Can't Anyone Help Me? (22 page)

‘Has anything like that ever occurred before? Maybe after you took some pills. You know, sometimes they can make you see things that aren’t there, especially if you mix alcohol and dope with them.’

I thought of the tab I had taken, but decided not to share that particular piece of information with him. ‘No,’ I said emphatically.

‘Well, did you take anything last night?’

‘No,’ I said. But if he thought it was the drugs that had made me act the way I had, and if I promised not to take them again, maybe they would let me go home. ‘Well, perhaps I might have, I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I must have, I suppose,’ I said quickly. I babbled on a bit more about how I didn’t know they were harmful, they must have been what had caused my behaviour and I wouldn’t do it again. Then, pleased with my effort, I gave him a conciliatory look. Now he’ll have to let me go, because there’s nothing wrong with me, I thought.

Wrong! As far as he was concerned, I hadn’t got one thing right. My history went too far back and he was not in the least bit convinced that I was telling the truth.

Other questions were fired at me, and I realized that again he had seen through my subterfuge.

Bloody hell, I thought. Aren’t psychiatrists supposed to be kind rather than interrogators? Resentful at his lack of trust, I tried to slip deeper under the bedclothes.

‘Sit up, Jackie,’ he said, ‘you’ve slept enough. Now, you went to see your family doctor yesterday, didn’t you?’

I said nothing, for he clearly knew I had.

‘You told him you were depressed. Why was that?’

I clammed up. If he knew that, he already knew what I had told the doctor and I wasn’t going to add to it. I shrugged as much as the bedclothes would let me. ‘I suppose I was,’ I said eventually, then asked him the one question I wanted an answer to. ‘I feel fine now! When can I go home?’

He ignored that and returned to the subject of drugs. He said how harmful they were and that the people who had given them to me were not friends. It was a fact that people who used drugs themselves liked to get other people to join them. After the lecture he focused on my parents and how worried they were about me. I switched off. I knew that speech too well and it would end as it always did, with words expressing how lucky I was.

I saw him watching me. He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them as he studied my face thoughtfully. He’s trying to work out if I’m sick or just plain bad, I thought, and stared back at him with a blank expression.

I wasn’t going to let him see that I was scared.

‘All right, Jackie, you can relax. That’s enough for now,’ he said finally, after a long period of silence.

‘When can I go home?’ I asked again.

‘We’ll talk about that the next time I see you.’

I had meant what time, not which day.

‘I’m not going home today, am I?’ I said. I tried to keep my voice calm – a simple fact needed confirmation – but it didn’t come out that way. Horrified, I heard the shaky tremor and the high note of worry and knew they showed I was afraid.

He glanced at me and I saw a degree of sympathy in his eyes. That worried me more than disdain would have done. If he felt sorry for me, it meant he believed there was something wrong with my head. Didn’t it? At that thought the swarm of butterflies started fluttering around in my stomach again.

‘Your father’s bringing in some clothes for you, so you can get dressed as soon as they arrive. The nurse will show you around.’ And before I could protest that he hadn’t answered my question, he left.

As though on cue, no sooner had he made his exit than my father appeared. I suspected he must have been waiting for the doctor to leave.

‘How are you feeling this morning, Jackie?’ he asked, in the forced, bright tone that the nurse had used.

‘All right, I suppose,’ was the only answer I could think of, as he sat on the chair the doctor had just vacated. He seemed to be more awkward than angry, which I guessed, as she hadn’t come, my mother was. He looked tired and, if I could have thought of the word then, defeated.

‘Your mother’s packed you your dressing-gown and some clothes,’ he said, without mentioning why he, not she, had brought them. The worried look I so hated was back on his face. His fingers involuntarily rubbed the deepening crease at the top of his nose, between his eyes, and I saw that he looked suddenly older. I felt a pang of guilt, for I knew my behaviour had caused that.

‘Jackie,’ he said, ‘do you remember anything about yesterday evening at all?’

I shook my head. I remembered going to the doctor and coming home angry, but that was all. ‘No, what happened?’ I asked.

‘What did the doctor tell you?’

I sensed that he didn’t want to give me more information than I already had. ‘Not much, but he wasn’t there, was he? He just said that I seemed to think I was five.’ I looked at him nervously, wondering what else had happened that had made them send for an ambulance.

‘Well, you did seem a little confused,’ he said. ‘You gave us a bit of a fright. But you seem much better now.’

He told me nothing else. Instead he talked about how I wasn’t well and how the hospital would get me better again. His words were meant to placate me, but as he said them, I wondered if the expression ‘not well’ was a euphemism for something much more serious. I searched my father’s face for some sign of the true meaning, but it gave nothing away.

‘Have you found everything you need?’ he asked, once I had rummaged through the bag to see what he had brought. Underneath my clothes were my Walkman and a selection of cassettes. This touched me, for I knew that he, not my mother, had packed them.

‘My music! Thank you, Daddy,’ I said. Maybe it was because I had shown some gratitude that he suddenly remembered the girl I had been before I had turned into the problem child.

‘Jackie,’ he started to say hesitantly, as he placed his hand gently on mine. He seemed about to ask or say something significant, but whatever it was, he reconsidered. ‘Is there anything else you want brought in?’ was all he said.

No, I thought. I don’t want anything brought in. I want you to take me out of here. I wanted to say, ‘Please take me home. I’ll be good if you do,’ but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I mumbled that I didn’t need anything. Now I had a sinking feeling. Bringing things in didn’t sound as though my father had any intention of saying that I could go home with him in the foreseeable future.

‘How long am I going to be here?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

‘Just until you’re feeling better. You’re in good hands, Jackie,’ he said. He looked at his watch, keen to escape being pushed further. He patted my hand and muttered something about a business meeting, then took out his wallet, peeled off a couple of five-pound notes. ‘In case you think of anything after I’ve gone,’ he said, ‘there’s a shop in the foyer. The nurse will take you there.’ Then, with an awkward look that barely disguised his relief, he got up and left.

Now it was the nurse’s turn to come into my space. ‘I see you’ve got your clothes, so you can get up now, Jackie. Let’s get you bathed first, though,’ she said, in the irritating bright voice I already loathed.

I pulled on my dressing-gown; wearing something of my own made me feel marginally better. She led the way to one of the bathrooms where I spent as long as I could, delaying coming out. I soaped every inch of myself, lathered shampoo on my head, then ducked under the water to rinse it off. I splashed a lot to let her know I hadn’t drowned myself. But I couldn’t delay coming out for ever. A knock and the nurse’s voice confirmed that.

‘Time to get out now, Jackie,’ she called.

Cursing her under my breath, I climbed out and rubbed myself dry.

‘Now, dear,’ she said, handing me a hair-drier, ‘as soon as you’ve done that and put on some clothes, I’ll show you around.’

‘How long am I staying?’ I asked, thinking that she might know and tell me.

‘It’s up to the doctor,’ she replied, echoing my father’s words.

Suddenly the frustration of not knowing what was happening was too much. ‘What’s wrong with everyone that they can’t fucking well answer me?’ I yelled.

My outburst had no effect. ‘Come on, Jackie,’ was all she said. ‘Get yourself dressed.’

I glared at her, then grudgingly decided that my day clothes would be better than a hospital nightdress and my dressing-gown.

As soon as I had wriggled into my jeans and pulled a T-shirt over my head, I discovered that my Dr Martens were missing. Instead, a pair of soft-soled slippers was the only footwear in my case. ‘I haven’t got my shoes,’ I told her.

‘Well, you don’t need them in here, do you?’

Still wanting to put off whatever she had in mind for me, I told her that I wanted to go to the shop. ‘My father gave me some money to buy a few things,’ I said.

She raised no objection, took me to the lift and we went down to the ground floor. She walked so close to me that I knew she was not going to leave my side. That told me I had no chance of leaving the ward alone.

The shop, although small, seemed to stock everything: bunches of flowers for visitors who needed to make a last-minute purchase, paperbacks, toiletries, magazines, plus an assortment of sweets and fruit. Under her watchful gaze, I bought a magazine and, unable to think of any more excuses to waste time, I followed her reluctantly back to the ward. She then took me on the promised guided tour. First to the dining room, furnished with long tables and plastic chairs; she told me the mealtimes.

Anyone would think I was in a fucking hotel, I thought, but some grain of common sense told me to keep my thoughts to myself.

‘You know where the bathrooms are now. You can have a bath each morning,’ she told me, then added that they were kept locked, but a nurse would let me in.

The next stop was the ‘lounge’: a large, square room with pale yellow walls, a television in the corner and a few tables. An odd collection of lumpy armchairs was dotted around the room and an assortment of people, wearing tracksuits, were sitting in them.

She introduced me to a few people, who showed little interest in me, then said she would leave me there to relax.

Glancing around I saw that few people were doing more than staring into space. In fact, they looked as though they were on something a lot strong than the Mandies I took when I really wanted to chill out. Maybe it’s not going to be too bad in here after all, I thought, but I didn’t believe it.

As the morning passed, the other inmates showed animation only when the trolley arrived with a choice of weak tea or coffee and some cheap biscuits. The latter they piled on to plates and took back to their chairs.

Eavesdropping on some of their sporadic conversations, I heard a few reasons why some were in there. Divorcees had depression, and people with high-powered jobs had cracked under the pressure. Those seemed the most common.

A man who looked less zonked out than the others told me how he had got out of his car in a rush-hour traffic jam and left it at the end of a flyover with the doors locked and the engine still running. ‘I’d had enough. I just got out and walked away. Must have caused chaos,’ he said proudly, as though bringing the city to a standstill was something to be commended.

I was intrigued, though, and asked what had happened.

‘The police got it blown up. Thought it belonged to an IRA bomber.’ He laughed.

There were only two people in the room who, although older than me, were at least in the same decade. One was a student who looked suspiciously thin. Bet he’s been sniffing the white stuff, I thought. I knew how much of it Dave sold to students at a well-known university. There, third-year students, having partied too hard for two years, had to work all night to get ready for the exams. Whatever he had taken, he looked burnt out and clearly had no interest in talking to a thirteen-year-old.

My eyes kept resting on a boy. He was slumped in a chair, his head nearly resting on his chest, as though his neck wasn’t strong enough to support it. Dark hair hung over a pale face, and beneath his jumper sleeves, I could see his thin, bony wrists. They were newly bandaged, and I knew what he had done. His fingers, the only part of his body that looked alive, curled and uncurled. Later, when I passed him, I heard him humming a toneless melody to which only he knew the words.

‘What’s up with him?’ I asked the man who had walked away from his car. Although I had taken a dislike to him, he was the only person who did not appear completely adrift in a world outside the walls surrounding us.

‘Lost his parents in a car crash, poor little bugger. He won’t talk. They’ll shock him if he carries on like that,’ he said, with some relish, as he lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into my face.

Seeing my puzzled look, he explained, ‘They’ll run electricity through his head. That’ll get him talking, all right.’

I said nothing. I thought he just wanted to scare me.

That first day I watched the other people with a sinking dread. Apart from the ones who were so depressed that tears ran down their cheeks as they chain-smoked, there were people who laughed out loud for no reason. Others talked to themselves, standing in corners and muttering away as though whoever lived in their head was a lot more interesting than the people around them.