How I Rescued My Brain

by David Roland

  He nods, as though this makes sense. ‘Anna tells me that you have been stressed about your property investments. How many do you have?’

  Somehow, his interest in this question feels directed more towards our investments than me. Still, I try and tally up the properties in my mind. The market has picked up recently, and some have been selling, at last. But to answer his question, I need to picture each property, remember if it has been sold, and hold the number I have counted to while I picture the next property. The numbers disappear into the fog and won’t come out again. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I need to see it on paper …’

  He looks irritated with this answer, but sighs in acceptance.

  ‘I’d like to walk to the beach and go for a swim,’ I say.

  He chuckles. ‘I don’t think it would be responsible of us to let you go wandering off on your own. In your state, you’d forget your way back. Best to stay in the clinic over the weekend, and we can reassess things on Monday.’

  I’ll go stir-crazy if I don’t go out. But I don’t say anything. I’m not capable of challenging him. The phone rings and he answers; he says it’s an urgent call-out and he has to wrap things up. He ends our meeting by telling us that he will be away for several weeks, so I’ll see another psychiatrist.

  As we re-enter the reception area, a nurse asks to show me to my room. We walk along a wide corridor, with wooden railings attached to the walls at hip height. Coming off the corridor are rooms with large doors. The place has more the feel of a hospital than an outpatient clinic.

  My room has two beds, and the nurse points to the one closest to the window. Through the glass, I see a low concrete wall, with a grassy slope rising away from it. There’s a smell of cigarettes, even though the building is non-smoking. I deposit my bag and guitar by the bed, and we go to look at the rest of the facility.

  When we come back a few minutes later, a young man with John Lennon glasses and a slim, athletic build is lying on the other bed. His hands are clasped behind his head as he stares at the ceiling. I smile in his direction, but he doesn’t acknowledge us.

  Anna and I hug briefly and kiss each other’s cheeks in parting. As she gathers her things, I think of the weight she will be carrying while I’m in here. She’s a truly capable and loving person; she takes on whatever problem comes along and deals with it. ‘Take care,’ I say.

  She nods and disappears.

  I sit on my bed to face the man. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi,’ he replies.

  ‘I’m your new roommate,’ I say, attempting to sound cheerful.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘How’s it going for you?’

  With an effort, he props himself up on his right elbow and faces me. He’s unshaven, dark hair unkempt, with the smell of tobacco coming from him. ‘Ah … I’ve been in before. I come in every now and then for a recharge — to sleep, and to get back on the meds.’

  ‘Oh, right. What do you do when you’re not in here?’

  ‘I busk, juggle — sometimes with the circus. It gets tiring.’

  He doesn’t ask me anything, so I say, ‘I don’t know how long I’m in for. It’s my first time. My name’s David.’

  ‘Simon,’ he says.

  He lies back down, staring at the ceiling again, his face emotionless. He’s clearly going to be a quiet roommate — not someone I can share my experiences with.

  I decide to unpack. I grab my allocated chair, which stands at the end of the bed, and place it in the carpeted space between my bed and the window, in front of the cabinet. Here I will sit, I decide — read by the natural light, and meditate. With the curtain between my bed and Simon’s partly drawn, I won’t be visible from the corridor, giving me a thin veil of privacy.

  Next I inspect the ensuite, accessible by a sliding door. It’s white and stark with absolutely nowhere to hang anything — towel or clothes — when showering, and no ledge to put a toothbrush, soap, or shampoo. The ‘mirror’ is a piece of shiny metal bolted to the wall. The shower rose is up high, out of reach. No sharp edges or hooks anywhere — it reminds me that the patients here are teetering on the brink.

  White, white, white. I crave some homeliness, some warmth, even if it is only in the form of colour. I already miss the sounds and the mess of home.

  THAT EVENING, I’M called to see the psychiatrist on duty. He’s young, with a pleasant manner, but he wants to hear my story all over again. Strangely, he suggests that I could return to clinical work once I’m better. It’s beyond me to explain why this doesn’t feel like a good idea; I’m very tired. However, he doesn’t mention any restrictions on leaving. I’m still not sure if I’m allowed to go out for walks while I’m here, but I decide to keep quiet for now.

  Afterwards, I retire to my hard bed. Lying there is un-comfortable — physically and mentally. How the hell did I end up here? I was a happy child, raised in a loving family where nothing unusually bad happened. I negotiated the turbulence of adolescence without mishap and became a confident, capable adult.

  When I was eleven, our family moved to Sydney so that Mum could complete her psychiatric training. It was a time when the seriously mentally ill were managed in large institutions. For several years we lived within the grounds of the Parramatta Psychiatric Hospital, sharing facilities with the residents — the swimming pool, the sports oval, and the Friday-night movies. The eccentricities of ‘the patients’, as we referred to them, didn’t trouble us; we enjoyed befriending the more personable of them. The only aspect of hospital life that gave me a chill was riding past the locked men’s and women’s wards. Mum said that the patients there weren’t allowed out because they were ‘dangerous’ — she didn’t specify how. I never thought I would end up in a psych hospital as one of ‘the patients’.

  During that long first night, my mind runs a home movie of the things gone sour in my life. I built a career over twenty years, but now I can’t work. Wayne had reminded me that I had eased the distress of hundreds of people and helped them on their way, but right now it feels as though I’ve helped very few. I completed a PhD and published in my field of specialisation, but all this seems irrelevant. I made investments that secured our family’s financial future, but now we face bankruptcy. I was a devoted father, raising three children, but I now feel alien to them. I made a marriage, but it is strained; I have friends, but feel distant from them. At this moment, it all boils down to a shared room with an uncommunicative stranger. A single bed; a white, antiseptic bathroom with nowhere to hang anything; one chair; my guitar; and a three-drawer cabinet — this is my home for now.

  My trustworthy, capable, insightful brain was once my strength. It was always able to save me, to make a plan and push me forward. Now it has gone haywire.

  I want to cry — to cry inconsolably — but I can’t even do that. I am numb. Nothing is working.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I’m woken by the barking laughter of kookaburras — the prelude to dawn. I must have slept after all. As the day outside shows itself, I see it will be sunny, tempered by a cool wind. This thought, and breakfast, brings some optimism; I will make the best of my situation.

  It is Saturday. A free day, I am told. A supervised outing is on offer; it seems as if I will have a taste of freedom already. A young and lanky clinical psychologist drives the eight or so of us who are taking part in the minibus. I sit in the front and ask him about his work and where he trained. He works at the clinic on Saturdays, he says, and otherwise he’s in private practice. Did I look and sound like him in my early years? I’m quick to explain that I have post-traumatic stress disorder from my work. He’s polite, but it feels as though there is a line between us — I’m the patient.

  We stop at a nearby headland and grab coffees before walking across the road to the lookout. We crane our necks,
looking for any sign of migrating humpback whales. If they’re out there, they’re difficult to spot; the ocean is littered with white collars of foam forged by the determined wind, pushing the swell, and it’s hard to see anything else. The patients stand in twos and threes. I gather from their conversation that they are mostly at Seaview for drug and alcohol problems — they must be in the addictions ward. Beside me is a young woman with bleached-blonde hair. We get to talking, and she tells me of her competitive surfing experiences. ‘Then I realised I was an alcoholic,’ she says. She is going home on the coming weekend, and is nervous about relapsing.

  What am I doing here?

  BY EARLY SUNDAY morning I need to get out again, and I decide to try that walk. There’s hardly anyone about. I go downstairs quietly and walk along the corridor through the addictions ward. There’s a rustle in the nurses’ station as I pass by, but I don’t turn to look. At the end of the building, I push open the fire-escape door — it’s the least observable exit from the clinic — and hop down a short set of steps. I go straight to the property’s fence line, where I’ve seen patients walking before, and find a dirt track. No one runs after me or apprehends me; so far, so good.

  Beyond Seaview’s garden, only a short distance away, is a car park, with compacted gravel and low log railings. Interspersed between the parking bays are paperbarks, like old men, wizened and wise, islands of solidity. If only I could be as stable and unruffled as one of these trees. I stop and press my cheek against the cool, smooth, tissue-like folds of bark. The raised branches hold bunches of elongated leaves that shift in the breeze. When I look up, I see diamonds of sunlight set there; but these sparkles are beyond my reach — like the spark that was once in me.

  As I walk on, I stop several times to look back at the hospital, with its tiled roof and walls of tessellated brick. It’s a dull building, undecided if it should look like a hospital or a small hotel. But I need to imprint in my mind the view I will see on my return; I don’t want Doctor Banister to be right about me losing my way.

  I go two blocks down a busy residential street, noting the landmarks I’ll see on my way back. At the street’s end, a view slaps me in the face: lustrous ocean, rock, horizon, and sand. Elation.

  The long beachfront is divided by low-lying rock platforms, jagging out into the sea. I have my bathers on and swimming goggles in my pocket. I’m not feeling strong, so I won’t do a big swim, but I need to give my body a sensory cleansing — sterilise it from the contamination of my circumstances.

  I plunge in, and the expectant cold wraps around me unsympathetically. But to me the embrace is like that of an old friend. I am in the water: water that could have drifted from the bay where I swim regularly. It connects me with home and with friends.

  I don’t last in there too long, but as I towel off, I feel washed through.

  LATER THAT DAY, an older nurse, a small woman, comes up to me as I stand near the nurses’ station in the psych ward, waiting for someone I can ask for toenail scissors. ‘David,’ she says softly. ‘I think I knew your mother. Was she a psychiatrist?’ She looks up at me intently.

  This is such an unexpected question. I’m not sure if I’ve heard her correctly. My thinking is still slow. How could she know my mother? Mum’s been dead for fourteen years.

  The nurse mentions a psychiatric hospital and the ward of which Mum was in charge. Finally I get what she’s asking me. ‘Yes,’ I answer.

  ‘I’m Julia. I worked with your mother for many years. She was a wonderful person.’

  Her remark sluices open my heart. I wish Mum were here now; she’d know what to do. I wrap Julia in a hug. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. And, momentarily, we seem to swim together in the memory of a treasured person.

  ‘Did you know that Doctor Franklin also worked with your mum?’

  I had seen Doctor Franklin’s name on one of the psychiatrists’ doors. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Now Mum’s presence is here — in this woman, in Doctor Franklin, in this place. It’s as if I have blinked and the view I had of the clinic staff as removed, even alien, has changed, transforming them into something almost like family. I tell Julia about my situation. ‘I’ve heard that Doctor Franklin specialises in post-traumatic stress disorder?’

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  ‘Could I see him? Doctor Banister said I would get a new psychiatrist.’ I’m not keen to return to the young psychiatrist I saw on Friday.

  ‘I’ll speak with him,’ she says.

  I remember to ask for the scissors, and she brings me nail cutters. She asks if I’ve been taking part in the group activities. No one has told me about the program of activities — or maybe they did when I first arrived, and I was in my mental fog. In any case, I have been left to my own devices. I don’t mind, but I have wondered where most of the patients disappear to during the day. She points to a printed program on the ward noticeboard: now I see what I’ve been missing.

  That evening, I sit on the sofa in the common room and place my sheet music on the coffee table. I’ve brought my classical guitar in with me; my steel-string would have required singing, and I don’t have the confidence for that. Cocooning the guitar’s body with my thighs, chest, and arms — holding it fast, like a child does a loved teddy bear — I begin to play. Other patients come into the room, to read or do puzzles, but they seem to sense how important this act is for me, and they keep their distance.

  Soon I’m a teenager again, sitting in my bedroom, playing into the night’s silence. An ageing hippy type walks in and says, ‘Hey man, I heard your playing from my room. You’re a real guitarist!’ Then he walks out. I smile. Someone thinks I’m worthwhile. It’s been a good day after all.

  9

  THE NEXT DAY, Monday, I decide to attend a morning group on ‘the locus of control’. This is undergraduate stuff in my field; I can guess what they’ll be covering.

  A middle-aged psychology intern presents the session, and he hardly looks up from his notes as he reads. It’s a bumbling performance, difficult to watch. Even in my fog — which is now more of a haze — I could do better. When it’s over, I wonder what the patients could have possibly got out of it.

  After lunch, I attend a group-therapy session with Seaview’s head psychologist, Peter. This is an open meeting, which means that membership changes from day to day. Today there are four of us, including Peter, sitting in a circle of chairs. Peter’s manner is friendly, with a professional edge. He asks each of us in turn, ‘How are you going today?’

  After we’ve responded, Peter turns the group’s focus to Mario, the large, middle-aged man sitting opposite me. I hear that Mario, who suffers from depression, has been in the clinic for four weeks and is due to leave at the end of this week. He has just returned from a trial weekend at home.

  ‘I felt flat … scared. It was good to see the kids, but I — I don’t think I can go back,’ he tells us. The words struggle out of his mouth and quiver in the air. His bottom lip protrudes like a child’s; tears are close. He slumps forward.

  Suddenly, the familiar panic rises. I want to run out of the room. But I also want to stay and face this, for Mario and for myself. I try to generate a sense of compassion for him, to take myself out of my skin. The panic begins to subside, enough for me to say, ‘That’s how you feel now, but feelings change. By the end of the week, you may feel differently.’ I also offer a few more comments. But it’s a strain. I want to fix him, and I’m not sure anymore that my advice is good. So I soon shut up, and sit out the rest of the session dumbly.

  When it is over and the others have left, I ask Peter for a private word. ‘Sure,’ he says, and pushes the door shut.

  ‘Thanks, Peter. Look, I’m a clinical psychologist. I have post-traumatic stress from work — it’s a long story. I’ve been depressed and anxious and got really stressed recently, and now I think I’ve lost it. I’ve had a breakdown.’


  ‘I see,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t think I could sit through another therapy group; it seemed to trigger my anxiety. I almost ran out of the room.’

  ‘Um, yes. Stay away from the therapy groups. Have you tried the topic groups?’

  I tell him of my experience with the locus-of-control session.

  ‘Give it another go. It’ll help occupy you, and shouldn’t trigger your symptoms.’

  ‘Do you think I could see you? It’s hard to chat with the other patients because of my background.’

  Peter agrees to see me the next morning.

  THERE’S BEEN TIMES this week when my mind drifts like flotsam, and I re-experience the calm that so infused me on my first day in hospital. It’s a remarkable feeling, as if nothing bothers me, as though I’m stuck in the present moment.

  But when Anna calls mid-afternoon and says that the developer has rejected our latest offer for settlement, the dread and panic returns. I have to walk up and down the car park for over an hour before the edge is taken off my agitation.

  I’ve got to find other ways to relax.

  Off the main corridor of my ward is a room where the nurses write their notes and store things. I walk in and ask the young nurse there for a relaxation CD and a player. She points to an invisible line on the floor. ‘Patients are not allowed to cross that line.’

  If I were here in my professional capacity, there wouldn’t be such an embargo. But she gives me the CD and a player. I listen to it while lying on my bed.

  That evening, I have a long guitar-playing session.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I’m woken at six-thirty by a nurse — who, I can tell by her red-and-blue uniform, is not from the hospital. She stands by my bed and opens a suitcase. ‘I’m here to take blood,’ she says, in a schoolteacher’s voice.

  I’m in a daze, and it takes a while to register what’s happening. ‘But I had a full lot of blood tests done at Lismore Hospital,’ I say. ‘Why do you need more?’