Faithless (12 page)

             
"Karen - what the fuck are you doing? What the fuck have you done?"

             
She turned and faced him, tears streaming down her face. She said, "I'm sorry."

             
"Oh my God Karen." He ran out and kicked Frankton's door open. Frankton awoke with a shock - still drunk.

             
"Get out and ring 999 for an ambulance! Quick!"

             
Frankton looked dazed.

             
"Get and ring for an ambulance!" shouted John. Frankton pulled on some trousers and a pullover and put on his glasses and ran down the stairs on his way to the public phone box on the corner.

John grabbed a towel and went to Karen. She dropped the razor blade on the floor. He wrapped
one towel round her right wrist and got another to wrap about her left. He squeezed hard. She shouted. "Ow, that hurts."

             
"It's to stop the bleeding."  The blood did not pump out, from the amount it did not appear that she had severed an artery. He said, "Why did you do it?"

             
She didn't reply. Blood was all over the floor. His feet were sticky with it. "I love you. Please Karen. I love you."  He was weeping too. He pulled her to him, smearing his chest in her blood. The towels grew red as the blood seeped through them. It seemed an eternity but eventually the ambulance crew arrived. They led Karen down to the ambulance and he walked behind on the stairs as they took charge.

             
They took her to the University Hospital A&E Department. They let John ride in the ambulance with her. Karen didn't talk.

             
After she had been stitched up and the nurse assured them both that it was not serious they were left alone in a cubicle. She was on the bed, staring at the ceiling; him, staring at her, his head splitting from the buzzing light of the neon tube. She still didn't speak. Then another doctor arrived, looking sleepy as if he'd not been long awake. It was around 5 am. He said he was a psychiatrist. He asked John to leave the room. After around an hour he came out and with a grave look on his face he said, "I am arranging an assessment under the Mental Health Act."

             
John was taken aback. "What do you mean? She's not mad."

             
The psychiatrist shook his head. "She's depressed. I'm very worried about her risk to herself if she doesn't receive treatment."

             
John felt his stomach turn over. "What does that mean?"

             
"Are you her husband?"

             
"No. Her boyfriend."

             
"Then I'm afraid you aren't her nearest relative and there is a limit to what I can tell you."

             
"What can you tell me?"

             
"That we'll treat her and she will probably get better. Most people do."

             
"Not everybody?"

             
"Not everybody, but she's a bright girl and I have every confidence. But I must leave you now as I have to make some phone calls."

             
"Can I see her?"

             
"I'd rather you didn't. It might just upset her more."

             
"I won't upset her. I love her. She didn't do this because of me."

             
The psychiatrist sighed. "You haven't fallen out with her? That's the most common cause of this kind of behaviour."

             
"This kind of behaviour? I thought you had to be sensitive to do your job? What on earth do you mean - like she's just a naughty child having a tantrum?"

             
"She's unwell. And she needs treatment. Now if you'd excuse me, I must go and arrange this assessment."

Karen was detained under the Mental Health Act 1959 - Section 29 for assessment. She was judged to be clinically depressed and kept at Winterton Hospital, Sedgefield for one month. While she was there
she was given Electro-Convulsive Therapy and prescribed Amitryptiline. John was told it would be best to give it a day or two after the ECT before he visited her because she might still be a little confused. Four days after she had been admitted, after he had been burning to see her and talk to her every minute, he travelled from Durham by train and bus to Sedgfield. The hospital was to the north of the town. When he saw it, his heart sank. It was a huge, grey Victorian Institution. The main door was in a building flanked by what looked like dormitory wings. The weather was fine and patients tended the gardens under the watchful eyes of nurses. He went up to the front desk and asked for Karen. The receptionist told him she was on Ward 26. She indicated the directions and then went back to typing.  John was surprised that he was allowed to wander through the hospital. He noticed he was also nervous. Like most people he had little to do with the mentally ill, the people society kept locked away and kept quiet about. When it did speak of them it was in newspaper columns filled with stories of insane murderers stabbing people in the eye with screwdrivers.

             
There were patients wandering down the corridor. He asked a male nurse in a white tunic the way to Ward 26. With a helpful smile the man indicated a turn to the right and gave directions which were so complicated that John forgot them after the first two turns.

             
Eventually after following signs he felt he must be getting close. He asked a middle aged woman who looked fairly normal for further directions. She said, "I'll show you." As they walked she said, "I'm not insane you know. I'm sensitive. I shouldn't be in here. Dr Dearman says I'll be discharged soon. Do you know they mix us with mentally subnormal people and people who are so insane they bang their heads on walls?"

             
"No, I didn't know."

             
"There aren't enough nurses here to keep the patients under control. I get really frightened when I hear some of them wailing and shouting."

             
"I can see why, I suppose," said John.

             
"But the poor things. All they have to do here is smoke. I've never been in a place where people smoked so much. And we don't take the tablets. We hide them and put them down the toilet. I think they even know we do. They don't care. So much apathy here."

             
John didn't know what to say so he smiled.

             
"At least I've finished five novels and I've crocheted a scarf." She smiled. "Here we are."

             
"Thank you very much."

             
"I'm Dora Finch. And you are?"

             
"I'm John Gilroy."

             
"You're Scottish. You must be Karen's boyfriend. She's a lovely girl. Very sad what she did."

             
John gripped the door handle tighter. "Thanks again, Mrs Finch."

             
"You're welcome. I hope to see you again."

             
John turned away. He rang the bell on the ward door. A young female nurse answered. He said he was there to see Karen.

             
"Oh, good," said the nurse. "She's been desperate for visitors."

             
"Is she ok?"

             
The nurse looked puzzled. "Yes, she's fine."

             
"Fine?"

             
"The ECT works wonders. Come this way. There's a private room."

John walked through the ward past a seating area where people sat vacantly in armchairs. Others talked to each other like it was a normal place and they were  in a caf
é or at a bus stop. He caught a glimpse of the smoking room. It was filthy with ash. It was crowded with patients and the air was so thick with smoke that he was surprised the ward fire alarms didn't go off. That was if they had any.

             
Karen got up from her bed when she saw him. Her wrists were dressed in bandages. She flung her arms around him. "Oh John, I'm so glad you've come."

             
The nurse smiled. "Come on. We don't want the other patients getting jealous. It's just through here."

             
She opened a door with chipped green paint. In the room was a wooden table covered in scratches and graffiti in biro pen. There was a green metal wastepaper basket and two chairs made out of canvas and painted steel tubes. One was black, the other dark blue. The nurse smiled. Karen sat down. John hesitated then he said, "Are we allowed to be alone?"

             
The nurse said,  "Of course. She's not on continuous obs any more." Then she left and closed the door. John sat down, shyly as if he didn't know her.

             
"I've missed you," Karen said.

             
"I missed you too. I was so scared."

             
"I was pretty scared too," she laughed.

             
"How do you feel now?"             

             
"What do you mean? Does it hurt? Yes it does, like a bitch."

             
"No, your mood."

             
She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm kind of numb."

             
"What was the thing like - the electric treatment?"

             
"A blur. I was struggling and they gave me some anaesthetic and then it was  darkness. When I woke up I didn't know where I was, but it came back.  One of the nurses gave me toast and tea. They were kind. I think they were just glad I wasn't trying to punch them any more." She laughed again.

             
"I was so scared."

             
"You said."

             
"I know I shouldn't ask you this, but why?"

             
"Depression? It's in my family."

             
"It's just that I hoped I was enough for you," he said.

             
"You are."

             
"Obviously not if you want to die."

             
"It's not that. It's not rational."

             
"It makes me feel that I've failed you."

             
Coldly she said, "Don't take my depression as a personal insult."

             
He was suddenly anxious.

             
She said, "not everything that happens is because of you. That may be hard for you to believe."

             
"That's not fair. I didn't mean that."

             
"What did you mean? That you're so wonderful you make the flowers grow  just by being here?"

             
"Just I don't understand it. It  came from nowhere."

             
"Apparently that's what happens."

             
"Have you ever tried to kill yourself before?"

             
"No. But then I've never known you before."

             
"I thought you said it wasn't about me."

             
"I was being bitter."

             
He reached over the table. For the first time since they sat down in the room he touched her. He wound his fingers through hers. She let him.

             
"I love you," he said.

             
She met his eyes. "I hope that's true."

             
"It is."

             
"Then I forgive your narcissism and arrogance."

             
"Thank you," he said. "I think."

             
"It's difficult. My feelings. I can't trust them." She leaned towards him. "Come here and kiss me. But not too loud in case it makes the other patients jealous."

When she came out of hospital a week later, John met her with her mother and father at the front gates. Her father drove her back to Bonnyrigg in his Ford Cortina with John as a passenger. Her mother fussed around her. Her father talked to John about Hearts Football Club. John kept looking at Karen sitting with her mum on the back seat. He thought she seemed better. She smiled and held her mother's hand tightly. Later as they sat in her family's small front room in Bonnyrigg, she told John that some of her memory had gone after the electric shock treatment, "But maybe that's a good, thing," she laughed. "There are some things I don't want in my memory." The scars on her wrists healed well. In later years John bought her bracelets to hide the thin silver lines. He thought she was never the same - as if the hospital had taken away her fire and replaced it with a hesitancy and a seeking for comfort that had not been there before.