The Pause (11 page)

I've been prescribed antidepressants for my long-term mental health, as well as something to help me sleep. To help me reboot. I'm on so many meds that if I run, I rattle. The funny thing is that before all this I didn't take anything. Didn't believe in it. Mum's a bit of an earth mother (well, an earth mother in a power suit), and she always encouraged me and Kate to let our natural antibodies fight whatever ailments we had coming on – headache, flu, tummy upset, couldn't-be-arsed-going-to-school-because-it's-cross-country-carnival-day. So it's kind of part of my DNA not to take medication, but now … Mum's eager for me to scarf down whatever pills the doctors throw my way.
Because when your mind cracks you need more than positive thinking, incense sticks and a set of bongo drums to stitch it back together again. You need hard-core pharmaceuticals.

I'm in the process of writing an email to Lisa when there's a knock on my door.

Danica enters without being invited in. ‘Party in Nathan's room,' she says. ‘Under twenties only. His mates smuggled in goon.'

‘What if we get busted?' I say rather pathetically. ‘Won't we get in trouble, like what's-her-face?'

‘You mean we might get expelled from a psychiatric hospital?' says Danica. ‘Oh no. Whatever shall we do?'

‘Okay,' I say. ‘You can turn off the sarcasm now. Be there in ten.'

‘You sexting Lisa?'

Sprung. ‘No. I'm just sending her an email.'

Danica grins. ‘Yeah, right. See you soon.'

There're five teens in the psycho ward now. Me (the almost suicide), Danica (who's seen too much), Nathan (bipolar), Ellie (arm slicer), and Samantha (another almost suicide). Danica's the alpha of the group and she instructs me to smuggle five cups from the tearoom but to be obvious about it and not sneak around like I'm up to something. Nathan opens the cask. Given that it's almost lights out, we're all dosed up to the back teeth on meds.
It heightens the effects of the wine, which tastes like paint thinner.

‘Jeez, Nate,' I say, having taken a sip and involuntarily dry-retched. ‘Couldn't your mates have smuggled in a couple of bottles rather than this cardboard shit? I mean, how did they get the cat to piss into the cask?'

‘I'll tell you what, Captain Connoisseur,' says Nathan. ‘You and your mates can cater our next event. Okay?' He talks at a million miles an hour but I think I get the gist of what he said.

‘Fine by me.' Chris'll raid his mother's private stash. Nothing under twenty-five dollars a bottle.

It's kind of like a cross between a party and group therapy. Once it's fully underway and Nathan's wine has stripped the tastebuds from our tongues and the backs of our throats and reduced our collective IQ significantly, it's clear that Ellie and Samantha don't talk much but Nathan hardly shuts up. Given the speed of his speech, and how he tends to answer questions that he hasn't even been asked, he's obviously heading towards the manic cycle of his particular flavour of psychosis.

‘It's just awesome dude when the highs hit you feel like you can fly and you feel like you kind of like know the mysteries of the universe and how to cure cancer and shit like that and you do that's the thing you really do only when you try and write it
down you forget so then you come up with a whole new religion that everyone can embrace because it doesn't have any rules or commandments or Gods or killing people and blowing shit up and stuff like that because religion is supposed to be peaceful but then you start thinking that if you start a religion it kind of makes you God and maybe people will start worshipping you like you're God or Allah or Krishna or or or or that mad asshole in America who thought he was the second coming of Jesus only he and his followers stashed away a bunch of AK-47s and grenades and shit which is not something you could imagine Jesus doing up there on the cross pulling out from behind his back a Kalashnikov semi-automatic assault rifle and saying “Take that you mothers … eat lead Pontius Pilate – where's your plane if you're a pilot, ha ha ha” – and so when the FBI turned up and said ‘What the eff' they had the shit kicked out of them because although what they did was completely and utterly messed up beyond belief what we should never forget is that the governmentcandowhateveritwantsand there'sfuckallyoucandoaboutit …'

Danica pours Nathan another large mug of wine before our ears start to bleed.

Unlike the rest of us, Nathan doesn't want to be cured because he lives for the highs of bipolar, even if the lows almost kill him. It's a balancing
act, he says, using a thousand words when fifty would have covered it. The important thing is to try to avoid leaping off a building during the manic phase because you truly believe you can fly, and then not throwing yourself off the same building in despair when the black dog shows up.

Danica talks of her life on the streets, the bus shelters, the parks, the trains, the rail yards, the megamalls. Meanwhile, Ellie, whose parents are loaded, informs us that she really doesn't want to live in this world anymore. We tell her that she's wrong. That she's an amazing person. That life can only get better. But seriously. Who are we to offer advice to anyone? We're the broken ones.

Samantha doesn't want to reveal why she did what she did. She never says anything in group. Though she will have to wear the scarf around her neck for the rest of her life to cover the rope burns.

And then it's my turn. Danica knows about Lisa, but life on the streets has made her smart beyond her years and she knows there's something else.

‘So what about this aunt of yours,' she says. ‘Ed mentioned her in group. She jerk you off or something?'

I shake my head. ‘No. Nothing like that.'

Nathan perks up. ‘She blow you?'

‘He wishes.'

‘For God's sake, Danica. She was my aunt.'

‘Technically she was your father's aunt, so she was your great-aunt.'

‘She was also seventy-five years old.'

‘She could have taken out her false teeth first,' says Nathan.

Even Samantha laughs at this. Everyone does. Everyone but me.

‘Sorry, Declan. We're just messing with you,' says Danica.

‘She committed suicide,' I say. ‘While I was …'

There's silence for a moment.

‘She do it in front of you?' asks Ellie.

I nod.

‘That's totally messed up,' says Nathan.

‘She tried to take me with her.'

Danica puts her arm around me. ‘Sorry, Declan. We didn't mean to …'

‘It's okay,' I say because it is. ‘I've never really talked about it.'

‘How old were you?' asks Samantha.

‘Six.'

The silence is so overwhelming that you can almost hear the gutrot wine eating through the cardboard cask.

‘That's really messed up,' says Nathan, the combined effects of the wine and his meds having finally brought him back to neutral.

‘I didn't realise just how much it got to me … Thought I'd buried it.'

Danica gently rubs my back.

‘I suppose she put it in my mind that suicide was an option, when really, life is bloody awesome.'

‘Were you close to her?' says Danica.

I look around the group. Everyone respectfully waits for my affirmation. ‘I hated the bitch,' I say. ‘I wished she'd killed herself sooner.'

There's a long silence before Danica snorts with laughter and then, having started us off, we're all at it. And for a moment, just for a moment, I get a brief taste of Nathan's mania and can understand why he's reluctant to give it up.

By the time I stagger into group the following morning, it feels as though someone has hacked my brain in half with a machete. I don't know how I got back to my room last night without assistance, or even if I
did
get back to my room without assistance. I kind of vaguely remember a nurse coming into the room at some point and laser-beaming her torch into my eyes.

Danica wanders in and slumps down into the chair next to me. She looks like I feel.

‘What happened last night?' she says. ‘How did we get back to our rooms? And was that like the worst wine in history? Was it wine or kerosene?'

I nod and immediately regret it. It feels like my brain is bouncing around inside my skull like a pinball.

‘What happened to the cask?' asks Danica.

‘The nurses took it,' says Samantha.

‘They finish it off?' says Nathan, hopefully.

‘Evidence.'

Oh, crap!

Ed Chui bounds into the room like he's on a mission. He doesn't run today's session but hands over to a trainee. Straight out of uni, she focuses on negative thoughts, how to spot the signs, and the strategies that we should employ to overcome them. It really is psychology 101 but I just want the session to be over so that I can go back to bed and lapse into a goon-induced coma. One thing's for sure and that is that I'm never drinking again. Ever. Well, not out of cardboard anyway. That stuff is potentially lethal.

When the hour's up, Ed invites Danica, Samantha, Ellie, Nathan and me to stay behind. We are clearly in deep shit.

When everyone has left the room, Ed reaches into a plastic bag and pulls out the offending cask. We all stare at it and silently curse its very existence, for making us feel like something the cat crapped out, like someone has pierced our eyes with a red-hot needle.

‘Well,' says Ed, ‘do you have anything to say for yourselves?'

‘Any left?' says Nathan. ‘Hair of the dog?'

Ed smiles at this, though I don't think the rest of us know what it means. Well, I don't.

‘Who's responsible?' says Ed.

I put up my hand.

‘Declan,' hisses Danica.

‘We all are, Ed,' I say. ‘We all got stuck in. Well, apart from Sam. Does it matter where it came from?'

‘Are we out?' asks Nathan.

‘Discharging you would be as irresponsible as the five of you were last night.'

‘But what about what's-her-face?' says Danica. ‘She got kicked out for having vodka in her bag.'

‘Monica? She was thirty-eight years old,' says Ed. ‘And she knew the rules.'

‘So did we,' argues Danica, who seems in favour of our expulsion, at least on ethical and equality grounds.

‘You're teenagers,' says Ed. ‘And no matter how much you think you know, no matter how intelligent you think you are, not only has your cerebral cortex not fully developed yet, you don't have the benefit of experience behind you that Monica had.'

‘Cerebral cortex?' says Ellie. ‘What the hell does that mean?'

‘I didn't even know I
had
a cerebral cortex,' says Nathan.

‘It means,' says Danica, ‘that we don't know shit from a hot rock.'

‘In a nutshell,' says Ed. ‘But you are on a warning. All of you.'

‘Can we go?' says Danica. ‘I've got a couple of Nurofen with my name on them.'

‘In a moment,' says Ed. ‘But first I want to tell you a story. About an uncle of mine.'

We look at each other and realise that we have very little choice but to listen. Ed's given us a reprieve so now we are his captive audience. This is our penance.

‘Poor Uncle Jimmy,' continues Ed, ‘had the great misfortune of being killed by a thumbtack.'

Danica snorts but attempts to turn it into a cough to spare Ed's feelings.

‘That's okay, Danica,' says Ed. ‘Uncle Jimmy was … How shall I put this in a way that you would easily understand … Oh, I know. All right. Uncle Jimmy was an asshole. In fact, if an asshole had an asshole, it would look a lot like Uncle Jimmy.'

We openly laugh at this.

‘Despite his being an asshole,' continues Ed, ‘his death does serve as a warning. Now, Uncle Jimmy spent his whole life ripping people off.
Family, friends, associates; he didn't care. He'd rip off anyone and call it business. He ran massage parlours. Okay, let's call a spade a spade. He ran brothels and exploited young women. Made him a lot of money. And to further highlight what an asshole he was, when his eight-year-old daughter started crying at her swimming lessons, he took her to the local pool and threw her in the deep end fully clothed. Some might say that he was mean. Some might say he was trying to toughen her up. I would say that he was a prick. He was also a raging drunk. In fact, he drank so much that he actually bought a house because it was close to a bottle shop.'

‘So he died from what, liver failure?' asked Nathan. He obviously assumed, like the rest of us, that this was Ed's anti-booze lecture.

‘No. I already told you, he died from the effects of a thumbtack.'

We look at each other again. How the hell do you die from a thumbtack?

‘So what happened?' asks Nathan.

‘Well, of all the idiotic ways there are to die, I think Uncle Jimmy takes the cake. Though I'd prefer to call it karma. One night he shouts us all dinner. Big man. Big show. And he hit the bottle pretty hard that night, let me tell you. He left the restaurant in much the same way the five of you left Nathan's room last night.'