Progression

I woke hearing ‘breakfast time’ being shouted from all angles. One of the nurses shook my arm and I let out a gasp. She looked at me and smiled, ‘c’mon Nel, breakfast.’ I didn’t know where I was. I looked around the room to see three beds, mine nearest the glass wall that faced the wards front desk which was permanently manned. There were curtains to divide the beds for privacy, but they never seemed to be pulled because the nurses wanted to be able to look into the room from the desk and see the three ladies in the beds; it was called an observation bay. There was a wet room in the corner with a toilet, sink and shower, but no lock. It was obvious I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

I sat up and threw my legs out of the side of the bed and looked at the ground, the floor covered in yellow linoleum. I saw my feet; they were bare and dirty. I stood up and all the blood rushed from my head making me quickly sit down again; I didn’t feel myself, I felt very groggy like there was a blanket over my brain. I looked at myself and saw that I was wearing ‘the Simpsons’ pyjama bottoms and a green long-sleeved t-shirt. I felt something on the right side of my neck. I automatically put my hand to it to see what it was. Stuck to my skin was a bandage. Then I looked at my wrists and they were covered in bandages as well. Suddenly I remembered what had happened and frantically tried to take them off to get to the stitch’s underneath. 

Bells started going off in the background and loads of people hurried into the room. I tried to fend them off but to no avail. I was quickly pinned to my bed, being held down by four nurses a fifth trying to put pressure my neck to try to stop the bleeding. Through the struggle I heard one of them say ‘hurry up; I can’t hold her much longer’. That’s when I felt the needle spike go into my left upper arm. ‘Stop struggling Nel, let the drugs work, you’re going to be ok’ someone said from the crowd. My head began to feel lighter; I was beginning to calm down. My eyes saw white, and the nurse’s voices became distant and distorted as I drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke, I looked around to find one of the friendliest faces on the planet, my mom. 
‘Hi honey’ she said gently stroking my cheek. 
‘Where am I?’ I asked her confused and groggy. 
‘You’re in the hospital, remember?’ She said with a forced smile on her face trying to hold back the tears. 
I rolled over onto my side, my back facing the nurses’ station so I could face her. 
It was the first time I was aware others were in the beds beside me. The woman in the middle bed was asleep, but the other woman by the window was crying hysterically. A nurse entered the room, went over to the crying woman, handed her a glass of water and what looked like pills. 
‘That will help you feel better Mary’ he said to her in a Northern Ireland drawl, as he watched her swallow the tablets making her show him her empty mouth after she had finished the water. 
‘You rest there now Mary, ok’ he said to the woman as she lay down facing the opened window and listened to the water feature outside in the garden.

‘How long have I been here?’ I asked my mother. 
‘Only a couple of days honey’ she replied. My head felt fuzzy, like my thoughts were flying. My neck was re-stitched and bandaged once more. My clothes and bed linen were covered in blood; my mom had a towel covering most of it because she didn’t need a reminder of the events that got me there in the first place. 
‘How long was I asleep?’ I asked. 
‘A few hours honey’ she smiled, her bottom lip quivering. ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ she asked, ‘did I do something wrong?’ 
‘Mom I’m sorry’ I said as tears rolled down my cheeks.
Mom started crying but still tried to look strong. ‘I called your father’ she informed me.
‘What? You did what? What did you do that for?’ I sat up quickly, panic arose in my voice.
The nurse at the station hurried in after signalling to one of her colleges who followed. ‘Is everything ok in here?’ she asked. 
‘She called my dad!’ I said as I pointed to my mom and started to cry.
‘What else could I do Nel, he’s your father, and he needed to know. He needed to know that his daughter tried to kill herself because that bastard he calls a father sexually abused you for the past three years!’ she said, tears running down her face. 
‘I’m sorry mom’ I managed to get out between sobs. 
‘Ok, ok, ok’ a few nurses came in to intervene. One took my mom out of the room whilst the others tried to calm me down. During the kafuffle I didn’t notice anyone with a syringe until I felt the needle pierce into my left upper arm again. I tried to challenge the drugs in my system but lost miserably. 

‘Breakfast time’ I awoke to once again, and once again I swung my feet onto the floor. There was a nurse sitting beside my bedside locker who had looked over me all night. I was on ‘special’. It meant that I wasn’t safe enough to be alone. My hand went to my neck, and I could feel the bandages, but the nurse caught my hand before I could do any harm. My tummy dictated that I needed food in the form of a rumble; to my knowledge I hadn’t eaten in days. ‘C’mon and try and eat something’ the nurse insisted helping me up. Between the drugs and the fact, I was a risk to myself, when I did get up, I was escorted with a nurse on either side of me. 

They walked me out of the observation bay and took me to the right where I came upon a widening in the corridor, an alcove with tables facing out onto the garden. They sat me down and all I could do was stare at the place setting in front of me. Everything was plastic. There was a spork; it was a spoon with a few teeth at the tip. They had taken away my plastic knife. ‘Hiya I’m Mary’ I heard a woman call out but paid no heed. None of the other inpatients took my attention away from the fact that I was hungry. A nurse put a bowl of porridge in front of me. I stared it down for as long as I could before someone came over to me and said, ‘you have to eat something Nel to keep your strength up.’ I picked up the spork and stuck it in the porridge. As I moved it around my eyes were on the bandages on my wrists. It was a reminder of how I failed; I failed to kill myself and I failed to stop my grandfather abusing me; I began to cry. 

A nurse came over and sat beside me to ask how I was doing. I told her everything. That was the first time I talked to them. ‘Would you like a nice bath?’ she asked me. ‘Sure’ I answered, after all it wasn’t nice being stuck in clothes with dried blood on them. ‘I need you to take your pills first though, okay’ I was not engaging in eye contact with them because I was so ashamed of myself. I was so tired and dirty that I would have jumped through hoops to get a bath. It was a victory for the both of us; I took my tablets and got my bath. 

Once in fresh clothes the nurse blow dried my hair with a hairdryer. I was too tired to fight back. The next few days continued in this manner. In honesty I slept for most of them. Mom came to visit every day and to my delight she told dad not to come; I was unable for conflict. The doctor said I had borderline personality disorder and was extremely suicidal. Borderline personality disorder was the same as emotionally unstable personality disorder. It meant that I was super sensitive to my emotions and that I found it harder than most to manage them.

When I got my stitches out the doctors slowly started reducing my tranquilisers. This made me more aware. I was complying with taking my medication and was taken off ‘special’. I walked out of the observation bay to stretch my legs. I turned to the left of the nurses’ station, the women’s side. To my surprise I found there was under floor heating which was great because I didn’t earn the privilege of socks yet. The first door to my right was a TV room with a fabulous long crème leather couch. The next room on the right was a senses room. It had a water feature in it and a CD player that was allowed be used under supervision. It also had bean bag chairs and a projector pointed at the ceiling emitting the stars in the night sky. I ventured further and to my astonishment found three private bedrooms. I could feel the nurses keeping their eyes on me; I was still a danger to myself after all. 

I walked back to my bed and lay down for a while, drifting into sleep. ‘Nel, Nel’ I heard a nurse call out to me. I opened my eyes. ‘Would you like to do some art therapy?’ she asked. Of course, I jumped to the idea; I loved art. I went into the room off the nurses’ station and met the instructor, Louise. She explained that there was to be art making for thirty minutes and then we were going to talk about our work and what feelings came up for us for thirty minutes. I was surprised at how much I got out of the class. Afterwards she informed me that the class was held every Wednesday morning from 11.30 to 12.30 and that I did great work.

I only had time to wash my hands before they were trying to stuff more food down my throat. I became to associate food with pills, because they both came at the same time. I resented both but played ball in order to get the hell out of there. The more I cooperated, the more they reduced the sedation making me more alert and active. I came to realise that there was a partition between the male and female side in the form of a wooden sliding door. There were no mobile phones or internet or music. There were no strings on my pyjama bottoms or a tie for my dressing gown. 

A trust emerged between myself and the nurses and that was rewarded in the form of not having someone watch me have a shower; instead, they stood outside the door and peeked in every couple of minutes until that stopped also. Like every patient I was checked on every fifteen minutes and like every patient my locker was searched twice daily.

After three weeks the doctor looked at me and said, ‘I’m hearing great things about you Nel, and have decided you can go out onto the main ward.’ I didn’t know what he meant about the main ward, but I knew it was a step in the right direction. 

That afternoon the exit door opened, and I went from a maximum-security ward to a medium security ward. I would have preferred no ward at all but was willing to take the win and smiled.