There's an app for that!

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There's an app for everything now - well, nearly everything. We have become 'app happy'.

But that's ok. That's fine. It is so easy to mock some of the excesses of technology - and there are many - but where would we be without it? It is allowing me to scatter my thoughts to the four winds of cyber space, in the hope that they might interest, amuse or even help somone; someone I shall never meet, never know.

Well, why don't you get on with it then!
Okay, I will.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED
Part II

But I digress.

A final thwack, for good luck. All done.

 I thought: well, that’s given me a head start. And I began to laugh as I realised I’d made a pun. I like puns.

‘Mental illness’ is a meaningless expression. After all, if we are going to talk about ‘mental illness’ then there must be some concept of ‘mental health’, and that is pretty well impossible to define. But some people are just not right in the head. That’s not a politically correct term, but we all know it, surely? Anyway, if you’d been on as many psychiatric wards as I have, you’d be aware that there are some pretty strange folk in our community – and not all of them locked up, I might add.

Take Nigel, for example. I met him in 1976… or was it 77? My memory plays me up sometimes – I think it’s all the drugs. Anyway, I know it was the hottest summer we had had for decades, and quite frankly, Mortimer Ward stank. Well, what can you expect with eighteen adult males banged up in a room originally designed for half that number; a room with all the windows locked tight and barred, so no one could leap out and smash their brains on the concrete, four floors below.

Nigel was diagnosed ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ – whatever that’s supposed to mean. He’d attacked a social-worker with a claw hammer. He hadn’t killed her but she parts her hair on the opposite side now. It was the voices that told him to do it. In the end he had a lobotomy. It was only a partial success. He used to go around shouting: Speak up ya buggers, I can’t hear ya.

 I started to walk quickly. With a bit of luck I would be back inside the hospital before anyone missed me. I was sweating even though it was a cold November night, and I was naked under my track-suit.

St. Botolph’s is a big, ugly, red-brick building, built in the days when a spade was called a spade, and a lunatic asylum a lunatic asylum. Now, of course, it is a ‘psychiatric hospital’ and the old strait-jackets have been replaced by the more humane - but much more efficient – chemical variety.

The bag, an old leather Gladstone, was heavy – even without the head – and it kept bumping against my leg. I suppose I could have used a plastic carrier-bag (Sainsbury’s do a nice size, and quite strong), but he deserved something a little more elegant. The Gladstone has character and was, I felt, more fitting to the occasion.  More dignified.

He would never have gotten better. We all knew that – staff and patients alike. But we all colluded in the game. Why? Didn’t old Hippocrates say anything about the quality of life?

 HE knew it, too. He wanted out of it. Only he couldn’t tell anybody. He couldn’t speak. Not properly. Not after the lobotomy. Just used to go around shouting obscenities at unseen tormentors. It was disturbing the other patients.

The tablecloth! I’d forgotten all about it. Oh sod it, I thought, I’ll chuck it in one of the laundry baskets, nobody will notice. The poor buggers that work in the laundry never look at what they are shoving into those huge machines. I’m not surprised - the stink that comes from some of the sheets and towels! And the stains. Well, it’s best not to look. The staff in the laundry wear those thick industrial rubber gloves, so they don’t catch anything. Even so, I wouldn’t like the job. Actually, I nicked a pair of those gloves – clean ones of course – for this job. They could go in the furnace, along with the old Gladstone. Pity about the bag, but I’d never get it really clean again.

 I could see the tower in the moonlight. At the top of the tower is a siren. It is supposed to be sounded when a dangerous lunatic escapes. It’s never been used for years. I crept around the perimeter wall until I came to the small gate that led into the staff quarters. It’s kept locked, but of course, I had a key.

The old hospital moaned and groaned softly as it slept. The huge vaulted corridors had security lights let into the walls and covered by wire grilles. They cast sickly splotches of light that only served to emphasise the darkness. Anything might be lurking in the deep pools of shadow, any sort of evil the imagination was capable of conjuring up. After all, this was a place of tormented souls. A place of deranged minds; minds taken over by demons. A place full of unspeakable horrors. The stuff of nightmares.

Reaching my room I looked at the bedside clock: three thirty-five. The whole business had taken less than an hour and a half. I took off my track-suit and climbed into bed. The feel of the cold sheets against my naked skin was quite sensual. I started to think of him.

My reverie was interrupted by the buzzing of the bedside phone; the soft orange, light pulsating from the white plastic, emphasising the urgency. An emergency! Well, of course – what else could I have expected?

I reached out and lifted the receiver. ‘Now calm down, Sister’, in my best professional voice, a nice mix of authority and reassurance, ‘I’ll be there right away.’ Replacing the handset I sighed and climbed out of bed. As I opened the wardrobe door and reached for my ‘work clothes’, I glimpsed my face in the mirror: a serene rather than beautiful face. It would not stand out in a crowd – or a police line-up for that matter. But the eyes – now they were remarkable: large, intensely blue, they held your gaze with a sincerity, an openness that made you want to pour your heart out. It was a face you could trust.

 I dressed quickly, but not hurriedly; I was used to ‘emergencies’, although admittedly this one was going to be a bit out of the ordinary. Finally I reached for the white coat: the symbol of authority in this place. My coat even more so:  pinned to the lapel was a small rectangle of blue plastic, its white letters announcing: Dr. Amanda Foggitty: Directory of Psychiatry.

I opened the door and strode purposefully down the corridor. No rest for the wicked.

Thanks for your comment RJ.(sparrowchat.com). This story started off as a sentence; a sentence that just popped into my head... 'When I'd walked so far into the wood...'. I had no idea what was going to come next. But it wrote itself. Amanda Foggitty only appeared near the end... but I might develop the story, based around her character. 

Yes, I too miss Anna, and hope to hear from her. Meanwhile, in the absence of 'a good sorting' which I certainly need, I have been doing a bit of bicycling. I pedalled past my first house yesterday. If I had hung on to it, instead of seeking upward mobility, I would have been quite well off today - financially and (possibly) mentally. But who knows.

Anyway, as Shirley McLane said, 'You can get there from here'.