“I would look for a place to stay and for work to do. I am able to work.”
“Not at your old job, perhaps.”
“Ordinary labourer. I could do ordinary labour. I know building sites. That I could do. Ordinary labouring.”
“You feel you could do this?”
“Yes, I feel I could do this.”
“How would you find a place to live?”
“I would go to the Municipal Available Local Lodgings Clearing Office.”
Dr Valspitter looks approving, nods and makes a note. “Good. And how would you find work?”
The obvious next question. “I would approach building site managers, but also I would go to the Municipal Local Employment Exchange.”
The doctor makes another note. I think I’m doing all right here. I need to. I have to get out. I have to get away.
Last night I found I could not sleep and took another small-hours wander along the corridor, down the stairwell and along to what I still thought of as the silent ward. I could not help it; I felt drawn there. I don’t think that’s what woke me up but once I was awake I found myself thinking obsessively about the rows of still beds with their vacant-eyed, near-silent patients, and the contrast with their appearance in daylight when they were awake. I couldn’t think what good padding down to look at them would do, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do either and maybe just seeing them for real rather than in my mind’s eye would let me get back to sleep eventually.
So I went, I looked – they were all just the same, though there were cards and personal items on the bedside cabinets and a few chairs scattered throughout the ward, all the things I’d convinced myself hadn’t been present on my first two visits but which I suppose were always there – then I came back again.
There was somebody in my room. I had left the door closed and my light off, but now I could see some light showing beneath the door, reflecting dimly off the shiny floor. At first, of course, I thought it would just be the duty nurse again.
Then I saw more movement, at the far end of the corridor, somewhere inside the day room. A pale figure, moving across the dark space, disappearing then reappearing and coming towards the low lights of the corridor. The figure in the day room emerged into the half-light of the night-dimmed corridor lights and was revealed as the duty nurse, walking back to his desk at the end of the corridor holding a magazine and flicking its pages, intent on it. He did not look up, so did not see me.
I felt a sudden terror and shrank back against the wall as far as I could, hiding behind a metal cupboard holding fire-fighting equipment. The duty nurse sat down at his station at the far end of the corridor, feet up on the desk, still flicking through the magazine. He stretched out to one side – I could hear the wheels of his chair squeaking – and turned on the radio at a low volume. Tinny pop music sounded.
I could no longer see the door to my room. Who was in there if not the nurse? Was it my former attacker, whoever had tried to interfere with me? Perhaps I ought to go to the door, fling it open, confront them, the noise and commotion of course attracting the attention of the duty nurse. Or perhaps I should just approach the duty nurse directly and tell him there was somebody in my room, let him deal with whoever it was.
I had decided on the latter course and was about to step out from behind the fire-equipment cupboard and walk towards the duty nurse’s station, when, from the far end of the corridor, I heard a toilet flush.
A door creaked and closed. I stepped along the wall to the nearest door, twisted the handle and let myself in. This should be a private visiting room, empty at this time of night. Sound came from somewhere near the toilets. Slipper-slapping footsteps came, and I recognised one of the old boys, a not-quite slack-jaw capable of holding a conversation and talking about something other than television or the weather. He went, head hunched, past where I watched via the cracked door.
Somebody said something and he looked up, waving down the corridor, no doubt at the duty nurse. I opened the door a little further to watch him go. When he was opposite the door to my room, a couple of doors short of his own room, the door to my room was flung open and light spilled out. “Mr Kel?” I heard a strong male voice say.
The old guy stood looking confused, staring blinking at whoever had addressed him from my room and then down the corridor. I heard seat wheels squeal as the nurse said something, voice inflected in a question.
Then a bright light shone into the old fellow’s face, he put his hand up to shield his eyes, the duty nurse shouted something, the bright light went out and a man – tall, well-built, in a dark suit – went running past me and away down the corridor towards the stair well. He held a chunky-looking torch in one hand. In the other hand he was carrying something else. He thrust it inside his jacket as he ran past me. It was dark and heavy-looking and I knew it was a gun.
So:
“Can I leave?” I ask Dr Valspitter. “Can I go? Please?”
She smiles. “Perhaps. I will need other doctor to come to same opinion, but I think you can.”
“Wonderful! Can we get other doctor, their opinion, today?”
“You are in such a hurry to leave?”
“I am. I want to get out,” I say. “Today.”
She shakes her head, frowning just a little. “Not today. Maybe tomorrow if other doctor agrees with me and we can complete all required paperwork and provide you with clothing and belongings and money and so on. Maybe tomorrow. I cannot promise. But soon, I think. Maybe tomorrow. We shall see. You must understand. You must be patient.”
I want to protest, but I am aware that I have pushed things quite far enough already. If I seem too desperate to get out they might take that as a sign that I’m unbalanced or neurotic or something. I do my best to smile. “Tomorrow, then,” I say. “I hope,” I add, before the frowning doctor can reiterate that it’s still only maybe.
“No!” I wail, staring at the two beige pills lying in the bottom of the little cup. The cup is colourless, translucent plastic, and tiny; a stingy measure of drink if you were serving spirits in it, and yet to me it seems like it’s as deep, dark and dangerous as a mine shaft. I stare hopelessly into it and despair. “I not want to!” I am aware that I sound like a recalcitrant child.
“You must,” the old nurse tells me. She is starting to lose patience with me, I can tell. “They harmless, Mr Kel. They give you a good night’s sleep, that’s all.”
“But I sleep good!”
“Doctor say you must have them, Mr Kel,” the old nurse tells me firmly, as though this trumps everything. “Do you want me to go and get doctor?”
This is a threat. If she fetches a doctor and I still refuse to take the sleeping pills I may well find that such a protest too will count against me when I ask to be released from the clinic. “Please not make me,” I say, biting my bottom lip. Perhaps I can appeal to her emotions. This is only partially an act. However, she is not moved. She has seen it all before. Perhaps a younger nurse might have been persuaded but this old one is taking no nonsense.
“Very well, we get doctor.” She turns to go and I have to reach out to her and say,
“No! All right!” She turns back, and at least has the decency not to look smug. “I take them,” I tell her.
First line of defence: I think I can fool her and just keep the pills under my tongue until she has gone and then spit them out, but she insists on inspecting my mouth afterwards and so I have no choice but to swallow them.
Second line of defence: I’ll go to the toilets and throw them up. But the nurse is watching for me to do this as she goes down the corridor dispensing drugs and twice shoos me back to bed with the threat that she’ll inject me with a sedative if I insist on going to the toilets. She knows I already went not ten minutes ago.
Third line of defence: I’ll throw up here in my room, into my water jug or out of the window if I have to. I can sign myself out voluntarily if I have to. Everything subsequently will be harder if I have done so – the finding a place to live and a job and so on – but not impossible. I am not stupid, I can survive.