All of Me (19 page)

As for having anorexia and bulimia – that was just ridiculous. I wasn’t even sure what the difference was but I knew I had no problem with food. And I definitely would never throw up if I could help it.

The longer the meeting went on, the happier Dad appeared. Even when he was told that dissociation is normally the result of some childhood trauma he just shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anything. She’s always been like this.’

At least we agreed on that. There were no skeletons in my closet. Plenty of things to moan about. Traumatic, though? Nothing at all. Not that it mattered. The doctor didn’t suggest Dad talk to me about it and he didn’t think of it either. They could have been haggling over the price of a second-hand car.

Hello? I am here!

‘This dissociation,’ Dad said. ‘Can you fix it?’

‘We can certainly make it easier to live with.’

That was enough for Dad. When we left the doctor’s room there was almost a spring in his step.

‘Well, at least we know what’s wrong with you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

He wasn’t listening. After all these years of being on the thick end of my behaviour, he finally had a label for it. I wasn’t naughty – I was ill. Mum would like that. I could see that’s what he was thinking. My behaviour wouldn’t reflect so badly on her now.

‘We did all we could. It’s a medical problem …’

Being diagnosed with this condition I’d never heard of for something I didn’t think I had may have appeased my parents but it made no difference to me. Therapy sessions were as tedious as ever. Mostly people treated me the same. Except at mealtimes. Something odd was happening then.

I sat down one afternoon with the others. Meals were prepared down in the kitchen and a cook came up to serve them. Today it was chicken. We were all talking so I didn’t take any notice of the other plates arriving and people tucking in. She couldn’t serve everyone at the same time. My meal would probably be next.

My plate was slid in front of me and I just stared at it.

The table fell quiet.

‘What’s this?’ I called out to the cook.

‘It’s what you asked for.’

‘I didn’t ask for two eggs.’

‘Yes, you did. Just like you did yesterday and the day before.’

I looked round the table at everyone else’s fried meat and chips. My friends would back me up. ‘I didn’t ask for this, did I?’

They all started eating. No one said a word.

Idiots.

I didn’t know what their problem was. They probably just wanted to see me get into trouble. I would have done the same.

The cook wouldn’t admit she was wrong. She refused to give me anything else, either.

‘Well, I’m not eating these.’

‘You are, or I’m calling the nurse.’

But I didn’t.

A few weeks after that I went home for the weekend. It felt odd with Nan gone and Dad out as much as he could manage. Lorraine was around though. She was living close enough to pop round quite regularly. It was good to see her again, especially with the baby so close to being born.

Friday night passed without episode. Saturday flew by as well. On Sunday afternoon, however, I found myself back in strange yet familiar surroundings. It was a hospital, but not the Cassel and not Mayday either.

I closed my eyes as tight as I could.

It can’t be happening again.

When I dared to look next I began to hyperventilate. I was right. I was in a hospital, wearing a gown. The label on it said ‘Kingston Hospital’.

I hate to think how I got here,
I thought.
But I know that I’m not staying.

The ward was quiet as I got up and dragged my coat over the gown. I’d been brought in without shoes so barefoot it was. As I stepped into the corridor I noticed a few visitors heading for the exit so I fell in behind them. Before I knew it I’d made it into the lift, down four floors and outside where a storm was just kicking off. As I hid from the pouring rain under the entrance’s canopy, I thought,
What now?
I’d managed to escape before thinking of a plan. Kingston was too far from Croydon to walk home. That left me with one alternative. Pulling my collar up as high as it would go I set off. In bare feet. In the rain.

The Cassel, here I come.

I was in the doctor’s room again. Dad was sitting next to me. They were talking in hushed tones with lots of pauses, Dad picking his nails as he listened. I tried to pick up the gist. It sounded serious. It was about me, obviously.
They must be discussing the dissociation.

‘Obviously our treatment isn’t working as well as we’d like …’

The doctor sounded angry. No – disappointed.

‘We thought we were making progress …’

Dad was just nodding, resigned.

‘If I thought there was any other way …’

Normally with these conversations I should have worked out what was going on by now. None of this one, however, was making any sense.

‘After the weekend’s problem we can’t take the risk of her being a danger to herself or others.’

What weekend problem?

I suddenly remembered Kingston. A shiver ran through me. They’d said I walked all the way back to Ham Common in the downpour, and looked shattered and confused when I arrived.

Why was I in the hospital?

Instinctively I felt my chest.
Sore! No, it was just a dream. It must have been a dream. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

Dad’s voice snapped me out of my shock. ‘Are you sure it’s the only way?’

‘At this stage I think we’re left with no choice.’

‘I understand.’

‘Sectioning your own daughter is not something to be taken lightly. You have to consider the consequences,’ the doctor explained. ‘But in my opinion it is the best way forward. It’s the only way to protect her.’

‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

I was still stunned at the realisation that Kingston hadn’t been a nightmare. It
had
happened. My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades to prove it. Suddenly the realisation of what the two men were saying hit me.

Sectioning?

I’d heard about this.

Panicking, I said, ‘There must be some mistake.’ Dad and the doctor spun round to stare at me. I think they’d forgotten I was even there.

‘You’ve brought it on yourself,’ Dad said, although he couldn’t look at me as he spoke.

‘It’s for your own good, Kim,’ the doctor agreed.

‘You can’t do this!’

Dad still wouldn’t look at me. Eyes fixed straight ahead, he said quietly, ‘Where do I sign?’

*

I’m moving.

I looked around. Two nurses sat alongside me. I was lying down. They were wearing seatbelts. I tried to sit up. I was strapped in as well.

I’m in an ambulance.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You know where we’re going.’

I recognised the nurse who spoke. She was one of the Cassel staff. The other one was a stranger. Probably part of the ambulance crew.

‘Tell me where we’re going!’

‘You’re going on a little holiday.’

‘Where to?’

The other nurse spoke up.

‘Warlingham Park.’

No!

‘You can’t! Take me back. Take me back to the Cassel! I want to go back!’

Funny how I was so conditioned by the system. It didn’t even occur to me to ask to go home.

‘You haven’t fixed me. You need to fix me!’

That was the last thing I remembered.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I’m not one of them

Rebecca tugged again on the sheet. It was taut.

That should be strong enough.

She looked again at the knot above her head and back down to the floor. She’d thought of everything. It would soon be over. She rolled her shoulders to relax, took a deep breath and stepped off the table.

Then everything went black.

‘I
’m sorry it came to this, I genuinely am.’

Dr Picton-Jones looked as sad as she sounded.

‘I thought you’d been doing so well. What changed?’

I couldn’t answer. The only thing that had changed was the way I was treated. That was the story of my life and she’d heard it all before. There was no point going over it again just so she could tell me I was wrong. So I kept quiet.

‘Well, if that’s how you want to be, so be it. Obviously you’ve been here before but you’ll be under stricter supervision, until we’re sure you’re going to behave. And we need to start getting your weight back up as well, of course. I’m sorry about that but there it is.’

*

I’d known exactly where I was the second I opened my eyes and saw the four grey walls and that imposing, thick door with its menacing spy hole.

A room, with a bed, and nothing else.

It could only mean one thing.

Warlingham Park.

I don’t know how long I was in that cell. Two or three days, probably. To be honest, it sailed by. It’s horrible having no windows, nothing to do, but I made the best of it. I knew the drill. It didn’t matter what they were accusing me of. It didn’t matter what I denied doing. They wouldn’t let me out until they were confident I’d calmed down, as they put it. So I climbed on my bed and waited.

Before I knew it I was back onto the main part of George Ward in one of the dormitory beds. The smell was unmistakeable. More pee, vomit and worse than any amount of cleaning agents could mask. If I never smell Dettol again it will be too soon. And the sounds. Those animalistic cries and mutters, the shouts of rage and delight and delusion. The whole foul cacophony that had followed me everywhere on my last stay. It was still here, as bad as ever.

I actually found myself wishing I was back in the cell. Although I couldn’t get out, no one could get in. At least I was safe there.

What was the point in being good if you still got treated like this? I just wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, ‘Let me out!’

But nobody would have come. The staff hear that all the time. That’s what everyone at Warlingham says. Every day, every week, every year.

I spent so much energy trying not to be noticed by the other inmates that it was a day or two before I remembered Dad’s role in my being there. It wasn’t just doctors keeping me there. He’d signed something, I recalled. Dr Picton-Jones filled in the gaps. I was in Warlingham, she explained, because I’d been ‘sectioned’. This was a legal order for a patient to be kept in the hospital by the state – usually against their will – in order to protect them or others. A section was usually for seventy-two hours, initially. This was the emergency one, a bit like the police arresting you, then working out the case, before having to apply to hold you for longer.

I knew instinctively I’d already been there longer than seventy-two hours.

‘Will I be let out soon?’

The doctor shrugged noncommittally.

‘That’s up to you.’

Apparently you can’t do two emergency sections in a row so the next section block is for twenty-eight days. That’s what they call the diagnosis period.

‘That’s how long you’re here for, Kim.’

The doctors had four weeks to work out what’s wrong with me, then, if they were successful, they could apply for a six-month period for treatment.

My blood froze at the thought.

‘I can’t spend six months here.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ the doctor agreed.

Then she explained that a six-month section wasn’t the worst. As I understood it, after that comes the big one: six years. If you’re hit with that you may as well kiss your old life goodbye. You’re never coming out.

Never coming out alive, you mean,
I thought as a shiver ran through me.

The prospect of anything more than a month terrified me. I’d just spent eighteen months at the Cassel but that had been like a holiday camp compared to my memories of Warlingham. I had to behave. Anything more than twenty-eight days would kill me. A bad choice of words as it transpired …

To action a section in those days, you needed the signatures of a psychiatrist and a social worker. In the absence of a social worker a member of the immediate family can authorise it.

That’s what Dad had done.

Apparently they could have summoned a social worker to the Cassel. Dad knew that so he signed the forms while he was there for our meeting with the doctor. Knowing that I would have been sectioned anyway didn’t alter how I felt.

As far as I was concerned, he’d betrayed me.

The dormitory. George Ward. Still here.