Madness Read Free

good.’
    â€˜Terrific. Am I cured then?’
    â€˜Do you still want to die?’
    â€˜I still want to die.’
    He walks away, I walk away.
    Lisa B takes us for a walk under the trees in the park. Moving with anything like a purpose feels odd. We are bats suddenly blinded by light, we are awkward in the open space, unsure of the intent of our feet, except one young man, who takes off with the wind, running across the spiky grass in his big army boots, his arms stretched out toward the horizon either side of the sky.
    Lisa B calls to him.
    â€˜Fuck off!’ he shouts. He’s tall and young and strong and he covers the ground at speed. Now Lisa’s running too, lightly and fast, while the rest of us stand in an uncertain gaggle, bemused, shivering in spite of the sun.
    Linda is my second roommate.
    â€˜Have you got a cigarette?’ she asks, and gives me a toothless smile.
    â€˜No,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’
    â€˜Can I have your jumper then?’
    â€˜Um . . . no.’ I say. ‘Sorry. I’ve got some coffee, if you’d like.’
    â€˜Are you married?’ she asks.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜I am. Yesterday I was going to marry Peter, but today I’m in love with Darren.’ She takes the coffee in a paper cup and disappears up the corridor. Later I return to our room to find all my clothes missing from the wardrobe. I sigh.
    â€˜I’ve washed them,’ Linda says. Lying on the shower floor are indeed all my clothes – bras, knickers, socks, jeans– in a sodden, soapy pile. I’m back to the orange hospital pyjamas.
    â€˜Darren’s taking me out tonight,’ Linda says, sitting on my bed. ‘We’re gonna do it, you know . . . sex . . . there’s this aura above us, sparkling, that’s why it’s gonna be tonight.’ She starts to cry. I move over to her, almost touching her, we sit in the silence, quite still. She sniffs, ‘I need him.’ Linda leaves the curtain open while she undresses. Her belly is round as a cantaloupe and the skin of her torso and limbs is crazed, dusky pink as though minute rivers have eroded away its softness. Immolation?
    I work with the ward psychologist on the tenets of cognitive-behavioural therapy: cognitions, assumptions, beliefs and behaviours. We discuss body image, I tell her my theory of the floating consciousness – freed from the body, free to inhabit the expanse of the universe much as a gas expands into the entire space in which it finds itself. She looks faintly troubled. Her hair is shining, it matches her eyes.
    â€˜There are some blank spaces,’ I tell her, ‘in my head.’
    â€˜Close your eyes,’ she says. ‘Concentrate on your breathing. Feel your feet on the floor. Now feel your calves, your thighs as they touch the seat. Your stomach, your back, your neck, your arms and hands, your fingers.’ Her voice is soft. In the quiet the world reaches in from the outside. There is space around her words, for a moment I feel whole.
    Then I meet a new patient at breakfast.
    â€˜All the usual suspects,’ he says.
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜That was a rhetorical statement, bitch.’
    I look up at him. ‘Oh.’ I say, confused.
    â€˜Listen,’ he grabs my hair and leans into my face. ‘I’m going to get my shotgun and shove it up your arse.’ He says it very quietly, very intently.
    I believe him.
    â€˜Keep away from me,’ he hisses, letting me go.
    I walk outside. Linda is talking on her mobile. She’s wearing a long skirt, black and red, shimmery. On top she has a super tight skivvy to show off her belly. Rachel is talking with people from the Mental Health Review Board. ‘No, I’m completely cured,’ she says. ‘Actually, I was never sick in the first place, just overwrought.’
    â€˜Do you think the medication helps?’
    â€˜It makes me dopey. I can’t think