How I Rescued My Brain (13 page)

‘Oh no, you're sounding fine,' he said.

I wasn't sure if he was being kind or if I was imagining that I was off. I supposed, given the last two days, I was just out of sorts, and a good night's sleep would see me right in the morning. I looked forward to that.

DIAGNOSIS

8

ON FRIDAY MORNING,
the day after I am discharged from Lismore Hospital, Anna and I arrive at Seaview Psychiatric Clinic. It's warm for winter; I take off my jacket. We sit down in a quiet, carpeted corner beside the reception desk. The walls are beige, the ceilings white. A water cooler stands by the far wall. Two others are with us in the waiting area, their heads down, beside relatives, with packed bags in clumps around them. I too have a bag, and a guitar.

Anna is wearing her business lipstick: the deep crimson. Her wonderful smile is hard to imagine now, her face is so taut. We sit in silence.

There are four doors leading off the waiting area. On each, above the word
PSYCHIATRIST
, is a doctor's name. With the location of their rooms at the bow of this elongated building, these psychiatrists are like captains of the ship. Eventually the door nearest us opens, and the long, familiar figure of Doctor Banister appears. He's wearing his trademark tweed jacket with elbow patches. ‘Come in,' he says, looking concerned.

We follow him in. He sits at his desk, facing away from us. Taking a seat on the two chairs behind him, we have a view of his back as he punches away at a laptop. On his desk is a crammed concertina file and the laptop, but little else. It looks as if Doctor Banister has just moved in or is in the process of moving out, even though I know that he's been working here for a long time.

After a few moments, he swivels in his chair to address us, speaking to Anna. ‘Tell me what happened … before you took David to hospital?'

She begins her account. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that I am superfluous to their conversation. That's okay with me. The rise and fall of their voices becomes the sound of summer insects — an aural backdrop as I explore the corners of the room. I notice that it has five unequal sides, like a warped pentagon. I'm still not quite sure if I'm dreaming, or if what's happening is real. I might be Alice, and a white rabbit, or something else very unexpected, will appear at any moment.

I see the unframed paintings: originals on canvas. None is hanging; instead, they rest on the floor, propped up by the walls. I'm taken by the large portrait of a young woman. She looks sad, with a long face, small lips, a pointy chin, and dark pools for eyes. Deep red and ochre filters down her face, to her shoulders.

Why are all these paintings here?

Doctor Banister asks me a question, yanking me back to reality. ‘David, what do you think brought this on?'

I really am in a psychiatric establishment
.

It's an effort to find an answer to his question. ‘I … I was very anxious. A barrister came to speak with us. He said that the developer wants to sue us. After he left, I had a huge panic attack; I couldn't stop the trauma memories from coming back. I think it was too much.'

He nods, as though this makes sense. ‘Anna tells me that you have been stressed about your property investments. How many do you have?'

Somehow, his interest in this question feels directed more towards our investments than me. Still, I try and tally up the properties in my mind. The market has picked up recently, and some have been selling, at last.
But to answer his question, I need to picture each property, remember if it has been sold, and hold the number I have counted to while I picture the next property. The numbers disappear into the fog and won't come out again. ‘I don't know,' I say. ‘I need to see it on paper …'

He looks irritated with this answer, but sighs in acceptance.

‘I'd like to walk to the beach and go for a swim,' I say.

He chuckles. ‘I don't think it would be responsible of us to let you go wandering off on your own. In your state, you'd forget your way back. Best to stay in the clinic over the weekend, and we can reassess things on Monday.'

I'll go stir-crazy if I don't go out. But I don't say anything. I'm not capable of challenging him. The phone rings and he answers; he says it's an urgent call-out and he has to wrap things up. He ends our meeting by telling us that he will be away for several weeks, so I'll see another psychiatrist.

As we re-enter the reception area, a nurse asks to show me to my room. We walk along a wide corridor, with wooden railings attached to the walls at hip height. Coming off the corridor are rooms with large doors. The place has more the feel of a hospital than an outpatient clinic.

My room has two beds, and the nurse points to the one closest to the window. Through the glass, I see a low concrete wall, with a grassy slope rising away from it. There's a smell of cigarettes, even though the building is non-smoking. I deposit my bag and guitar by the bed, and we go to look at the rest of the facility.

When we come back a few minutes later, a young man with John Lennon glasses and a slim, athletic build is lying on the other bed. His hands are clasped behind his head as he stares at the ceiling. I smile in his direction, but he doesn't acknowledge us.

Anna and I hug briefly and kiss each other's cheeks in parting. As she gathers her things, I think of the weight she will be carrying while I'm in here. She's a truly capable and loving person; she takes on whatever problem comes along and deals with it. ‘Take care,' I say.

She nods and disappears.

I sit on my bed to face the man. ‘Hello.'

‘Hi,' he replies.

‘I'm your new roommate,' I say, attempting to sound cheerful.

‘Okay.'

‘How long have you been here?'

‘About a week.'

‘How's it going for you?'

With an effort, he props himself up on his right elbow and faces me. He's unshaven, dark hair unkempt, with the smell of tobacco coming from him. ‘Ah … I've been in before. I come in every now and then for a recharge — to sleep, and to get back on the meds.'

‘Oh, right. What do you do when you're not in here?'

‘I busk, juggle — sometimes with the circus. It gets tiring.'

He doesn't ask me anything, so I say, ‘I don't know how long I'm in for. It's my first time. My name's David.'

‘Simon,' he says.

He lies back down, staring at the ceiling again, his face emotionless. He's clearly going to be a quiet roommate — not someone I can share my experiences with.

I decide to unpack. I grab my allocated chair, which stands at the end of the bed, and place it in the carpeted space between my bed and the window, in front of the cabinet. Here I will sit, I decide — read by the natural light, and meditate. With the curtain between my bed and Simon's partly drawn, I won't be visible from the corridor, giving me a thin veil of privacy.

Next I inspect the ensuite, accessible by a sliding door. It's white and stark with absolutely nowhere to hang anything — towel or clothes — when showering, and no ledge to put a toothbrush, soap, or shampoo. The ‘mirror' is a piece of shiny metal bolted to the wall. The shower rose is up high, out of reach. No sharp edges or hooks anywhere — it reminds me that the patients here are teetering on the brink.

White, white, white. I crave some homeliness, some warmth, even if it is only in the form of colour. I already miss the sounds and the mess of home.

THAT EVENING, I'M
called to see the psychiatrist on duty. He's young, with a pleasant manner, but he wants to hear my story all over again. Strangely, he suggests that I could return to clinical work once I'm better. It's beyond me to explain why this doesn't feel like a good idea; I'm very tired. However, he doesn't mention any restrictions on leaving. I'm still not sure if I'm allowed to go out for walks while I'm here, but I decide to keep quiet for now.

Afterwards, I retire to my hard bed. Lying there is un-comfortable — physically and mentally. How the hell did I end up here? I was a happy child, raised in a loving family where nothing unusually bad happened. I negotiated the turbulence of adolescence without mishap and became a confident, capable adult.

When I was eleven, our family moved to Sydney so that Mum could complete her psychiatric training. It was a time when the seriously mentally ill were managed in large institutions. For several years we lived within the grounds of the Parramatta Psychiatric Hospital, sharing facilities with the residents — the swimming pool, the sports oval, and the Friday-night movies. The eccentricities of ‘the patients', as we referred to them, didn't trouble us; we enjoyed befriending the more personable of them. The only aspect of hospital life that gave me a chill was riding past the locked men's and women's wards. Mum said that the patients there weren't allowed out because they were ‘dangerous' — she didn't specify how. I never thought I would end up in a psych hospital as one of ‘the patients'.

During that long first night, my mind runs a home movie of the things gone sour in my life. I built a career over twenty years, but now I can't work. Wayne had reminded me that I had eased the distress of hundreds of people and helped them on their way, but right now it feels as though I've helped very few. I completed a PhD and published in my field of specialisation, but all this seems irrelevant. I made investments that secured our family's financial future, but now we face bankruptcy. I was a devoted father, raising three children, but I now feel alien to them. I made a marriage, but it is strained; I have friends, but feel distant from them. At this moment, it all boils down to a shared room with an uncommunicative stranger. A single bed; a white, antiseptic bathroom with nowhere to hang anything; one chair; my guitar; and a three-drawer cabinet — this is my home for now.

My trustworthy, capable, insightful brain was once my strength. It was always able to save me, to make a plan and push me forward. Now it has gone haywire.

I want to cry — to cry inconsolably — but I can't even do that. I am numb. Nothing is working.

THE NEXT MORNING,
I'm woken by the barking laughter of kookaburras — the prelude to dawn. I must have slept after all. As the day outside shows itself, I see it will be sunny, tempered by a cool wind. This thought, and breakfast, brings some optimism; I will make the best of my situation.

It is Saturday. A free day, I am told. A supervised outing is on offer; it seems as if I will have a taste of freedom already. A young and lanky clinical psychologist drives the eight or so of us who are taking part in the minibus. I sit in the front and ask him about his work and where he trained. He works at the clinic on Saturdays, he says, and otherwise he's in private practice.
Did I look and sound like him in my early years?
I'm quick to explain that I have post-traumatic stress disorder from my work. He's polite, but it feels as though there is a line between us — I'm the patient.

We stop at a nearby headland and grab coffees before walking across the road to the lookout. We crane our necks, looking for any sign of migrating humpback whales. If they're out there, they're difficult to spot; the ocean is littered with white collars of foam forged by the determined wind, pushing the swell, and it's hard to see anything else. The patients stand in twos and threes. I gather from their conversation that they are mostly at Seaview for drug and alcohol problems — they must be in the addictions ward. Beside me is a young woman with bleached-blonde hair. We get to talking, and she tells me of her competitive surfing experiences. ‘Then I realised I was an alcoholic,' she says. She is going home on the coming weekend, and is nervous about relapsing.

What am I doing here?

BY EARLY SUNDAY
morning I need to get out again, and I decide to try that walk. There's hardly anyone about. I go downstairs quietly and walk along the corridor through the addictions ward. There's a rustle in the nurses' station as I pass by, but I don't turn to look. At the end of the building, I push open the fire-escape door — it's the least observable exit from the clinic — and hop down a short set of steps. I go straight to the property's fence line, where I've seen patients walking before, and find a dirt track. No one runs after me or apprehends me; so far, so good.

Beyond Seaview's garden, only a short distance away, is a car park, with compacted gravel and low log railings. Interspersed between the parking bays are paperbarks, like old men, wizened and wise, islands of solidity. If only I could be as stable and unruffled as one of these trees. I stop and press my cheek against the cool, smooth, tissue-like folds of bark. The raised branches hold bunches of elongated leaves that shift in the breeze. When I look up, I see diamonds of sunlight set there; but these sparkles are beyond my reach — like the spark that was once in me.

As I walk on, I stop several times to look back at the hospital, with its tiled roof and walls of tessellated brick. It's a dull building, undecided if it should look like a hospital or a small hotel. But I need to imprint in my mind the view I will see on my return; I don't want Doctor Banister to be right about me losing my way.

I go two blocks down a busy residential street, noting the landmarks I'll see on my way back. At the street's end, a view slaps me in the face: lustrous ocean, rock, horizon, and sand. Elation.