But Tessa wasn’t going anywhere. She’d kicked off in the lounge and Ethel had fainted for real. Her dressing gown stank, her hair was lank, her shins were thick with stubble. They’d called her into the office for a chat.
“How do you think it’s going, Tessa?”
“I want to go home.”
Two of the nurses raised their eyebrows, Dr Patel suppressed a smile.
“We’d like to try you on another medication.”
Of course they would. That was their answer to everything. She wondered if they had a pill for unfaithfulness. Or betrayal.
“We’re going to try you on a low dose of Prolixin.”
It was because of the drugs that she’d lost the baby. She’d told them they weren’t safe. No one ever believed her. Shuffle-shuffle down the corridor, stop in the entrance hall, the old-fashioned telephone on the wall, the notice board stuck with visiting times and pink leaflets suggesting meditation, the double airlock doors to the outside world. The lounge, the courtyard, her bedroom; where would she park herself for the next block of time? The chairs had been set up for group therapy at four. She shuffled to the courtyard. Time dragged.
One of these days she’d get the hang of rolling cigarettes. She dropped half the tobacco on the paving. By the time she’d managed to light it, two drags put it out again, and she chucked it at the wall. An ember fell on a late winter daisy. She kicked it with her slipper. This was the worst of it; not the shouting and crying and the trauma and the fucking awful food, not the scratchy beds and nutters everywhere. It was the ache of time drawing to an almost close, it was the powerlessness to stop it. Tessa let the glass door slam behind her. At least the corridor was warm. She leaned against the wall, the nurse’s station half an eye in view, their door open, she could hear them chatting, the occasional name she knew. Somewhere in that room or the one beyond where her psychiatrist sat in an upright chair, her kind eyes and organised hands, somewhere in there was a file with every Tessa word, and every Tessa action noted. There was no blood-pressure chart or record of bowel movements, no physio report that she’d walked the corridor alone. They believed her illness was all in her mind where they could not go, and the record of her success and failure was measured like this, in behaviour, in phrases funnelled by their questions and filtered by their judgement. There was no trust, anywhere.
Shuffle-shuffle to group therapy. She retied the belt around her robe. Dr Patel had given up encouraging her to get dressed. What was the point? It’ll make you feel better. But she’d be the judge of that, thank you very much, and her judgement, from many, many years of study, said it wouldn’t. It’s a good habit to get into. If they wanted to talk habits, how about the one where they gave her pills every time she acted up? If they couldn’t throw their habits they had no business with hers. You don’t want your visitors seeing you in your dressing gown, do you. What visitors would they be? Her husband who didn’t care? The woman he was fucking? She’d told him Ros had come to see her and he’d said I don’t think so, love as if she’d make such a thing up. She’d have shown him the script if Ethel hadn’t eaten it. Now, the only reason to get dressed was to get out. She’d managed to escape once, when Freddy was a baby, she’d run through the double doors to cheers from the lounge and got as far as her mother standing uselessly shouting while three nurses chased her around the carpark. It had been fun. It was tradition. A habit.
The lounge filled up with the others. Tessa chose a seat facing the window in the absurd circle of straight-backed chairs on which they were expected to feel comfortable. Derek had already broken three. The one he was on now looked at the point of collapse.
“Are we all here?” The therapist with her legs crossed and her smile on. Tessa had thought about training as a therapist once, somewhere in a long run of being well, when she’d thought she’d conquered it, when Freddy had started nursery and she’d had time again on her hands.
“Depends what you mean by here,” said a boy with floppy hair and black jeans. Ethel looked panicked and Carrie giggled.
If only they were allowed to smoke people might talk more. If they could sit around in armchairs as if they were at the pub, if there were an open fire and baskets of scampi and drinks on offer, she’d settle for a Coke, but if they could make it just a bit more cheery, and stop treating them as this was their fault, as if fat had caused it, or laziness, then maybe the inmates of Mercury Ward would start talking. If they could stop punishing them all the time.
“Who’d like to start?” The therapist wore a badge which said Sally Hopkins-Smythe.
Everybody looked at the floor except Ethel who looked at the ceiling.
If she said she was fine and played well, if she took her pills with gratitude and accepted her condition and the comprehension of the world that named her ill with no hope of a cure, if she played their game, swallowing their view as her own, Dr Patel would give her the kind of smile that said: we’re watching. And if she kicked off, they upped her meds. She couldn’t win. She was pinned, labelled, as much at war with her past as they were with her future. Did she have to accept their diagnosis if they were to let her out? Yes. Did she believe to her core that they were wrong? Double yes. But it felt as if the professional members of the section ward were a team united against her, a secret enclave of discussion. She needed her voice heard, the connections she’d made, made valid in the eyes of authority. Why wouldn’t they listen? Think of it like diabetes… You’d take insulin, wouldn’t you? … Your brain’s misfiring, that’s all - a chemical imbalance that had nothing to do with her childhood, a fact like diabetes which couldn’t be helped. Yet these fallen that she sat amongst had traumas in common. They shared stories of abandonment and neglect. Not one of them had arrived by accident; all of them were scarred.
“Carrie?”
Carrie wound a thread around her finger, turning the tip blue.
“Would you like to say anything?” Sally Hopkins-Smythe wore jeans from the eighties and ballet pumps. If Tessa worked for MIND she’d wear a flak suit.
Carrie shook her head. She wound the thread the other way.
“Roger?”
Roger had found his way to cope. “I’d appreciate it if Miss Noggins over there,”
“Do you mean Ethel?”
“Ethel the unready,” said Clive.
“I do ask that you abide by the code, Roger, all of you, of patience, love and listening, while you’re in this room. Ethel has a name.”
Ethel crossed her arms and bared her teeth, an animal in belted shawl, rope around her waist, grey socks.
“I’d appreciate it if everyone left my cards alone,” said Roger.
“Roger that,” said Derek. Clive laughed.
“I’m sure we can do that,” said Sally. “Can’t we, Ethel? Respect each other’s space? We’re all here to get better.”
“Is that what you’re here for?” asked Clive.
“Tessa,” Sally Hopkins-Smythe turned tired eyes upon her. “Maybe you’d like to start us off.”
If she’d been held, if she’d felt for an instant that she was safe, if, after she’d been shut in the cupboard and told she was going to die, the Alice In Wonderland drugs, her sisters laughing, if after all of that her mother had held her and said my darling, how awful, it will never happen again; if her mother had protected her from the myriad times it had happened before and would happen again instead of saying in that bright kitchen, not stopping for a minute with the carrots she was chopping, not even turning around but saying with her back, her hair, sleeves up, do stop making things up Theresa. Go and wash your hands. Your sisters were having a joke. They only tease you because they love you; if none of that had happened, who knew where she’d be now? Not in Mercury Ward, slumped in an uncomfortable chair beside a dying yucca plant, surrounded by loss. “I want to go home.”
“Do you feel ready to go home?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk a little about coping mechanisms?”
“She doesn’t think she’s ill,” blurted Carrie.
“Shall we let Tessa speak?” Sally Hopkins-Smythe had a wedding ring on, and gold studs, and a thin gold chain around her neck.
“Exercise, nutrition, sleep,” said Tessa. It reminded her of the midwife who’d come in to help after Freddy was born, to show her the ropes as if it was as simple as that. We call it the E-A-S-Y method; eat-activity-sleep-you. The acronym had made Tessa feel lonely. They should have called it H-A-R-D. Hopelessness-anger-regret-despair. It had felt like that; everyone watching, waiting for her to fuck it up, hovering constantly to whip him away from her. It was all very well to tell her about the Easy method, but what about telling Freddy? All he’d wanted was her and all she’d wanted was him. Wasn’t that what mothers were supposed to feel? She’d read that for the first three months, babies weren’t even aware they were separate.
“Exactly right,” said Sally. “A routine of exercise, a balanced diet and regular sleep.”
“And medication,” said Ethel.
“Thank you, Ethel. And, of course, taking your medication. Do you think you can manage that, Tessa?”
If she said yes, would they let her out? “Yes.”
Freddy had been four months old when they’d taken her away in an ambulance and locked her up here, her first time in Mercury Ward, ten years ago. Wasn’t that post-natal depression? Other women suffered it, but they didn’t get locked up. Or maybe they did. That was the fear, wasn’t it? If you tell anyone that you’re on the edge, that you’re out of your mind with exhaustion, they’ll take your baby away from you, so you don’t. You don’t say anything until it’s too late. What was it about this habit they loved so much of ripping the fragile away from the only binds keeping them anchored to the ground? The vulnerable needed connection, not isolation. Motherhood was frightening enough, but without Freddy it was impossible.
“And do you want to talk a little about your worries around going home?” She had brown bobbed hair that trembled every time she spoke. The chain around her neck had a thin gold cross on it.
Tessa searched her mind for the right thing to say. Everyone got it wrong sometimes, didn’t they? Everyone ignored advice and stumbled through, finding their own way. A friend from NCT had hidden in her bathroom, scared of what she might do to her baby who hadn’t stopped crying for fourteen hours. Had they locked her up? No. They’d said she was suffering exhaustion and brought in help. Or Clare, who’d nearly blinded Nancy with Olbas oil when she’d poured too much on the pillow in the middle of the night while animal shapes danced in shadows on the wall. Or the time Ros had told them about when she’d topped up a carton of apple juice with vodka and forgotten and given it to Molly and Issy for three breakfasts in a row.
“Tessa?” said Sally.
Had anyone called them incompetent? Had anyone said they were a danger? No. They’d laughed about it. No one had laughed when Freddy had rolled off the bed. No one had said This whole thing’s a nightmare, you’re doing great, when she ran into her mother in Sainsbury’s and had it reported over dinner that night that she’d been seen rocking the peas to sleep. They didn’t laugh and say been there, done that, they exchanged looks. They gave that flags-up straightening of the mouth.
“I just think I’m ready.”
Sally nodded, her hair trembled, and Carrie wound the thread the other way.
Tessa shifted position on the uncomfortable, hard backed, hard seat chair. They’d said she wasn’t safe, but without Freddy in her arms, there’d been no point at all. They’d removed him and expected her to calm down. She’d learnt more about playing the game that time, than she ever had before. Shut up and pretend. That was the message. Nobody was interested in the horror of a child out of reach, nobody took any notice. They called it another episode.
“That is good to hear,” said Sally. “It’s good to hear you’re making progress.”
She was in for four months that time. When she came out she found it hard to touch him. H-A-R-D. He’d been weaned, of course. They’d had to feed him. Changing his nappy for the first time after, a health visitor had watched over her shoulder while pretending to fold muslins. He wasn’t hers anymore. Everybody had said it hadn’t affected him at all.
Tessa ground to a halt in the corridor. The floor was a dirty pink linoleum, the walls, magnolia and scuffed. She wasn’t sure how she’d got there or when group therapy had finished. She’d just drifted to a stop. Her hair was lanky and her dressing gown loose. Where was she going? Why was she here? None of it made any sense.
"What was it about this habit they loved so much of ripping the fragile away from the only binds keeping them anchored to the ground? The vulnerable needed connection, not isolation. Motherhood was frightening enough, but without Freddy it was impossible." Wonderful writing and I really felt my sympathy for Tessa soaring when I read this. Her mind is so vivid.
I do wonder what the point of group therapy is sometimes, in situations like these, I would think that one-on-one would be far more beneficial than a soup pot approach. And she's absolutely right - the line between laughing off a misstep and full-blown mental illness is not as clear cut as most people think. 🤪