Dr Barbara sips her tea. ‘Well, I think I’d have a job forcing you. I could wake Graham, I suppose, but I’d rather not.’ Then she smiles, a smile that’s somehow warm and sad at the same time. ‘Do you want me to wake up Graham?’
I’m not even aware that I’ve started crying again, not until I feel the tears trickling down my cheeks. ‘I don’t want you to wake Graham,’ I tell her. ‘You have my permission to take me to hospital.’
So that’s it. A few minutes later I’m back in Dr Barbara’s car and heading west to the twenty-four-hour emergency unit.
That’s what happens next.
Hammersmith Hospital is not a reassuring place to be visiting at three o’clock in the morning in a fragile state. It has an imposing Victorian façade of dark red brick and dozens of windows staring like latticed spider eyes. It sits behind wrought-iron gates and is crowned by a starkly lit clock tower. Its closest neighbour, just to the west, is Wormwood Scrubs.
We walk through an elaborate entranceway bordered with cornices and columns, through lobbies and winding corridors, and it all feels like a hideous parody of my experience at the Dorchester, only nine hours ago. Everything is white again, but it’s no longer the dazzling white of marble floors and crystal chandeliers: it’s the bleached-out white of fluorescent strips and rooms without texture. Rich mahogany is now laminate worktop, and the soft aroma of bath oils and freshly washed cotton has become starch and antiseptic.
Dr Barbara has phoned ahead, and once we arrive it doesn’t take long to get me formally assessed. We sit in a consultation room with a small, bespectacled psychiatrist who listens attentively as Dr Barbara runs through my medical history. She tells him I’m having a mixed-state hypomanic episode, which has been ongoing for the past forty-eight hours, possibly much longer. The hypomanic part means that I’ve gone a little crazy but it could be worse: I’ve been running amok – impulsive actions, reckless spending, promiscuity – but I’m not delusional; I don’t think I’m Joan of Arc or an alien visitor or Christ reincarnated in female form. The mixed-state means that I’m simultaneously displaying signs of depression: weeping, despondency, despair; wanting to kill myself.
I sit and listen to the medicalese version of this while staring numbly at a filing cabinet. I’m still wearing my beautiful blue dress, though Dr Barbara has also lent me one of her cardigans to wear over it. It’s slightly too big; the sleeves hang a couple of inches past my wrists. And it’s camel-coloured, which is a shocking clash with cobalt blue. All in all, I’m not sure it makes me look any saner. Plus it’s still a stupidly hot night, and the windowless consultation room feels tight and stuffy. After a couple of minutes, I remove the cardigan and hand it wordlessly to Dr Barbara, who folds it in her lap.
My talk with the psychiatrist lasts no time at all. He asks me a dozen questions and I reply with monosyllables wherever I can. Sometimes, I’m forced to speak a full sentence, but anything more than that seems an insurmountable effort. I tell him I just want to sleep, and soon enough my wish is granted. I sign my own committal form – the one that says the hospital can keep me until such a time as they deem me ready for release – and then I’m led by a nurse to a single room on an unremarkable ward a couple of floors up. It would be too disruptive to put me anywhere else for the moment.
I’m given a hospital gown and some disposable underwear to change into, and Dr Barbara sits with me while the nurse asks questions about my recent alcohol consumption – what, when and how much. Once she’s satisfied that it’s safe, she brings me a tiny beaker containing two diazepam.
‘Dr Barbara?’
It’s the first time in about an hour that I’ve spoken without being asked a direct question, and my voice sounds like it’s coming from far, far away.
‘Yes, Abby?’
‘I know I have no right to ask . . .’
‘Go ahead and ask.’
‘Would you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep. I don’t think it will be very long.’
Dr Barbara smiles and places her hand on mine. ‘Of course. And I’ll be back in the evening. I don’t know if you’ll be awake by then, but I’ll be back.’
‘Thank you.’
There’s nothing else to say. I take my diazepam, and not long after, I drop into a black, bottomless sleep.
15
SHARPS
I was awoken around midday, groggy and disorientated. A nurse was tapping me on my shoulder, long after most would have given up. She told me that she’d also been in at eight, with breakfast, but it had proven impossible to rouse me. ‘Dead to the world, you were.’
I didn’t reply. The comment was pointless. I didn’t want to get involved in a pointless conversation.
‘Still, lunch soon,’ she went on. ‘Can’t have you missing a second meal.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said. ‘I just want to sleep.’
The nurse tutted in a way that suggested what I wanted was no longer relevant. ‘Doctors’ orders,’ she insisted. ‘I’m to make sure you eat before we move you.’
I shrugged – or tried to shrug – my heavy shoulders to let her know that I wasn’t going to play her ridiculous game. I had no curiosity about what the doctors had planned for the next twenty-four hours. I told her that if they wanted to move me to another ward, they could just as well do it while I slept. I had no intention of getting up.
‘You’re not going to a different ward,’ the nurse countered. ‘You’re going to a different hospital. St Charles. It’s all been arranged. They’re expecting you mid-afternoon.’
‘I can’t walk,’ I persisted. ‘I’m too tired.’
The nurse smiled benevolently. ‘You don’t have to walk. One of the porters will be very happy to take you down to the ambulance in a wheelchair. After lunch.’
‘I’m too tired to chew,’ I told her. It was childish but I didn’t care. The thought of food made me sick.
‘It’s soup,’ the nurse said. ‘You don’t have to chew, either.’
Someone from the psychiatric liaison team came in immediately after lunch. He told me I was being moved to St Charles because it had a specialized mental health unit and would provide a much more suitable environment for my recovery. But I knew this was just a euphemism. What he really meant was that they had locked wards there. That was why it would be more suitable.
At two o’clock, with my blue dress and my handbag and my Harvey Nichols underwear heaped in my lap, I was wheeled down to the ambulance and driven a couple of miles across west London to another imposing Victorian hospital. Same stained brickwork and turrets and daunting iron gates. The only difference was that it was in a nicer part of the city. Instead of a maximum-security prison next door, there was a Carmelite monastery.
The ambulance passed through the open gates and followed a small road to the back of the hospital complex, where the mental health unit was housed in its own three-storey annexe. In contrast to its almost Gothic surroundings, the mental health unit was as modern and nondescript as a newly built block of flats, the sort of building you’d pass on the street without a second glance. Inside, it was obvious that every element of the décor – from the bright blue carpets to the potted rubber plants – had been chosen to reinforce the impression that this was not a hospital at all. The only thing that gave the game away was the doors. Past reception, they were all magnetically locked and could only be opened with staff key cards.
They took me through to a ward called Nile. The wards were all named after rivers for some reason. There was also Amazon, Danube, Ganges and Thames. I never found out why. Maybe it was another way to make the mental unit seem less institutional. Maybe there was some other hidden significance. All I found out, upon my admission, was that Nile was the psychiatric intensive care ward. It was a closed ward housing the psychotics, the suicidal and those deemed at high risk of absconding. It should have been called Styx.