All of Me (26 page)

It can’t have been that hard, though, because I seemed to appeal without even realising it.

The first thing I knew was when doctors and patients started talking about it. Then Mum said my appeal date had been set.

Odd, I thought,
that they’re talking as though I applied for this.

Even more so that they implied I’d already informed them I would be defending myself and not using a solicitor.

It was confusing but I decided to go along with it even though I didn’t have a clue what to say.

Tribunals were held at the hospital. A three-person judging panel, comprising one layperson and two doctors who are not your own doctors, hear the evidence and vote. The hospital then sends its representative and you send yours or, in my case, represent yourself.

Where on Earth had they got the idea that I could do that? I wondered.
Is it some kind trick to make sure they win?

Realistically, though, I would never have been able to afford a professional so it was a relief when I found myself sitting outside the tribunal room with my father a few weeks later. It only took a second to work out where I was and what was going on – and just a second more to become absolutely petrified about going in to make my case.

What am I going to say? I haven’t prepared anything!

I’m glad Dad was there because he knew his way around the social services world, thanks to his job, although this was new territory for him. Luckily he wasn’t the only one experiencing a tribunal for the first time. Professor Leff couldn’t make the appointment so he sent a young registrar to represent the Maudsley. This doctor had never attended a tribunal before and he was desperate to look the part in his bow tie but I could tell he was a bundle of nervous energy.

He looks how I feel.

We all sat outside the tribunal room silently. No one dared to make eye contact. Then we were called in. The doctor went through the justifications for my long-term status as a ward of court: I was a danger to myself and to the public at large and my continual refusal to accept the assessment of schizophrenia meant I was likely to not take the medication, which in turn would lead to further psychotic episodes.

It was a persuasive argument, even when put by a perspiring, stuttering bag of nerves. The enormity of the situation suddenly hit me.

What am I doing here? I’m out of my depth. Why did I agree to come to this in the first place?

The funny thing is, I came out later not remembering another word. And yet there was Dad saying, with genuine pride beaming from his face, ‘You really put it up them.’

Did I? I don’t remember.

The letter saying I would no longer be detained under the Mental Health Act confirmed it. Apparently I’d sat round the table with all those professionals and addressed them as if I’d been at the bar all my life. I had – although it was a different type of bar.

My tactics of rebuttal apparently had been pretty straightforward: there’s no point arguing with the doctors because they have evidence on their side. The best you can do is just go in and agree as much as you can and say the action you are going to take. So that’s what I’d done. I’d confessed that while I had originally challenged the diagnosis of schizophrenia, I had now come to accept it as being accurate. I’d also accepted, therefore, that without medication I would become ill and pledged to continue taking the medicine. While that was the case, I’d concluded, there was no purpose to be served in becoming a ward of court or by being sectioned indefinitely.

I had to agree, it did sound persuasive. I just wished I could have remembered it to have basked in the moment with him.

A decision had been made that afternoon and I left the tribunal as the first alumnus of Ward 3 to ever win.

I wasn’t fighting the hospital’s diagnosis, just its right to strip me of my freedom. The verdict didn’t mean I was cured and there was still the little matter of taking the tablets every day once I got home. I had, after all, admitted to suffering from schizophrenia. Miss even one tablet, a nurse warned me, and the punishment would be severe.

‘If we discover you’re not taking your medication then we’ll call you back in and administer the drug via injection every month. Mess around after that and you will be hospitalised until the end of your section.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

I was so delighted to be released I’d have agreed to anything at that moment. But the second I left that austere old building I was searching feverishly for a plan. There was no way I wanted an injection and I certainly didn’t want to be locked up again. But there was also no chance of my taking one more tablet now I wasn’t being watched over by some scrutinising nurse. That would be like asking to be turned into a zombie. It would be the end of my life as I knew it.

It might be chaotic; it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s the only life I’ve got.

To make it harder to cheat, the hospital handed over a certain amount of tablets and told me to return when I ran out. That was a pretty devious trick. Keeping track of which pill I was meant to be on was harder than it sounds. I spent a good portion of every day worrying, ‘Have I taken today’s one out of the packet or not?’ To really keep the façade of cooperation going, whenever I returned to Denmark Hill I did my best to appear as I remembered the drugs making me – although I did draw the line at dribbling.

Months went by and I didn’t take a single, solitary pill. Eventually the hospital discovered what was going on. I didn’t know how. Kingy claimed I’d admitted it to her but that was a lie. Why would I?

I really thought my days of freedom were up. It turned out I might have accidentally done myself a favour. Professor Leff passed a note to my nurse to the effect that if I had genuinely not taken my medicine and still hadn’t had an episode then there was an argument to be had for desisting with the treatment. I couldn’t have agreed more and later that afternoon I skipped out of the Maudsley a free woman once again.

Now to rebuild my life. Now to get back to work.

Unfortunately, as I was soon to discover, my troubles were only just beginning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It’s a crime scene now

Hayley smiled as the man poured the coffee.

She could hear men’s voices. It sounded close and yet muffled. Hayley shook her head. Was it suddenly foggy in there?

I must be more tired than I thought.

She didn’t fight it when the man with the coffee helped her up. She didn’t resist when he led her down the stairs. In fact, without his help she wouldn’t have made it.

What’s wrong with my legs?

She didn’t even try to prevent it when two other men appeared and all three of them lifted her into a box raised on a long table.

She giggled.
Am I in a dream?

Could there be another explanation? She felt so listless, like a toy almost out of battery life, barely going through the motions. Nothing seemed to be working. She just wanted to close her eyes.

But then she recognised the pink, quilted fabric.

My God – it’s a coffin! I’m in a coffin.

Suddenly alert, Hayley’s heartbeat must have been off the scale by now. Still, though, she couldn’t move.

What the hell was going on?

Adrenaline surge fading, she fought hard to concentrate. She
needed to be awake. She needed to see everything. She needed to be able to tell the police every last detail.

But I’m so tired.

The fog in her head was settling lower and thicker. It wasn’t a dream, she knew that. It was a nightmare. But this was worse.

Worse than anything she had ever seen.

Because of the children.

She heard them first. The sound was unclear, like a badly tuned radio, but slowly she recognised it as singing. When her eyes focused she could make out five little ones. They were dressed in long shirts, holding hands, chanting ‘Ring-O-Roses’. The children weren’t smiling. They were young but Hayley could read in their faces they knew it wasn’t a game. None of them dared look at the men in the grotesque animal masks standing at the back. None of them smiled. They just gripped each other’s hands as tightly as possible, sang as well as they could and tried not to look at the man filming it all.

‘M
y name is Patricia – and I am an alcoholic.’

I never uttered those words at an AA meeting but maybe I should have. I needed to do something. I’d entered my thirties full of optimism for the future. Life was going my way, for once. I had a flat, a few potential boyfriends sniffing around, nice lads actually, a job I enjoyed and somehow I’d even taken on the medical establishment – and won. For the first time in my memory I felt truly independent. But there was a problem and I could only think that the drinking was to blame. If I wasn’t at work or the hospital I always seemed to have a glass in my hand.

I never felt drunk or out of control but things were happening to me that I couldn’t explain any other way. I was losing huge chunks of time. Afternoons, evenings, sometimes entire days. How was that possible? I’d close the door of my flat, turn round and find myself somewhere completely different. Ping – ping – ping. Now I’m here, now I’m not. It was like flicking through a film on fast forward. You whizz on a bit, pause to view a few seconds, then press ‘FF’ again to skip to the next scene.

I could only chalk these events up to alcohol-related blackouts. I hated thinking I’d drunk so much I couldn’t remember so many things or passed out for such long periods of time – even though there hardly seemed to be any empty bottles at home – but it was easier than coming up with any other explanation. Somehow I was losing days on end and, shameful as it was, no other reason made sense.

As I sat down to analyse it one day, after another episode where I seemed to have ‘lost’ half a week, I realised everything had gotten worse since I’d started a new job. The gaps in time seemed to have begun then, and my memory problems had worsened. All the things in my life that had always been confusing but manageable had begun to escalate around the time I’d switched from the courier job to an admin position. Of course, when I say I switched jobs, I had no recollection of doing it and – like with so many other new jobs I’d found myself in – it had actually taken me a while to realise what was going on. That, at least, was normal for me …

I’m in an office. I’ve been here before. I’ve delivered and dropped things off here. But I’m not wearing my uniform. And I’m sitting behind a desk. There’s a pad, a computer and a small calendar that says it’s five years since I started my driving job. Where does the time go?

‘How are you settling in, then?’

Good, a familiar face.
The other shoe started to drop.
This
guy’s been at me to apply for a transfer to a desk job for ages.
Had I actually done it? Had they actually given me the gig without any interview or forms to be filled out? Surely I would have remembered.

I smiled. That always seemed to help when I was buying time, trying to figure out what was going on.

‘Glad to be out of that stupid truck, I bet,’ he continued. As he spoke he came over and perched on the corner of my desk. ‘Remember, anything you want, anything at all, you come to me. Okay?’

‘Thanks.’

I wonder if he winks at everyone.

A girl on the desk across the room came over. I’d met her before. She was the one I usually picked up from. What was her name?

Carol!

‘He thinks he’s God’s gift,’ Carol said. ‘Lord knows why when you look at him.’ I smiled again as I searched her face for more clues. Carol gestured again at the man. He wasn’t what anyone would call a looker. ‘He’s married, not that you’d know it.’

We chatted for a while. Then I just had to ask: ‘Carol, remind me again what I should be doing.’

Was it my imagination or did she look at me a second longer than was comfortable? Had she already told me this? By the look of it, she certainly thought she had, and recently too. Then she relaxed and went through a few things. It wasn’t hard, mostly paperwork and filing. But I could tell what she was thinking.

Bloody Green Card employees. More trouble than they’re worth.

*

There’s more to sussing out a job than just getting on top of your office duties. Somehow you have to learn your hours and, more importantly, learn how the hell to find your way back there the next day without annoying too many people. Not for the first time I felt like I was trying to board a spinning carousel.

It didn’t help that work wasn’t the only thing that kept me on my toes. Trips to the Maudsley remained a regular occurrence in my life – although I never seemed to remember travelling there. Luckily I only seemed to go for outpatient appointments but even so it was still such a pointless exercise. There are only so many times you can hear a doctor talk about your so-called weight problem before you start to drift off. Listening to them go on and on about this or that eating disorder – when they only had to look at me to see I was perfectly fine – made me actually wish I could have a blackout for once. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. I didn’t know how it worked but it never seemed to do me any favours.