The Trouble with Polly Brown (59 page)
“Hi, Lucinda. My name's Polly, but I guess you already know that, don't you?” she said as she invited herself to sit down on the end of the young girl's bed.
“Yes, I know who you are from those stupid group therapy sessions,” the young girl replied, making a mockingly long, sullen face as she took hold of a hairbrush to brush her long golden locks.
“I figured you must hate those sessions almost as much as I do,” Polly quipped.
“Yes, well, that's because the rest of them really are a load of fruitcakes!” Lucinda said, breaking into a wide smile.
“Well, Lucinda, you've got really lovely long hair. I wish I had such beautiful hair like yours,” Polly wistfully stated.
“Oh, you wouldn't, for it gets so horribly tangled with knots,” the young, blue-eyed girl playfully retorted. “Anyway Polly, my mother calls me Luchea, especially when she's angry with me, all my friends call me Lucy, and the rest of the world calls me Lucinda. So I give you full permission to call me Lucy, as I feel we are about to become good friends.”
“Here, Lucy, let me brush your hair for you. I promise to get all the tangles out without hurting you further,” Polly insisted.
With all formalities quickly laid to one side, it took no time at all for the girls to become firm friends, and with that friendship came the obvious sharing of precious past and present secrets that up until now they had held dear and therefore locked away. Polly felt terribly saddened by all Lucy privately cared to share with her, secrets like the time she attempted to end everything and her reasons behind doing such a terrible thing. Likewise Lucy seemed equally saddened by all that had befallen Polly. In time, they vowed to stand by each other and, in doing so, never, ever betray each other to anyone, even under the threat of death. “True sisters guard their hearts and mouths from all idle and careless gossip, and they will never share with others what has been entrusted in confidence to their ears alone,” became their constant verbal pledge.
Of course, Doctor Ninkumpoop, on hearing of Polly and Lucinda's new but very close friendship, thought otherwise, and so he quickly determined that Lucinda could be the perfect vehicle to get inside Polly's mind and thereby learn all he needed to know. However, despite many meetings with Lucinda, meetings where he proposed all sorts of extra hospital privileges if she were prepared to open up and reveal all Polly had confided, she blatantly refused to cooperate. Lucinda could not be bought. It would finally dawn on him that those close bonds of true friendship that are wrought in times of great hardship are indeed the toughest and, so, are nigh impossible to destroy. He was now back at square one and therefore none the wiser when it came to learning anything new about hospital Patient 579, whose name in full was Polly Esther Brown.
Finally out of great frustration, oh, as well as unbelievable meanness, the doctor did something that to most decent, thinking people would seem inconceivable: he decided it was high time to break up their special friendship once and for all by having Polly transferred to a high-security ward where others of a similar ilk were locked away for their own protection, as well as for the good of mankind. Here in these wards there would be no ability for any kind of friendship to develop, let alone blossom, as all inpatients were utterly locked away in their own personal nightmares.
Once again Polly found herself alone, without a friend in the world. She quickly learned that other patients contented themselves by walking around in circles or wandering the long corridors back and forth as they shouted and yelled at hateful but imaginary people. Still others chose a more calm approach, such as sitting in the television lounge, passively staring into the blank screen in front of them.
At first Polly did attempt to open up the odd conversation or two, just as she had tried on the last ward. There was a day quite early on when she took it upon herself to walk up to a gentleman who was repeatedly banging his head against the wall, and typical of Polly, she dared to ask him why he was doing such a harmful thing to himself. The poor man was visibly shocked by her line of questioning, and so he looked her directly in the eye as he angrily informed her that what he was doing should be perfectly clear and therefore obvious to all. “I am doing my duty,” he indignantly informed her before turning back to continue banging his bloodied forehead against the wall in front of him. Polly walked away feeling very perplexed, and so it would be a number of weeks before she plucked up the courage to once more give it another try.
This time she innocently came to sit down beside a patient in the hope of striking up a friendly conversation.
“Hello, Jasmine. My name is Polly.”
“Go away. Leave me alone, for I am working very hard,” Jasmine cried.
“Working hard at what?” Polly innocently requested to know.
“Can't you see that I'm concentrating my mind to stop every horrid war that is going on in this crazy, mixed-up world?” she screamed.
This response was more than enough to persuade Polly to completely give up trying to make polite conversation with any of the patients on Ward 707, as she had no desire whatsoever to join in with any of their deeply disturbing and most personal recreational activities. So, yet again, she resorted to hiding away under the bed covers while still trying as desperately hard as she was able to hold on to her fast-fading memories of Piadora.
Despite keeping a diary of Polly's progress, Dr. Ninkumpoop was to remain in a permanent state of confused bewilderment as to the root cause of Polly's deep melancholy, especially when he was forced to accept that Polly was failing to respond to even one of his many internationally recognized and profoundly groundbreaking treatments.
All this left him feeling extremely frustrated and angry, and so he recommended that her medication be further increased in an effort to free her from this most disturbing malady, which took the form of a deeply penetrating melancholy, as well as eyes that now appeared permanently glazed over. Sadly, like everything else, this too failed dismally.
July 27
Latest entry regarding “the girl”
It would appear that Patient 579, who must continue to remain nameless, has lost all reason to live. Her bed and bedclothes have literally become her sanctuary and womb, far away from the hostile world she believes she experiences. Very occasionally she still presents me with little mysterious, handwritten notes that she says are sent from Piadora to encourage her, but now it has come to the point where I am no longer interested in either her notes or her little games. I am therefore going to ask her to keep all future notes to herself.
This morning after I confronted her and made my request known, she withdrew even further.
She appeared very confused by my refusal to read any more of them but shrugged her shoulders when I told her that she was obviously still hiding the truth from me, for freshly written notes of encouragement don't just suddenly appear every day from the navel of an oversized elephant!
Of course, she was equally adamant that in this special case they did.
So, for the time being, she appears to have completely closed down, and therefore she has little to say of any meaning to anyone.
I have scrapped her involvement in group therapy sessions, as she made little to no effort to join in, opting to sullenly sit holding on for dear life to that very irritating blue elephant with a larger-than-average belly.
At mealtimes she sits alone, hurriedly eating up every tiny morsel on her plate as though it were a last supper.
With her plate thoroughly cleaned of all food, she heads back to the dormitory to climb back under the sheets and hide away from the rest of the world. It also means she spends much of the day sleeping.
I have to add that apart from the odd, sporadic moment of resistance, there is little opposition when she is forced to take her large volume of medication, and to date I have seen little that would suggest that the girl is an out-and-out rebel who needs reining in. However, as I observe her lying scrunched up in a tight ball with only her elephant for comfort, oh, as well as an increasing pile of darned notes, I am left wondering if, with everything else having failed, this might be the perfect time to consider giving electroconvulsive therapy a try. However, if the response from the medical community happens to be a resounding no to my otherwise bold suggestion, then from where, might I take the trouble to ask, will her very essential and most necessary cure possibly come from?
It did not seem like a whole year had passed before it was time to get the festive decorations and the battered Christmas tree out of storage once more. Sadly, once up and in position, it looked tattier than ever, even when covered by the sparse, ever-fading decorations that as a rule brighten up a Christmas tree. Equally sad was the truth that Polly had received hardly a visitor in all this time.
Oh, Uncle Boritz and Aunt Mildred had visited Polly twice throughout the year. The first time they left after only twenty minutes, as Aunt Mildred rather unfortunately had one of her troubling nosebleeds. As for the second time, they accidentally bumped into dear Dr. Ninkumpoop doing his ward rounds, so the majority of this otherwise short and therefore sacred visit was not spent with Polly but with all other parties fawning over each other as they tried hard to outdo each other with as much personal adulation and praise as they could think of.
So, Christmas Eve found Polly watching on as over-chummy nurses and doctors mischievously used this glorious annual occasion as the perfect excuse to kiss and hug each other for longer than they shouldâunder the mistletoe, of course! Some even deigned to take things further by planting one wet kiss after another on every available rosy cheek as, filled with unabashed, festive cheer, they gathered around the Christmas tree to sing joyful carols intended to lift even the saddest spirits on the ward. Secretly, Polly could only feel great concern for the spindly, wilting tree, which due to hospital cutbacks appeared bereft of almost any pretty and precious decorations, save a battered-looking, one-armed fairy precariously dangling from the top branch that, just like her, appeared to be losing the battle to cling on for its very life.