Crossing the Line (7 page)

13

A
week passes before Matt comes to visit me. I wasn’t expecting anyone, certainly not him, so I’m not properly dressed for his visit. I feel embarrassed that he should see me looking so bedraggled, barefoot and in old jeans. God only knows how bad my hair must look.

‘Hey there.’ He walks up behind where I sit alone and brooding, and leans over my shoulder, his face so close I can feel his breath on my neck.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispers.

If it was any other place, I would hug him, but, aware people are watching, I say nothing. Instead, I clench the tissue in my hand and hope I don’t start blubbering.

Matt pulls up a chair and sits in front of me. ‘Hope you don’t mind me visiting. I was here before, when you first arrived – but they wouldn’t let me see you.’

‘I’m sorry. I probably couldn’t have seen anyone then.’

‘Not a problem. As long as you’re all right. You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I’m really good. Ready to go home.’

He lays a bunch of flowers in my lap – a cheerful mix of reds and yellows and blues. No guy has ever given me flowers before. I mumble that they are beautiful.

‘Aw, Sophie.’ He takes my hand. ‘I’d give you flowers every day if it made you happy.’

A part of me – my heart? my soul? – crumples like paper in a fire. I cover my face so he can’t see what he’s done to me.

‘It’s okay, Soph. Let it out.’

Nurses and patients walk past, staring at this sobbing girl, but I ignore them.

‘I didn’t realise you were in such a bad way,’ he says. ‘I would have camped outside the damn door until you were up to seeing me.’

‘There was nothing you could have done.’

‘Yeah, there was. I could have stayed with you.’ He holds my hand even tighter.

He stays with me until way past visiting hours. The nurses leave us alone – there’s not even a gentle hint. It’s so good to have news from beyond the hospital walls. And Matt is happy to do the talking while I soak it in.

I discover that he and Amy have cleaned our house from top to bottom. ‘You’d never recognise the place!’

And Amy has a new boyfriend – with dreadlocks and body piercings.

‘That’s why she hasn’t been in to see you,’ Matt explains. ‘She’s always out with this Johnny guy – but she will come visit soon. She misses you, same as I do. And old Persia misses you a real lot.’

I nod. ‘Yeah, because I’m the one who never forgets to feed him.’

‘True,’ Matt says. ‘He’s a smart pussycat, Persia.’

Not once does he ask what I’m doing in this place. I’m so grateful.

Then he comes out with the most surprising news of all.

‘Greta rang.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘That you were in hospital.’

‘Oh . . . did she say anything?’

‘Only that she hopes you’re well soon. And she sent her love.’

Tears well up in my eyes again. I was so sure that Greta would not want anything to do with me, not after she’d found out I was cutting myself.

Matt touches my cheek. ‘Tell me true. You okay?’

I take his hand and kiss it. It’s not a sexual thing. It’s me telling him all the things I can’t find words for.

‘Yes,’ I mutter. ‘I’m okay.’

When he leaves, I keep a picture of him in my mind for a long while after. It’s so good to know I’m not completely alone.

A week later and colours are brighter. Things don’t seem all leached out now, and though I continue to feel sluggish, I have more energy. Helen asks if I’m feeling better and I nod. It’s the first time in days that I have responded to her in any way.

‘That’s good, Sophie,’ she tells me. ‘I’m pleased.’

I want to look at her, but I feel . . . I don’t know what, shy isn’t really the right word; stubborn maybe. If I look at her, I might be compelled to talk. And talking with a shrink is the last thing I want to do after what Noel did to me. I thought I’d never forgive him for putting me in this hole, but I have to admit things are improving.

Actually, I rather like the daily ward routine and being left alone for most of the time. I’ve started writing again, mostly poems. Every day after Group we have what they call Practical English with Mr Pettigrew. All the other adults around here are happy to be called by their first names, but he’s not. I suppose it’s the teacher in him. Behind his back we call him Pettypants. I don’t think he’d approve. His face is red and shiny, with pouchy jowls. He tries to get us to ‘engage with the page’ as he calls it, but no one except for Holden and I is interested in schoolwork. Pettypants genuinely tries to help me with my studies: he phones my school and gets in some textbooks my class is working on, as well as some novels for English. And when I worry aloud about getting behind in my school work and maybe having to repeat this final year, he takes time to try and reassure me, which is kind of him.

Today, my brain fuzzed with reading chapter after chapter of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, I stare out of the window and daydream about Matt. The others pretend to work. Not Lauren and Ashley, though. They sit and gossip or flick through glossy mags. Pettypants tries to quieten them.

‘Ladies,’ he says, ‘please put those magazines away and keep your chatter down. Others are trying to work.’

Lauren swears at him, loudly.

Pettypants sounds as though he’s choking. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me, dickhead.’

There’s a long silence.

I glance up and see that Lauren and Ashley are staring brazenly at him, but he’s taken an easy option: he’s walking away. Just as well, too. They would have torn him up. I feel sorry for him; it can’t be easy having students coming and going all the time and not having any continuity with us.

I’m beginning to know a bit about the others here, even though I keep my distance from them. Emma walks around as if spaced out. I think it’s more than being off her face on meds: at meal times the nurses try to encourage her to eat, but she barely touches her food. She’s twig-thin so maybe she’s anorexic. I was friends once with a girl who had anorexia. Jessie. She wouldn’t listen to anyone who told her she needed to put on weight. She insisted she was fat. Jessie used to invite me over to her place and we’d give one another beauty treatments – facials, hairdos and manicures. She had this big collection of teddy bears. When she was really sick and I went to visit her in hospital, she gave me her favourite. Just after that, she died. I still have her bear – always will. Cuddly One sits on my bed at home with Mopsie, my politically incorrect golliwog, which Arlene knitted for me when I was little. I suppose it’s childish for someone my age to have such things, but we all need something to love.

Holden has this compulsion about numbers. He counts tiles on the floor, lines on the ceiling, lights in the ward – not once or twice, but over and over again. Another guy, Felix, admits in Group to having panic attacks. You can hear the terror in his voice when he talks about being alone or getting lost. ‘When it happens,’ he says, ‘I can’t breathe. I get nauseous. I sweat. My heart races – it feels like I’m going to die.’

I feel sorry for him; we all do, I think, except Lauren.

‘You’re a loser, Felix.’ She smirks. ‘And a wanker.’

Ashley giggles at that. She and Lauren are best buddies. They get off on putting everyone down. I thought I liked Lauren, but now I’m not so sure.

Matt’s written to me three or four times now. And he forwarded a letter from Greta. It’s full of news from school and what everyone’s been up to. All light and fluffy stuff. But at the end there’s a serious bit:

I’m sorry I walked out on you at the pub that night. Fact is I couldn’t handle it when I saw you’d been cutting yourself. I’d made up my mind that people who did it were crazy. But you’re not crazy. I think you’re more sane than I am. I’ve been reading lots about cutting – there’s stacks on the net – and I’ve realised I was being really judgemental. So please forgive me for being a shitty friend. I am trying really hard to understand. And who am I to judge? I’ve had a cushy life and I’ve got a great family. You don’t seem to have anyone. I care about you, Sophie. I can’t wait for you to get back to school so we can hang together.

Greta’s signed off with heaps of hearts and kisses and hugs. And she’s drawn all these silly little cartoon figures. Sooo Greta. Her letter is special. It lifts me higher than any drug they’ve fed me in this place.

Amy hasn’t written at all, the slacker, but that’s Amy. She means well, I’m sure, but she never gets around to doing stuff. Matt writes that college classes and assignments are taking up a lot of his time, that he’s working long hours at the market (which is why he hasn’t visited again) and – most importantly – that he still misses me. I don’t reply to the letters. I’d like to, but does anyone really want a girl in a loony bin pouring her heart out to them? I get so intense sometimes and it comes across in my writing. They’d be sure to get a twenty-page letter, plus my soppy poems. I’d freak them out. No, I’ll catch up when I get back home.

Home. Just saying the word evokes all kinds of feelings in me. I want so much to resume a normal life – or as normal as I can ever have. Seeing Matt and Amy, Greta, the gang from school . . .

I think about that all the time. But it scares me, too. More and more as I stay in this shut-off world with its daily routines and safe walls, I find myself burrowing in. It has become my refuge, my hiding place. I know when the time comes it will be hard to adjust to the ‘real’ world, to home. I’m not really sure if I can do it.

In therapy today, Helen started by reading to me from the Department case file Marie must have given her. I heard Marie’s clipped tones in the writing, so impersonal on such a personal subject. When Helen mentioned the Pattersons, a forgotten anger surged in me.

‘Those bastards,’ I muttered.

Helen looked at me, almost surprised that I had a voice, let alone such an angry one. I’d managed to avoid words before this. Ordinarily I would have dropped my head, but today I couldn’t turn away. She smiled at me. Pale blue eyes, sharp and intelligent. There’s a dimple at the right corner of her lip.

‘It’s very nice to hear from you.’

I nodded.

‘Such a relief,’ she said, ‘I was beginning to think I’d only ever see the top of your head.’

I like her smile. In fact, I’ve decided I like her. She laughs a lot. You can hear her in the corridor a long way off. Other doctors and staff tiptoe around patients, and mostly talk in subdued tones. But Helen is upfront, noisy and colourful in this soulless place. I still don’t feel like talking to her, though. So many people have claimed a piece of me over the years that I have come to mistrust everyone, except Matt. Even he hurt me when he met Greta at the pub, although maybe it wasn’t as bad as I imagined at the time.

After Group today Lauren fronts up to me. ‘You want a smoke?’ she says.

There are
No Smoking
signs all over the hospital but they don’t mean anything to Lauren. She lights up and glares when I don’t want to do the same.

‘Sorry.’ I smile. ‘I’d join you if I smoked. But I don’t.’

Lauren considers me intently for a moment. ‘I thought you were a stuck-up bitch when you first got here, but maybe I was wrong. Still workin’ on that one.’

I say nothing, but glance sideways and see that on the inside of her arm are scars, raised and pink, bright ugly worms of things. She sees me looking but doesn’t comment.

‘What are you in here for?’

‘Homicide,’ I answer, very grimly.

Her eyes chase down the truth, burning into mine. Finally I smirk.

‘I knew it! You’re full of bull!’

We both laugh then. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in weeks.

It’s a rare sound from patients in a place like this – unless it’s some manic giggle. A nurse at her desk peers at us curiously. Lauren turns her back to hide the cigarette.

‘Nosy bitch,’ she mutters. ‘You can’t fart in this joint without someone writing a report about it.’

That makes me laugh again. Lauren can be nasty but right now she’s good medicine for me.

‘Tell us about that guy who came to visit you.’ She leans in closer. ‘He’s hot.’

‘Oh, Matt,’ I casually reply. ‘He lives with me.’ It feels so good to say that. Of course, I don’t mention we’re only flatmates.

‘Yeah? Far out. Tell me about him.’

‘Sorry, it’s private.’

She glares. For a second I think she’s going to hit me. But then . . .

‘I suppose I can understand that. If I had him I’d be just the same – half your luck.’

That night I doze off holding the idea of Matt close to me.

14

A
t first I sat dumbly in Helen’s office, but now I’ve started – tentatively – to react to her questions. She asks me this morning if I’m feeling happier. ‘You were laughing with Lauren in the Day Room when I came in,’ she says.

‘Lauren can be funny sometimes.’

She is taken aback to hear a reply, but doesn’t comment, so I continue. ‘But I guess none of us here are really happy, no matter how much we pretend, or we wouldn’t be here.’

She smiles, her lips like a crescent moon laid on its side. The smile is in her eyes, too. As much as I want to keep my distance, it’s difficult to ignore the growing feeling that she cares about me. Unlike Noel, she has told me a lot about herself in those earlier sessions. And she has demanded nothing from me.

‘Would you like to tell me what you know about your early childhood?’ she asks.

The kindness in her voice cuts through my defences.

I tell her what I remember. How I never knew my father, how first there was just me and my mother.

‘She was skinny, I think. For years I had a purple fluffy teddy. I seem to recall that she gave it to me. One of my carers’ dogs tore it to pieces. I cried for days after. That’s about it . . .’

‘Nothing more?’ she says, the faint curve of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

‘Well . . . one day my mother took an overdose and I rang the emergency services. So they tell me. I don’t remember it.’

‘That was brave of you.’

‘Not really.’

‘Do you remember anything at all about that night?’

I try hard for her.

‘Um . . . being scared of the cops.’

She waits patiently. No pressure.

‘I’m pretty sure there was a fat woman who cuddled me and took me to her home. She gave me an ice-cream and sang to me when I went to bed.’

Helen looks so peaceful.

‘I can’t remember anything else.’

‘You did very well. I think that’s enough for today.’

I’m amazed that the session has come to an end so quickly.

‘I wanted to ask something.’ I hesitate. If she says ‘no’ to me I’ll feel so hurt. From anyone else it wouldn’t matter, but from her . . .

‘What is it, Sophie?’

That kindness again – it gives me the strength I need.

‘Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been stuck in the ward. Can I go out? Into the grounds?’

‘I don’t see any problem with that. Of course.’

‘I can go with my friends?’

‘Yes. I think that’s a very good idea.’

I feel she’s drawing me closer to her with everything she says, with every look. My Helen.

Later that afternoon a group of us is allowed outdoors. The hospital is set in vast grounds, with whole areas of grass stretching green and unbroken for a long way. There’s a tarred driveway leading up to the entrance gates about half a kilometre away, so, for something to do, we dawdle together towards it.

We’re a strange lot. Holden counts to himself as he walks – his lips moving – so many steps this way, so many that way. Someone is always asking him about it, and every time, head down he answers, ‘I have to’. Poor guy. Meanwhile, Felix keeps turning to glance at the hospital as if to reassure himself it hasn’t vanished since he last looked. And Ashley, who acts like the Roadrunner on speed, has dashed ahead and is calling for us to, ‘Hurry up! Hurry up!’

Lauren ambles along beside me, her eyes fixed on the gates ahead. They are chained but not drawn tightly together. She soon confirms what I’m thinking.

‘If someone pushes it open for me, I reckon I can squeeze through there.’

Ashley overhears her. ‘It’s only fifteen minutes walk into town. You want to do it?’

‘Yeah!’ Lauren charges at the gate. ‘Let’s all go! Come on!’

Felix and Holden hang back.

Holden shakes his head, not at all keen on a break-out.

Briefly, Felix considers it, before deciding that the opening is too small.

‘I might get stuck,’ he says.

‘Fine!’ Lauren snaps. ‘I didn’t want you freaks anyway.’ She looks at me. ‘But you’re comin’ – right?’

There’s no way I can. Helen trusted me, trusted all of us.

‘Don’t do it,’ I say. ‘It’s not worth it.’

With Ashley’s help, Lauren wiggles through the opening. ‘Wrong!’ she yells back at me. ‘You’re not worth it! You’re a loser, just like them! Come on, Ashley – move it!’

She strains against the gates so that Ashley can squeeze through. And then both of them are on the other side. ‘Let’s go!’

Without a backward glance, Lauren and Ashley stride down the tree-lined road towards town.

Holden, Felix and I return to the hospital not saying a word to one another. Hours later the three of us are called in to the head sister’s office. I refuse to say anything, but Felix tells her what happened. Later, I see Helen and rush up to her.

‘I’m sorry – about Lauren and Ashley: I tried to stop them.’

‘I know you did,’ she says. ‘It’s not your fault, Sophie. You did nothing wrong.’

She is so forgiving, how could I not help but feel happy?

Just before lunch the next day, Ashley is brought in. She shuffles like a zombie between two orderlies, staring ahead, as though a doctor has given her a massive dose of drugs. Or maybe she’s taken something herself and is tripping out. They put her into a private room and lock the door.

Lauren doesn’t return the following day, or the next. It is four days before she troops in, cheeks bruised, bottom lip swollen and bleeding. She catches me watching her as she’s escorted along the corridor.

She screams, ‘What are you looking at, bitch?’

For hours afterwards I have a lonely, empty feeling in my gut. Once, for half a minute, I thought we could be friends.

Today, for the first time, Helen is late for our session. I keep checking the wall clock in the nurses’ station as the minutes tick past our appointed time, but she doesn’t show. She’s always punctual. I stop a passing nurse.

‘Where’s Helen?’

‘Probably caught up somewhere.’

‘She’s never late.’

‘She’ll be here.’ As if the nurse cares.

Ten, twenty, thirty minutes pass. I begin to feel panicky, my heart drumming at a berserk tempo.

At long last Helen strides along the corridor towards me. ‘Sophie,’ she calls, panting. ‘There was an emergency. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’ She fumbles for the keys to her office door while I stand mute, unable to form a sentence. There’s a pain in me, as though a rib is cracked.

In her room, Helen tosses her keys onto the desk and turns toward me, a smile breaking across her face. My throat feels full of cut glass, tears swim across my eyes.

Through the blur, I see Helen’s face, pasted over with a mild look of confusion, her mouth open in surprise.

‘Sophie, what’s wrong?’

‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ Even as I half-say, half-sob this, I feel like a stupid two-year-old.

‘Oh, you poor thing.’ Before I know it, she has her arms around me, pulling me towards her soft, spongy chest. My heart turns liquid with need. When did I ever cry so much in all my life? Hurts that have been trapped for so long cascade out in tears onto her jacket front.

Finally I’m reduced to hiccups, and then to silence. We stand, embracing one another, with Helen gently patting my back. I hold her closer and closer until there’s not much world left. A feeling of peace overcomes me, a sense of being perfectly content, as if I have tuned into some great harmony and am in a place I was always meant to be. Never have I felt like this. Before I was fragmented: now Helen has put all the pieces together.

Afterward we sit opposite one another as we always do and there are her questions, my answers. Something is different. Ballooning inside of me is a feeling I can only describe as love. It’s nothing like the affection I have for Matt. This is more intense. Dangerous.