The Pause (9 page)

Two groups of early primates climbed down from the trees and stared out into the savannah. One group said (actually, they didn't say because they couldn't speak yet), ‘Why don't we go see what's out there?' – And off they went. The other group said, ‘Stuff that for a joke, it's not safe,' and scampered back into the trees. The second group's ancestors we now gaze at adoringly at the zoo and think, ‘Oh, they're so cute.' The first group are doing the gazing. They're us.

Group two didn't need to evolve much. They were already well suited to their environment. But group one had to change drastically. They had to adapt. They had to walk upright in order to peer
over the tall grass, to make sure there weren't any sabre-toothed tigers or other bitey things lurking about. They also had to communicate to warn each other about the bitey things, and they had to work collaboratively in order to hunt as they changed from herbivores to omnivores.

And the extra protein in this new diet started to do amazing things to their brains. One day a loner, let's call him Ugg, was wandering around the plain on his own when he was attacked by a bitey thing. In a wild panic, Ugg picked up a heavy stick and thwacked the bitey thing on the head, killing it instantly, which put a bit of a crimp in its day. Ugg gazed down his stick and thought, ‘You know what? If I were to attach a sharpened rock to the end of this stick, I would have something that I would call, oh, I don't know, a spear.' Ugg returned to his tribe and showed them what he'd made, and a couple of the blonder ones said, ‘Dude, that's totally gnarly,' before they migrated to California.

And so technology and surfing were born. Communal living led to collaboration and cooperation. This in turn led to contemplation as the advent of technology gave our early ancestors free time to sit around the campfire shooting the breeze and telling stories. And the trouble with free time is that eventually you'll get around to
contemplating the nature of existence. Which will invariably lead to some troublesome questions. Why are we here? What's the point? What's our purpose? This can lead to a thirst for knowledge, or else to the depths of despair as we come to the realisation that there is no why, there is no purpose. There just
is
. We are alone in the universe. The lucky ones skim across the surface of life content with shopping, watching home renovation shows or sport on TV, and accumulating stuff they don't need to fill the void of their inevitable non-existence. The luckiest ones take comfort in an afterlife. They don't accept the randomness of the universe but instead attribute it to a benign creator. The unlucky ones plump for self-annihilation when the void becomes too much, too empty, too painful. And that is a uniquely human trait. No other species on the planet commits suicide. Animals will fight to the death to defend their young, but that's sacrifice not suicide.

Being human, it seems, is the greatest gift there is. It is also, for some of us, the greatest curse.

Mum wants to do a bit of shopping before we go so I sit and read in the hammock by the pool until she gets back. By the time we get to the hospital it's around five-thirty. I think she wanted to give me some time alone. Time to see what I would have missed had I … to see how lovely our home is and she's right, it
is
lovely. But I don't want or need stuff. I want and need Lisa and to not feel this sense of desperation, of nothingness. I sense that Mum has her sad moments, but I don't think she knows what it's like to feel emptiness, this bottomless chasm of emptiness. At least I hope she doesn't. She doesn't deserve to feel like this, no matter how guilty she feels about what happened to me.

We get to the next hospital and I meet my nurse. His name's Andre and he's from Nigeria. He's a large friendly guy with a beaming, welcoming smile. No sooner am I settled in my room than he's filling out my dinner order for me. Dinner, he says as he checks his watch, is in about an hour. He tells me the directions to the dining room, which is basically down a kilometre-long corridor and to the left. I should have brought my skateboard.

Mum gives me a hug and a goodbye kiss. ‘You'll be okay?' she says.

‘That's the plan.'

‘Do you want anything before I go?'

I think for a moment. Lisa is obviously out of the question. She hasn't called or texted again and we're not allowed to use the net so I don't have access to email. Besides, if Lisa's aunt is anything like Lisa's mum then she probably beat Lisa senseless over the text message.

I shake my head. ‘I'm fine.'

‘You sure?'

‘Maybe get Chris and Maaaate to drop over sometime.'

Mum likes this idea. ‘I'm here for you, Declan. Please be here for me.'

I nod. ‘I'm not going anywhere, Mum. I promise.'

She hugs me again, cries into my hair.

‘Your mum's nice,' says Andre, after she's gone.

‘She's amazing.' I can say that to Andre 'cause she's not here.

‘Is she married?' asks Andre before bursting into laughter. ‘Only joking.' He then goes through my bag looking for alcohol or anything sharp. But he's a little more discreet than the nurse at the other hospital. He doesn't ask about my laces, which I didn't bother rethreading, figuring they'd only be taken from me again once I got here. It seems this place is a little more laid back. I suppose the first hospital was emergency care. It was their job to keep me alive. Nothing more. I'm here to get better. To reboot.

I wonder about life on the outside. The real world. My friends, school, ordinary stuff. Lisa. I don't really want to be here – another nuthouse – but then again, I don't really want to be anywhere. It's difficult but I have to trust Mum and the doctors. Left alone, I almost ended it because I didn't even know that I was sick so, to use Mum's expression, I have to outsource my recovery to others. I'll take my medicine and my therapy. I'll take whatever they dish up because the alternative is too horrifying to contemplate.

Andre has finished going through my bag and now goes over the notes at the foot of my bed. ‘My friend,' he says, ‘just take your time. There's
no rush. Ed will be along later. Ed Chiu. You'll like him. Everyone likes Ed. He's the psychologist. Good man, Ed. Anyway, Declan, get yourself down to the dining room by six before the sharks start circling your dinner tray.' He laughs again. It's a loud, infectious laugh and I can't help but smile.

By the time I shuffle along the corridor to the dining room it's already quite full. The trays are laid out on the tables and have everyone's names on them. I find mine and luckily it's on a table by itself so I don't have to sit with anyone. The other patients are mostly middle-aged women. They're seated together and in on some joke that apparently happened at one of the group sessions this morning. One of them has a laugh like a hyena on nitrous oxide. It's actually more like a screech and it occasionally goes above the threshold of the human audio range: her mouth's open but there's no obvious sound coming out; dogs within a twenty-kay radius are probably looking around and thinking, ‘What the hell was that?' Maybe that's the big joke. Maybe everyone else is laughing at her laugh. God knows why they're in a psychiatric hospital if they're laughing so much. Perhaps if they stop laughing, they'll start crying.

A couple of them look over and say hello. I nod back. It's the best I can do. I'm not comfortable around strangers. Not large groups anyway. I was
okay with the girl at the other hospital but that's because it was just the two of us.

Suddenly I feel really anxious and don't want to be here anymore.

‘Excuse me,' I say to the group of cacklers.

‘Yes?' says the hyena, turning around.

‘Do we have to eat in here or can we …'

‘Oh no,' she says. ‘You're allowed to eat in your room if you want.' She then gives me a wonderful warm smile and I feel awful for thinking so poorly of them.

I try to smile back at her but it's a total fail.

I pick up my tray and shuffle out of the room. And that's the thing. I've noticed that since it happened – or almost happened – I've started shuffling like an old man. I'm even wearing this ancient pair of Dad's slippers that Mum made me bring in because I refuse to own slippers on general principle. It takes me about five minutes to shuffle back down the corridor to my room. I close the door behind me and turn on the TV. I don't want to think too much. I find the cartoon channel, content just to be. To live in the moment. That's all I can handle for now. That and the lukewarm chicken pasta and jelly and ice-cream. But things will get better. They will. They
will.

After dinner I go and ask the ward nurse if I can have my meds early. She checks my notes and
agrees that it should be okay. I then shuffle back into my room and curl up in a ball in bed. According to the list of activities there's a group session on after dinner, but I've had enough for today.

Although it's only seven o'clock, I've made it through another day without Lisa. I met an inspirational girl, I had a bowl of chicken and sweet corn soup, moved hospitals, had dinner, watched
The Simpsons
, and took my meds. That was my day. And I'm happy with my achievements. Considering the fact that had I not had that moment's hesitation on the station, today would probably have been my funeral. Because of that pause, that fork in the road, Dad's probably out in his shed attempting to cobble together the sort of birdcage that no bird in its right mind would ever think about living in, and Kate will probably be in her bedroom doing whatever it is that Kate does in her bedroom (extracting nuclear fusionable material from a Lego brick or something). And Mum will be enjoying a glass of wine on the sofa rather than crying into her pillow with her heart torn out knowing that life will never be the same again. I'm glad I'm able to give that to them. Spare them that agony. On Saturday on the station I thought they would be better off without me … That everyone would be better off without me. I now see such thoughts for what they are. The ravings of
a madman. Which is why I'm here. This is where I belong. For now, at least.

I'm just drifting off to sleep when there's a knock on my door.

The man enters my room like he's done this a thousand times. ‘G'day. You must be Declan. I'm Ed Chiu, the psychologist here.'

I sit up in bed and shake Ed's hand. His voice has a gentle quality like a warm and relaxing hot chocolate. I immediately feel at ease.

‘You've settled in okay?'

‘Fine.'

‘You've probably seen the list of activities for tomorrow.'

I nod. Words are not my strong point at the moment.

‘Just do what you want – though we do kind of make group compulsory. You can give this evening's session a miss if you want, though, seeing how you just got here. Tomorrow's starts at ten and I'd like you to attend. After that just take your time. There's cooking, art, tai chi. I think they're going for a walk up to the shops tomorrow, too, if retail therapy's your thing, which, if you're anything like me, it's not.'

I smile and think of us loonies doing the baby-elephant walk up to the nearby mall in our dressing gowns, tracksuits and slippers, and
parents gathering their children closer to them as we pass. Ed's right. I think I'll give that little outing a very wide berth.

‘What's happened to me, Ed? I don't really understand it. Everyone's been great but no one's saying what went wrong.'

‘I've been going over your notes from the emergency psych unit,' says Ed. ‘And although it's a term that's fallen into disuse, I believe you've had a mental breakdown. It's hard to say without talking to you in more detail but there was probably a trigger.'

I think of losing Lisa, of the injustice of her life. Our lives. The violence, the physical and emotional abuse that she's had to endure. Her gentleness.

‘But the chances are that something was always there – or has been there for a long time – and the trigger just released it.'

‘Will I be all right?'

‘It'll take a little time but we'll teach you various methods of how to cope, plus how to spot the negative thoughts piling on top of each other. Basically, given what's happened, your brain has to rewire itself. I have every confidence that in a couple of weeks' time, you'll be running down the corridor, eager to get back to your life.'

When Ed goes I switch on the TV again.
The Big Bang Theory
is on, but I don't feel like laughing so I turn it off. Right now I'm just in the moment.
I have no past and no future, no drive, no ambition. I just am. I'm just a collection of fractured nerve endings and although deep down I want to carry on, if I were to be wiped out by a meteor or tsunami right now it wouldn't bother me. And if that
did
happen, if I did get smacked in the face by a meteor or a tsunami, then I don't want to be reborn. I don't want there to be a heaven or a hell. I'd rather be dispersed. To no longer exist.

My whirring mind starts to slow as I feel the meds washing over me, carrying me away. I check my watch. It's just after eight o'clock but for me the day is long over. Before I can reboot, I need to shut down. I switch off the light and drift off to sleep so that my brain can begin the process of rewiring itself.

After breakfast we do a tai chi session. If Chris, Maaaate and Lisa could see me they would totally lose it. The instructor has this permanently demented smile attached to her face and I wonder if she's also a patient. It's so hard to tell. We work on breathing more than movement and it's okay. I never really thought about breathing, what with it being involuntary and everything, but now that I stop and think about it, and I mean really
think about it, it's kind of nice. If you just focus on breathing – I mean really focus and try to stop your mind chattering by thinking about your body, about breathing, about being in the moment – everything else kind of goes away and time stops.

After tai chi the clock kicks off again but there's a half-hour break before group so I shuffle back to bed and read for a while.

I get to group early so I don't have to walk into a room full of strangers. The women from last night arrive shortly after me. They're still laughing at some side-splitting in-joke but they all smile at me and are so welcoming it's impossible to think badly of them. There are a couple of guys sitting by themselves, lost in some sort of mental maze, but a complete absence of anyone my age, which is interesting. Maybe adults, with their experience, learn to ask for help, but I haven't learnt how to do this. It was easier to call it quits.

The leader of the women appears to be a mop of frizzed-up hair called Sharon. Sharon's group talk quietly amongst themselves without excluding me, which is nice of them. They seem to sense that I don't want to talk but although they're sitting across the room from me, their body language is open should I want to join them.

Ed Chiu bustles in and is greeted by a cheery ‘Good morning' from the women – he is clearly
a hit with all of them. He looks over at me and nods, trying not to draw too much attention to my status as the newbie. His understanding eases my nerves a little. There's a bit of banter before Ed gets the session under way. Given the sparse attendance compared to the full dining room of last night, it's obvious to me that group is not as compulsory as Ed likes to think it is.

As I'm the only newb, Ed takes it on himself to introduce me.

‘Everyone, this is Declan. He arrived yesterday. You might have seen him around.'

‘Hi, Declan,' say the women in singsong voices.

I look at the carpet rather than say anything. I'm not being rude – well, not deliberately – it's just that their greeting took me back to kindergarten and I'm trying not to laugh.

‘Could you tell us why you're here, Declan?' says Ed.