The Treatment and the Cure

by Peter Kocan

  It seems Dr Grey sat in on Ward Meetings and Group Therapy sessions throughout the hospital and said the same things. His name is mud now amongst almost all the staff. They call him “The Idiot”. The odd thing is that Blue acts as though the patients ought to despise Dr Grey as much as she does. She often jokes with you about “The Idiot’s latest brainwave” or something. You grin and agree.

  Now the strike is happening.

  All the nursing staff are out, except for a few supervisors and one screw or nurse left in each ward as an “observer”. The “observer” is supposed to give necessary medical care so that nobody will die and create bad publicity. The “observer” isn’t allowed to give psychiatric medication, only medical stuff like insulin, so you are free of the nuisance of having to spit your tablet down the sink. You’ve been watching other inmates to see how much madder they get without their medication. You can’t see much difference.

  The pantrymaids are out “in sympathy”. The dixies of food are still being delivered from the main kitchen, so you and Con Pappas take over the pantry and keep the meals going. It’s wonderfully peaceful at mealtimes now, without the shouting and abuse, though the “observer” nurse appears to feel that if the meals are being kept up the shouting and abuse should be kept up as well. You are dishing lunches across the servery. Christine waddles in a few minutes late and the “observer” yells that she can bloodywell go without so she’ll learn to liven her bloody self up in future. It’s intolerable. You push a meal across to Christine and she stares at it, her little fat chin wobbling with distress.

  “Have your lunch, Christine,” you say.

  “I said she can go without!”

  “Have your lunch, Christine.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Take it, Christine. It’s okay.”

  The room has gone very quiet. The “observer” is staring bug-eyed at you. Maybe she’ll dash the plate on the floor or something. If so you’ll dish up another. If this was a male screw he’d probably try a bit of knuckle at this stage. That’d be awkward. More importantly, it’d obscure the lesson of what is happening. The lesson is that bullying and abuse don’t work without the whole apparatus of shock and punishment and Negative Reinforcement. The Apparatus has only been stopped for three days—after eighty years—and already this nurse has reverted to a puffed-up bag of nothing.

  “Oh, have your bloody lunch!” she yells at Christine, then stalks out.

  Later a supervisor comes round. The supervisors have been told by the union to stay on duty, for humanitarian reasons.

  “If it was up to me I’d be out with the rest!” he tells you fiercely. He sees you are washing the dixies. “You doin’ the pantry work here?”

  “Just the necessaries,” you say.

  “Dishin’ up meals?”

  “That’s right.”

  “A lotta people are feelin’ pretty savage about anyone who helps undermine this strike action.”

  “I imagine so,” you say. You aren’t sure whether you are being threatened. This supervisor was already steamed-up when he came in, perhaps from the strain of his humanitarian role, and may just be cranky.

  “And you’re just doin’ the necessaries?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Mmmm,” he grunts, then walks around the pantry, examining it. He’s looking at the floor to see if it’s been mopped lately. Con Pappas starts to come in the other door with mop and bucket. You motion him away.

  “Alright then,” grunts the supervisor. He goes out.

  Nothing much happens in REHAB during the strike. Cecil collapses with an asthma attack and the “observer”—a different one—agrees to phone for a doctor. “The German” comes and attends to him. All the doctors are working long hours in the geriatric and retard wards. “The German” walks through the dayroom on her way out.

  “Iss everyvun heppy?” she calls.

  “Happy as fuckin’ Larry, Doc!” bawls Syd Hicks. Syd is getting frisky now without his Largactil. He’s wearing only a singlet and a sock.

  “Ach, I tink you are too heppy, eh?”

  “Friggin’ oath, Doc!”

  “The German” wags a finger at him and goes out. It’s hard work just keeping the geriatrics alive, so Syd Hicks being too happy hardly matters.

  Mr Trowbridge is keeping OT open. You go a couple of times but Mr Trowbridge tells you you might as well stay and look after your ward and keep the meals going. The union is talking about having a strike over Mr Trowbridge as soon as the strike over Dr Grey is finished.

  It ends after four days and the screws and nurses and pantrymaids come back. You are curious to see whether they keep a bit quiet for a day or so, or even for a few hours. They don’t. If anything they are more swaggering than ever. Of course they’ve no reason not to be. The Apparatus is back in action.

  And they’ve heard all about the episode of Christine’s lunch. Blue jokes with you about it. It’s okay. You and Blue understand each other.

  14

  Con Pappas has begun to change from the hangdog bloke you knew in MAX. He has combed his greying hair back in a wave and has grown a moustache which he trims carefully each morning. And he’s got some new clothes, or maybe they are ones he’s had in his suitcase for a few years. The yellow crocodile shoes attract a lot of attention. Con Pappas spends all his spare time trying to socialise with women inmates. You see him, with his wave and moustache and crocodile shoes, trying to be smooth and charming in a Greek sort of way. He’s always escorting someone to the canteen for a soft drink, except when his withdrawals have been stopped for Negative Reinforcement. That’s happening more often now. He can’t understand why.

  You try to talk to him.

  “Listen mate, you’d better pull your horns in a bit.”

  “What means this?”

  “It means watch out.”

  “I do nothing wrong.”

  “That’s not the point. You’re making yourself conspicuous. Those shoes, for instance.”

  Con Pappas looks offended.

  “I’m not criticising them,” you add hastily. “But Blue only needs some little thing to start her off.”

  But he doesn’t get your drift.

  It builds gradually, with Blue making remarks about the “two-bit Casanova”. Other staff take it up and soon everybody’s aware that Con Pappas is a bit of a sex maniac. You are in the dayroom, listening to the night-screw tell how he fucked two girls in the carpark at a disco last night. The screw notices Con Pappas sitting beside a female patient on the other side of the room.

  “Hey, Casanova!” he calls. “You tryin’ to get yer end in again?”

  Con Pappas ought to make a joke of it. He should answer: “You’re just jealous of my good looks,” or something like that. But he probably doesn’t understand a slang phrase like “get your end in”. so he grins back sheepishly, to show he appreciates the humour—whatever it is—and says nothing.

  “Shifty bastard,” mutters the screw. He goes on with the story of the double fuck in the carpark. After a while he notices that Con Pappas and the woman patient are gone from their places.

  “Hey, where’s Casanova?” he yells.

  “He’s behind the partition,” Christine says in her prim little voice.

  “Come outa there, lover-boy,” yells the screw. “I want ya where I can see ya.”

  You can imagine Con Pappas grinning sheepishly to his girlfriend and the other patients behind the partition. Showing he appreciates the humour. The screw goes on with the double fuck story and then about how he smashed a bottle over some bloke’s head in a brawl inside the disco.

  The radio is turned up loud behind the partition. It makes it hard to hear the TV and the fuck and brawl stories.

  “Stop yer bloody racket, Pappas!” yells the screw. There are half a dozen patients behind the partition, but the screw has Con Pappas firmly in his mind. The radio goes low, then loud again. Some idiot’s fiddling with it. Probably Syd Hicks. But Syd Hicks isn
’t in the screw’s mind just now. The screw gets up and goes over.

  “I told you before to come outa there!” you hear him telling Con Pappas. Con Pappas comes out, half-grinning, trying to appreciate the humour again.

  “D’you reckon it’s a bloody joke?” snaps the screw. “Alright then, you can get to bed!”

  Con Pappas starts to say something in his soft-voiced, polite way.

  “Don’t argue the bloody point with me!” says the screw.

  Con Pappas realises the humour—whatever it was—is over and he doesn’t want trouble. He begins to say a last word to his girlfriend and takes a step towards her: but the step is in the opposite direction from bed. The screw grabs him and Con Pappas puts his arm up in surprise. This screw is a terrific disco brawler so he can handle the situation okay. He bends Con

  Pappas’s arm up his back and marches him from the room and up the stairs. Then he goes to write it all in the report book:

  Sexually molesting a female patient.

  Disruptive behaviour.

  Abuse of ward property.

  Disobedience.

  Attempted assault of a staff member.

  Blue will read the report in the morning but she won’t be surprised. She saw this coming. Something beyond mere training and experience enables her to sense troublemakers even before they’ve made any. She’s gifted that way.

  You have invented a name for the process that is happening to Con Pappas—the Snowball. It begins with something trivial and gathers its own momentum. The Snowball is happening to different patients in various wards all the time, but it doesn’t always go on rolling. If nobody’s deliberately pushing it it can slow, then stop. This time it keeps rolling. The conditions are perfect for it. Con Pappas is perfect for it.

  Con Pappas’s misbehaviour is the main topic in Ward Meetings now, especially his sexual aggressions. Some female patients have realised how much better Blue treats them if they can report being “bothered” by Con Pappas. Elsie Haggart is “bothered” an awful lot. She and Blue will be bosom pals if the “bothering” keeps up. Christine hasn’t been “bothered” herself, that would be too incredible, but she has her fat little eyes and her notebook and is always good for an eyewitness account: “I saw him interfering with Denise Williams …”

  “Is this true, Denise?” Blue demands.

  Denise Williams looks vague.

  “They went to the canteen together!” says Christine.

  Denise Williams is trying to think. Maybe it was last Friday when she and Con Pappas happened to be walking on the same part of the road in the same direction.

  “Did you agree to go to the canteen with him?”

  “No.”

  “So he forced himself on you?”

  “I went by myself,” stutters Denise Williams.

  “They were together!”

  “Did you or did you not encourage him, Denise?”

  “No,” mumbles Denise Williams. She hardly knows what she is alleged to have done, or when, or with whom. It’s best to just deny everything.

  Blue turns to Con Pappas.

  “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

  “I do nothing wrong. I just go for walk.”

  “We all know what kind of walks you go for!”

  “I no understand,” says Con Pappas in his soft way. This always provokes Blue.

  “You bloodywell understand alright!”

  But it doesn’t matter whether he understands or not. The Snowball goes on just the same. Con Pappas is on heavy medication now. The calisthenics are part of the Snowball too. Because of the medication he can’t do movements as briskly as the watching screws and nurses want. They jeer: “Step it up, Casanova!” or “Hey, lover boy, you savin’ yer energy for yer shaggin’?” Or they’ll pretend he’s done one less knee-bend than the others and will make him do ten extra to make up. So Con Pappas gets a reputation for shirking at calisthenics and the screws and nurses jeer harder each morning and the shirking reputation builds up until Con Pappas is as well known for his laziness as for his sex urge.

  He doesn’t wear the yellow crocodile shoes any more, nor the wave in his hair, nor the moustache; and he doesn’t try to be smooth and charming with female patients. He’s hangdog again, the way he was in MAX. Blue has noticed the change. She discusses it with Dr Muckerjee in the Ward Meeting.

  “I’m concerned about Con Pappas, Doctor. He used to take a pride in his appearance and was socialising quite well. I really felt he was improving, but lately he seems to have relapsed into depression.”

  Dr Muckerjee nods. He’s noticed it too.

  “Is anything worrying you, Con?” Blue asks.

  Con Pappas doesn’t respond at once. He’s on heavy medication and can’t concentrate too well.

  Dr Muckerjee nods. The patient is very withdrawn. “I asked if anything’s the matter, Con,” Blue says. “No,” replies Con Pappas. The word comes out slurred because the medication makes it hard for him to control his tongue.

  Dr Muckerjee nods. The patient lacks insight.

  It is Tuesday morning. Con Pappas is being helped up the stairs to the little room where patients wait their turn for electroshock. He is very upset. He’s crying. The screw is sympathetic and is urging Con Pappas up each step and telling him it’s only a little way further to the room. This screw is a decent chap. Some screws would get impatient, but this one understands that inmates are victims of mental illness and need treatment. You go past and down to OT.

  When you come back at lunchtime there is a stir in the ward. Christine tells you all about it. Con Pappas ran from the little room when the screw’s back was turned, then fled from the ward. Some staff have driven around the grounds in cars but saw no sign of him. They think he’s in the bush, planted somewhere nearby. Con Pappas isn’t the type to make a real escape, and anyway he’d be too distraught to do the careful thinking he’d need to do. He’s just holed up somewhere close, probably just wishing he was dead. On your way back from OT in the evening you see screws beating the bush along the lake on the far side of Glory Road. You join them and are there when Con Pappas is dragged from a swampy thicket. He struggles a bit and the screws get slime on their uniforms. They were treating the whole thing as a joke before, but that slime annoys them, especially a screw who’s called “Bull” because of his big shoulders and big bull head. Bull bends Con Pappas’s arm and marches him along, and when Con Pappas stumbles Bull lifts him up by the bent arm and Con Pappas groans with pain. Con Pappas only glances at you once but the glance makes you feel like Judas or something. It isn’t fair. You’re the one who warned him at the start about those crocodile shoes.

  Con Pappas is a vegetable after eight shocks. He can’t talk or understand or feed himself or use the lavatory. The only good thing about it is that Blue can’t do anything more to him. Then the shocks are finished and after a week or so Con Pappas begins to be himself again, though he’s still vague and clumsy and a bit helpless. He’s a nuisance to the pantrymaids because he takes too long over his meals and they have to yell at him and threaten him even more than usual to show they aren’t fooled by his act. You are washing the dixies, trying to block out the yelling. Bull is taking the medication tray around. He hands Con Pappas a little glass of syrup medication and Con Pappas spills it.

  “Ahhh, bloody hell!” grunts Bull.

  “He did it deliberate!” shouts a pantrymaid.

  “Just watch yourself, sport,” says Bull to Con Pappas.

  “Make him clean it up!” shouts the pantrymaid.

  “Yeah, go on. Clean it up,” says Bull.

  Con Pappas just sits looking vaguely from Bull to the pantrymaid and back again.

  “Look at him!” cries the pantrymaid. “He thinks he can get away with murder!”

  Bull is getting stirred. It’d be a reflection on himself if Con Pappas gets away with murder.

  “I told you to clean it up!” he says, pulling Con Pappas from his seat. “Get a cloth and clean it up!”
He pushes Con Pappas towards the servery where the cloths are. Con Pappas stands staring vaguely back at him. Bull is fully stirred now. He pushes Con Pappas harder so that he falls against the servery and a dixie of custard crashes to the floor. Bull wrestles a headlock on to Con Pappas and the two of them lurch and slide together in the spilt custard, then Bull drags Con Pappas from the room. It will all go in the report book:

  Refusing medication.

  Running amok in the dining room.

  Attempted assault of a staff member.

  The Snowball has begun again for Con Pappas. You wonder what happens after the Snowball has occurred over and over for a few years. A lobotomy?

  A few minutes later you go to the Charge’s office for some reason. Bull has Con Pappas in there. Blue is at the desk and a young nurse named Kean is behind her. Bull has a lock on Con Pappas’s neck and is forcing his head back and trying to pour medication into his mouth. You stop in the doorway. Con Pappas is making choking noises and coughs the syrup out. Bull gives an exaggerated sigh, as though to indicate that this would exhaust even a saint’s patience. He braces Con Pappas with one big arm, positions him, then punches him in the face. It makes a meaty sound.

  Your impulse to interfere lasts only a moment. There’s nothing you can do. The best thing is to take note of everything, fix it in your mind. Con Pappas’s knees have buckled and there is blood down his shirt. Bull lowers him into a chair and begins wiping his big fist calmly, the way a workman would clean an implement after use.

  Bull hasn’t noticed you in the doorway. Blue has. You and Blue are looking into each other’s eyes and the dare in Blue’s eyes is louder than words: “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  You go to the verandah and pace up and down. Your stomach feels watery. You don’t have to do anything. It doesn’t concern you. What does a punch matter? Con Pappas has had worse done to him than that. And if you reported this it’d only be your word against the staff’s. And who would you report it to? And how would you survive afterwards? No, there isn’t a single good reason to risk yourself.