by Sarah Dalton
You could say that it’s weird. That I’m weird. Because I don’t believe in ghosts, but I believe in what I see. I see some strange things. I see people with things wrong with them, bones and wounds and deathly pale skin. They deliver messages to me. They help me stop bad things from happening. I don’t know what they are, or why they come to me. Maybe they are some sort of left over essence, or a part of my mind trying to glue pieces together. I don’t know and I don’t over think it.
The problem is—they get me in trouble. Like during the incident.
It was at school. This girl I know, someone I wanted to impress but not someone who’s a good friend, invited me to a get together. A group of us broke into the school with a load of alcohol and started getting pissed, spray-painting the sports hall and generally arsing around. I’m not normally like that. Honest. But I guess I needed to let off steam or something. The things… the Things I see… they were getting to me and I wanted a break. I wanted to be a kid again.
So the week before we broke into the school, one of the Things came to me during class. One minute I’m taking notes about the boiling point of ethanol and the next, this leathery man with an eye missing and green tinged skin is standing next to my desk. He puts a hand over mine and moves the pen. Fire. Blood. School.
In another instant, he’s gone.
Half an hour later, Gary Jones lights his Bunsen burner and it explodes! Mr. Qureshi had disappeared to get more goggles from the store cupboard next door and while everyone’s yelling, “Sir! Sir!”, I rush forward and pull Gary away. Mr. Qureshi dashes into the lab, grabs a fire extinguisher and puts the fire out. It’s only after I let Gary go that I see the gash on my elbow. I’d caught myself on a piece of broken beaker. That was it for me. I fainted.
On the night of the incident, inside the sports hall with Anita Taylor, half the rugby team and Anita’s sister and her friends—the A-Level crew—we’re sat passing vodka around in a circle when someone drunkenly mentions that it’s like we’re camping. Someone else rolls a joint and things get messy.
I space out for a while. The lights go off. Someone creates light. It flickers and moves like it’s dancing. One of the rugby team comes to sit next to me, his knee touching mine. His arms get closer until one of them is over my shoulder and he pulls me into his chest a little bit. It’s nice for a while, but then a sensation of suffocation overwhelms me. The zombie with the rotting leather skin comes back, spray painting across the walls: Die die die. You all die die die.
Suddenly I’m not so spaced anymore. The idiots have lit a campfire and the flames are already taller than me. Black smoke billows out and the alarms are screaming. I can’t see Anita anywhere. The rugby guy has passed out on the floor and part of his jeans are on fire. I slam my foot down on his ankle, stomping out the flames. Then I drag him away from the fire.
“Anita? Anita?” I shout out.
I wake.
Lacey stares down at me. “You all right? It’s nearly 8:15. You need to get showered or you’ll never have time for breakfast.” She seems concerned. “Bad dream?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You’ll feel better after your meds.” She moves away from the bed and picks up her eyeliner. As I dash out of the room she leans forward into the mirror. For a split-second I think I see a shadow in the back of the mirror and some green eyes. I shake my head and leave.
*
At breakfast, Lacey introduces me to some of the other patients. There’s Yasmeen, an anorexic girl with braided hair and glasses, who stares at her food for thirty seconds before starting to eat; then there’s Marcus, a recovering addict from London who says ‘yeah’ at the end of most sentences; he fidgets in his seat and drums on the table with his knife. They sit together and seem to be good friends, if a little ill-suited. Frankie, the screecher, sits with his care assistant and splashes his milk with his spoon. Lacey informs me that Natalie has attempted suicide five times—she checks in and out whenever she begins to plan another suicide and then sits in perfect silence, usually on her own, until she leaves a week later. My eyes are drawn to her. She sits so still. Her dark eyes stare into nothing.
Mohammed—or Mo—runs poker sessions. He is another regular at Magdelena, checking in and out whenever he has a psychotic episode. Over breakfast he cheerily tells me about the time he ordered £300 worth of salt and vinegar crisps on the internet, and thought people in soap operas were talking to him.
Also amongst the card players are Helen, who is a depressed over-eater—she smiles shyly and pulls at her stretched out hoody; Tom, with borderline personality disorder and straight teeth; and Anka, another anorexia sufferer.
Halfway through introductions, uncomfortable questions and cereal, I hear a loud sobbing coming from outside the ward. I follow the gaze of some of the patients, through the glass doors. You can see into the corridor of the hospital, beyond the reception, where a man comforts a distressed woman, stroking her hair and patting her back. She sinks into his arms, limp with grief.
“That’s makes four. Whoever bet on three is out.” Mo cocks his head to one side and surveys the rest of the table.
“Not me. I got five. Hels is gonna have to pay up, yeah.” Marcus flashes Helen a grin.
“I’ve only got prawn cocktail left,” Helen whines, “and they’re my favourite.”
“Shh, Granger is coming,” Lacey chimes in.
The rest of the table lower their heads and carry on with breakfast.
“Good morning,” Nurse Granger says. “Yasmeen and Anka, can I check your bowls, please?”
The two girls hold up their bowls, which have been scraped clean. Anka looks a little like she wants to vomit.
“Very good. So I see you’ve all met Mary. Make sure to give her a warm welcome.” Nurse Granger clicks her heels together like Mary Poppins and walks off with a slight wiggle to her backside.
Mo sniggers. “Jolly good show, guys,” he says with forced gusto. “We’d best throw Mary a spiffing good party to welcome her here.”
“Don’t forget the ginger beer!” Tom suggests.
I try and join in the laughter, but there’s still a pang inside, one telling me I should be at home.
“All right, that’s enough, yeah. We’re sortin’ out the bets, innit.” Marcus raps the table with his plastic knife. It could barely cut bread and butter. “Like four of them have snuffed it this week, at least. So anyone who went for less than four needs to cough up.”
“You’re betting on deaths?” I blurt out. “Isn’t that a bit… morbid?”
The group burst out laughing. “Where you been, girl? This is morbid central, innit. You’re in a mental hospital, yeah,” Marcus says.
Mo quietens first. “There’s a palliative care unit across the hallway,” he explains in a measured tone. “It’s basically for people with terminal illnesses.”
A cold sensation spreads over my skin. Nanna in the hospital bed. Thin and lifeless.
“End of life care,” Lacey says wistfully. “That’s what they called it when my grandad died. It sounds so much better than dying. Takes the pain out.”
“I wonder if that’s how she sees it,” Yasmeen says, nodding towards Natalie. “Ending things.”
“Or beginning,” Tom joins in, “depending on what you believe.”
The group stop and poke at their cereal. Silence descends over the table. Frankie screeches and the shock of the loud noise after such a pregnant pause causes a jolt to run up my spine. I physically jump and clutch my chest. Mo turns his deep brown eyes on me and laughs.
“You’re gonna have to toughen up, girl. Things will get worse than this,” he says.
Something makes me want to turn to the back of the room, as if I sense a presence. Johnny walks in. His green eyes shine from beneath his hood. The sight of him sets tingles running up and down my arms, almost like when I see the Things, except I kind of like seeing Johnny, with his green eyes beneath hood. I’m not terribly fond of zombies with rotting flesh.
&n
bsp; He doesn’t get breakfast. Instead, he hovers around the room before turning and running back down the corridor. I’m about to ask the group about him when Marcus starts insisting that the others pay him in crisps and chocolate. I glance towards the glass, where you can just see the corridor and the palliative care unit. Standing outside the door—for the briefest of instances—I see the man with a skull-like face. His bones shine through the skin. I shake the image away and continue with my breakfast.
Chapter Five
Group therapy. It must be one of the most depressing, frustrating, pointless, soul-destroyingly awful things I’ve ever done in my entire life. We sit in a circle, on uncomfortable chairs, jigging legs and pulling holes in jumpers. A social worker gives us a topic to discuss: What to do if your spouse physically abuses you; Coping with addiction; Dealing with suicidal thoughts. I don’t know anything about these subjects, and when I try to offer any kind of opinion, it’s so matter-of-fact and abrupt that I wonder about my tact and social skills.
“Maybe she should go to the police if someone is hitting her,” I suggest. We’ve come up with a hypothetical situation, where a husband is beating his wife. She has children and lives in a cramped flat, where he drinks and has no job. “Or leave him. With her kids.”
“Where would she go? If she has no relatives, money or friends?”
“Well, that’s a bit odd,” I find myself saying. Mo flashes me an amused grin. “Everyone has someone.”
“Not if you’ve been cut off by a controlling spouse,” the social worker adds. She’s a mouse of a woman, skinny and long-faced.
“I guess you’d go to one of those shelters for battered women, then. They actually exist, right?” I say.
“They exist with a budget.” The social worker turns stern eyes on me. “They have limited spacing, finances, facilities…”
“But the police…” I start.
“You clearly don’t know the police round ‘ere,” says a tough looking girl with a scar on her chin.
My mouth flaps open. I can’t accept that there’s nothing anyone can do. “Why doesn’t she fight back?”
The social worker waggles her pen at me. “Good point. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?”
“Adding violence to violence only increases the violence.” Mo shrugs. “Is it worth it? Plus, how is she going to learn self-defence? He’s had years of fighting practice. She’s had none. He’s probably physically stronger, so even if she gets a knife he could disarm her.”
Mo seems to know what he’s on about and it shames me. I’ve led such a sheltered life. I know nothing about what it’s like to truly struggle.
My mind drifts off as the social worker continues the doomed life of this woman being battered by her husband. She goes through the options at a battery shelter, the guidelines and police regulations; it’s as though she’s resigned to thinking that we will have to deal with this one day, that we’re victims already.
Johnny walks in. It’s weird; I don’t hear or see the door opening but suddenly he’s there, sitting on the empty chair next to me, slouched right back, with his hands pushed into pockets and feet sticking out into the room.
“Having fun?” he asks in a low voice.
“No, not really.” I’m still reeling from the fact that no one can help our hypothetical woman. That’s not the world I grew up believing in. That’s not what my parents led me to believe, that there is always good.
“You can’t handle it here, can you?” Johnny says. His green eyes flash towards me, the light picking up the amber flecks. A slow smile creeps across his face, like a predatory cat. It infuriates me.
“Yes, I can.”
“You don’t belong here. It’s so obvious.” His gaze challenges me like no one has before. It’s defiant and sarcastic and a little bit mean.
“You know nothing about me,” I say firmly. “Nothing.”
He clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Temper, temper. I know you’re not tough enough for this place. Not tough enough to know what’s really going on.”
“Mary, what do you think?” the social worker says.
I turn back to her, in the middle of the room, and she nods at me eagerly. A sheen of cold sweat builds on the back of my neck. It’s like being back at school when you’ve not been listening to the teacher and you’re scared of getting a bollocking. Maybe Johnny is right. Maybe I’m not tough enough.
“Um, what were we talking about? I’m really sorry, I…”
“That’s okay,” the lady says. “I know it’s hard to concentrate in here, sometimes.”
It hits me then that she must be used to dealing with people spacing out. My lapse in concentration is nothing, compared to someone in psychosis or in the midst of a bad depression. Maybe I’m the ‘best’ student she’s had for a long time.
Tactfully she moves on to talking about another discussion topic and I turn back to Johnny, to find out what he was hinting at. The seat is empty.
*
“Have you taken your medication?” Mum asks before she even says hello. “I’ve been worrying about it all night.”
“Why would you worry, Mum? I’m in the hospital—of course I’m going to take my medication.”
“That’s what I try to tell her,” Dad says. He rolls his eyes for dramatic emphasis.
“How are they making you feel, sweetheart? Are you on the right dose?”
I shrug. “It’s okay. I’m a bit spacey sometimes. A little numb here and there.”
“Is it too much? Maybe it’s too much. Perhaps you should make an appointment with Dr. Harrison. He’ll be able to sort it out for you—”
“Mum, I’m fine. It’s just one of those things. Let’s sit down?”
They’re barely three feet in from the glass doors. To tell the truth, I want to be away from the corridor, knowing what I do about the unit across the hall. Whenever I see the palliative care doors I imagine the patients wasting away in their beds.
As we move through to the communal lounge, Dad eyes me with an apprehensive sideways glance. “You okay, kiddo?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason. You seem a little scared, that’s all.” He pulls me into a shoulder hug for a brief moment.
Mum sits on the grey sofa, placing her bag between her knees, as though she thinks someone will nick it when she’s not paying attention. I sit opposite them. Dad fetches tea from the vending machines.
“So, the drugs are all right then?” Mum continues.
“Yes, they’re fine. Stop going on about them.” I sigh.
Mum’s chin wobbles. “I’m not allowed to worry about you now, then? Is that it?”
“No.” I find a corner of the table to pick at with my thumbnail.
“And your roommate? What’s she like?” Mum looks away and blinks a lot. I guess she wants me to do something, to ask her if she’s all right, but I’m not going to.
“She’s nice. She’s a bit kooky.”
“My ears burning, eh?” Lacey bundles around the corner, all blond hair and eye-liner. “These your folks? Lucky Mary!”
Dad sets the tea down. “You must be Mary’s roommate. Would you like tea, too?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Hades! Make us a strong one, I like to live dangerously.” She winks at him and I put my head in my hands with embarrassment.
Dad seems to think he’s now a cool dad, who relates to the kids, because he struts off to the vending machine with his beer belly poking forwards and his chin up to the ceiling. When he gets back we all sit down.
“This is Lacey,” I explain. “We share a room.”
“Your daughter snores and her socks smell,” Lacey says.
“We’ve only been sharing for a day,” I object. “My socks do not smell.”
“That’s what you think.” Lacey points from me to her and back again. “This kind of back and forth… this is our thing. We’re renowned for it.”
I shake my head and laugh. There’s no point arguing with Lacey. She�
�s like a hurricane of personality. It slaps you in the face, like a bucket of cold water, and you have no choice but to deal with it.
“Well, as long as you’re taking care of our Mary,” Mum says without a trace of humour in her voice.
“Mum, she’s not my babysitter.”
“I know, I know. It’d nice if you two girls look after each other, that’s all.”
“So, kiddo, what’s it like in the loony bin? What have you been getting up to? Nurse Ratched been sending you for ECT yet?” Dad says. Mum shoots him a hard stare that could kill the happiest unicorn in the world stone dead with pure fear.
“No, Dad, it’s nothing like that. We get on with things. We have a routine here. It’s all right, really.” Apart from the creepy deaths across the hall and the crying in the corridor. There had been another one, this afternoon.
“You get free drugs, weak tea and can watch Frankie scream at chairs all day. What more could yer want?”
Right on cue, Frankie began to screech at his visitors. I assume they are his parents. They both wear suits and grimace every time he screams. My heart falls for Frankie.
“Does he do that a lot?” Mum asks.
“Kinda,” I admit. “You get used to it.”
“Still it must be a bit… disconcerting,” Mum can’t stop staring and I really want her to stop.
“It’s a psychiatric hospital, Mum. When you agreed to me coming here, what did you expect?” I snap.
