by John Lynch
‘17.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘North…Yes, the North…’
‘You’re a long way from home. I’d advise you to go back there.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Get off the street. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
I look up the alleyway and I see one of his colleagues standing there. He is smaller than the one that is dealing with me and has a dangerous look in his eyes as if at any moment he could be at your throat. I’m glad he’s not dealing with me.
‘We have to log everyone we see in situations like yours. We have to take their names and their addresses and if they are not in imminent danger to either themselves or others we let them go on their way. Where you slept last night, if you can call it that, is the trade entrance for quite a well-known restaurant. Their manager rang us and asked that we come and remove you.’
‘Okay, I understand.’
‘I don’t think that you do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve seen you now. And once I’ve seen you you’re mine. So if I see you again I will run a check on you and if I so much as smell trouble in your past you will regret it. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Good. Go home. Winter is on its way.’
For a moment I watch as he walks away to join his colleague. They give me a brief look before moving into the tablet of sunlight at the end of the alleyway. Yes, winter is coming, I can feel it in the air. I look up at the sky, storm clouds move across it like dark monsters in a children’s fable. My whole being is begging me to feed it what it needs. I look around at the discarded cans and newspapers and the smudged dog shit. I get on my knees and begin to root around, throwing over bins, my fingers slipping in and out of the squelch of decaying food. I try not to panic, I know that I hid it somewhere; like a dog with a choice bone terrified that another will be drawn by its scent.
I feel as if my mind is twisting and spiralling in my head like that kite I watched all those years ago, fluttering and dipping across the inside of my skull. I close my eyes and tell myself that when I open them I will see what I’m looking for. I know that I must look stupid kneeling in front of an upturned bin. I don’t care; I know that the war is beginning in me as it does every morning, and that only one thing will quell the forces that are rising in me to take me apart. Yes, winter is coming and I tell myself that I am ready for its army of frost and steel.
Among the Bridges
They are moving me. I knew it was coming. Every day I have felt the storm in my mind ease a little until I began to wonder if it had happened at all. I had a brief meeting with Dr Sarah Burke and Dr Garland this morning; she began by asking me if I still believed that I was in danger. I tried to make a joke and said, no more than anyone else. She smiled when I did this and then asked me again. No, I said, and then repeated it, no. She nodded and said that now my real work must begin. She told me that they were pleased with me, with the progress that I have made. My episodes, as she called them, have gone. When you first came here you had to be restrained regularly. It’s normal, she said, for someone who was in your state. Your dosage of drugs is being lowered day by day and soon hopefully you will be drug-free.
She told me that I will no longer be in lock-up and that I will be joining a treatment programme in the main building, that I will continue in some form or other for the rest of my life. You are lucky, Sarah said to me, very lucky. God has shown you in the most violent way possible that you cannot drink anymore. Some people spend their lives shuffling from one moment to the next wondering why they hurt. You, she said, pointing at me, have been told in no uncertain terms what is wrong with you. God is asking you a question that most people are never lucky enough to hear. At the mention of the word God I shifted in my seat and my face darkened. I saw Dr Garland reach over and put his hand on her arm to get her to change the subject. Anyway, she said, there’s time enough for all of that. Yes, I said. They told me to wait in the ward and that I would be moved in about an hour or so. As I got up I asked about my son, if I will be allowed to see him, that it feels like a long time since I held him. My eyes clouded with tears as I said this. I felt stupid and unmanly sitting there, fighting back the sadness that suddenly had me by the throat. I saw them look to each other. That’s up to your wife, Sarah said to me, there was a softness in her voice as she spoke to me. Give it time, her colleague said. Then Sarah said something about trust and rebuilding bridges that have been torn down. But I was no longer listening.
There are two of them. They stand beside my bed and tell me it’s time. One of them I recognise, the other I’ve never seen before. I gather my things together and follow them out of the ward. They walk either side of me; sunlight bleeds across the long hallway making the faces of my escorts look pale and bloodless. They stay close to me, indicating now and then with the gesture of an arm or the nod of a head if we should turn left or right. I know that I am still dangerous to them, that they are not taking any chances. I try and remember the night that I arrived, but all I can see is a man screaming, it isn’t my face, but it is my scream. We walk through a series of doors with coded locks on them and take a flight of stairs. As we descend I try and joke with one of my new friends, telling him how important I feel, like the Pope or a president being ushered from one important affair of state to another. The one to my left looks at me and says: ‘Don’t kid yourself.’
We reach a small reception area and I’m told to stop. The receptionist holds out a clipboard with a form on it and I’m told to read it and sign it. I look at it, it’s a release form. I sign and one of my guards signs as a witness. I nod to the receptionist but she has already drifted back into the daydream that we woke her from. I look at the big glass doors and see the world beyond them. For a moment fear rises in me as I remember how alone I had felt out there in the world of men. One of the nurses moves ahead of me and opens one of the doors and indicates that I should pass through it. As I do I feel the sting of the November wind on my face and it seems to bring a sudden onslaught of memories with it. I shake my head and try and stay positive, ignoring the gnawing in my mind.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Right.’
We move across the grounds, our feet kicking up dying leaves. I hear the squelch of the wet grass beneath my feet. I don’t know what awaits me, but something in me is telling me to trust it, to go with it, it can’t be any worse than where you’ve been. We reach a large building. It looks Victorian and paint is peeling from its large grand walls. A few people are standing outside it; one or two are smoking and look at me as I am led past into the large lobby area. A man comes up to us as we cross the threshold of the large doors.
‘Welcome, Gabriel,’ he says. ‘Welcome to St Patrick’s.’
They take me to a small holding room. My hospital coat is removed as are my gown and my shoes and I stand there naked as hands run up and down my body. I feel like saying that it was highly impossible that I had smuggled anything in the short distance between the two buildings, but I don’t, I am as docile as an overfed dog, the drugs in my veins are seeing to that. I think I even smile.
‘Good man,’ one of them says. ‘Good man.’
Planet Earth
My first night is difficult. I am starting to remember things more clearly and I realise that I have been very unwell. It scares me. I am in the room that they have given me. It has a small single bed in it. There are many bedrooms on the landing that I am on, full of people like me. There is a small nurse’s station, manned constantly by one or two nurses. One of them escorted me to my room earlier in the afternoon and laid down the law, the dos and don’ts of what I would have to follow while I was there. Breakfast was mandatory, as was the programme that I was about to embark on. No shirking, she had said to me. She was a few years younger than me and not yet old enough to be cynical about the job she was doing.
‘Lights out at 10.30 p.m. sharp.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘No guests or fellow patient
s in your room at any time without express permission from either me Alex or my colleague Jan.’
‘Okay.’
‘No reading material. No radios. No TVs. No food of your own, only that provided by the institute. You’re lucky, some have to share with another person, you have a room to yourself.’
‘Lucky?’
‘Yes, Mr O’Rourke. Lucky.’
‘Right.’
‘We have given you some clothes. The ones you were in when you arrived…well, they were…You won’t be allowed visitors until the second week of your stay here. So maybe then you can request that a loved one can bring you some of your own things as I’m not sure that the ones that we have given you will fit.’
‘I’m sure that…’
‘No phone calls until the second week. No reading material. Oh I’ve said that already…’
‘Yes. Can I take a dump?’
‘Sorry, a what?’
‘A shit. Or do I have to ask for permission?’
‘Well, I think that I’ve covered pretty much everything. Don’t forget to come to the station later to get your medicine.’
‘Right.’
I watched as she walked to the door of the room then she looked back at me and said: ‘We’ve had worse than you in here. Don’t think that I’m as shockable as I look. Good day to you.’
I smiled. I liked her. I was glad to be alone, to have my own space where I could try and rebuild what was left of my life and my mind. The daytime I know that I can just about cope with. It is the night that I fear when the mind turns inwards. I think about what they told me about my psychosis, about how I had been divorced from reality, believed that I was moving through cloud, hurtling earthwards towards an unnameable fear. There is a fog in my memory where that time should sit. It baffles me as it isn’t that long ago, a matter of days, weeks at most. I feel like I’ve woken up from a strange dream or maybe this is the dream that I’ve woken into, this small room with its white walls and hard single bed.
Alf
He is English, but don’t hold that against me, he says, as he stoops and offers me his hand. He has warm eyes and there is mischief in them. I look at his hand for a moment before taking it. His flesh is warm and the palm of his hand is dry, mine isn’t, it has a seam of sweat that I can’t seem to shift. He gently wipes his hand on the side of his trousers after we’ve greeted each other. He tries to hide it but I see it all the same. He has a large belly that spills over his belt and now and then he pats it as if it’s an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while. He sits beside me. He makes a small gesture with his hands as if to say is it okay? I don’t respond but keep looking straight ahead. We sit there in silence. We are on the small bench in front of the main building. There is a large garden leading to small buildings and offices where I know that most of our classes will take place, we were told at breakfast this morning. I came out here to smoke before going to see one of the counsellors for an induction talk, as they put it. I hear the Englishman beside me sigh and know that he is about to speak.
‘When did you get here?’ he asks me.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yesterday? I thought that they had you in lock-up.’
‘They did.’
‘Then you couldn’t have arrived here yesterday.’
‘No, I meant…’
‘Oh you meant here to the recovery unit. To the alcohol programme.’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
‘How long were you in lock-up?’
‘Dunno.’
‘It’s rough.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m a counsellor here, my name’s Alf. I’ll be taking you for group therapy and one thing and another.’
‘Right.’
‘Are you always this accepting?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘The North.’
‘Never been there. Stupid, isn’t it? I’ve been in this country for five years or so and I have never been there. I hear it’s beautiful.’
‘It was.’
I am bored now. I want him to go away. This is what I’m facing for the foreseeable future, smug men in cashmere and jeans digging and probing into my life, whether I like it or not. I light a cigarette and watch as the smoke climbs into the winter air.
‘Mind if I trouble you for one?’
I give him the packet without looking at him, followed by the lighter.
‘Must stop these. But as the man said, I’ll deal with my addictions in the order that they’re killing me.’
I can feel his eyes on me looking for a response. I don’t give him one.
‘You must find all this very strange. Like being on a different planet. They were worried about you when you were brought in. You were…’
He doesn’t complete the sentence but lets it trail off. In my mind I see a man crawling around on all fours. I hear the cry that comes from his lips.
‘This is the best place for you.’
I see his body falling in and out of light, his arms outstretched, and his mouth open. I hear his screams and feel the tremor of fear in his soul.
‘We’ll start gently. Get you acquainted with our methods.’
I see insanity and sanity lying side by side. I see him walking across the bridge that connects the two. I am afraid. What if he never comes back? I turn and look at this large man sitting beside me.
‘It’s cold where I am…’ I say. ‘It’s cold…’
‘I know it is, son…I know it is…’
The Beast with Two Backs
I am playing along with him. Maybe he can sense that. I don’t know, I don’t care, I doubt it. I think he is too in love with the fineness of his words, with his high and mighty take on life. He is a small man immaculately dressed in a dark grey suit, starched white shirt and crisp black tie. His hair is finely coiffed and is steely silver in colour. I am sitting opposite him, nodding when I feel I ought to, my hands laced in my lap as if I was at an important business lunch poised to close a deal. I know that presentation is important to people like him, he has eyes that can see beyond the obvious, he has eyes like mine, that much I will give him. He has been talking to me for a while now, his voice droning on, blending with the sounds outside, the faint whine of a workman’s drill or the throaty punch of a motorbike as it passes on the road nearby.
I resent him. I hate him for his newness, his brightness of spirit. I can’t stand his prim attention to what he’s wearing, it smacks of self-celebration, arrogance. He loves his hands; he keeps examining them, flexing his fingers, holding them to look at them as he speaks as if he’s a concert pianist about to give the recital of his life.
I don’t say anything even when he looks to me and pauses, offering me some space to contribute. Fuck him, I think, you carry on, I’ll just sit here and let you waffle on about your life, philosophy and all things you.
He is saying that he was like me. He is telling me I have a disease, an illness, just like him. He says it’s our curse and our blessing. Bollocks. He says that life is out there waiting for me, that it is an adventure, a gift, that there is no need to sleepwalk through it anymore, befuddled and be-fucked by booze. He says that this is a programme that uses Alcoholics Anonymous and that it espouses total abstinence from our drug of choice, in my case alcohol. I would begin going to meetings in the next day or so and that I had no say in the matter, that they were compulsory.
He asks me if I believe in God. I don’t reply. He says he does, that it was a long journey but that he had to otherwise he would have drunk again. Big fucking deal, I feel like saying, God left the building a long time ago, all that’s left is a shadow, and that’s what I believe in, the dark where we all end up, in the cold arms of Nothing.
I suppose he can see the scepticism cross my eyes. Think about it, he urges, you don’t have to decide now, let it sit, he says. His name is Thaddeus; it suits him, it goes with his ‘I’m so special’ way of dressing, and his ‘I love the sound of m
y voice’ way of speaking. He then starts talking about how all of the heavens and all the hells are inside people like us, and that we spend our lives trying to return to where we came from. As he says this he points upwards. We use booze, drugs, sex, anything to forget ourselves and the pain and injustice of this existence. But I stop listening. I take my mind and walk it past his shoulder and through the window behind him into the park, onto the grey concrete path that cuts through the lines of stark trees. I wish myself from the room, and ache to feel the cold bite of the wind on my skin, to stand alone in the November cold. I know myself there, in the aloneness of the landscape I see beyond this room.
He has stopped talking, it takes me a second to realise it, and when I look at him I can see the glint of one of his contact lenses as the weak winter sun hits it.
‘Where did you go?’ he asks me.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Have you heard anything I’ve been saying?’
‘Some of it.’
‘Some of it?’ he asks. ‘Well repeat it to me.’
‘What?’
‘Repeat it to me.’
‘I’m not a fucking child.’
‘Do you want to get well?’
I stare at him.
‘Do you want to get well? Stop sulking.’
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘Then answer me.’
He waits. I lower my head and gaze at the black spirals on the nylon carpet. I drop my head because I’m afraid I’ll lose it and take this perfumed man in front of me apart, pull his pampered head from his shoulders and shove it up his sweet-smelling arse.
‘Is that your answer…to run away?’
Still I say nothing.
‘I’ll sit here for as long as it takes,’ I hear him say.
His words are like someone thumping a pillow, muffled and soft. I can feel my hands begin to shake and I hate myself, my body and my mind forever at war, forever pushing and pulling in different directions. I think of my heart, I see it labouring in a vat of feeling like a drowning man throwing a few last desperate swimming strokes.
