Love on the NHS (12 page)

"It's a funny place to stand. Just take it easy, stay calm, Luke."

Luke did not know what to do. The police were here and he had wanted someone to talk to today but not them. He continued to gaze at the water. A couple of minutes later as he turned around again he noticed the road had been cordoned off and people were standing on the river bank gawping.

They obviously expected him to jump. Luke had not thought of that but now it crossed his mind it was a good idea. He had nothing much to live for! "I've got no one to talk to," said Luke. "You can talk to me," replied the policeman.

"Yeah, for now. But nobody wants to talk to me usually."

"I'm sure you'll get help. We'll do all we can  to get you help now we know how bad you feel. Why don't you just step down?"

Luke did not like the man's arrogance and so in defiance he jumped. As he did, the office blocks, apartments and people around swooshed into a blur. Plopping powerfully into the river, he resurfaced five seconds later. On the horizon he saw a motorized dinghy approaching, in it a rescue team. He did not make an attempt to swim. He was rescued nevertheless within forty seconds by the speedy crew. Taken to shore, he was passed to paramedics who strapped him in a stretcher and closed him in an ambulance. He was transported to North Woecaster General Hospital. There he found himself in the accident and emergency department where he became acquainted with two police officers who stood by his chair in a small room.

The two officers were male, one of whom was tall and athletic and had cold, glassy blue eyes. His mouth was pursed and sinister. The other had a receding hairline and brown doe eyes overlooking a greedy paunch. The tall officer talked to a nurse doing her rounds and later some university students. He made ample use of his time to show off and flirt, making dry observations that the ladies laughed at but were not really funny. One of the female students told him about her job in a hotel lobby and the officer made crude questions, belying his true level of sophistication. His hands tucked in an uppity way in the gaps of his uniform, he droned at length about the state of the economy and the bizarre habits of youngsters these days.

Luke was desperate to be seen but no matter how many times he asked nobody came. He had been told his sister Grace was on her way and he wanted to talk to her. There was no clear communication though about what was happening. I will be stuck here forever, he thought. Left to starve and dehydrate while these bullies keep me quiet. His sense of desperation grew until he grabbed his chair and began to hit himself on the head with it repeatedly. His forehead opened and bled profusely. Screams of agony were heard while the two police officers grabbed him and insisted he calm down. Then a carefree nurse entered and silently dressed his wound.

"I want to make a complaint," said Luke. "Please help me. I shouldn't be treated like this."

"There's no need for that," said the nurse. "You'll be seen to soon. Just be patient."

"But I want to. It's my right. Please get me a form or whatever I have to do. I shouldn't have to be in a room for so long. Not with police officers who are scaring me and with no one to talk to. This is a hospital, not a prison. I have Asperger's syndrome, this is disability discrimination. I have no one to advocate what my needs are." As you might imagine, a complaint form was never retrieved for Luke.

A few minutes later a rattle of a lead shook Luke from a maudlin reverie and he saw his sister Grace and her guide dog Coco at the door. Relief washed over him.

"Are you alright?" said Grace.

"Not great," replied Luke. Grace sat next to him on the floor. The police stepped out, a little less guarded. "They made me wait to come in," said Grace in a low murmur. "I was out in that hall for half an hour."

"I didn't know," moaned Luke. "No one told me."

"Well, I'm here now. Are you alright?" Luke did genuinely feel happy to see Grace and nodded. She continued, "Just stay calm. When the psychiatrist comes to see you, you need to be calm."

An hour later the two psychiatrists and social worker arrived to assess him.

Later Luke was transported in an ambulance to Royal Duldrum Hospital. The trio of professionals had decided in his mental health assessment he needed inpatient care and so he was carted away; where on arrival at the hospital in Duldrum he was escorted in a wheelchair through mauve, dated corridors to the psychiatric department. During his stay, Luke was housed in a four-bedded room in which each person had a locker. He felt this a privilege; he had never had a locker in the psychiatric ward in Leece, the first ward he had been detained in. He put his mobile phone in and what a fortuitous decision that was!

He learned from other patients that phones were not allowed on the ward except the communal payphone. All patients were requested to hand in mobile phones to the office. Luke was scared about using his phone but he could not afford to use the payphone. It was too exposed to other patients and staff for privacy too. He would wait until the other people in the room had gone out, take note of when staff observations took place and then carefully make phone calls at a low volume. During the second day of his stay, Luke received a call from Laura Smith from the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service.

"Hi Luke, It's Laura. I'm calling to ask if you still want us to guide you through the complaint against the community mental health team?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Okay, what we need to do is send you out some papers. You'll need to sign them and then you need send them back. Once we have it in writing you give us permission to help you then we can advocate for you."

"Oh. The thing is I'm in hospital at the moment and I don't think I'll be able to do that."

"That's fine. Why don't you just give us another call when you're out?"

"No, no, you don't understand. I'm in a psychiatric ward. The stress of it all has made me end up in here."

"Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that, Luke. Well, you call us back when you get out and I'll send the papers to you. Okay?"

"No, I can't wait. I might die in here. You never know. Sometimes people do. Some of the other patients are scaring me. One of them told me another patient tried to strangle him in the night. The others all said it was true too."

"What do you want to do then?"

"Send the papers out now but I don't trust this hospital. They don't even want me to use this phone. I think it's best you send them out to my apartment."

"Okay, Luke, I'll do that."

"Thank you. And please call again soon. I'm scared here and all alone. Can we not just start the advocacy now? I give you full permission to advocate for me."

"I'm sorry, Luke, but it all has to be done in writing. We can't accept permission over the phone."

"Oh God. Well, please, send out the papers to my apartment and I will get them when I get out. You will call me again, won't you? I'm scared in here."

"Alright then. I will try my best to do that. Bye now Luke."

"Bye."

Luke stayed in the ward for two weeks. He was dismayed when Laura never called back. Just like every other stay in hospital, whether he would get out and when was a mystery. Nurses and psychiatrists gave away nothing. Information is power. A constant fear played on Luke that the doctor might recommend him electric shock treatment. Then there was the possibility of a long spell or brain surgery - it was very rare but not unheard of. In the lounge, male and female patients mixed but Luke could not make friends. He noticed some of the other men in there as patients could be described as alpha males. They flirted easily with the females and were spoken about with reverence. Luke, meanwhile, attempted flirtation but not even chit chat elicited anything but feigned interest from the ladies. When his parents visited, his father brought a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Thereafter Luke spent a lot of time in bed, lost in a marvellous voyage on the mythic Mississippi.

An old man on the ward had dementia or Alzheimer's disease. He wandered the rooms with a blank expression on his face. One day he stood by a window looking out on the sunlit garden where young female patients were chatting. A lady nurse sitting in the room leafing a magazine noticed him. She rose and pointing her finger, yelled, "Get away from that window, you pervert! Go back to your bedroom." And when the man was in his room Luke could sometimes hear him cry out, "Help, help, help, help," but no one came. Later that day the man was in his wheelchair. After calling for help again and not getting it he began to hit the chair's arms. Frustration burst his wells and he cried like a baby. The staff mocked him, repeating, "Help, help, help." Though what sickened Luke the most was their hyena's laughter.

Why could the hospital's director not pay a visit like on the TV show Undercover Boss? It could work just as well here as in pizza outlets and delivery companies. If in a secret visit the hospital owner pretended to be a patient, they would soon find plenty of room for improvement: both in terms of working conditions, the workplace culture and pay for staff and, of course, how staff treated patients.

In the daytime patients were sometimes allowed out for a walk. They could roam around the hospital grounds for up to an hour. Luke made use of this opportunity and was walking around the outside of his ward's high perimeter fence. Opposite there was another high fence. It was guarding another ward and there was a garden. He saw a woman stood there. She was short and thin with a ponytail. She was running around energetically. Four nurses came in and out and there were two other patients inside.

He realized it was the intensive care unit. That was where patients were sent if staff deemed it necessary for their or other patients' safety. He tried to make eye contact with the girl. Did she want to talk? She looked bored and restless. How much it feel to be in such a small space with so few patients and so many staff? Then a fat male nurse came out and shouted, "What are you doing? No talking with the patients allowed." Luke dashed away. He did not want to make the girl's treatment any more harsh.

There was a hierarchy among the patients just as there ares in most parts of society. At the top were the more physically impressive patients, many of whom smoked and liked to think they ran the place. One or two would bother people for money. They would use it to buy packs of cigarettes and cans from the vending machines. Luke attempted talking to a few people. He was put off after speaking a dozen times to a man of advanced years who - despite being friendly - rabbited on about nothing in the way uneducated people living in backwaters do. Luke confided in one or two people about his self harm and suicide attempts; all people would say was, "There's no point doing that. What are you going to achieve?" and, "You'll either turn yourself into a vegetable that needs looking after all the time or just end up in here." It was impossible to discuss emotions or concepts in depth with the people around him, staff or patients, so he shut himself in his room. He read The Adventures of Huck Finn and an English travel writer's memoir of life, warts and all, in Italy that he found on the ward's bookcase. There was always room for escapism in Luke's book.

XXII

Donald was short and bald . He spoke imperceptibly in a thick more provincial variant of the Woecastrian accent. He was friendly but weird.

"Will you dance with me?" he asked Luke in the hallway.

"Yeah," said Luke and  Donald took him by the hand as they did the tango.

"Come back to my room with me," he urged.

"No, you're alright."

"Shadrack's gay," Donald said, referring to the large African nurse on the ward. "Did you know that? Shadrack's gay." Donald was a bit rebellious and sometimes tried to escape. The staff hated him. It left a bitter taste in Luke's mouth to see Donald being manhandled by four nurses into his room and having a needle stuck up his bum. He has tried to escape one time too many for their liking. They requested for a transfer for Donald to the ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) suite. Notes were written on a paper. All lies, no doubt. In the evening, Luke and the other patients saw Donald return with red, round marks where electrodes had been put on his head; and he shuffled mutely as a sad goat back to his room.

A girl on the ward called Felicity who was nineteen used a speech generating device to communicate. She was a mostly non-verbal high functioning Autistic girl. Felicity was usually ignored by the staff when she tried to speak; and that even though typing the commands to make the machine communicate was hard work. She had told Luke through her device she needed to get in touch with her mum. She was desperate to taken back home where she could get the right support she needed. The nurses were impatient and surly with her and regarded her specific food requests and sensory requirements (such as lights being a certain way) as "acting up". Felicity was sometimes violent which was why the council had applied for a respite period for her in the hospital.

She told Luke care homes for disabled people she had been in were the same too - neglect and abusive staff were common. She had anger management problems as is sometimes an issue with Autistic people. Occasionally she would lash out with slaps at people but was never really dangerous. Luke felt certain people wound her up. If only people really made an effort to draw up an intelligent care plan for her, she would not need to lash out. The final act of a frustrated individual who is not listened to can, unsurprisingly, be a violent act. It is, as unpalatable as it is, a necessary evil in some instances as opposed to a crime.

Luke felt Felicity might benefit from making a complaint but it was so complicated. If she made one, how long would it take to be resolved? Would it lead to staff getting revenge by upping the ante of the abuse? He would have liked to complain on her behalf. However, from what he understood the only people who could make a complaint were the service recipient themselves, a family member or legal representative. He had very nearly not made his own complaint against the community mental health team. Fear is a powerful force.