by Martha Long
My eyes lit up. A smoke!
‘I left them there fer ye!’
‘Thanks,’ I whispered, straightening my mouth in a smile.
I was very tired and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was night. I could see the darkness through the window. The man in the corner was being wheeled out under a sheet, and a nurse was stripping the sheet off his bed. It was covered in pink dye. Doctors were shuffling out of the room, their hands hanging limply down by their sides. Their heads dropped. ‘We lost him,’ they muttered.
I stared at the shape of the body lying under the sheet as they wheeled him out. He was alive this morning. Now he’s gone! His machine was switched off. He wasn’t strapped to it. They must have thought he was going to be OK. Life is a bitch! That poor man was probably desperate to live, had a lot to live for. Now he’s gone. Here I am, desperate to die, still here. What a sick joke!
One of the doctors stopped at the end of my bed. ‘You’re back with us,’ he beamed down at me. ‘We had an awful job bringing you back, you know! You went into respiratory failure. We had the medication bottles. Goodness! They were all full! We saw the labels with the date. You took a massive overdose! Enough to stop an army. But we pulled you back! Yes!’ and he stopped to pause, thinking about it. ‘I remember you from the endocrinology ward. You were in here for months.’
I stared at him, remembering him too. He was a houseman, and he always seemed to be working. He used to walk around haunted and hunted looking. Banjacksed from lack of sleep.
I lay motionless; the only thing in action was my eyes, watching him.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ he shouted, waving at me, grinning as he loped out the door with his head going ahead of him and the rest of him following.
I lay with absolute stillness, my mind off in limbo. My eyes staring at nothing. I dimly registered poor human wrecks lying around me, their bodies wanting to take their last gasp, their minds holding a tenacious grip on this life. They were helped by machines carrying them through until their ailing bodies could recover and they could get both feet back in this life. It was a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, constant battle between staff in this room and Death, which would suddenly appear and try to snatch away a patient.
Staff fought with ferocious and grim determination to hang on to their patients’ lives. Machines were whipped into action, a body was grabbed, pyjama top ripped, buttons flew, pillows shot across the floor, the alarm sounded, alerting everyone, especially doctors trained in the mastery of fighting this foe: ‘Death is back!’
They came thundering into the room, white coats flapping out behind them. Everyone knowing their place and racing against time. Death’s best friend! The guardians of this room won more battles, then lost. And a gloom would hang over the staff, seeing their charge wheeled out, lost to Death.
But I’m still here, and Death got pissed off waiting to see if this time he could get his hands on me. Once again he’d failed and went off sniffing to pick up the scent of some other poor unfortunate who didn’t even want to know him. Though I did try to help him!
I lay serenely puffing on my tobacco, watching with interest the machine I was strapped to wave back at me like a drunken sailor. I eyed the cylinders of oxygen next to the beds and wondered mildly if the room would blow up. Nobody said a word. I was gratified by this. A little curious, though, as to why they let me get away with it. Perhaps I sent out a menacing air, lying in my bed with utmost placidity.
It’s morning again. Nurses appeared at my bed and clicked off the brake, wheeling me out of the room. ‘We’re taking you out of Intensive Care, Martha!’ the nurse shouted happily down at me, pushing me along the corridor, then waits for the lift. There’s two of them. When the lift opens, one steers from behind and the other pushes from the front.
‘Did ye hear the latest on Ryner?’ the one with the long, curly, dyed-red hair asked the one behind me with the Afro hairstyle. Her cap sat on top of it, looking like the leaning tower of Pisa.
‘No! What’s the crack?’ asked Pisa, smiling and jutting her head towards the redhead in case she missed anything.
‘Well! If he didn’t go and buy the biggest bunch of roses ye ever saw in your whole life and leave them sitting up in the office for your woman Babs! You know?’ Red said, when the other one wrinkled her nose, looking puzzled. ‘The one with the long legs that go all the way up to her arse! She’s down in Urology!’
‘Oh! Do ye mean the one with the lisp?’
‘Yeah! Yeah! That’s the one.’
‘God! I can’t stand that one!’ Pisa said. ‘She fancies herself no end!’
‘Anyway! Let me finish!’ Red said, getting impatient at her story being interrupted.
‘Yeah! Go on! Go on!’ Pisa said.
Red took in a breath, then stopped. ‘Where was I?’ she asked herself. ‘Oh! Yeah! So, we used Tipp-Ex and rubbed out Babs’ name, and what did we do?’ Red paused, making her face look sorrowful. ‘We put aul Frosty’s name on it, saying, “From an Admirer.” She questioned us up and down the place. “Who left them in? When? Are you sure you didn’t see who it was?” Nobody knew anything, of course. “No, Sister! It was probably a patient,” I said. Then she got red in the face and barked at me, “A patient wouldn’t say ‘from an admirer’!”
‘Poor aul Frosty, she went around for the rest of the day in a daze, and she was killed looking at every man that walked into the place.’
Pisa screamed, laughing and grabbing her knees.
‘God love her!’ said Red. ‘The only pleasure she gets is going to bed with The Catholic Messenger.’
Then they nearly knocked me out of the bed. Slamming it out through the door before it was properly opened, banging into it. I shook like a jelly, hanging on to me tobacco, hidden under the bedclothes in case someone decided to take it off me.
They rattled me along a passage and into a big ward. ‘Here we are!’ the redhead shouted down at me, beaming at a load of people sitting on sofas around a table.
‘How’re ye, girls!’ a tall young fellow – he looked about seventeen years old, with a mop of brown curly hair, wearing a dressing gown and slippers – shouted at the nurses.
‘How’s it going, Pascal? Are you still here?’ roared the redhead again. ‘Gawd! You must love this place.’
‘Ah, no, Nurse! It’s you I’m tormented thinking about that’s keeping me awake nights, tossing and turning in me bed of pain! I hope you’re saving yourself for me!’
‘Ah, Pascal darling. As much as I would love to get me hands on you, sure, your mammy would annihilate me for robbing her little baby! An me a grown woman!’
Then they turned into an empty cubicle, screeching laughing, and heaved the bed, rattling and shaking it against the wall, jamming it into a corner, making my head wobble and my teeth knock together.
Fuck this, I thought, why don’t they watch what they’re doing? They’re going to give me brain damage, the bloody eegits! Then they stood on the brake, locking the wheels of the bed, and followed each other out. I was left staring straight ahead at a long desk, but there was nobody there. I heard the gang of people follow the nurses out of the ward, then it was quiet. Looks like I have the whole place to myself.
I turned my head, staring at the wall. Lying with absolute stillness. My eyes glazed over, and I felt an icy calmness. My emotions were frozen. Nothing bothered me. I had said all I wanted to say, and people no longer interested me. I was biding my time, knowing next time I would succeed. My mind, now free of its burden to find reasons why I had stopped caring about life, meandered quietly and gently, looking at the mistakes I had made. It paused, settling on my absurd notion of joining the respectable middle class.
By the time I got up there among them, it was too late to turn back. These people were not real. They politely ask you, ‘How are you?’ and I’m supposed to say, ‘I’m great, thank you. And how are you?’ and show my white Gibbs toothpaste smile. When in fact I could be carrying my head unde
r my arm or just about to blow my brains out. But so long as I say everything is OK, then everyone can pretend we’re all having a marvellous fucking life!
You look into their eyes and see their pain. They try to guard it with a twist of the lips, looking a bit like a smile. And they see the pain in your eyes, then I see them look away. I see it, because I’m looking for it. I want warmth, to feel valued. But there’s only coldness. Only a machine going about its business. I am on a different planet. These people have been trained like monkeys; being ‘respectable’ is everything. Getting to the top of the tree is the goal, or climbing the social ladder they call it. They never become real people.
The inner city, where I spent my early childhood, they were real people. Yeah! I smiled to myself, thinking of the day I got fed up with the people living around me. I was feeling very low that day. Really lonely. I got into the car and drove into town. I parked it on Parnell Street and found myself wandering down Moore Street, where all the fruit and vegetables are sold.
The women are very tough. Out in all weathers. They would take the head off you if you touched their fruit or said it wasn’t up to scratch. I was standing with my back to a shop window, a butcher’s, when one aul one stopped to have a chat with another aul one. One of them had two black eyes, and she tried to hide this with a scarf on her head pulled down low over her forehead. I spotted her straight away, and she threw an eye at me to see if I was listening before she opened her mouth and got down to the business of telling her friend what was on her mind. I pretended to busy myself rolling a cigarette and not notice them. But making sure I could hear everything that was being said.
‘How’re ye, Mary?’
‘Ah! Jaysus! Don’t ask me, Nelly luv!’ they greeted each other.
‘Go on! Tell us! Wha ails ye?’ Nelly said, folding her arms and hitting Mary with the back of her hand to encourage her.
Mary paused, lifting her big chest and giving it an almighty heave, taking a deep breath in through her nose, looking like she had a bad smell under it, and started. But first throwing her eyes from side to side, in case she saw someone coming along that might know her and hear her business.
‘Ah! Holy God! Mornin, noon, te night! I’m tormented wit him comin home drunk an upendin the place. An lookit, Missus! Where do ye think I got these two black eyes from?’
‘Well, if it was me!’ Nelly said, heaving herself up to her full four feet seven inches and standing five feet wide, straightening herself up and folding her arms under her massive chest and taking a sharp intake of breath. ‘Listen!’ she said, tapping Mary’s shoulder with the stub of her finger, then pausing to take in a gulp of air. She clamps her lips together, dropping her jaw, raising both eyebrows together, and says slowly, making sure not one word is lost, ‘I would pick up the frying pan or wha’s left of it, or the bleedin milk bottle, an I’d land him such a smack on the head he’d be sent flyin inta tomorra! Tha’d put a stop te his gallop! Don’t ye agree wit me, Missus?’ Then she lifted her head back, holding it in the air, staring at Mary to see her reaction, and admire how treacherous she was.
Mary blinked, thinking about it, then got a fright, seeing herself getting splattered if she tried that, and smiled weakly, saying, ‘Ye’re right there, Nelly. I’m too soft! Tha’s my trouble.’
‘Well! I’m tellin you now!’ Nelly said, leaning into her and gently tapping her on the hand with her finger. ‘Take my advice, an better still, wait until he’s sleepin an he won’t know wha hit him!’
Then they ran off, screaming laughing, telling each other to ‘Mind yerself now! An I’ll see ye again!’ and everyone is happy. Caring and sharing their worries. I watched them go, feeling a terrible longing inside me to be a part of them. I had lost something along the way. I knew I wasn’t a part of them any more, and I felt empty, lost.
I don’t belong with the people I’m living among now. It is like being stranded in no-man’s-land. I don’t know where I belong. My values are middle class, but I identify more with the city people. I understand them. But they wouldn’t understand me. I would only have to open my mouth and one earful of me speaking with my BBC accent and they’re gone! Looking back at me with suspicion.
Yeah! I taught myself to speak by listening to the radio! I decided I might as well go for the ‘Oxford’ as opposed to the ‘Dublin Four’ brigade. They’re a load of chancers! Culchies trying to pass themselves off as ‘West Brits’. The landed gentry! Posers! Bit like meself. Still, I suppose I’m really a loner.
My thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of the young fellow with the curly hair.
‘Hello! I’m Pascal!’
I blinked acknowledgement.
‘This is the psychiatric ward.’
I blinked, shocked.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, reading my face. ‘You will like it here. Once you get used to it. The nurses are very nice.’
I blinked by way of thanking him. But I didn’t want to hear any more and turned my head away from him. So he wandered off, looking for someone else to talk to.
Suddenly there is activity around the desk. A doctor is roaring down the telephone. ‘She can’t stay here. We are sending her over to you.’ Pause. ‘What? I don’t care! She’s not staying here. We don’t have the facilities. This is an open ward. She’s a very high risk!’ Then she screams, ‘You have the facilities! I already told you! You are not listening! She’s too high risk to be kept here. You will take her, and that’s that! We are sending her over to you by ambulance, and that’s my final word!’ Then she slammed the phone down, balling her hands into fists down by her sides, and roared up at the ceiling, ‘Jesus! Bloody cretins!’
Then her bleeper went off, and she unclipped it from her pocket, looked at it, then said, ‘Oh, shite!’ and marched off, looking like she was going to wring someone’s neck.
That’s me they are having the row about, and whoever it is that’s at the other end of the phone is not too impressed by my imminent arrival. Hmm! Too bloody bad. Then it occurred to me that nobody had consulted me about whether I wanted to move or not. Of course I’m a high risk! Too bloody right I am! But that is for me to decide. I was mildly curious about why I hadn’t jumped up and confronted your woman about pushing me around. They should at least come to me and explain, giving me some input into what is going to be happening while I am ‘safely in their care’.
‘Dear, would you mind awfully going to another psychiatric establishment? You see, we know you intend to top yourself at the first given opportunity, and therefore we believe the most suitable place for you would be the nearest loony bin! Hmm! So, what do you think?’
Then at least I would have the opportunity of telling them to shove that fucking idea up their arse. I’d probably get carted out in a straitjacket. But it would be worth it. Who the fuck gave them licence over me? Hmm! You did, Martha, by getting caught. So now they own you. Yep! This is what happens when you put yourself on the ‘Loony Red Alert’ list.
I heard the rattle of the tea trolley and looked up. A fat woman with four shades of colour in her hair – black-and-grey roots, probably original blonde going down, and the rest turned a pinky-red. She brought the trolley to a grinding halt at the foot of my bed and shouted down at me. She was wearing a navy-blue wraparound smock with white dots, and she roared, ‘Do ye want tea, luv?’
I hesitated, and she whipped the cover off a dinner plate and leaned over to me, showing me cold roast beef, tomatoes, potato salad and lettuce.
I sat up, showing the first bit of interest in anything since I had my swansong back home in the kitchen. It looked delicious! A part of me definitely wanted it, but the perverse side of me insisted I suffer. No grub, it muttered. I looked at her.
‘Go on, take it!’ she said, slamming it down on the tray and pushing it up towards me. ‘It’ll put hairs on yer chest!’ she laughed, grabbing her tea trolley and heading off down the ward again.
Just as I was about to reach for it, two men appeared in navy-blue uniforms, p
ushing a wheelchair, followed by the doctor who had been roaring on the phone.
‘Right you are, my dear. Hop down and jump in here!’ they shouted happily to me, pulling out a blanket and waiting for me.
I threw back the blankets and swung my feet out of the bed, standing up. My legs turned to rubber, and I held on to the bed.
‘Ah, wait! Let her have her tea first!’ one of the men said. A baldy fellow with glasses.
‘Oh, no!’ said the doctor. ‘She’s to go over to St Oliver’s. She will get her tea there. Now!’ said the doctor, leaning her head forward, boring her eyes into the men. ‘When you get there, tell them she is expected, and if there are any problems . . .’
‘What sort a problems?’ asked Baldy, looking very suspicious, then looking at me, wondering if I was dangerous!
‘If they don’t want to take her, do not, and I emphasise this,’ she said, slamming her fist into her left palm, ‘under no circumstance do you take her back here! Refuse! Because I suspect they will try to weasel out of their obligations. Tell them she is in their catchment area.’
I was sitting in the wheelchair, staring at me tea, me mouth beginning to remember what it was for, while they discussed me as if I was a parcel. I stared up at yer woman, with her long narrow face and beaked nose, and thick straw hair that refused to sit down and behave itself. It stood out in all directions. I opened my mouth, beginning to break my vow of silence, and even took in a sharp breath, ready to tell her to go and fuck herself, when she turned tail and headed off down the ward. I stared after her, watching her short, fat legs wobbling against each other; they looked like tree trunks! Then I snapped my jaws shut. What’s the point? It would only give her the satisfaction of knowing she was right.
