A: Chapters 1 &; 2

Running Away

Chapter One

From where I was lying, I could only see the upstairs of the houses we
passed. Most of the windows were unlit, showing nothing. The few
upstairs lights were little beacons of life. A crying baby, perhaps, at
that one. A kid who liked the hall light left on. Someone's chilly
mid-night walk to the bathroom. Insomnia, maybe, or the night shift. I,
at least, hadn't been the only one awake. Probably not even the only
one awake making desperate phonecalls.

Pete's bulk was acting as a partial buffer between me and that
street-lit world passing by outside, but when he swayed or leant
across, more of it burst painfully into my vision. I'd never met him or
the other guy before but I knew them perfectly. They were 'staff',
people there to look after you. A kind of institutional family who
you're supposed to trust.

My mother, irritatingly, had instilled one thing in me when I was
young. "Don't trust strangers". Then she buggered off and left me with
social services.

The ambulance slowed. Why did traffic lights have to stop us in this
dead time of the night? They were a ceaseless, pointless rotation of
head-hurting, ambulance-delaying lights. Everyone marched and halted to
their tune, or else. Inside the vehicle, the loose seat straps rattled
and clunked, and as we stopped my stomach threatened to spew its
contents again. My skull ached.

I fought the urge to jump out. It would be easy. That red lever would
open the door, and then I would never have to get there. Escape. I
could slip into the darkness. Get lost among the sleeping people's
houses. Disappear. It was seductive. Running away? Wasn't that the
trouble in the first place?

Oh well, they wouldn't let me get far anyway.

I tried to imagine Pete as somebody's Dad. To me he was just 'staff'. A
good one, a nice one. But still, Paramedic, Teacher, Social Worker, you
saw the same ones over and over again. I couldn't even imagine him in
civvies. Did he and the driver go out drinking on a Friday night? Would
he wear jeans? Embarrassing jumpers? I couldn't see past the uniform.
Only then I remembered. It was Friday night. Well, Saturday morning.
That was the whole problem.

"How are you feeling Jenny? Any aches and pains?"
"My head. And I still feel sicky."
"Hang in there. They'll give you some stuff to sort that out when we
get there. Not very nice, but it does the trick."
"Which hospital are we going to?"
"Bristol City . Only the best A &;amp; E department for you."

He talked to me like it was a script, the reassuring quips thrown in to
make the situation more bearable. It worked, I guess. He had been like
that at the house, too, asking me if I had put the fish out and
switched off the cat. The other one - the driver - only talked to Pete,
not to me. He looked more bored, and mentioned a nice cuppa tea once
they were done with me.

"May I?"
Pete took my pulse again. It must have been OK because he didn't say
anything else.

Chapter Two

Accident and Emergency seems too dramatic a description for the
department I was delivered to. It was like waiting to be served in a
village pub while the landlord passes the time of day with the world
and his wife. You try to smile politely but they don't even seem to
notice you. You're irrelevant.

A male nurse helped Pete escort me to a clinic room, but only after
they'd stood chatting together for a few minutes. He sat me down on a
bed with a paper strip running down the middle. I don't know his name
because he left then and never came back.

It must be slow, during the night. Even a Friday night, once the pubs
and clubs are shut and the puke and bloody noses are dealt with.

It wasn't so long ago I'd waited for Matt at the police station. That
was a bit like this place. The colour of the paint was the same, and
the police officers bustled about with the same authority as the nurses
and doctors here. And that all started on a Friday night, too.

He'd have got off with a warning if only they hadn't searched him. He
gets - got - so boisterous and funny when he was drunk. He'd danced out
of the doors of Sullivan's at chucking out time, nearly pirouetting
onto the bouncer, and then plucked a handful of plants - complete with
earth covered roots - out of a nearby tub and presented them to me. I
tried to stop giggling enough to reprimand him, but one of the bouncers
got there first, hauled him back to his feet and rammed him into the
wall. The police, who happened to be cruising by to monitor late night
rowdiness, stepped in to stop the bouncers and were just going to give
him a telling off, but then they found the wrap.

I had to follow the police van in a taxi. The station was dreary and
sobering. No one told me what was going on. They made us wait ages, but
Matt wasn't charged in the end, and once they'd cleaned up his face we
were eventually able to go.

It was so late, it was early, and we watched the sky lighten as we
walked back by the river. Matt couldn't stop saying sorry. "I don't
care," I kept saying, but he wouldn't shut up. "I'm the crappiest,
shitest boyfriend," he kept saying, until I sat on a bench and refused
to move. "But it's freezing," he said.
"So, promise to shut up and we can go," I said. He held my hand and
kept his mouth shut then, but he still kept looking at me
sheepishly.

"Hi there Jenny. How are you feeling?"
I hadn't really thought about that for a while. Sorry, maybe? Tired,
very tired. Starting the mother of all hangovers, definitely.

This nurse was called Sally. She asked lots of questions, so I asked
her name.
"What did you take, Jenny?"
"Just Paracetamol." Just some stupid tablets. A pathetic attempt, no
style, no individuality. A drunken lonely decision I couldn't even
follow through on.
She wrote my answer down.
"How many?"
"About 40." How many shrunken white circles had come back up in my
puke? Did they count?
She wrote it down.
"Any alcohol?"
"A bit. I wanted to sleep." That was what messed everything up. Spirits
always make me cry.
She wrote that down.
"How much did you drink?"
"Pretty much a whole bottle of Jack Daniels." Not enough to get
through.
She wrote that down and gave me a look.
"Have you taken any other drugs tonight?" How stupid are you, she
seemed to be asking. Is it worth our while, or shall we just write you
off?
"Nah, I'm clean." Could have done. Should have done, maybe. I'd found
Matt's stash and stared at it for ages.
She wrote that down.
"Is there anyone we can contact for you?"
Is there?
"Mum..?"
Gone.
"Dad..?"
Who was he?
"Partner..?"
Gone.
"Anyone?"
Matt's parents? No, they didn't deserve this, not now. Friends? Holly,
who was miles away in Brighton? I hadn't seen her in a year. The
others? They didn't need all this. And, if they hadn't heard, then I'd
have to face telling them, and the questions, and the pity.
"No, there's no one."
She wrote that down. Then she took my pulse, measured my blood pressure
and looked at me for a while, writing things in little boxes.
"We'll have to give you something to make you sick." And she
left.

I thought that was the questions done with, but then later, after the
doctor had looked at me and I'd puked up the charcoal, another nurse
came in.
"What did you take?"
"How many?"
"Any Alcohol?"
"Do you take drugs?"
"Is there anyone we can contact for you?"
Sally did all this, I said.
"I know."
Do we have to, I asked.
"We do."
She checked my pulse and blood pressure, and stuck a needle in my hand.
She looked at me and filled in some boxes.
"Any dizziness?"
"Headache?"
"Nausea?"
She left, but later she was back to do it all again.

I wondered when breakfast would come, but I needn't have bothered,
because it didn't. Sally had fetched me a jug of water earlier, but I'd
finished that. Now I really needed to pee. There was a panel of buttons
lying next to me on the bed. One was for emergencies, I think, and
there was another one with a symbol that looked like the one you get
for an air hostess on a flight. I didn't want to call anyone, though,
even though they seemed to have forgotton I was there. I wasn't in a
cubicle. I was in this room on my own instead, and it must have been in
a side corridor, because hardly anyone went past except a man wheeling
a linen trolley, who passed my door a few times in the early
morning.

Peering into the corridor, I couldn't see any sign of a toilet. I tried
to remember which way we'd come in, and retraced the route. I came
first to a big office with the door open. There were lots of staff in
there, but no-one I recognised, and they didn't notice me hovering.
Further on, I realised from the red lines taped on the floor that this
was the way to the ambulance bay. I hadn't come in the public route.
The scuffed rubber swing doors let in a draught, and I stood there,
looking out. I could go. I'd be OK now.

But I really needed to pee.
"You OK there honey?" The soft voice came from a doorway to my left,
where a nurse was stirring a cup of coffee and smiling at me. The staff
kitchen.
"You look lost, can I help?"
"Yeah, thanks. I was looking for the toilet."
"Right through here, honey. Don't worry, just come through." She led me
through the kitchen and showed me where the toilet was.

"Now then," she said when I got back to the kitchen, "I've just come on
duty, but I'm guessing that you're the young lady who took some tablets
last night, right?"
I nodded.
"And you've been waiting around for this doctor to turn up, and he's
still not here, even though they bleeped him three times."
Maybe there was someone else here who took tablets too.
"I think I saw a doctor earlier, actually. But it was a woman."
"Jackie? Oh, yes. No, it's the psych reg you're waiting for."
"I am?"

In fact, the psychiatric registrar, Rasheed, didn't turn up until two.
I'd asked them if I could go, but they kept on saying I had to wait for
him. Waiting seemed easier, so I did. Polly, the one from the kitchen,
had made me a coffee to take back to my little room, but I still hadn't
had anything to eat.

He wanted to know how I was feeling. Not my head, or my pulse, or my
tummy, but me. It was harder. I wasn't prepared for it after all this
waiting. "Why did you take the tablets?" he asked.
"I didn't want to live anymore."
He didn't write anything down, he just waited for me to continue. I
knew why I'd taken them, I just didn't know how much to say. The
thought of Friday night on my own again? Sitting alone in the front
room where I watched my boyfriend die waiting for the ambulance?
Because this is how my life is and always will be? Me, alone and left
behind again. Because I can't stand the thought of having to find
someone to moor onto again, and I can't stand the thought of not?
"How about now? Do you still feel you want to die?"
I couldn't help it. Suddenly I was choking on these gut-wrenching sobs,
uncontrollable ones that came up from I don't know where. And it wasn't
because I wished I was dead, or because I was glad I was alive. It was
just because I remembered all the reasons, and none of them had gone
away. I wanted someone - Polly, Rasheed, Pete, anyone - to pick me up,
to gather me in their arms and tell me it would be all right. To tell
me they'd look after me.
"Have you done anything like this before?" he prompted me.
I shook my head.
"What made you call the ambulance?"
I remembered picking up the phone, desperate to hear a voice. Was it
because I panicked? Because I was afraid I was going to die? How dumb
that sounded.

I thought I might have to leave after I saw him. They had kept saying
to just wait until I'd seen him, then I could go. But he recommended I
was admitted to a psychiatric bed. I wanted to say no, but then why was
I blinking back tears of relief? He had picked me up.

Chapter 3