Bought and Sold (Part 3 of 3)

by Stephens, Megan

  I was heavily medicated, so everything that happened during the next few days is all jumbled up in my mind. I know that at some point, maybe after breakfast on that first morning, the nurse took me out for a walk around the vast hospital grounds. Beyond the grass that surrounded the building there was a small forest, and beyond the forest were two huge gates flanked on either side by a very high wall topped with barbed wire and numerous cameras. I think it was seeing those gates that finally made me understand that I had been sectioned and was in a mental hospital.

  During that first day, I was taken by another nurse back to the office I had been in the previous day, where I was asked more questions by a man who turned out to be the hospital’s chief psychiatrist. Paradoxically – considering I had almost killed myself and was an in-patient in a psychiatric hospital in a foreign country – all I was really worried about was what I had shouted as I was leaving the apartment building with the police. I knew I had said something about Christoph, but I couldn’t remember if I had said his name. I kept wondering if he had been watching from somewhere in the shadows and had heard whatever it was I said.

  I think I spent most of the rest of that day lying on my bed, moping and recovering from all the alcohol I had drunk the day before. At some point, after I had seen the psychiatrist, I was given all the things that had been in my bag when the police found me, and it wasn’t long before my phone rang.

  ‘Where are you?’ Christoph sounded angry. ‘The woman I rent the apartment from says you caused trouble and that she won’t rent it to me anymore. What did you do? What’s going on?’

  ‘I got drunk,’ I told him, in a sad little girl’s voice. ‘I’m sorry. I was stupid. I cut myself, on purpose, so the police arrested me and now I’m in a hospital.’

  I waited for his anger to explode. But when he spoke again his tone had changed completely. ‘Why, baby?’ he asked. ‘I’m so upset that you’ve done something like that to yourself. Why would you do that? What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered again.

  ‘What have you told them at the hospital?’ There was a hard edge to his voice.

  ‘They think I’ve got “issues”,’ I told him. ‘They’ve put me on medication and they say I need some help.’

  ‘I think they’re right, baby.’ He was solicitous again now. ‘I think you’ve been struggling for the last few weeks. I noticed it and now I wish I had taken you to the hospital myself. Am I allowed to visit you?’

  I told him I would ask and, very gently, without my being aware of it, he began to close the trap around me again.

  Visiting hours at the hospital were flexible and when Christoph came the following day, he was almost invisible behind a huge bunch of flowers, and he was carrying in his other hand a bag full of nice things to eat and drink. I told the hospital staff he was a friend, someone who looked after me, and he went out of his way to be polite and charming to them. Despite everything, I couldn’t help being pleased to see him.

  Patients and their visitors could go into a sitting room or walk around the grounds. Christoph came with me to my room first, while I put away the things he had brought for me. My roommate – the girl with empty eyes who spent hours every day in perpetual rocking motion – wasn’t there. So there was no one except me to see Christoph touch my arm or hear him say, ‘You have no idea how much I miss fucking you. I can’t wait until things are back to normal. I’m going to get you a lovely apartment when you’re better. I think it’s time you had a rest. Maybe you should have a holiday. Don’t worry, my girl. I’ll sort it out.’

  Christoph often called me ‘my girl’ and I liked it. I had always wanted to be someone’s girl. I had thought for a while I was Jak’s and had felt special because of it. When I was very young, I used to think I was my dad’s girl, before things changed and he seemed to stop caring about everything and everyone else. It’s funny how something so simple mattered so much to me. Being called ‘my girl’ by Christoph had been one of the reasons why I had fooled myself into believing he had real feelings for me. Among the other reasons were self-deception fuelled by emotional neediness and the fact that I had absolutely no judgement about men or relationships.

  Christoph’s quiet, soothing tone didn’t alter as he added, ‘If you say anything about what you’ve been doing, no one will believe you. They’ll think you’re crazy, and they’ll keep you in here for ever. If by any chance they did believe you and I got into trouble because of something you had said, you would have signed your own death warrant – and your mother’s too.’ It was little wonder that I was always confused and uncertain.

  I was put on several different types of medication while I was in the hospital, including an antidepressant, a drug to boost the antidepressant, and another drug to help reduce anxiety. I also had daily assessment sessions with the psychiatrist. I didn’t ever talk about Christoph or anything that had happened to me during what was now the last six years. But I began to think that the psychiatrist knew. As the days merged into weeks, he often told me I was making good progress. Then, one day, he said, ‘I don’t think you really want to kill yourself, do you, Megan? I think you had a specific reason for doing what you did. If you need our help, we can protect you, you know.’

  He was a nice man, and although I didn’t believe that, ultimately, he really would be able to protect me from Christoph, I knew that his good intentions were genuine. In fact, strange as it may seem, I actually liked being in the hospital. I felt safe there, for the first time in years. It was like being inside an impenetrable but invisible bubble: I could take part in whatever was going on around me while at the same time remaining cushioned and protected. Something else I liked about being there was the fact that I made friends and had people to talk to.

  There was one old lady I became particularly close to. She was usually sweet and friendly, and then sometimes when you tried to talk to her she would tell you to ‘eff off’. She was never aggressive or vicious though, and it just made everyone laugh. One day, she gave me a box with a pink bow tied round it. I thought at first when I lifted the lid that it was full of cotton wool. Then I saw the silver cross. ‘It’s for you,’ the old lady said. ‘It’s a present. I want you to have it.’ She gave me a card too, in which she had written ‘Good luck’ in Greek. I’ve still got them both – the silver cross and the card; they’re two of my most treasured possessions.

  Perhaps it’s only after you’ve been starved of human contact for a while that you realise just how important it is to be able to interact with other people. Since Jak had left me in Athens, I had only rarely had even the sort of mundane conversations you have with people in shops. I had worked alone in brothels most of the time, and then gone back to a hotel room or an apartment, where I had been on my own again. During the years, the loneliness had built up inside me until it was like something solid. It was at least partly because of that loneliness and aloneness that I had become so dependent on Christoph, and why I was now so grateful for the fact that everyone at the hospital was kind to me.

  Christoph visited me almost every other day. We would walk around the grounds and he would talk about the apartment he was going to get for me and how everything was going to be different when I was better. He always repeated his warning too, about what would happen if I told anyone the truth – although he didn’t use the word ‘truth’, of course.

  Despite feeling safe in the hospital, I always had the thought that I wasn’t going to be able to stay for ever at the back of my mind as I began to get better. After I had been there for almost three months, I was lying on my bed one morning, crying and praying that something would happen to get me out of the mess I was trapped in, when a nurse came into my room. I didn’t know she was there until she sat down on the bed beside me, took hold of my hand and said, ‘I know, Megan. And it’s going to be okay.’

  When I went for my session with the psychiatrist the next day, he asked me all the usual questions, told me he was very pleased with the progress I ha
d made, and then said, ‘I don’t know exactly what’s been going on; what I do know is that you’re in trouble. I’m not going to ask you to talk about things you don’t want to talk about, but we want to help you. You understand that, don’t you?’

  He handed me a tissue, and after I had wiped away my tears, I nodded my head.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So just answer yes or no to this question: do you need our help?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  ‘Good.’ He sounded genuinely relieved. ‘Well, you need to leave Greece. It isn’t safe for you to stay here. Is there anyone in England who could look after you?’

  He already knew my mum lived with Nikos on the coast. ‘I’ve got grandparents in England,’ I told him. ‘They live near London. I don’t know their phone number, but Mum will have it. They would take care of me; I’m sure they would.’ As I said it, an image flashed into my mind of me as a little girl sitting at the kitchen table in my grandparents’ house, looking at a book with my grandfather. I think I had accepted the fact that I wouldn’t ever see him or my grandmother again. And now, suddenly, it was a possibility I was desperate to cling to.

  ‘Right. In that case, I need to speak to your mother first.’ He pressed the heels of his hands on to the desk for a moment, then reached for the phone.

  For as long as I can remember, certainly ever since I was a very little girl, my body’s reaction to extreme anxiety has been to shake. It’s quite embarrassing sometimes, because it isn’t just gentle shuddering; it’s quite noticeable, and totally beyond my control. I was shaking as I sat listening to the doctor talk to my mum, because I knew that something had been set in motion that could make everything either better or considerably worse than it had ever been.

  When I was admitted to the hospital, I hadn’t wanted Mum to know what had happened, so I had asked them not to contact her. It hadn’t been difficult keeping up the pretence – in texts and occasionally phone calls – that everything was going well for me, particularly once I had begun to feel safe at the hospital. After all, I had managed it when I wasn’t safe and was working as a prostitute. So I knew it was going to be a huge shock for Mum to hear the truth now. In fact, all the doctor told her was that I had been sectioned after trying to take my own life and that he believed me to be in great danger in Athens. Mum obviously couldn’t take in what he was saying at first and he had to repeat some of it and keep reassuring her that I was all right.

  When she finally accepted what he was telling her, the doctor said, ‘Your daughter says she has grandparents in England who would look after her. If we let her leave the hospital and can get her to where you are, would you be willing and able to take her back to England?’ Mum must have said she would. ‘In that case,’ the doctor continued, ‘I need to speak to Megan’s grandparents. So if you could let me have their phone number …’

  Before he hung up the phone, I talked to my mum too, just to tell her that I really was okay and that I would explain everything when I saw her. Then, after the doctor had spoken to my grandfather and told him much the same thing as he had told my mother, he handed the phone to me again. Although I had learned long ago to hold back the tears when I spoke to my mum, I hadn’t heard my granddad’s voice for years, and I was crying so much I doubt whether he could understand most of what I was saying. It must have been even more of a shock for him than for my mum, getting a phone call like that out of the blue. He sounded bemused, but kept reassuring me – as he had already assured the doctor – that he and my grandmother would do whatever was required to help me when I got back to England.

  Later that same day, one of the nurses told me, ‘We’re going to need your passport. Do you know where it is?’

  ‘It’s in the apartment I was staying in,’ I lied. ‘I could ask my friend to pick it up and bring it with him next time he comes.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ she said, and although her expression didn’t change, I don’t think she was fooled for a moment.

  When Christoph phoned, I asked him to bring in my passport when he visited me the next day. ‘The people at the hospital are asking for it,’ I said. ‘They need it for my records. I told them it was in the apartment and that I would ask you to bring it in.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say you had lost it?’ he demanded angrily. ‘For God’s sake, Megan, do you never learn anything?’ But he must have realised it was already too late and that failing to produce it now might lead to questions and complications that, from his point of view, were best avoided. ‘I’ll bring it tomorrow,’ he said, forcing himself to speak pleasantly again. ‘And I’ll bring some nice food for you as well.’

  When Christoph came to see me the next day, we walked around the grounds, as we had done many times before on all the occasions when it had been nice just to have a visitor. This time, though, I couldn’t wait for him to leave. The nurses were as coolly polite to him as they always were, but my paranoia seemed to have gone into overdrive and I kept thinking, ‘What if he can read my thoughts?’ So when he told me he was going to be busy and wouldn’t be able to come to see me again for a couple of days, my immediate thought was that it was a trick and he just wanted to see how I would react. Fortunately, I managed to answer him calmly – thanks, in part at least, to the tablets I was taking.

  It seems ridiculous now to say that I had mixed feelings as I stood in the hallway and watched Christoph walk away that day. When he stopped in the doorway and turned around to wave, I had to hold my breath to stop myself bursting into tears. As soon as he had gone, I gave my passport to one of the hospital staff.

  The next morning, a nurse helped me to pack my bag with the few items of clothing Christoph had brought in for me over the last few weeks. Odd though it may sound, I was very sad to be leaving the hospital. In the three months I had spent there, not a single person had said anything harsh, critical or unkind to me. (Being told to ‘eff off’ by the old lady didn’t count, because there was never any malice in it when she said it and I knew she didn’t mean it.) I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and the thought of being on the other side of the wall that surrounded the hospital grounds and kept everything inside it safe was very daunting and frightening.

  Later that morning, a nurse and a male member of the hospital staff took me by car to the coach station in the centre of Athens, where they bought me a ticket to the coastal town where my mother lived with Nikos. Even though they stood close beside me all the time, I couldn’t stop myself looking round nervously every few seconds, expecting to see Christoph’s face amongst the crowd, or someone else watching me, waiting to see which coach I got on.

  Then my coach was there with its door open and it was time for me to leave. I cried as the nurse hugged me and wished me good luck. ‘This is for you,’ she said, handing me a bracelet. ‘The symbol on it is a Turkish eye. It’s supposed to ward off evil. Be safe, Megan. And may God protect you.’ If I hadn’t known that my mum would be waiting for me at the end of my journey, I don’t know if I would have been able to get on the coach. But I did get on it, and as I sat waiting for the driver to close the door and start the engine, I tried to concentrate on taking one breath after another and suppressing the panic that was threatening to engulf me.

  I had been dreading the long journey from Athens to the coast, and it was every bit as bad as I had imagined it would be. I couldn’t relax, even for a moment. I flinched every time someone passed me on their way down the aisle to use the toilet at the back of the bus, and had to force myself not to keep turning round to see if any of the other passengers were looking at me. And then I began to worry in case the tablets I was taking might have stopped working, and my paranoia would just keep building up and up until it tipped me over the edge into some sort of manic episode.

  I had thought for a long time that I was suffering from paranoia – even before I tried to kill myself and ended up in a mental hospital. In fact, I continued to think so until fairly recently, when I looked it up. One of the definitions for the w
ord paranoia is ‘an irrational or delusional thought process’, another is ‘the belief that other people are trying to do you harm even though there’s no convincing evidence that that is the case’, and another ‘the unfounded fear that something bad is going to happen and that other people are responsible for this’. So perhaps it never really was paranoia after all, because most of my fears weren’t delusional or unfounded. When you’ve been physically and mentally abused on a daily basis for years, there’s plenty of ‘convincing evidence’ that people are trying to do you harm, which means that the fears I had were perfectly rational. It’s some small comfort, I suppose.

  As I sat on the coach that day, I felt excited as well as anxious and frightened, because I was going to see my mum again, for only the second time in six long years. It was after midnight when the coach turned into the station. I saw Mum as soon as the door opened, and I stumbled down the steps, dropped my bag on the ground and ran towards her. We were both crying as we threw our arms around each other. Then Mum held me away from her so that she could look at me, and I could tell that she was shocked and upset by what she saw. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked me. ‘I don’t understand, Megan. I thought you were doing so well in Athens. I thought you were happy. Come on, let’s go home.’

  As we walked together through the almost-deserted streets to the apartment she lived in with Nikos, she asked me again, ‘What happened to you. Megan?’ But what could I tell her when I didn’t really understand it myself? Even then, I was still clinging to the belief that Jak had loved me and that, in some inexplicable way, everything that had occurred had been the result of a horrible mistake and not what he had intended when I was 14 years old and we had first gone to Athens together.

  Nikos was waiting for us when we arrived at the apartment. He looked strained and anxious, and as he put his arms around me he began to cry. I had tried so many times to imagine what my life might have been like during those lost years if I had stayed in that little town on the coast, close to Mum and Nikos. Now that I was back there, I kept thinking I might suddenly wake up and find that I wasn’t.