look like a bad dad and I'm gonna kill you.

‘Could you possibly shed a little light?'

‘Yeah, sure. His best friend died three months ago.'

He didn't die, he was murdered.

‘That's tragic, Adam. You've obviously not been coping well with losing your friend. Do you feel you could tell me what happened?'

‘He was stabbed,' Dad cut in.

‘Yes I think I read about that in the papers, actually.' She stopped herself. She shouldn't have said that, I could tell by the way she just stopped talking. It didn't stop the panic coming back though, because if she knew who I was, she'd stop being nice to me, even if she was being paid to be nice to me.

‘Chris, could we step outside for a moment?' She turned to me, ‘Adam, I'd like to have a chat with your dad in private, if that's OK with you?'

She could take him down the pub for a pint for all I cared at that moment. I had the panic back to go with the pain in my stomach, and I just wanted them to go away. I turned over and put my arm over my eyes.

They came back after a bit and Dad was pale in the face. The woman looked serious.

‘Adam, with your dad's permission, I am going to go away and speak to my senior and ask them to come down and try to have a chat with you. We're concerned about your state of mind and your inability to communicate with us. We think it would be best if, when you're well enough to leave here, we transfer you to another hospital where we can keep you safe for a while, until you're feeling less likely to harm yourself again.'

My dad was biting his nails. He wouldn't look at me. He'd given his permission, of course he had. I'd be out of his hair, and out of his way, and he wouldn't have to deal with me.

‘How do you feel about that, Adam?' She asked. She gave me this intense look with her head cocked to the side a bit.

I nodded.

I wasn't threatened by what she just said. All I had to do was talk to her senior when they came down and convince them I was OK and, bam, I'd be out of there.

‘I think you're making the right decision, we can help make you better.' She clicked her pen and put it inside her jacket pocket. ‘I'll be back shortly,' she said.

Dad stared at me. He sighed. Then he left the cubicle without saying another word.

Three

I was flicking through a three-day-old newspaper when my doctor, a new doctor, a nurse and my dad came through the ward doors, making a beeline for my bed.

I put the paper down and sat up straight.

‘Morning, Adam,' my doctor said. ‘How are you feeling?'

Something wasn't right. Dr Sanderson had been coming in to see me every morning, just him, only him. Why was there suddenly another doctor, a nurse and my bloody dad there?

‘The nurse is just going to do your vitals while we chat,' Dr Sanderson said. I held out my arm for my blood pressure. I knew the drill.

‘This is Dr Verma, Adam,' Dr Sanderson said, gesturing to the other doctor. ‘He's a clinical psychotherapist, and he's been helping me to decide what's best for you now you're well enough to go home.'

Dr Verma stepped forward and perched himself on my bed. ‘How are you feeling today, Adam?'

I wasn't going to answer that. I was going to do what I'd been doing for the past eight days and keep my mouth shut. If I said nothing, they couldn't twist my words and accuse me of still being suicidal.

‘Adam? Are you still not talking?' Dr Verma asked.

The beeping of the blood pressure monitor cut through the silence.

Dr Verma and Dr Sanderson nodded at each other. Dr Verma leant towards me.

‘Adam,' he said. His voice was soft, like he was speaking to a little child. ‘We're going to transfer you to a place called The Meadows. It's a lovely place where you can go and take a rest for a while and …'

I didn't want to listen to anymore. I jumped up and pushed past them, dragging the blood pressure machine along with me. I ripped the cuff off my arm and threw it on the floor as Dad's arms went around my waist from behind. He was stronger than me. I struggled to get free of his grip.

‘Come on now, Adam. This is for the best,' he whispered in my ear.

I elbowed him in the stomach as hard as I could and he let go.

‘You little shit,' he said.

I shoved him in the chest and bolted out of the ward doors but he caught me. He grabbed me harder this time, and held me tight while the nurse caught up with us and stuck a needle in my leg.

They walked me back down the corridor, supporting me, as with every step I took I felt weaker and weaker. Whatever she'd just injected into me had the desired effect. I was now defenceless and I would have to do exactly what they said.

Back on the ward, all the other patients were staring.

Dr Sanderson drew the curtains around the bed. The cubicle was small as it was, without four more people in it. Dr Verma stared at me; Dr Sanderson at my notes. The nurse shoved a thermometer in my ear and my dad stood at the end of my bed, biting his nails and staring me out.

My jaw was tight and my breathing shallow.

I was done for. It was over. I couldn't fight them on this.

I let my eyes close, heavy from the injection, while they did whatever it was they had to do to get me put away.

I was getting locked up in the nut house and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

They took me there in a minibus ambulance. I was strapped to a wheelchair, and off my face on a second injection they'd given me just before we left. I was on my own. Dad had done a runner as soon as all the paperwork was signed. He was probably standing outside the bookies drinking a Strongbow and telling all his mates how pathetic I was.

When we pulled up, a nurse unstrapped me from the wheelchair and helped me out the ambulance.

‘Whoa there, lovey,' she said when my legs wobbled underneath me. She held me upright and waited until I was steady again before we moved on.

The place didn't look like a mental hospital. It wasn't tall, dark, and looming. There was no big, dramatic entrance. There were no crazies running naked around the gardens. There were no bright flashes of lightning, no dramatic crashes of thunder, no crows squawking, threatening to peck your brains out. The building was modern and bathed in sunshine; but it didn't matter how peaceful and inviting it was, I still didn't want to go in.

‘Come on, Adam,' the nurse said. She put her hand on my shoulder and walked me up the path towards the door.

She put a key code in, the door beeped, she held it open for me and we went inside.

‘Come on, up the stairs,' she said, putting her hand in the small of my back.

At the top of a few flights of stairs was a set of doors with another key code thing on. She put the code in and it beeped just like the one downstairs and then she led me in.

‘This is Peacock Ward,' she said. ‘I'm going to show you straight to your room so you can get some rest.'

She took me down a dark corridor with no windows. None of the rooms had doors on except the bathroom. It was as quiet and peaceful inside as it was outside. It was confusing. Maybe I was the only suspected mental person in the world.

My room was one off the hallway with no door. The walls were a disgusting mustard colour and some of the paint was peeling off the white ceiling. There was a small white sink in the corner, a built-in wardrobe and a single bed. Above the bed was a small window with bars on the outside.

‘No bag with you, then?' The nurse asked. ‘Let me find you something clean to wear.' She walked away, her shoes squeaking along the floor as she went.

I was trapped. I knew they wanted to make me better but they had no chance. The only thing that would make me better would be having Jake back, so unless they were God, or they had a time machine, it wasn't going to happen.

‘Right, here we go.' The nurse and her squeaky shoes were back with a pair of grey joggers, a white T-shirt and a black sweater. ‘They OK? I'm just going to pop and get your medication while you change,' she said.

I took off my old clothes. They stank. I'd been wearing them for the eight days I'd been in the other hospital. I put on the clean ones the nurse gave me; they were warm and comfortable.

‘Pills,' she was back with a little white cup. It was the same as the ones McDonald's give you to fill up with ketchup, because they're too tight to give out packets anymore. It had two tablets in. She also had a plastic cup of water.

She handed me the pills.

‘I'd like you to take these,' she said. She put the cup of water in my other hand.

I looked at the tablets and back up at her.

‘They're just to help you relax,' she said.

I put them in my mouth and took some water to swallow them back.

‘Poke out your tongue,' she said. She took my chin in her hand and pushed it up, looking in my mouth as she did. ‘Good lad,' she said.

I gave her a funny look.

‘Just checking. Get some rest,' she said. Her shoes squeaked as she walked out of the room without looking back.

That was it? Just get some rest. Nothing else. No doctor coming to see me to tell me what they were going to do with me. No family to settle me in and give me a hug. And definitely no friends to take the mickey out of me for being in the loony bin.

I was sitting there staring at the stupid yellow wall for ages. The loneliness was suffocating. However many millions and billions of people on this earth and I was on a cold bed, in a room with bars on the windows, and I had nobody. The nurses were there, but only because they were paid to be there. They didn't know what it felt like to be me. They didn't know what it felt like to be there that night, and see what happened to Jake, and do what I did. They didn't care that I couldn't think about it, because when I did, I couldn't breathe. They didn't care that I still didn't understand how it happened, how in a split second, a moment of madness, everything was destroyed.

That was what it was, a moment of madness. One quick jab of the knife and everything came crashing down around us and would never be fixed.

If that knife had never gone in, everything would have been OK.

Four

The next morning the place had sprung into life outside my room. I heard laughing, shouting, a TV, and there were smells of food, coffee, and bleach. I wasn't the only one here and I wasn't dreaming. I also hadn't died and this wasn't some warped version of the afterlife – aka hell. It was real.

I was too scared to leave my room. I mean, I'd seen my fair share of films set in mental hospitals before and they weren't exactly fun. I didn't want to get out of my bed to go and investigate; I was terrified of what I might find.

It turned out I didn't have much choice, though. A nurse appeared and told me I'd slept through breakfast, but she'd get me some tea and toast and I could have it in the therapy room while I waited for my therapist.

‘Come on, up,' she said, snapping me out of the thoughts that were running around my head, like how the hell did it all come to this?

She walked me out of my room and into the corridor. I was surprised that there was nobody standing staring at a wall, or scratching their nails down it, or their own face.

The noise I'd heard had been coming from a section off the main corridor, by the nurses' station. It was full of mainly normal-looking teenagers playing pool, watching TV, and there was a game of Monopoly going on

A few stopped what they were doing and looked at me as I shuffled along behind the nurse. A couple smiled but I couldn't bring myself to smile back.

She led me into the therapy room, and inside it was just as cold and uninviting as my own room. There were just a few tables and a stack of blue plastic chairs.

‘We do group therapy in here,' the nurse said. ‘The one-on-one room is busy this morning, so this will have to do.'

When she walked away, saying she was off to get me some toast, I realised she reminded me of the nurse I met when Jake was in hospital when we were younger. She was cold and grumpy, too. Jake and I had pulled faces at her behind her back, but now there was no Jake there to help me make fun of her. It was just me.

The door opened and a man walked in. He was about thirty I reckon. I think he thought he was a bit of alright, and a bit cool, because he wasn't in a suit or doctors' scrubs like you'd expect. He had jeans on, and Converse, and his hair was quite scruffy like he was pretending not to make an effort with it, but you know he really had.

He held the door open for the nurse and she plonked a plate of toast and a cup of tea down on the table next to me without saying a word.

‘Thank you, Anna,' the man said, nodding at her as she went out. Then he put down a pile of papers on the table, got himself a chair from the stack, and sat down opposite me.

‘Hi Adam, I'm David.' He held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,' he said. His hand was hovering in the space between us.

I took a bite of my toast.

‘So, Adam, do you know why you're here?' He pulled his hand back but he didn't look offended.

He had a weird accent. I think it might have been Irish, but it was sort of mixed in with English like he'd been over here a while and the two were blending together.

‘Adam?' He picked up a pad from his papers and flicked through it to a clean page. ‘How are you feeling?' He asked.

He was staring at me. It was making me nervous.

I shrugged.

‘What do you remember since taking the overdose, Adam? Do you remember coming here?'

I nodded.

‘And you are aware of where you are?'

I nodded again.

‘OK, well you'll be with us for at least the next few weeks while we try and obtain a diagnosis and put together a treatment plan for you,' he said.