Fought Disorder: Bonus Content

Fought Disorder officially ends at the point where I move from a PICU to an acute ward.

I have found, however, an unreleased and unfinished prose section that describes my time in acute. I never finished this part of the story, as I feared it was getting too long and uninteresting. I’ve decided to release it here as a blog post instead. It won’t be included in the Kindle version.

It’s worth noting that around a year after the events below, I returned to The Cedars as a health care assistant. I enjoyed my time as staff as much as I did as a patient.

‘Here we are.’ Dennis declared, ‘The Cedars. You’re headed for Delderfield Ward.’ The ambulance swung into a cul-de-sac and slowed just shy of the rear gate. I scanned the large blue sign that read: ‘Coombehaven Ward.’

Aha… Come behavin’ Ward. This is the place I get to prove myself ready to leave. Come here, behave, go home. Ha, so this link stuff never goes away, it’s just the ability to ignore it that determines whether you get to stand around outside or not.

‘Didn’t take long at all, did it?’ I chippered.

‘Told you we’d make good time’ he beamed. ‘Right, if you just follow me, these lads will take your bags up for you.’

I turned back to Trevor and Steve, ‘sure I can’t carry anything?’

‘No you’re alright mate.’

I followed Dennis up a narrow staircase, through a darkened corridor and past a set of dim doorways. A slim, punchy voiced man in his late thirties with a shaved head and designer specs met us mid-way.

‘Hello Oli, I’m Manny.’

Another Manny, hah.

I extended an arm. ‘Hi.’

‘Right mate, that’s us done.’ Dennis tipped his head and turned to leave.

‘It was great meeting you guys, thanks so much for everything. Take care.’

‘You too mate.’ The three men smiled and paced away in relaxed steps.

Only Manny and I remained. He sized me up and smiled. ‘Let’s get you settled in.’

‘Okie dokie.’

We reached a blue, heavy steel door with a magnetic lock. He rang the bell as we stood, swimming in the still, thickly awkward silence. I raised my eyebrows, in the hopes that doing so would somehow speed up the passing of time.

A short woman in her mid-forties with a blonde-brown ponytail answered the door. ‘Manny,’ her words spoken in half-greeting, half-acknowledgement, continued to me. ‘Hello.’

He walked through ahead of me and gestured across the space. ‘This is Delderfield Ward. It’s one of two units here; Coombehaven Ward is our other unit, downstairs.’

‘Ah O.K.’ I said, uncaring, just happy to be on the path home.

The main area, laid out like a crossroads between several corridors, saw the presence of several, calm, dozing patients. Just ahead of me, they sat in a circle. A burly, bearded man wearing a thick grey sweater and cumbersome headphones picked the notes of Romanzia from a black acoustic guitar.

Romanzia… What next?

A woman in her sixties patched with kitsch clothing tipped towards a deep, serene sleep. Other patients sat around the quiet guitarist as if he were a campfire. The space felt warm, welcoming and peaceful. A cheering change from the PICU atmosphere I’d left behind. To the right, beyond some brightly coloured beanbags, a series of green and brown armchairs caught my analytical eye.

The massive joint. We meet again. Must be standard NHS issue.

To my left, just inside the door, on a chipboard stuffed table reminiscent of high school maths classes, an incomplete jigsaw puzzle lay in sprawling, broken islands. Above it, a Nintendo Wii sat within a locked glass box. The television, flickering between muted images, blinkered between colourful, poorly written subtitles.

Nintendo. The unwittingly official NHS sponsor.

I pulled Bill’s puzzle piece from my pocket and set it down in one of the few free spaces. Too big for the others and depicting a vividly different image, I laughed to myself.

Very poetic. Beautiful, even. The perfect metaphor for a loosening of association.

Manny invited me further into the widened T-junction. ‘If you’d like to take a seat in here’ he pointed towards a small, circular corner room containing a few scarlet, padded armchairs, just behind the television, ‘we’ll get you settled in. We have a few things to do before we show you to your room, some paperwork and stuff like that. Would you like anything to eat? Coffee? A biscuit?’

I’m in heaven. I’m actually in heaven. Chilled music, greater access to coffee, snacks.

‘Ah, yeah, a… a biscuit and a coffee would be great, thanks Manny.’ I wore a supplicant smile. ‘No sugar for me thanks.’

‘Coffee, no sugar. Two seconds.’ He vanished and for a few minutes, I waited, eyes wafting lightly between the artwork mounted on the walls.

A simple oil painting of a boat afforded a bizarre sensation of easing, sighing closure. With the Cornwall-centric aspect of the experience behind me, it acted as a finalising, symbolic visual statement.

‘It’ll be good for you, Oli, to go home.’ Yes. It. Will.

‘Here we are.’ Manny sprang back through the doorway with a coffee in one hand and a stack of varied biscuits in the other. He fanned them out on the coffee table next to me. ‘There’s a mixture there, I wasn’t sure if you had a preference.’

I grinned at the spread deck of carbs. ‘Thanks for that, they all look great.’

He took a seat opposite mine and flopped a stack of paperwork onto his knee. ‘Now, I have a few things for you to sign, and then we can get you settled in.’

###

‘Oli?’ A woman in her early thirties with short scarlet hair and sharply accented eyebrows tipped into view. ‘Can you follow me please?’ She led me out of the small meeting room and across the hall, to an all too familiar meds room.

I stumbled in and hovered around the middle of the space, unsure of where I should set myself. In the end, I sat up on the bed.

‘So, I’m Emmy.’ She looked down at me with a wry, near hidden smile. ‘Can you tell me why you’re here?’

I sighed. ‘Ah, cannabis induced paranoid psychosis.’

She looked across to the quiet, observing man who watched me from the corner; he raised his eyebrows and stretched his lips in satisfied surprise.

‘You know, that’s really refreshing to hear. Most people with psychosis never acknowledge the cannabis. They always insist the drugs aren’t involved.’

‘Well, something tells me that they were.’ I frowned.

‘And, do you remember at what point your thinking started to balance out?’

‘Yeah, it was, almost overnight actually. I was given twenty-five milligrams of Quetiapine and the next day I was like, oh, fucking whoops.’

Emmy grinned, ‘that tends to be the way with acute episodes. They start rapidly and end just as quickly.’

‘Yeah, it didn’t help that I couldn’t be treated for weeks though, sort of gave credence to my delusions.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Well, when you think you’re on a T.V show and everyone tells you they can’t give you anything other than Valium, you start to question why.’

The previously silent man stepped forward. ‘So, you have a fairly good recollection of your episode?’

‘Every detail.’

‘Hm.’ He smiled. ‘That’s rare.’ He raised his left index finger and placed it about a foot from my head. ‘Can you follow this for me?’

I tracked the finger as it moved further away, back again, to the left and to the right.

‘Good. Have you had any problems since you left the PICU? Any unexplained noises, visions, abnormal feelings or emotions?’

‘No, not really. No auditory hallucinations, no feelings of persecution, no sensory hallucinations-‘

‘Did you have sensory hallucinations during your episode?’

‘Not too many, I had a few in Harvest, one or two in Glenbourne and a prolific one at the onset.’

He tilted his head and frowned only slightly, solemnly. ‘That must have been quite unpleasant.’

‘The initial one was. The second one was this flashback, of a memory that wasn’t even real, which took time to figure out. Then there was a song, just before my transfer. Fourth was visual only, in seclusion at Harvest.’ I looked up to Emmy, ‘the wall moved, like one of those Mind Warp posters, you know?’

She nodded.

‘The fifth was full sensory. I had a conversation with a non-existent staff member over two nights. He was gone after that.’

‘Wow. Sounds like you’ve had a very interesting experience.’ His words broke free from the typical, clinical air of sympathy over empathy.

‘Yeah, it was even kind of funny at times.’

‘Well,’ he began, with a slight of speech that implied extensive knowledge of my case, ‘perhaps at the time, but in the cold light of day…’

Oh good… You’ve seen the CCTV.

His words pulled my eyes up, out from the fog of introversion, ‘but you feel fine now?’

I nodded before knowing my answer. ‘Yeah, I guess.’ I looked between the pair. ‘A little shat up from it all though.’

They smiled. Emmy looked down at me, ‘well I think you’re allowed that.’

They took my blood, gauged my blood pressure, asked me if I smoked, weighed me and finally, sent me on my way. As I left the room, the presiding clinician seemed welcomingly keen to carry on the conversation.

‘So what are your interests?’

‘I like to drum. Preferably on a kit, although this experience has taught me that… my arse will also do.’

‘Ah, you should look up Steely Dan.’

‘Oh does he drum on his arse too?’ I tore a corner from something (probably) important from my stack of papers and borrowed a biro. ‘Steely… Dan. Will do. So, will you be my consultant?’

‘No, I…’ He drove his eyes around the hallway, ‘actually work in another part of the hospital. I just wanted to stop by and have a chat.’

I suppose anyone who regimentally sticks a sock on his nuts constitutes something of a psychological curiosity.

‘Oh. Well, it was a pleasure.’

We shook hands and I pattered off in the direction of the main area.

I sidled up to the silent guitarist, ‘Romanzia. I like that song. Very personal.’

He turned on his beanbag and looked up, his voice a fine copy of Ray Winstone’s, ‘it’s a great tune. Relaxes everyone ‘ere. Washyer name mate?’

‘Oli’ I smiled.

He took my hand, which dangled at my side, ‘Nigel. Nice to meet you mate. You good with names arhya?’

‘Better than I was.’ I grinned.

###

‘Hi Oli, I’ll just quickly show you around so you can get a bit more comfortable. I see you’re already making friends, that’s good.’ He smiled and trailed back a few paces, before extending his arms as if guiding a jet to the runway. ‘So this is the main area, obviously, the office is just there behind me as you can see, ah… this corridor here…’ He stepped forwards, towards a glass tunnel that led straight ahead, past the office, before stopping to make a tiny barrier with flat palms. ‘This is the female wing, obviously, no male patients allowed down here… and visa versa. Although we do make exceptions in the event of…’ He winced into a nod, in search of the right word, ‘need.’

Double take. This is RATHER different from PICU.

‘These two corridors here, they’re the male corridors.’ He waved his arms towards the two wings that split off in opposing directions from our position.

‘I’ll show you the right wing first.’ He pointed himself forward and I followed. ‘To your left is the kitchen, we open this up most of the time, but it’s closed between one and two in the afternoon and six and seven in the evening, for cleaning and prep. You can make yourself a coffee here, and we serve food at nine, twelve and six. Over here…’ He stepped himself parallel. ‘Here’s our rec room. Treadmil…’

Treadmill. Fucking treadmill yes.

‘…Pool table, exercise bike. Not many of the patients use this room, we sometimes use it for visits if we’re busy.’

‘Sure.’ I tried the door. ‘Oh.’

‘We keep it locked, but if you find one of us we’ll let you in.’

We walked further down the corridor. ‘On the right here are the offices for the hospital manager and the deputy. Down here…’

We hit a glass-panelled tube, a connecting bridge between each corridor reminiscent of Marble Run – a game I used to play as a kid. ‘Losing your marbles…’ I grinned.

‘What’s that?’

‘Oh nothing.’ I hid my smile. ‘Just a joke between me and… the rest of me. Carry on.’

He frowned comically. ‘O.K… so, here are the rooms in this corridor, rooms one through six. Just here…’ He jogged towards an unmarked door. ‘This is our shower room. There’s a toilet and a bath in there. We keep it locked but someone can let you in when you need to use it. When you finish, let someone know so we can lock it up again.’

‘That’s fine; I only have a five minute shower in the morning.’

‘I’m the same. Great. That’s the tour.’ He dropped his hands, patting his thighs in tandem.

I followed Manny back to the T.V-Junction.

‘We’re about to do a cigarette run, in about five minutes.’ He pivoted for the clock, ‘we tend to do them every two hours, the last one’s at around ten-ish. So now’s your last chance for a cigarette if you want one.’

All of the seated patients were suddenly afoot, forming a loose cue for a room to the left of the office.

‘We keep tobacco locked away, stops patients smoking in their rooms. If you need to go out, you can pick up your stuff here before we escort you.’

Wildly different smoking policy from PICU.

Nigel appeared behind me. ‘Circus, this.’

Once we’d all acquired our paraphernalia, we were siphoned in line through the security door, down the stairs to the main entrance.

‘You take everyone outside to smoke?’ I looked at Manny with a disbelieving half-blink.

‘No, the smoking area is shared by both wards. You have to go through Coombehaven to get to it. Follow the others and you’ll find your way.’

‘Thanks man.’

###

‘Did you arrive here tonight?’ A man with no concept of personal space curled himself across my shoulder.

‘Mhm. Been waiting to get here a long time.’

‘Oh yeah?’

I nodded.

‘What you in for?’ Nigel asked.

‘Paranoid psychosis bud. Drug induced.’

‘Paranoid psychosis, fuckin’ ‘orrible.’ He shuddered, in disturbed empathy.

The pale, socially discourteous middle-aged man whispered once again across my shoulder. ‘You sure that’s what you had?’

Seeds of doubt, just what someone in my shoes needs.

I turned to meet his shaded grin. ‘Quite sure thanks.’

He pressed on, flicking his white bowl fringe free of his eyes with a lighter-wielding hand, ‘sure?’ His grin flipped towards Dane, a silent, smirking troll who wore his flannel dressing gown as a makeshift cape.

‘Yeah, well I’m on meds now so…’I directed my attentions back to Nigel.

‘Don’t listen to them mate. You’ve done well to get ‘ere. Lot of people only go further up from PICU, Christ knows I nearly did.’

The man with albinism and the troll both stiffened. ‘You came from a PICU?’

‘Yeh.’ I nodded. ‘Spent five weeks there, mostly in seclusion, nearly always naked,’ I wobbled my head, grinned maniacally and lingered atop my words, ’singing songs and doing pushups,’ Breaking the act, in genuine remembrance, I added, ‘oh… and I had a grievously fast wank or two.’

‘See you later bud.’ The pair stepped on their cigarettes and shuffled away in stilted steps.

Only Nigel and I remained. The night air rose as if cut from violins and I relaxed into an honest smile, ‘I’m fine, really,’ I pointed backwards with a thumb, ‘just thought I’d give as good as I get, you know.’ My cigarette blazed into a stub. ‘Fucking-‘

‘Uh huh.’ He wore an amused crease at the closest eye. ‘You know what you need to survive places like this mate? A good pair of headphones and some prog rock.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I slid into kismet mode. ‘Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Spock’s Beard, Yes, Genesis, Neil Young…’

‘Yeah you know.’ He laughed. ‘Just leave everyone to their own shit.’ He eyes crept up the high, red brick walls, to one of the few-lit windows. Only when I tracked his gaze did I hear the very faintest of eerie sobs. ‘Dunno which is worse. This madhouse here.’ He drew a circle against the night with a dying ember. ‘Or the one in here.’ He pointed squarely at his temple.

We shared a long sigh.

‘Right, I’m gonna jump back upstairs, see you in a bit mate, we’ll play some guitar. You can show me how you do your Romanzia.’

‘Sounds great Nigel, I’ll see you in a bit. Gonna stay for a while,’ I pointed into the darkness. ‘I haven’t walked on grass in next to a month.’

‘Awight boy, in a bit.’ He patted my back as the door swept a wet, licking gust against my neck.

‘In a bit.’

‘In a bit.’ Last hurdle. Just a bit further… Good guy.

I paced across the grass, into the darkest region of the thick turf square. The glazed blades rolled under the shifting weight of each step. In the very center, I looked up to meet the birthing rain. A wide, grateful smile spread liquidly into the furthest pits of my cheeks. The smacking drops multiplied and before long, I stood drenched amidst the cold winds of night, quietly at peace.

‘Andy Dufresne… A man who crawled through a river of-’

‘Shit.’ The dusty thud of owl’s wings batted overhead, ringing whip cracks in its wake. I danced out of the jump scare in stamped tiptoes with each explicit declaration. With a sigh and a hanging head, I shivered.

Shuffling across the small pitch, I pressed my palms to the expansive, grating perimeter fence. Easily fifteen feet tall, with a mesh too narrow to grip by the fingers, the steel, nylon coated web flexed against my weight. A titanic reminder that I still had time to serve behind high fences, walls and gates.

‘The worst is yet to come.’ Perhaps… Perhaps the worst is over.

###

Dripping through Coombehaven Ward, I reached the familiar, airlock double-door system. No sign of any available staff left me questioning the procedure for getting back up to Delderfield. I span on wet heels with a squeak. In the lower office, two men watched me, with amused, twisted grins. Turning again, I held my hands behind my back and stared deep into the glass, watching them whisper, chuckle and point in the accented, refracted reflection.

‘Good day.’ A man in his late twenties, in only a suit jacket and underpants passed.

I turned to locate the voice, throwing on a highly exaggerated R.P accent. ‘Tally- …oh. Aren’t you cold?’

‘Quite cold. Good day.’ He nodded, before driving off with the posture of a broomstick.

A small man in his late twenties, with a distinct birthmark that rolled diagonally along the ball of his jaw, hidden partially by brown hair worn down across his ears, stopped, clearly unable to place me as a member of the Coombehaven crew. ‘You waidin’ dogaw… upstairs there?’ His accent, faintly suggestive of county Tyrone, reminded me of Callum.

‘Yeah, I was waiting for these two actually.’ I pointed at the office and folded my arms as the pair scrambled for clipboards and other props. ‘I think they were, ah,’ I sank into a forgiving, playful murmur, ‘too busy poking fun at the patients though. Slow night and all that.’

‘Awh.’ He laughed, a nervous glance leaping between my stony, unimpressed stare and the closing office door. ‘There y’gaw.’

He clicked a fob to the panel and pressed his weight outwards. I slid past and tipped my head in thanks. Traipsing up the winding stairway, I reached the second door, pushed the buzzer and lingered on the edge of mute boredom.

Kelly, a tall, active woman in her early thirties with pronounced blue eyes opened the door. ‘Alright mate, Kelly. Welcome back.’ She moved three spaces ahead towards the office, before turning, ‘Settling in O.K?’

‘Fine yeah, this place is a palace… compared to what I’m used to.’

‘Well we’re very happy to hear that. When you’re ready to head to sleep, come and find me, I need to give you a room key.’

‘There he is.’ Nigel span round from the lip of his orange beanbag. ‘Here.’ He loaned out the guitar with a straight arm, ‘I want to see how you do yours.’

‘Thanks Nigel.’

‘Call me Nige, son.’

I pulled up a green poofe and crouched into a portly slouch. ‘Right…’

As I started to play, a previously silent young woman, perhaps twenty, maybe twenty-two at a push, looked over and spoke in an intriguing lilt, grinning behind the pointed shard of a dark fringe. ‘You play lots of guitar?’

‘No, no.’ I laughed. ‘Just this one song.’

‘Ah.’ She looked up to the muted television. ‘Your name is Oli?’

‘Yeah.’ I slid my hands up the fret board, looking up between accuracy ensuring glimpses.

She giggled and pointed to the X-Factor judges. ‘Like Olly Murs.’

‘I’m gon’ call you Olly Murrs I am.’

‘Aha, sort of, although… he can actually sing.’ I raised an eyebrow at the set and nodded once.

‘I love Olly Murs, his voice so nice. His face is cute like baby,’ she looked over with narrowing eyes, ‘and nice voice.’ I watched her watch the show, dropping my chin during the most challenging parts of the piece.

Her hand flicked up in irritation, ‘sometimes, this show is so shid, you know? And some time it’s good. I don’t know. I like but don’t like. Simon is asshole, like… all the time.’

‘He’s also got a perfectly square head.’

‘Yeah,’ She stroked her lips, eyeing the television with studious analysis, ‘like leedle box.’

###

A short, petite young woman with long brown hair shuffled through the main area, wearing pajamas and apparently lacking a fixed goal. She wandered a few paces at a time, stopping to watch the staff perform their duties, patients in conversation and other things. When she saw me, she laughed in uncontrolled, high triplets. At first, I wondered if I’d done or said something strange, but after several repetitions, I realised that her laughter comprised a component of her experience. I’ve since learned that it’s called Paradoxical Laughter, the causes for which are too numerous to make an informed guess. I smiled at her as I approached the office, unnerved by her repeated, pointed giggles.

‘Off to bed Oli?’ Kelly peered out from the office threshold.

‘Yeah, do you mind showing me what room I’m-’

‘No problem.’ She picked up a jailor-clump of keys and jangled down the leftmost corridor. ‘I love that song, Romanzia. How long have you been playing?’

I quickened my steps to keep up. ‘Oh no, I don’t play guitar. That’s the only song I know.’

‘That’s ironic.’ She smiled.

‘That’s very good, Oli. Very ironic.’ Everyone in mental health’s an expert in irony. I suppose they see a lot of it.

‘Here we are. Remember to keep your light on; otherwise we might wake you up with the torch.’ She pointed to a dimly visible, wholly familiar, heavy wooden door; complete with obligatory glass observation panel, slats open. ‘You’re number six.’

Ah. Ha. Fuck.

I bubbled upwards into a short laugh. ‘You ever see The Prisoner?’

She unlocked the door with an informed grin and moved away, merging into the cracked blue half-light that drowned the tubular corridor with each step. ‘That’s funny.’ She called back, ‘I like that.’

‘So do I at this point… Night Kelly.’

The softened, recursive echo of innumerable footsteps danced atop her reply ‘-ight Ol-.’

###

My room at Delderfield, comparable to a hotel room, carried an air of unexpected lavishment and luxuriation. I had my own desk, a padded armchair, a useable wardrobe and a window that actually permitted the intrusion of the breeze. I drew back the chair, which weighed a surprising amount. Soon realising that the motive for this likely arose from a desire to limit its potential as a weapon, I slumped down. Looking out from the window and across the neat, rolling turf, past the high gates, to the towering apartment block that looked in on the ward, I briefly forgot my location, my limitation, my captivity.

A cheerful knock at the door.

I smiled at the silhouette beyond the slats.

Manny’s head popped into view, ‘hi mate. We normally do meds at eight, but because you arrived late tonight, we need to give you yours now. Do you mind coming down to the room we did your obs in? When you’re ready.’

‘Sure, I’ll come down now.’ Meaning to slide the chair back with planted feet and only nine stone of bodyweight, I, much to my surprise, crammed myself forwards, spilling under the desk into a tight bundle of limbs. ‘Medic.’

‘You need a hand?’

I flailed afoot. ‘I’m good. I’m good.’

###

May 2nd, 2014.

Padding out of my room, out towards the T.V-Junction, I found a man named Barney, looking purposeful but temporarily free.

‘Hello, sorry, I was hoping to use the shower…’

‘Yep sure mate.’ He scratched the jailor keyset from the desk and led me back in the direction of Room Six. ‘My name’s Barney, by the way.’

‘It’s going to take time, it’s going to take tears.’ He wasn’t half right.

‘Nice to meet you Barney.’

‘Here we are. Give us a shout when you’re done so I can lock it up again mate.’

###

Breakfast. I dried my hair with a hand towel and shuffled myself into the dining room. I nearly had a fit. A literal bucket of single serving jam pots, marmalades, apricot preserves, marmite… you name it, held pride of place at the middle table. Loaves of bread of all assortments sat stacked against the dispense window. Three quadruplet chrome toasters beamed under the morning sun, another chrome bucket of single use cereals and pints of condensation covered fresh milk cartons gleamed by the window, even pressed orange juice had been accounted for.

Pinching my own arm, I jumbled, ‘am… am I dead?’

‘Hello mate. Did you get here last night?’ A sweet, calm man in his mid-forties with an educating tone of voice looked up from a piece of toast.

‘Hi there. Yeah, I arrived yesterday. I’m Oli.’

We shook hands. I felt entirely at peace around this man.

‘I’m Tris.’

‘Nice to meet you. I’ll just grab some toast and then I’ll join you if that’s O.K?’

‘Of course.’ He found it difficult to maintain eye contact at times. I found that strangely endearing, as well as sad. I hate the thought of intimidating others.

Taking care to demonstrate my harmlessness, I sat slowly and buttered my toast with unwarranted slightness. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘Me? No…’ He looked back at his toast, doing his best to temper a softly trembling hand. ‘I come here some times. It’s good to get away from the stress of everything out there.’

‘I agree.’ I looked down at my plate.

A faint, familiar echo bounced into the room. ‘Are you Leah Tuckey?’

Callum? Callum?

I shot round. ‘Callum. Callum you’re, you’re O.K.’ I jumped up from the table and bounced over to the doorway, ‘I thought… I thought you’d gone.’

He looked right through me, with a smile, however.

I became a puzzle of words. ‘It’s so good to… to see you. When you weren’t there one day and, the paramedics, and I couldn’t find you, and… I thought they were there for you.’

That means, that means Katie…

‘Ey boy. Still got your black jumper?’ He growled with a grin.

‘Yeah,’ I laughed. ‘I still have my black jumper.’

‘Mmgood. Good. Tiocfaidh ár lá.’

‘Éirinn go Brách.’ I grinned, overjoyed to see him safe, before the clammy, cold truth caught up with me.

I hope Katie’s O.K. I wasn’t good to her.

Patting Callum on the back, I returned to Tris to reoccupy my seat.

Tris looked up from his toast. ‘You know each other then?’ He looked over me.

My eyes followed.

Callum began reordering the stack of clean plates.

‘Yeah,’ I chuckled, ‘we were in PICU together.’

Tris locked up, his knife dangled heavily from a two pronged vice grip.

I noticed. ‘No, no it’s O.K. I’m not violent or anything. They put me there because I did a Houdini.’

His shoulders melted. ‘Oh… You get arrested?’

‘I did, as it happens.’ A single, sweeping laugh rushed from my lungs, shooting toast crumbs into his eyes.

‘Oh.’ He squinted, politely ignoring the breakfast shotgun. ‘I got arrested too. Did you try and resist?’

‘No I got naked.’ I took another bite and raised my eyebrows.

He creased up. ‘Naked?’ Gesturing up and down his flanks, he flapped his hands, ‘like-’

‘Like the wind was playing conkers with my balls.’ Cutting my last piece of toast into triangles, I looked down, ‘about as funny as it sounds. I thought I was on T.V so, I never considered a fight.’

‘I resisted.’ He chuckled. ‘They don’t like that. Three of ‘em, kneeling on my head, neck, ruthless.’

‘At least they didn’t tase you, eh?’ I prodded him lightly below the collar.

He laughed, limply.

‘Oh shit they fucking tased you. But you’re so…’ I searched him for a flamboyant adjective, ‘nice.’

‘It wasn’t so bad I guess.’

‘Really? I hear it’s-’

‘Nah…’

Oh so… so it’s not so bad.

We rode the pause, punctuated only by the scraping of toast. Out of the silence, he lifted a piece and flashed a shy grin. ‘It was really fucking bad.’ He took his turn to blast crumbs as the laughter bounced between us. Most of them stuck to my tears.

A woman around my age, with bright scarlet hair, worn at a length that clipped her shoulders as she walked, stumbled into the dining room. She wore relaxed, colourful clothes and stared absently, her lips fixed into a slight pout. She carried a clear plastic bag full of tobacco pouches, cigarette papers, at least ten lighters and other material. She walked straight up to me and asked, with quiet confusion, ‘can I borrow a cigarette please?’

‘Er.’ I stared at the clear bag, if tobacco were money, she’d have claimed the title of Bill Gates. ‘Sure. Sure. I’ll, just get mine out of the room, thing. Wait there.’

She followed me out of the dining room, pinching her fingers together in tight circles.

‘Bye Tris,’ I smiled, ‘I’ll pop back in a bit for a chat.’

‘Sure, bye Oli.’ He dipped his head in resurgent shyness.

###

Out at the smoking area, I rolled the mystery woman a cigarette. She waited until I sealed it to correct me. ‘Can I roll it?’

‘Oh. Sure.’ I placed the one in my hand in my mouth and handed her everything she’d need, despite her smoker’s wealth.

The outer door clicked but didn’t open. I looked over to see a frail elderly woman, of less than slight construction, struggling to fight her way out. For a second, we both watched her in silence.

I stood up and pulled the door.

‘Oh thank you m’dear.’ She said sweetly, before bellowing ‘I hate that bastard door’ at a baffled orderly, who’d arrived to provide aid a little too late. Looking at the ground, she flicked up to me, in a storm of white hair. ‘Can I have a cigarette lovey?’

I slid the roll up from my lip and handed it her way.

‘Bless you. I aint got no tobacco, aint got not money. Aint got a lot these days,’ she tiled her head as her eyes crawled away, ‘I haven’t had a visitor in six months.’

That’s not right…

Looking down at the bus stop-styled smoking shelter, my eyes leapt from face to face. The quiet redheaded woman pouted sticky whispers between puffs as the other drew with determination, as if her cigarette were in danger of vanishing without warning.

Dane slipped out through the metal blue door. ‘Awight mate. I knows you I do.’ He fed his arms through his dressing gown cape and poked a cigarette into the induction lighter. ‘You fought you was Jesus mate.’

Well, this is new.

‘I…?’

‘You fought you was Jesus, I knew who you was the second you walked in here. You been thinking you’re Jesus but I forgave you ‘cause I’m God and Christ the one true savior mate.’

Running low on ideas, I went with, ‘oh well thanks. Nice to finally meet you. So, who’s been talking to you about my case here then? A nurse or an HCA?’

‘No one’s been talking to me mate. I just knows your story. You gave up all your possessions, clothes an’ all. You walked miles. Your feet were on fire mate. I saw it all.’

Erm.

I still have no explanation for that.

‘Yeah?’

He nodded, the others watched us in silence. ‘You reminds me of that magician. Not David Blane…’

‘Let me guess, Derren Brown.’

Brain hernia ad infinitum.

‘No. No not him.’ He squinted over his cigarette, before flicking up as if struck by an idea. ‘You fought you was on telly mate. I know, I saw it all.’

O.K, you have my attention.

‘It’s true.’ I looked around at the small cluster of faces, ‘I did think I was on T.V’

‘You’ll still be on telly mate you wait and see.’ Dane re-lit his cigarette with the scarlet woman’s lighter and looked out across the grass.

‘Hello my lovely friends and foes…’ A cheeky man in his late fifties, wearing innumerable pin badges, a retro train driver’s cap, colourful cravat and brown waistcoat emerged from the door. ‘I thought I’d come by to…’ He studied me with zoological curiosity. ‘You’re new.’

‘That I am.’ I smirked, extending an open hand. ‘Oli.’

‘Oli. Oli the owl.’ He descended into a fit of satisfied laughter. ‘That’s what I’ll call you. Oli the owl. Everyone calls me Lark.’

‘Lark eh? I met the owl last night, funnily enough.’

‘Oh you saw him?’ He’s a long-eared owl.’ He span on his feet and looked up, scanning the rooftops. ‘He’s quite shy see. You were lucky to see him.’ His eyes dropped down to head-level. ‘Like it here?’

‘It’s… an improvement on where I was.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Bodmin.’

‘Bodmin?’ He squinted. ‘What did you do…?’

‘Escaped Glenbourne. You know, in Plymouth?’

‘Oh right, get arrested?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Then you tried to fight ‘em, they shat their pants and carted you off to Bodmin in an ambulance.’ He flashed a set of golden teeth, none made of gold. ‘How close was I?’

‘Close. They asked if they could arrest me and I said yeah sure, but decided to get naked.’

‘Oh…’ He leant back, before falling closer, ‘that’s Ken magic that, you knew that right?’

‘Ken magic? No… I haven’t-’

‘Ken. K-E-N.’

I couldn’t help but picture a Ken doll, in a pink box, in nothing but handcuffs and a sock, with the tagline “Ken Magic” emblazoned across the front in an indigo Impact font.

Ken Magic. “Now with absolutely no shame. Sanity sold separately.”

‘What magic did I?-‘

‘It’s what you do to prove your innocence. Like here, if you say to me, “you are a thief” I can use Ken to prove I’m not. I take off all my clothes and hold up my hands. So you can see for yourself that I’ve not got anything I shouldn’t.’ He smashed the invisible barrier that constituted my comfort zone. ‘See?’

I laughed, ‘that’s interesting. I had no idea. So what happens if I say you stole my Ken magic?’

A long pause. ‘Let me show you something.’

Alright scrap that.

‘You see those birds, up there?’ He pointed to a string of mosaic artworks, of incrementally growing size, atop the uppermost row of windows on the opposing housing block. ‘The one second from the left, he’s a black back herring gull.’

‘Dynamo.’ Dane blurted. ‘You looks like Dynamo mate.’

I look nothing like Dynamo. ‘O.K.’

‘Remember mate I forgive you for all your sins because I’m the Lord and son the one true sav-.’

‘Thanks Dane.’ I mimed the Hail Mary, ‘Spirito sancti scrotum something.’

Manny span through the doorway and leant over to me. ‘Alright mate, do you have five minutes? The O.T wants a chat.’

‘Sure thing.’ I turned back to the grass and pointed up at the murals, ‘we were just admiring those birds. Who did those?’

‘Oh that was something the O.T put together a few years ago. We need to fix that one on the end. It’s coming loose.’

‘I know how he feels.’

###

I found myself seated in one of the marble run styled corner corridors that connected the patient areas to the main unit, on a muddy brown sofa. As I locked my fingers and pitched my head down towards my knees, a slim man with short, light brown hair and a carpet beard rounded the corner. ‘Hi Oli, I’m Gerald.’ He looked down with friendly, but apprehensive eyes. Likely used to all manner of strange introductions, he waited for me to say something indicative of my state.

‘Hi.’ I smiled, in absentia, ‘nice to meet you.’ Still struggling to shake off the odd nature of my exchange with Dane, Lark and the others, my mind wandered slightly to one side of the conversation.

‘So I wanted to speak to you about clubs. We have a range of activities here and,’ He dropped his chin and shuffled some paperwork, ‘well I just wanted to see if I could put your name down for anything.’

‘Ah well I’m planning on making use of the rec room, I like the treadmill.’

‘O.K well we have an activity center, in a separate part of the… compound, as it were.’ He laughed. ‘There’s rowing machines, exercise bikes…’

‘Oh, cool.’

‘We also run a breakfast club on Thursdays.’

‘I wanna be an airborne ranger.’ ‘Join the paras lad.’ ‘Will you discharge me, will you fu-uck.’

‘Sounds…’I trailed away.

Apt.

‘Good.’

He smiled. ‘So if I put you down for that? It’s a nice social event, we all cook up a fry up and it gets people mingling, learning life skills, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you have anything centered around giving up cigarettes?’

‘Ah, good question. No… But, we have lots of support. I think you can ask the doctors to add nicotine gum to your prescription.’

‘Ah thanks, I’ll look into that.’

‘I’ve just given up smoking, as my wife’s recently given birth to our son. I didn’t think it would be so easy but, when you have a strong enough reason-’

I leant forward, nodding emphatically. ‘I understand exactly what you mean.’

###

Back to the smoking courtyard. Alone with my thoughts and the whirring breeze, I paced around the H-shaped pathway, looking back, I saw that had Lark appeared by the bus shelter.

I called across the pitch, ‘oh hey Lark, how’s life?’

‘Good, chap, good. Just doing a bit of gardening. I’m the only one here who gives a fuck about the plants. I’ll show you when you finish your little death stick.’ His mischievous grin widened as he pointed up to the bird mosaics. ‘Remember which one that one is?’

Walking back up to the doorway, I threw a thumb over my shoulder. ‘Second from the left?’

‘Aye.’

‘Black back herring gull.’

He laughed with wide eyes, ‘you remembered.’

‘Well I’m the long eared owl, aren’t I?’

‘Oof that’s quick that. Very witty.’ He turned to leave, before spinning back to tap my shoulder, ‘I like you.’

‘I like you too Lark’ I laughed, dropping my cigarette. ‘Right, let’s see this garden.’

‘Before I take you through, I need to tell you something. About this place.’

Now we’re getting nowhere.

He stopped himself to change the subject. ‘What were you doing before this? Before they put you into the shit?’

‘English degree. In Falmouth.’

He ignored my answer to pick up where he’d left off. ‘See this fucking place, this… This fucking smoking area. Look at it; does it remind you of anything?’

‘Nothing in particular.’

He grinned, as if revealing a secret. ‘The H-blocks. Ireland.’

Bobby Sands MP.

‘Oh yeah, Bobby Sands MP, thirty-thousand votes.’

‘God I don’t know what they’re teaching you on that course of yours but that’s good that you know that… Yes, same place.’ He mumbled, half to himself, ‘you know it’s good that the young people, the people of today, with their…’ He mimed typing. ‘Clicky clacky stuff and all those fucking distractions that make you thick… are still clued up about what really matters.’ He chewed something non-existent. ‘That’s good. Now, the garden. You like plants?’

‘Not as much as I used to.’

‘Ah.’ He winked, ‘you were a dope fiend, aye?’

‘Correct.’ I smiled.

###

Lark led me back through the door to the smoking field, across the narrow Coombehaven corridor and out through another heavy blue door. The transition took about three seconds. By comparison, the garden, a small urban jungle, offered a welcome break from the dreary, prison-esque smoking area. Instead of endless brick, metal, concrete and a flat, designate patch of grass, gravel, potted trees, birdsong and bright, blooming flowerbeds bled life and colour.

‘Here.’ He smiled. ‘This is my little retreat. I keep things in order here.’ He looked up and around the high-fenced space. I been here, thirty-two years. Six longer than Mandela. I’m here…’ He picked up a four-foot twig and stamped it into the soil, ‘because I’m a political prisoner. Fucking Thatcher.’

I followed him through the winding path, past several unkempt plant beds and palm trees.

‘See this.’ He crouched, inviting me to do the same. ‘These are my girls. Sally and Anne. See them?’ He pointed through the foliage to two potted trees, each cradling small nests. I leaned over his shoulder, towards the nearest. A robin puffed itself up, to twice its regular size, gurgling manic tweets in warning.

‘That’s Sally.’ He whispered. ‘Sally and Anne… Sally Anne, The Salvation Army, y’see?’ He looked me up and down with a frown. ‘You do much for charity?’

‘I…’ couldn’t help but laugh, ‘try my best.’

‘Ah.’ He looked back to Sally. ‘Let me show you something else.’ He led me away from the nest, towards the perimeter fence. ‘You see that?’ He pointed up a grass bank, towards Wonford House. A creepy, gothic manor that once served as a high-security psychiatric hospital, during an era of gross medical ignorance on the subject of patient care. ‘I spent eighteen years in that fucking horror show. See the crown? Big fucking crown on top.’

I saw the crown. ‘Mhm.’

‘That, that there, is a symbol. All of these places are symbols. That crown, that fuckin’ crown, is there to remind everyone that places like that,’ he turned back, ‘like this, are owned by her fuckin’ Majesty. They call it being “On Her Majesty’s Government’s Pleasure.” You see? You know what they said to me when I walked through them doors the first time? “Abandon hope all ye who enter.” They fuckin’ love the power. ‘cause you can’t say nothin’ see, no one believes a fuckin’ word. Once you’re in the system, you’re stuck. How you got back here from your PICU is nothin’ short of a fuckin’ miracle boy. Everyone only goes up, up, up until they reach heaven its bloody self.’

I stared at the ruined asylum.

‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ I suppose my experience was a Divine Comedy, of sorts.

Growing curious, I diverted. ‘Why are you a political prisoner?’

‘Because I, I represent the Monster Raving Loonies, they threw me in there right before the elections. Old Lark knows what’s cookin’

‘Oh yeah? I liked your ninety-nine pence coin policy. That’s clever.’

He wrestled with a smile as he continued, ‘see those windows? The ones on the ground floor there. They used to call them the cryin’ rooms. Anytime you’d say the wrong thing, speak out of turn, kick up a fuss, they’d take you in there, stick a bean bag over your head and kick the shit out of you.’

‘I can believe that.’ I strained my eyes, trying to make out the finer details of the crown, which stood atop a battlement.

‘You see this?’ He pointed to the fence, at a portion sporting a slight bend that curled inwards, towards us. ‘Three patients, they were here a few years ago, they formed a suicide pact on this…’ He patted a rustic bench made of pieces of driftwood the size of railway sleepers. ‘This very bench. They threw a blanket over that there fence, jumped the wire and all of them, together, jumped the cliffs on Salcombe Hill, you know Salcombe? In Sidmouth?’

Suicide pact… My poor parents. They’ve been through the mill.

I shook my head.

‘They all died together, the girl was only twenty nine.’ He smacked his lips and stared at the floor. ‘She was bloody pregnant too.’

A pregnant young woman in her twenties, jumping from a cliff, well this all rings loudly of my initial delusion. Even though the meds have done their job, I have to wonder.

‘You’re… not saying this just to fuck with me, are you Lark? Dane’s been saying things that make me think my files are being passed around like propaganda posters.’ I scanned the windows that looked down on the garden, ‘someone’s been breaking confidentiality here.’

His eyes hardened and his features sagged, ‘no boy, this isn’t some spook story. Look it up.’

I since have. He wasn’t lying.

My eyes fell to the base of a large metal sculpture, an upturned, elongated, chrome plated triangle, set into a concrete semi-circle. ‘What’s this?’

‘That.’ Lark grunted, ‘is the fucking excuse for a memorial they put up. Three good people die and they stick a bloody knife in the ground.’

‘Hm.’ I saw the point, both literally and figuratively.

‘Speaking of which, they won’t let me have a bleedin’ pen knife. Can you believe that? How am I supposed to look after this mess without a knife?’

I saw that point, less.

‘Well, secure unit isn’t it? Wouldn’t a trowel be… handier?’

‘I suppose. Hah.’ He nodded, ‘have you seen the clown?’

Have I seen…

My eyebrows rose, then fell. ‘The clown…’

‘Yeah, c’mon, I’ll show you. By the way, I’ve got another one of them… fuckin’ tribunals tomorrow, so you might not see me, but the day after I’ll be here.’ He stopped and leant back into the step I hadn’t taken, ‘they aren’t going to let me out, course, I knows too much, see.’

‘Ah…’

###

‘Here he is. The clown. The spirit of the north.’

We both stared at a smiley face, drawn in blue chalk on the wall nearest the high, green mesh perimeter fence, in resolute silence.

I raised an eyebrow and zoned into the fine white hairs that built his beard. ‘This is the clown?’

‘Yeah, the spirit of the north. There’s four spirits here see.’ His accent, somehow, grew even more Bristolian. ‘Let’s pray to the spirits.’

‘O.K’ I did my best to maintain some sense of… something. An uncomfortable ten seconds passed. I leaned closer. ‘You might have to start, I’m new to this.’

‘Right. Right. SPIRIT OF THE NORTH.’

I leapt out of my skin. ‘Jesus.’

‘No not him.’ He jolted, with a bolting eye.

I shrugged.

He continued, emphasising his irritation in the face of my interruption. ‘Please protect this kind lad, as he goes about his journey. Right,’ he pointed towards the sharp clay corner of the main building, at the far end of the block, ‘now we go to the next one.’

We gazed at a red “X”, again lashed upon the brick in chalk.

‘SPIRIT OF THE EAST.’

I’d readied myself for it that time.

‘I ask you to watch over this young man, to guide him, to show him the way.’

###

After paying our dues to each respective nautical deity, the last of which marked only by a splattering of porridge coloured vomit, I felt, somehow, quietly lightened of something. Possibly hunger.

‘I thank whatever gods may be.’

Personally, I deemed what had just occurred as psychologically synonymous with hosting a tea party for dolls, but, bizarrely, I felt both indebted to (and happily gratifying of) Lark’s spiritualized demonstration of protection. We bonded over the quare ritual, one of many firm friendships formed on the brink of sense. Whether it concerned the real world or not, the gesture, the product of generous, honest intent, could certainly be called real from a noumenal standpoint.

###

I stood once again at the connecting doorway that separated Coombehaven and Delderfield. The two jesters who’d stood aimlessly in the office the previous night had disappeared, leaving instead a triplet of women who appeared immersed in actual work.

Manny left the reception and stopped, slapping a cluster of keys against the lock. ‘Going up mate?’

‘I am indeed.’ I followed him up the Delderfield stairs and we waited, once again, for someone to answer the buzzer.

An unhealthily slight man of recognizable, but unclear familiarity joined us. He struggled to contain endless watts of anxious energy and pulled unnervingly hard on his beard.

‘O.K today Kelvin?’ Manny asked.

‘Mmm.’ He shook into the slightest of grumpy nods.

###

I then met Eric, a sweet, older man who perpetually reeked of cider piss and wore a classic pervert’s grin. I smiled through the rampant odour as he passed, dipping his head in a slow, gentrified display of recognition. He wore skintight women’s leggings along with an oversized grey jumper, never losing his steadfast, leery smile. He didn’t say much, but routinely mumbled sweet Devonshire obscenities as he hobbled along, in uncertain directions, waving a tri-legged walking aid at the shins of passing staff.