The Book: Chapter 3
By Sooz006
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Chapter 3
The next day, Alice didn’t want to leave the tranquillity of the wooden bench in the remembrance garden behind the annexe. She was in a sour mood. That’s right, she thought, put the dispatches next to the nuthatches. It was unfair and Alice often felt her patients were unfairly marginalised. A corridor didn’t separate them like other departments; they were housed in a different building. The days of the archaic mental asylums, like Lancaster Moor, were supposedly long gone, but no amount of murals and paint could disguise the fact that her people were kept apart like the pariahs of old.
She went into the perpetual wall of sound to start her shift, instinctively sidestepping as a patient barrelled past, clutching a plastic cafeteria tray pilfered from the canteen. He wore a gown tied at the back, exposing a sliver of pale, bony spine from his neck to his buttocks. A nurse chased him with a clipboard and frustration wrote a sonnet across her face. ‘Come on, Harry. It’s not lunchtime yet,’ she said.
Calm down. Everything’s fine, it’s just another day, Alice thought. She felt anxious and didn’t understand it.
‘It’s a shield,’ Harry bellowed. ‘The evil’s coming.’ He stopped for a second brandishing his tray like a ninja turtle. Then he ran, his feet slapping against the epoxy flooring as he turned the corner. ‘It’s already here,’ he shouted back.
She couldn’t see him now but he was still yelling. They were all at it today.
Alice went to the nurse’s station for shift handover before her rounds. She passed, Louis, one of the porters, who was mopping a spill, his earbuds tucked in as he bobbed his head to music she couldn’t hear.
The ward desk was a fortress of paperwork and caffeine. Piles of patient files and abandoned mugs formed their defences as two nurses leaned against the counter to chat. Felix, an RGN in his thirties, gestured with a pen, while Debbie, a nurse with a tight blonde bun shook her head making it dance.
‘I’m just saying, if we had a vending machine in the unit, half the drama wouldn’t happen. Snacks save lives. You get me?’
Debbie snorted. ‘Crisps—the solution to severe psychosis. Brilliant deduction, Dr Felix Freud.’
‘Mock me all you like, but you know it’s the truth. Feed their bellies and you calm their minds. I’m telling you, if Napoleon had crisps at Waterloo, we’d all be speaking French.’
Alice interrupted before he could go on. ‘Busy morning, team?’
Felix sighed. ‘The usual mayhem. Harry’s hoarding trays ahead of the zombie apocalypse, Molly’s convinced the lights in her room are transmitting messages, She’s weepy. And don’t get me started on Gerard.’
‘What’s he done?’ Alice asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Felix lowered his voice. ‘He’s a secret agent and the hospital is a front for government experiments. We’re all in on it and plotting to get him. So watch out.’
‘I’ll check on him during rounds, maybe give him something to level him out.’
A third nurse joined them and as she handed Alice a pile of files, her expression softened. ‘You’ve got your work cut out for you today, Doc. Molly’s asking for you. She’s calmer, but you know how she gets when she fixates.’
‘Thanks, Mara. I’ll swing by her room, during rounds,’ Alice said.
Felix grinned. ‘Crisps are cheaper than therapy. Ask Thomas. Betty’s demanding sugar all day. They’re leaving notes for each other about him putting on weight.’
At lunchtime, Alice stopped long enough to eat in the cafeteria. Harry streaked past her like a bargain hunter on Black Friday, armed with another stolen tray. Before Alice got to the end of the queue, two heated discussions broke out and that was just between the staff. What was wrong with the mood this week? Alice couldn’t get a handle on the mounting tension. This wasn’t just a hospital—it was a live-action reality show, and Alice didn’t know if she was the director, an extra in the background, or a cameraman, taking it all in but unable to do squat about it.
The corridor leading to the wards was quieter, though the tension in the air was palpable. She heard a noise coming from the library as she passed and a patient sat cross-legged in the corner, rocking while she hummed a tuneless melody. She went in and saw another patient by the window, staring at the rain-soaked carpark with an intensity bordering on obsession.
Alice let the familiar smell of paper and disinfectant calm her. The faint trace of desperation was less noticeable here.
The door creaked open, and when she turned, Molly greeted her.
‘Dr Grant,’ she said. Her crowning glory, a riot of unruly curls, was beautiful despite bald patches where she’d riven handfuls of hair from her scalp. The flesh appeared raised, and keloid scars lay underneath the scabs from newer wounds. Her jumper hung from her frame as though it belonged to somebody twice her size.
‘Hi, Molly. Come in. Are you looking for somebody?’
The patient hesitated and her eyes scanned the room like a rabbit sizing up a field of foxes. She appeared to deem it safe and nodded once to stamp a full stop on her decision before going in with her head lowered as she made a beeline for the table. Her fingers trailed over the spines of the new books.
‘They keep saying I’m not well,’ she said. ‘But they don’t understand. I see things the way they really are. That’s not crazy, is it?’ Molly’s voice cracked as she looked at Alice and her hand rose to tangle in her hair.
Alice put her hand on the young woman’s arm, guiding her fingers out of her hair. ‘It’s not wrong to view the world differently to others. But when we’re overwhelmed with stimuli, it can feel like everything is working against us. That’s why you’re here—to help you release that anxiety.’
‘I know things,’ Molly whispered. She jumped as though somebody had touched her and her eyes darted into the corners where anything could hide. ‘Not because anyone tells me, but I can feel it. Like when a storm’s coming and you can smell the rain.’ She traced the edge of a shelf, reading Braille in the fingerprints.
Molly’s hand twitched on a book with a red cover. She didn’t pick it up, but her fingers lingered. ‘I see things. I have the eye—it’s a light in a subway tunnel—and they’re wrong about me. I’m not schizophrenic. I’m psychic.’
‘I know it’s hard, Molly. But a diagnosis doesn’t define who you are. You can still have your beliefs. We just want to help you manage them realistically.’
Molly’s gaze flickered to another stack of shelves. Her expression sharpened and she moved closer to a green book, reminding Alice of a cat approaching a moving leaf. ‘What’s that?’
Alice saw the same plain green cover that unsettled Thomas. It had been moved across the room to a different shelf. ‘It’s just a book,’ Alice said, but she felt a creeping sensation on her skin. It wasn’t just Thomas; though she wouldn’t admit it, the book had unsettled her too.
Molly went closer, her movements jittery, a prisoner in invisible tangled chains. ‘It’s not like the others,’ she whispered. ‘It’s alive. I see through the cracks of things,’ Molly said. ‘What’s there, and right down to what isn’t.’ She paused, her hand hovering near the book, testing the energy of an invisible current.
Alice’s stomach tightened. ‘It’s just a book. Nothing to worry about.’
‘I can see thousands of subatomic particles around it that don’t belong. It’s watching me. It’s not right.’ Her voice had risen to a wail.
‘It’s okay. Breathe.’
Molly backed away ‘I don’t want it in here.’
‘Let’s go into the day room. Come on.’ Alice took her arm to coax her out of the room. Molly refused to move and stared at the book. And then, as though a curtain had closed across her anxiety, the fear left her eyes. ‘Yes. It’s just a book.’ She looked confused and then nodded, affirming her opinion. She followed Alice to the door.
The rest of the day passed with more drama than usual. Some days were like that. One patient would trigger the rest and before you knew it, they’d all spiralled. Alice saw patients in her office, addressed concerns, defused arguments, and jotted notes that sometimes felt futile.
They had staff shortages, morale was low and she had to pull more than her share of double shifts. Everybody did their best, and today was one of those days after a colleague had called in sick. Low staffing generated more stress-related illness and perpetuated the circle of a stretched system. She should have been leaving for the day but gave up on her fantasy of relying on a good book for company. She wasn’t seeing her boyfriend that night and she didn’t often get an evening to herself. Mick would text her and she’d probably ignore it. It was never on purpose. Work did that to her brain.
A book.
At break time, she made a coffee and thought about the library. Her work didn’t take her in there some days, but she felt compelled to see that everything was in order. Her thoughts went to a particular novel. Not a book, she thought—The Book. She knew it was ridiculous to be superstitious, but it had upset two patients, and that was enough rationale to get rid of it, even if the reasoning was illogical. As she went in, she saw the stacks of new books were still on the table. Nobody had put them away, though they had been rifled through. As if she didn’t have enough real work to do. She chastised herself for uncharitable thoughts—it wasn’t like her—and she was the one who’d brought the new books in.
‘Hi, Dr Grant.’ Felix was at the desk.
She smiled. ‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’
Felix replied but she didn’t hear him. She glanced at the green book and unease pricked the back of her neck again. Annoyed for being rattled by nothing, she picked up the next novel from the piles, giving up on the thought of sitting down for her fifteen-minute break.
‘Chaos is the norm around here,’ Felix said, leaning against the desk with a coffee cup in his hand. ‘It should be the hospital motto. We might as well have it printed on the brochures.’
‘Hardly reassuring for the patients,’ she laughed. “Welcome. Come in. We haven’t a clue what’s happening.’
‘Oh, please.’ Felix waved his hand. ‘They know the score. Most of them are on their sixth committal. Did you hear what happened with Jenkins this morning?’
‘Some, but I didn’t get the details.’
Felix’s theatrical tone said he’d saved this story for retelling. ‘Jenkins decided he’d had enough of the “oppressive regime”—his words, not mine—and staged a breakout. He hid in the laundry bin.’
Alice suppressed a smile. ‘I did hear something about that. It doesn’t sound out of the ordinary for Jenkins.’
‘Wait for it.’ Felix held up his finger with a dramatic pause. ‘He lurked there until the girls were bending over their machines and jumped out—completely starkers—screaming about alien abductions. He frightened the laundry staff to death.’
‘Alien abductions?’ Alice asked. ‘I hope they’ve got a better healthcare system than us.’
‘Or at the very least free Mars Bars.’ Felix laughed and reached for a packet of digestives that balanced on the edge of the desk.
‘Dr Calvert said Jenkins had been sedated. I’ll look in on him,’ Alice said.
‘Sometimes, I think you’re the only one here who believes this place can make a difference.’
‘That doesn’t say a lot about you.’ She grinned. But what’s wrong with caring?’
‘You can’t save everyone, Alice. Sometimes a disturbed human condition just is.’
‘Rubbish. A lack of standards is the result when you stop trying.’
‘So we fix them up and send them out, to have them relapse next month. I used to love my job, I suppose I still do, but sometimes it feels pointless. What good do we do when it’s a hamster wheel most of them can’t get off?’
Alice smiled. ‘But not all of them, Felix. Not all.’ She brushed a strand of wayward hair back into place.
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Things starting to fall apart
Things starting to fall apart - keep going!
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Made me smile at bits (and I
Made me smile at bits (and I don't smile). Only a book. Then again, so was the Bible and that divided continents and nations. The Quaran...I just hope it's not a porno with Linda Lovelace (whoever that was)?
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