Her White Lie

by Jackie Walsh

  My father glanced briefly at me before turning his head away again. Dad looked like he was about to cry and just wanted me out of the car. I felt awful. It was my fault. Me and my selfish ‘poor fucking me’ ways. I had to fix this.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, disturbing the awkward silence. The word reverberated around the car like we were in a big hollow space. My father turned to look at me. I stared at his sad eyes for a moment, then leaned in to kiss his cheek.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, Dad,’ I said, then jumped out of the car before he had time to reply.

  I walk through the doors of the clinic. Waving good morning to Anna behind the reception desk I continue on down to my room at the end of the corridor. Aoife is in her bed when I get there. The poor girl has only been here for two weeks so she’s still in shock. Before that, Joanne was my roommate. She did really well and was released after only two months of therapy. I haven’t heard from her since she left, which is a bit disappointing because we really did hit it off.

  Aoife is asking me about my weekend when the door opens and Nurse Catherine walks in. She’s wearing a black woollen dress and flat grey ankle boots. Catherine always ties her hair back off her bony, shiny face. There are no uniforms here. There’s no need for them. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who the patients are. Pain is carved all over our faces, in our gait, our tortured smiles. We’re the ones walking with sagging shoulders, darting eyes. Nervous, looking for signs, waiting for the world to collapse.

  Catherine hands me a little plastic cup with the yellow lid like she does every Monday morning. If it turns out that she discovers alcohol in my pee, my weekend pass will be revoked and I certainly don’t want that to happen. She pushes open the door to the bathroom that I share with Aoife.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ she says, but she doesn’t mean this. It’s not when I’m ready. It’s now, or I fail.

  I take the cup and walk into the room, closing the door behind me. I can hear her chatting away to Aoife while searching my bag. So many things are forbidden that it’s hard to remember at times. Face wipes. I can’t imagine being so desperate for alcohol that I’d suck on a face wipe. But I guess they’re covering all corners. Or so they think.

  I stand up onto the toilet seat and reach into the small air vent at the top of the wall, pulling out a plastic Ziploc bag full of urine. I hid it there last thing before leaving here on Friday. Then I place the bag and the plastic cup on the radiator before pulling my knickers down.

  Catherine knocks on the door.

  ‘Give me a minute, it’s not that fucking easy to piss on demand,’ I shout out to her. I’ve developed quite a vulgar tone since coming here. It’s either a last line of defence or a show of resilience. Whichever, it gives me a sense of control.

  I press my hand down on the bag. That should be warm enough now. I take the lid off the cup and open the corner of the bag, carefully pouring the contents into the cup while peeing into the toilet bowl. Then I tighten the lid of the cup, pull up my knickers, wash the plastic bag out and wash my hands. I stick the empty bag back into the air vent before opening the door and handing the cup to Catherine. This is the third week in a row I’ve managed to complete the trick flawlessly. I could be a circus act.

  ‘Thank you,’ Catherine says before asking me if I had a nice weekend. It’s important I remain positive if I’m going to appear like I’m making progress so I say, ‘Yes, lovely, nothing too exciting.’

  ‘Did you watch I’m a Celebrity?’ she says, causing a glitch to appear in my confidence but thankfully Aoife butts in, commenting on the latest goings-on and surreptitiously updating me in the process. My week in here is spent watching I’m a Celeb on the TV at night. If I didn’t have an up-to-date comment ready, alarm bells might ring. Catherine might say, so what were you doing if you didn’t watch it? Were you out? You know you’re not supposed to be out after ten o’clock when you’re on weekend release. Then I’d have to make up some story about a visit from my sister or a headache that sent me to bed early and I’d be nervous because I’d know she was on to me. They’re very smart in here. Just not as smart as me.

  Catherine eventually walks out of the room with the cup in her hand and I’m left to unpack the fresh clothes my mother ironed with the precision of a brain surgeon. I know she’s nervous. Mam finds it hard to deal with someone like me. Someone not quite right. My brother and sister gave them no trouble – a fact my father regularly imparts to me.

  ‘Faye Connolly.’ The door opens and Fionn, one of the counsellors, calls my name.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Consultation room four in ten minutes.’

  The file where I keep all my notes and questions and progress, if any, is in the drawer of the desk that stands at the end of my bed. When I have my clothes put away, I take the file and walk to the door. Aoife is writing in her notebook. She lifts her head and smiles at me as I leave the room. Walking down the corridor my body grows heavier. When I reach the door of consultation room number four, I take a deep breath and push it open. And so it begins. The quest for answers. Why is Faye Connolly an alcoholic?

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Sometimes I think I’m never going to get out of this place. That my life will be spent explaining myself. What I did, what I didn’t do. Why I did it. Why I didn’t do it. It’s all just an attempt to unravel the mystery of my twisted mind. My misdemeanours. Why do I not care about myself anymore? Why do I hurt the people who love me? Intelligence doesn’t help. That just means there are more wires to unravel. More things to go wrong.

  Apparently I’m a ‘complex character’. That’s how Fionn described me to my father when he demanded answers for my acute demise, after just a few days of therapy. My dad thought the more money he threw at the problem, the quicker he’d get results. This place costs 10,000 euros a month. Dad must have expected me to be skipping through the meadows by Christmas. He doesn’t understand about all the wires.

  I don’t actually agree with Fionn but I don’t tell him that my problem is not complex. It’s quite simple, really, I just can’t share it with him. Instead I make like I’m buying all his crap. I like to give him something to work on so I speak about Andriu sometimes. How I’d built my world around him and then he walked out on me. I was so dramatic when I first mentioned him, making it sound like a breakthrough, a revelation, a demon released. I even cried. I imagine Fionn had a celebratory bottle of wine that night. At last he was getting somewhere with the complex character. If only he knew.

  That’s the thing I don’t like about this place. Fionn believes I can tell him anything. That what I have to say to him won’t destroy me even further if I let it out of my head and into the world. He’s a true believer that people can be fixed. And maybe some people can but not me. I’m broken beyond repair. I just need to find a way to operate with the cracks so I can get out of here and back to some sort of normality. Which is why I’m playing their game.

  ‘Today’s session went well, don’t you think?’ Fionn says, walking out the door behind me. Fionn is only a few inches taller than me and full of hope. He has more faith in me than I have in myself. He never fails to remind me of my achievements and even though he makes me confront the darker side of my personality, to him, my life is not all about failure.

  There are times I genuinely cry in a session and don’t have to fake it. Today was one of those times. I let myself replay the night my mother walked into the hospital. I was lying on a bed in A&E, my face covered in blood. The irony wasn’t lost on me when a young student doctor arrived beside the bed just like I had done the previous month. He tried to explain to my distraught mother what had happened. But how could he? I didn’t even know what had happened. Why I had driven at full speed into a tree. It’s not like I planned it. One minute I was going for a drive to clear my head, the next minute I was wrapped around a tree. I waited for Mam to ask if I was trying to kill myself. Or if it was an accident. But she never did.

  I can still picture Mam standing by m
y bedside, the disbelief, the confusion, the pain carving a whole new expression on her face. She was wearing a navy coat with a soft pink scarf hanging around her neck. Mam never left the house without carefully brushing her hair and putting on some lipstick… but that day she did. I hate that I hurt her like that. I can be such a selfish cow at times.

  I nod at Fionn and mutter a yes, while wiping my eyes. Today’s session did go well. Then I head back to my room and find Aoife lying on her bed, crying. Everyone is crying. What sort of place is this?

  ‘Are you okay, Aoife?’ I say, putting my hand on her head. But it’s a stupid question because if she was okay she wouldn’t be crying. She wouldn’t be in here.

  Aoife lifts her head off the pillow. Her eyes are swollen; her face is red and wet. For a brief moment I want to laugh. It erupts inside me, the madness of it all, but I manage to hold it in and watch as she rubs her eyes with her fingers. I never ask her why she’s here. It’s early days for Aoife.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asks, sitting up on the bed.

  I take my phone from the drawer in the bedside cabinet and see that it’s almost five, time for tea. Egg sandwiches and Jaffa Cakes no doubt.

  I notice Tara has called again. I’ll call her back tonight when I can get a bit of privacy. Aoife usually goes to the TV room after supper.

  Exactly when you can make a phone call isn’t the only thing governed in here. They control the WiFi also. You get one hour a day, but that’s only after you’ve proven yourself. I’ve proven myself. I can troll whoever I want for sixty minutes every day. Which is great. It’s where I get my energy to stay angry.

  * * *

  When the egg sandwiches are swallowed and those who haven’t proven themselves yet head to the communal area, I go back to my room and lift my phone. Holding down the button and waiting for the WiFi signal to flash on has become so satisfying it’s like having a drink.

  I quickly scan through the headlines in The Journal.ie. Money missing from the football association claims the number one spot. Then, an earthquake on some island leaving hundreds of inhabitants without homes. I find it strange the earthquake doesn’t make it to the top spot ahead of the missing money.

  After reading a short update about Avril Ryan’s investigation and finding nothing new or of consequence in the report, I decide it’s time. I’d better ring Tara back in case she decides to come here. I don’t want her to find out I’m a patient in this clinic, not a doctor.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  It’s six in the morning. There’s a fog sitting on the grass outside the window. The bottom of the trees that line the walled garden aren’t visible at the moment and the trees look like they’re floating across the back wall. The wall doesn’t have any barbed wire, even though this clinic feels like a prison. The barbed wire is in our heads.

  Only people who want to get better will be admitted here. Or so they think. This won’t be easy. Are you prepared to put in the hard work? I remember their words, chiming in my head like church bells when I’m trying to sleep. I nodded and nodded.

  Three months ago it seemed like the better option. The only option. Things could not go on the way they were.

  The hospital management where I worked were as good as they were legally allowed to be. It was impossible to keep me employed once they had it figured out. At first, nobody suspected anything was wrong. I was so clever. Feigning illness, migraines, I even faked a miscarriage once. But my shaking hands and tardy timekeeping soon revealed the problem. My job demanded responsibility, accuracy, concentration; there was no room for error. No room for me to be anything less than perfect.

  ‘Contact us as soon as you’re feeling better,’ the staff officer said. I remember his concerned look. I could tell he was embarrassed for me. Why? I don’t know. He worked in a hospital. People get sick all the time. I was sick.

  After that, things went from bad to worse. It was my sister Deirdre who alerted my parents to the fact that I’d lost my job. I showed up at her house one night looking for money. I probably shouldn’t have knocked on the door drunk because her eight-year-old son Elijah answered and I fell in the door on top of him. I didn’t scare him. I know that much for sure because I can still picture him laughing while she was shouting at him to go back inside. I laughed too.

  I don’t think I’ve laughed since. My sister Deirdre, my brother Morgan and both my parents all moved up a gear in their quest to fix Faye. Phone calls were made. People in the know were contacted. The local GP was summoned to the house to give me the once-over and a box of pills that would help get me through the next few days. Everyone agreed, Faye needed help.

  Except me. I was still happy to fall under a bus if that’s what was in store. And I almost did, but instead of a bus it was my father’s brand new Mercedes that got the job. I drove it out from the driveway in the middle of the night and ran it into a beautiful Sessile oak tree that stood tall at the bottom of my parents’ road. An image of me climbing that tree as an eight-year-old flashed in front of me just before I hit it. I was wearing denim dungarees and a pink T-shirt. My hair, tied in a ponytail, was swinging from side to side and I was about to turn around and look when – a loud crash shattered the quiet. My body lifted into the air with a force I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why I was floating in mid air. The crashing sound was followed by a hissing sound and then my head hit the windscreen. It was like I’d been whacked with a baseball bat. I could smell something burning. It got stronger… and then nothing. The next thing I remember was the screaming, the screechy, noisy, aching screaming. Someone was shouting at me, trying to open the door. I wanted to see who it was but something sticky and dark had formed a blanket over my eyes. I’m not sure how much time passed until I was pulled out by two medics and strapped onto a stretcher. My head was secured in a brace and I was put into the back of an ambulance. A stranger’s voice told me I was going to be okay. I was alive and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Thankfully, the tree survived. As did I. The Mercedes, however, had to be replaced. I often think my dad would rather it had been the other way around.

  * * *

  Aoife’s whimpering breaks the silence. She stirs in the bed, lifting her face off the pillow. I remember how terrible it was when I first arrived here, especially the first weekend before I was given weekend release. It wasn’t the fact that I was alone in the room. I liked that bit because it was the only time I felt I wasn’t being watched. That every little thing I did wasn’t being noticed, recorded and analyzed. But the realisation that I was only at the start of this barbaric journey was frightening. The months ahead were going to be painful and there was a lot of doubt in my mind as to whether I’d be strong enough for it.

  ‘Don’t worry, Aoife, you’ll be getting weekend release soon. You’ll get to see whoever it is you are missing.’

  I want to ignore the fact that I can hear her crying into her pillow. It’s impossible to comfort everyone in here every time they cry. I do my best. I have put my arm around her a few times and told her things would get better, like Joanne did for me. It never really cures anything or helps anything but in that moment, when you feel the heat of another broken soul embrace you, you’re happy to bathe in hopeless comfort.

  Oh damn it. I can’t leave her like that.

  I move away from the window and over to Aoife’s bedside where I lie down beside her and rest my head on her pillow.

  ‘You know what we should do, Aoife? This time next year we should meet up. Somewhere beautiful. Somewhere with trees and birds and blue skies and hot coffee and people walking their dogs. We should meet and talk and be proud of ourselves. We’ll know we’ve made it, but we won’t mention it, Aoife. We won’t talk about what it took for us to get to that beautiful place. We’ll just be happy to be there, to be meeting up.’

  Aoife sniffles, lifts her head and looks at me. ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise, Aoife. This time next year.’

  Chapter Fifty-Five

&nb
sp; When I get back to the room later that evening, Aoife isn’t lying on her bed as per usual and that immediately raises a red flag but I guess maybe she’s gone to an early group session or is still in the dining room. I throw my notebook onto the bed and turn around to find Nurse Catherine standing there.

  Her eyes are fixed on me and she doesn’t look her usual happy self. Something is wrong. Has something happened to Aoife? Is that why she’s not here?

  ‘Where’s Aoife?’ I say. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Aoife’s fine.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘I need you to give me a sample, Faye,’ she says, handing me the container with the yellow lid.

  She holds her grip on the container a second longer than she needs to, making me pull it from her. My heart is sending panic waves throughout my body.

  She knows. Did she find the bag or did she send the sample to the lab? They do that sometimes. They don’t believe their own little strip of telltale paper so they send it out to have it analysed. Shit, one way or the other I am in trouble.

  I’m about to close the door when she puts her foot out to stop me like a prison warden. It’s hard to believe this treatment costs ten thousand euros a month.

  ‘Leave the door open,’ she says.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Open.’ She almost growls the word.

  My hands are trembling now. If I give her a sample, she’ll know I was drinking at the weekend. Which means I’ll be thrown out. Or at the very least, with a bit of begging, I might get off with just losing my weekend privileges. One way or the other, my father will find out. Everything I thought was within my reach earlier today is being pulled further away from me. Discovering the truth about Andriu and Tara had released me from the chains of my past. Erased the nightmare I was living with and brought me hope that I might be able to commit to this treatment. But now…