When I was working on the psychiatry ward

We were in the ‘ward round’ room, which is where the patients on the psychiatry ward come to be examined. The chairs are too heavy for the patients to lift, our comfortable seats are positioned right next to the only exit and the room has a clean, clinical feel to it. “This is clearly our bastion,” I thought to myself, amused, as we got ready to see our first patient for the day.

The door opened and in walked a young girl in her late teens. She was neatly dressed with her hair tucked away under her hijab, looking like a girl in her mother’s clothing. Her hands were held stiffly at her side, bent at the elbow, almost making the ‘prayer’ sign but not quite. I knew that she had recently suffered a bout of bipolar affective disorder, during which she had commanded her in-laws to ‘do as she bid’ as she was the reigning Queen of Persia. Knowing her to be a docile girl who always respected her elders, they panicked and rang 999. Just in time, as it turns out, because she soon grabbed a knife and began threatening them with dire consequences.

I watched her as she stared at some fixed point on her horizon, roughly 10 cm to my side. She looked lost but also hopeful, like a child wandering the shores of a sea, waiting for her father to return. I began the interview and, although she answered sensibly, it did not feel as though she was in the same room as me. Halfway through my insipid questioning, she suddenly leant forward and, reaching out, asked me, “My baby...where is my baby? Please, I want to see her.”

I knew that her episode of illness had struck cruelly, one month after she had given birth. She continued to appear distraught but, as I watched, her face cleared and the emotion slipped away, just as quickly as it had appeared.  She stood up and walked purposefully to the cabinet on the far side of the room, standing alone in that desolate place.

“I know where my discharge papers are,” she said, as she began opening one empty drawer after the next.

I walked towards her, knowing she would not find what she needed. “You’re searching for something that isn’t here,” I said, gently, as I put my arm around her.

The fight went out of her. She strode away from me and started pacing the room instead, not frantically as though an end were in sight, but purposelessly as though no end could satisfy.  Halfway through her third lap, she stopped and placed her hands to her ears. A stream of Arabic flowed out of her mouth as she rocked to and fro.

After finishing, she sat down opposite us and said, “My mother asked me to pray just now. Good children obey their parents.”

 “Do you often hear her?” I asked.

“Sometimes...I hear my father more often. He is telling me that I am weak, that I should find my daughter, that she needs me, that I’m a bad mother,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion as though the words did not affect her.

“She’s with her father,” I said.

A week later, as I stepped into the doctors’ office to grab my bag before heading off for lunch, Natasha stopped me. “Have you heard about the Muslim girl’s baby?” she asked. I shook my head. My heart jumped suddenly in irrational fear.

 “Died last night...cot-death, they think. Sad, isn’t it...”

Nausea was overpowering my insides as I nodded and let Natasha finish. My skin went cold. Putting down my bag, I found my feet making their way to the ‘ward round’ room. I walked towards our empty cabinet and took hold of it. One of the nurses caught sight of me and asked me what I was doing. “There is nothing in this. It shouldn’t be here...” I muttered, as I dragged it down the corridor, anger giving me the strength I needed.