Blue Lagoon

When Louise woke, all she could see were bright florescent lights above her that were flickering. ‘Did I do it?’ she asked herself. ‘Is this heaven?’ When she moved her head to the side, she could see her husband, Tony, asleep on the chair beside her bed. She noticed that he had aged ten years since the last time she had seen him.

She tried to get up when she felt pressure on both her wrists. She looked down and saw two massive bandages, one on each hand, and began to have a panic attack when the realisation kicked in that she was in fact still alive. She tried to move her arms in order to try to help herself calm down, but there were two soft restraints on either arm which made her panic even more.

‘Tony!’ she said sounding raspy, her throat sore from the tube that had she had to breathe through initially due to the extent of her overdose before she cut her wrists. She cleared her throat and called for Tony again, this time louder and with more force.

Tony jumped in the chair and Louise could see him look around him before fixing his gaze on her. He quickly lept out of the seat and hugged her so tightly, she felt trapped. When he finally let go, she noticed the tears stream freely down his snow white freckly cheeks, his face contorted in a way that showed her he was in pain.

Louise was still struggling, so Tony pushed the call button. When the nurse came, she nodded at him, and left again. The same nurse and one of her colleagues arrived into the room with a fully loaded syringe. They put it in the canula that was stuck in the crook of Louise’s arm and immediately she began to feel as though she was flying.

It was like she had been transported to another world, a world full of green. She could hear water gushing from somewhere and went to investigate with the aid of her machete. During her investigation, she sliced through the heavy, waxy leaf bushes as she followed her instincts as to where the water was flowing from. She finally came to a blue lagoon where she facing massive rockfaces on all sides of her. She looked up in awe at the magnitude of the waterfall that was pounding into the cove. She took off all of her clothes except her bra and panties, and dived into the deep, warm water. She thought she saw a glimmer of a cave behind the gush of water coming from above. She decided to float under the weight of the water beating down, and found it to be the best sensation she could have ever experienced. She felt exhilarated. She swam through the sheet of water and entered the small cave.

For some reason, she could feel herself moving and noticed the inlet was lit with electric lights, something she found to be odd. She looked up for the first time and was met with a man with such kind eyes, the rest of his face covered by a mask, and began to scream croakily. She saw him inject a syringe of medication into the canula on her arm before taking the canula out. She could feel her body relax, but the lagoon was no more.

She was greeted at the back door of the special care ward by none other than three nurses. She doesn’t remember what happened then, all she knew was that she woke up to a smooth ceiling that looked as though it was freshly painted.

Louise turned her head to the left, and was met by a mustard yellow curtain. She looked towards the right and found herself to be two meters between her bed and a desk. She noticed who she thought to be nurses flying around the desk like mosquitos. She saw that all of the swarm were wearing matching name badges and began to scream. She had come the realisation that she was in a hospital, but not just any hospital! She was in special care of the mental health hospital she had been in twice before. She watched the nurses run into her as she lashed out at her newly operated wrists, not recognising any of them because of the masks.

As the bells went off in the distance, more and more them hurried into the ward through an air locked door. They tried to restrain her in her tiny area, but she was very strong and powerful when she needed to be, so after twenty minutes she felt the sharp sting of a needle enter her upper left arm. She fought the drugs for as long as she could. She was so forceful in fact that they gave her a second dose of medication to calm her down. She doesn’t remember much after that.

As the days rolled on, the alarms rang on a regular basis and she was given multiple injections. Louise vaguely remembers taking tablets that were offered to her and once they began to build up in her system, she became more manageable. She remembers having to be supervised when having a shower and a nurse always standing outside the toilet door, popping their heads in every few minutes as she was trying to urinate. She couldn’t put an answer to the question as to how long she had been there, all she could remember was refusing to see her husband as she became ashamed at what she had tried to do and just couldn’t face him.

There is only one doctor who looks after all twelve of the patients in special care, the ward Louise was in. Louise knew Dr Gold from the last time she was in there and remembered that, although she was nice, she didn’t have the same approach as Dr Patel, who wasn’t allowed see patients on that particular ward. She didn’t trust Dr Gold from the get go, and felt abandoned by Dr Patel. She refused to see her every time it was suggested she go into the room, which was packed with students, nurses, and other doctors. She became paranoid and was convinced they were sucking the soul out of her. She wasn’t too far off as they just continued to increase the dosage of her medication, making her feel like a zombie. Once she became more calm and logical in her thinking, she knew that seeing Dr Gold was the only way to get herself back to some form of normality.

Their first meeting together was awkward to say the least. Louise sat there as the doctor tried to talk to her and the only question she asked was, ‘how long will I be in here?’ The answer she got was a bog standard reply that she wasn’t happy with. ‘You will be here for as long as your distress levels are so heightened!’ Dr Gold didn’t understand that, as Louise had no access to her phone or iPad or any device she could think of, was actually making her worse as she sat with her thoughts for the majority of the day. She plotted and planned her way out of there every other way accept by complying.

It was obvious after the meeting Louise was going around with the best form of an emotional mask that she could muster. The staff had seen it too many times to not notice the signs. She had changed her attitude and immediately began to comply to the rules. One of the managers called her out on it, which made the mask drop and she began to go back to her old ways.

As she was sitting in her chair, she was obsessed with counting how long it took the medication room door to close after the nurse exited. She counted three Mississippi’s. She became sure that it was a risk she knew she had to take! She stood up as the nurse was ready to come out of the tiny room, the medication trolley open, begging for her to raid it, and waited one Mississippi before running in. She quickly closed the door behind her and tried to grab as many bottles of drugs, as she knew if she took blisters, she would need to pop them out before being able to take them. Bottles on the other hand, she could just open them and chug. Alarms went off and as she had the first bottle open and was about to swallow whatever was inside it, she felt multiple hands stop her. She stuck to her guns and held onto a bottle for dear life, burying her head in a chair so she could take them. She got so close, but yet so far, as she was physically restrained on the floor of the small room. She felt the pinch in her arm again and immediately found herself feeling drowsy, allowing the nurses to take control and lead her back to her bedside. She managed to get into the room three times in five days before the nurses coped on that they needed to close the door fully before they dished out the medication to another service user.

Over the next few weeks, Louise had tried all sorts to end her life. She had taken the clingfilm from her cheese and crackers and collapsed on the bathroom floor before they got to her. That made the manager address the fact that cling film should not be available for the service users, something which disappointed Louise greatly. She had tried making a ligature out of her t-shirt, as all her other clothes were put under lock and key, only given to her when she came out of the shower, the dirty ones left in a bag for Tony to take home and wash.

The first time she agreed to see Tony, she cried in his arms for most of the hour. Her stitches were well out, leaving her with two very ugly scars going up the inside of her arms. She was clearly drugged as she was slurring her words and she heard from him first that she was going to have ECT, Electroconvulsive therapy. She wasn’t sure what was real at that stage so she just cried grabbing onto him as the visit was over, begging him not to go.

One Tuesday morning at 8am, she was uprooted from her bed for her blood pressure to be taken. She doesn’t remember much, except the feeling of the anaesthetic soaring through her blood. It felt as though she was flying, allowing her to see the blue lagoon again. Her fantasy was short lived as she woke from the procedure by the blood pressure cuff tightening on her upper right arm.

She didn’t know how many treatments were under her belt before she was brought to reality with a bang one day where everything was suddenly clear. It was like someone had switched on a light bulb in her head. The visits with Tony, although brief, were increased to four times a week, each time he told her how much better she seemed. He began to bring in photographs of their babies, their dogs, and the nurses made a point of sticking them up on the wall above her bed as visual cues as to what she was working towards.

Gradually, she gained the nurses trust, enough for them to give her the responsibility of having her clothes in her possession. Tony started to bring in little things like mindful colouring to keep her mind occupied and use as a distraction from the mundane drone of day to day life.

When she was handed the mindful colouring book and markers, she cried tears of joy and smiled at him. That was the first time she managed to crack a smile since weeks before the incident happened. As the nurse entered the visiting room to tell them the hour was up, they were in each other’s arms sobbing. Louise cried solidly for the rest of that day, ashamed at what she nearly given up. It was safe to say that she was getting better!

Louise found herself opening up more to Dr Gold and it wasn’t until she was moved out to the main ward, with her own room and her devices back, did she realise she had spent three and a half months in the highly restrictive ward. She was trusted in her own room, which had an ensuite. One of the first things she did was have her first unsupervised shower, and boy did it feel good! There was no one scanning her body for new evidence of self-harm, and she didn’t feel rushed. The ensuite was small and pokey, but when she stood under the spray of water, it was as if she was in the blue lagoon she often experienced and was floating under the waterfall. She had a long way to go yet, but she could finally see significance of the cave. It was a continuation of life!