The Skeleton Cupboard (4 page)

I started taking a detailed history. The poor guy, I thought. No wonder he doesn't want to be here in the outpatient psychiatric department—he'd been through every other department in the hospital. Every part of him had been checked—heart, lungs, bloods, brain.

Classic. The medics sell the patient on the idea that their diagnosis will make it all better, and then when they draw a blank, they throw them over to the mental health services. “Sorry, mate—thought you were ill, but actually, as it turns out, you're not, so you must be bonkers.”

I began to chide myself for being so easily intimidated by an obviously frightened and vulnerable man. I looked him in the eye.

“I can see that you have had the real runaround in this hospital. In fact, you probably know the inner workings of each department better than most of the managers!”

Ray smiled. “Yeah, this place could do with a quality-control audit!” His smile faded.

“OK. So now you're here, in this department. What we need to think about is what these panic attacks mean.”

“Mean?”

“Yes—why are you getting them? What do they represent?”

“Represent? Look, Doc, sorry, but I just want whatever pills or whatnot I can take to control these bastards.”

“It's not quite as simple as that.”

“Why not?”

“OK, the thing is, yes, you are getting panic attacks. Severe ones. Yes, they affect your body and so theoretically it should just be possible to prescribe medication to calm everything down, but that isn't going to solve the problem. In fact, aren't you taking some meds already?”

“Yeah. Those little pink pills. And something at night—begins with ‘D.'”

“Diazepam? How do you find them?”

“The pink pills are OK. They calm me down a bit. But I hate the night stuff 'cos I feel like shit next morning.”

“Groggy?”

“Like I been on a major bender the night before.”

“OK, so the medication needs to be reviewed, but—”

“But nothing, Doc. Give me my new pills and I'm on my way.” Ray was beginning to get agitated.

“Ray…” I leaned forward and touched his beginning-to-clench fist. He grabbed my hand and my heart leaped into my mouth. “Listen, Ray. There are many things that we can do. Pills are part of it, but I am not the one to do the pill side of things for you. My role … my role is to help us understand why you are having the panic attacks, because—”

“Doc, look—”

“Because, Ray,” I continued with a note of firmness to my voice, “because … Think of it this way. You've got a wound that is infected, right? And that infection is treated by pills and creams, which temporarily relieve the soreness but do nothing to get rid of the underlying infection itself. We need to investigate what is causing the infection, and why it is preventing the wound from healing.”

I shrugged. “Panic attacks can happen for a variety of reasons, most usually stress and anxiety. Something has happened or is happening in your life that leaves you feeling anxious. That makes you increasingly vulnerable to panic attacks.” I sat back.

Ray looked evenly at me. “So, my dad was an arsehole. Is that what you wanna hear from me? Dad was an arsehole, useless. Mum was my life but died when I was nine. Is this right? Dad left us to our own devices, and my devices ended up getting me thrown into jail for a few short and one longish stretch. Am I getting anywhere, Doc?”

“Ray, I—”

“No, listen. My childhood was shit. Nothing like yours was, I expect. Total shit. But so were the fucking childhoods of most blokes I grew up with. So what? It was hard. We were poor. I had no mum—poor Ray. Bullshit.”

Ray wasn't breathing too quickly this time. In fact, he was very still and very focused. I tensed in my seat. Something about the dynamic between us had shifted, like a change of air pressure. I scanned the room quickly. I realized I was looking for the panic button—there should be one in every room. I just wanted to know it was there. Where the hell was it? There. Other end of the desk. I hadn't given this any thought when I was first positioning the chairs for the session, and now I couldn't reach it from where I was sitting. My mouth was suddenly dry.

“Tell me about your life now, Ray.” I wanted to keep him talking, to calm him down.

Ray took off his jacket and revealed his muscular torso, covered only by a Gold's Gym undershirt. Both arms were adorned in tattoos, and, as far as I could tell, so were his neck and chest.

“Here's my life, Doc.”

I looked at the ink on Ray's skin. There were dragons and what looked to be a large cobra coiled around one arm. There was a nude woman on his other forearm and under that a list of names.

“Who are Brittany, Bethany and Brandon?”

“My kids.”

I forced a smile, nodded. “Tell me about them.”

“I love them.”

“I'm sure you do.”

“No, you don't ‘I'm sure you do.' I would kill for them.”

I believed him and that frightened me.

“They are all I have.”

There was a long pause. I itched to say something, but instinct and a recent lecture on the importance of the “therapeutic silence” stopped me.

“Brit is seventeen. She's at beauty college—nails, hair, that kinda stuff. Beth is a bit wild. She's fifteen and has a kid, another on the way. Brandon is … He's my lad, my boy, my little mate.”

Ray stopped and began to hug himself with his powerful tattooed arms. As his hug tightened, he bent farther forward, as if he were trying to curl up into himself.

“Ray, what's going on? Your chest…?”

What came next shocked me.

It started with a groan, like Ray was in pain—not anxious, panic pain but a pain so physical, so visceral, that it shook me to my core. The first groan was guttural, seeming to push out from the depths of the big man and go on for ages. Ray was bent over double, his fists clenched into his sides. The groan continued for so long that I began involuntarily gulping for air—as if I could breathe on his behalf.

Then, like a diver reaching the surface, he pushed his head back and gasped—loud gulps that had the effect of releasing one small tear from the edge of his left eye, which traveled slowly down his check, meandering around the deep wrinkles in his face and finally dripping into his open mouth.

And then, suddenly, Ray punched at where he felt the tear tickle his top lip; the punch had such force that his nose started to bleed.

I felt both afraid and awestruck by the ferocity of the emotion from a man who had seemed so locked in, so unyielding. With a little stab of shame, I also realized how exhilarated I felt—I had done this. I had enabled this unhappy man, a man who, I assumed, would not normally allow himself to cry, to access his pain. We were now getting to the root and I felt myself relax.

Oh my God, you can actually do it. You can actually do this job
.

It was extraordinary; it was a privilege; it was a total high.

“When I first held him, I told him I would never leave him. He'd never lose me.” Ray's voice was low and hoarse, his throat ripped by sobs. “He was the most beautiful boy—everyone said he looked like an angel. He did. The girls were cute, but he was in another league. He was in the Champions League.”

Ray began to uncurl his body and with a sigh rubbed his hands over his face, smearing the blood from his nose into a red mustache. He took a drink, sat back and looked at me.

“I can see that this is painful for you.”

But Ray didn't seem to hear me. In fact, he didn't even seem to be looking at me. He was somewhere else.

“I couldn't bear to be away from him. I did everything for him—fed him, changed him. I even slept with him. When I went to the gym, I took a photo in a frame so I could look at him the whole time. We were mates; he was my best mate—my best little mate. He was my life. Oh fuck.” Ray began to sob again, this time quietly.

“I fucked it up with the girls. Well, I didn't—their bitch of a mother did. She was bad, proper bad—got her girls, didn't want to know me anymore. She'd start picking at me and I'd spend more time out of the house than in it—I had to, because I knew if I didn't, I'd have fucking lamped her. She wanted that—she wanted to be the victim, so she could take my girls away from me and get me out of her life.

“She called me useless and a failure, a fucking waste of space. She told me I wasn't worth nothing to no one. That even if my mum had been alive, she'd have said the same and thought the same. She said that if Mum were around, she'd have been ashamed of me.”

Ray paused, sniffing loudly before taking a tissue from the box that I offered him. He blew his nose noisily and looked into the tissue. “Christ.”

“Only a small bleed. It's stopped now. It looks OK.”

Ray looked up at me as if he was, for the first time, suddenly becoming aware of my presence in the room. He looked dazed, a rabbit in headlights.

“Hearing those words about your mother must have been very tough for you, Ray.”

“Yeah, tough.” Ray gave a small smile. “Tougher for the bitch who said them, though. I put her in the hospital.” Ray chuckled to himself.

“And yourself inside?”

“Yeah. It was one of the smaller stretches. Assault but diminished responsibility 'cos of her goading and my steroid use.”

“Right. How is she now?”

“How the fuck do I know how she is now? Apparently she can feed herself again. More's the shame. I did her a favor, all those days on a liquid diet she'd have lost that big fat arse of hers. I reckon she'll have larded it on again.” Another laugh.

“And the girls?”

“No. Nothing. Nix. Nada. Tried to contact them via relatives. The little one doesn't want to know me—she's an old slag like her mother. Two kids already…” Ray shook his head and tutted. “Brit sends the occasional message, but she doesn't want to meet up. Don't blame her.”

Ray picked up the plastic cup, which was empty. I pushed my untouched water toward him. He took long, slow gulps.

“You really do have beautiful eyes.”

“Tell me about Brandon, Ray.”

He winced. “Oooh. Nasty doc. Nasty girl with the beautiful eyes. Like a shark, aren't you, sweetheart—sniff blood, circle a bit and then in for the kill.”

“I'm sorry. I just—” I stopped as Ray put up his hand.

“Shush, sweetheart. I was joking. No problems, babe. You're just doing your job.”

He leaned right back in his chair, pulling his arms upward and lengthening his legs forward as he stretched out his body with a grunt. He clicked his fingers at each joint. He was huge.

“Brandon. Yeah, my boy. The little lad I had with the other one, the cruelest cunt of cunts. My boy. My little mate. We did everything together. He was perfect. Beautiful. Clever. Funny. He loved me and I…”

“Where is Brandon now, Ray?”

I was expecting the worst.

“He's everywhere. That's the fucking problem—he's everywhere. He's in every song they play on the fucking radio. He's in the fucking stuffed toys that my old boss keeps shoving into the radiator.”

I looked confused.

“Of the truck.”

Ray took another drink. “He's on my arm. He's in my heart.” Ray thumped his chest again. Hard. “He's in every fucking buggy I see and every bloody advert for nappies.”

Silence again. Ray leaned forward and hung his head down toward his lap. I felt my heart pounding and took a deep breath.

“Is Brandon dead, Ray?”

Ray looked up, startled. “What did you say?”

“Oh, Ray. I'm sorry. I didn't mean…”

“Is he dead? You ask, is he dead?”

And then, just as loudly as he had been sobbing, he started laughing with such ferocity that I couldn't be sure whether it was only laughter or coupled with the rawest of grief. Unable to think of anything else to do, I leaned forward, proffering the tissue box; Ray took one and held it over his face with both hands, his body convulsing with emotion.

The fear was back. I'd drifted into deep water and now, unable to feel any ground beneath my feet, I began to worry. Introduction to anxiety management was one thing, but grief? Our first bereavement workshop wasn't scheduled for another week and I just didn't have a clue.

A sudden movement and I was jolted by Ray grabbing my hands—his face coming near to mine. I was now not only out of my depth, I was bloody scared.

“Oh, you beautiful-eyed goddess. You sweet little angel. You.”

Ray gazed into my eyes and held the pause just long enough for me to begin to fear that I was going to be sick. He was so close to me that I felt his slow, warm, nicotined breath on my cheek. I didn't know what to do. Was this a good therapeutic moment that I had to contain, be the strong maternal figure who doesn't desert him or goad him, or do I begin to listen more acutely to the alarm bells in my head and find a way to close this session down?

Shit, I didn't even know what the time was—had fifty minutes elapsed? There was no clock on the wall, and I was too afraid to insult Ray by looking down at my wrist. He dropped my hands, sat back and, as if reading my mind, looked at his watch.

“Fucking hell, Doc, you're good. Got me going there for over half an hour. Oh yes, you did. Think we might have got to … What's it called? The root? What do you reckon, sweetheart?”

I tried to swallow imperceptibly and made a mental and physical effort to steady my voice as I spoke.

“Ray, can I begin by saying that I admire you. You are a man of courage.”

“I am?” Ray smirked and I doubted that he was used to compliments.

“Real emotional courage. We've never met before. You've had a real shock being referred to this department—”

“The nuthouse?”

“And, Ray, you have found the strength to talk openly about your children and the pain of their losses to you, especially your little boy.”