Far From The Madding Crowd

There; there it was, clear, defined, unimpeded. The room was empty but for himself. Clara walked past the dayroom, all vacant eyes and fear. There had been something different about today. He had fleetingly suspected this day was not ‘just another day’ before now – but as rapidly as the notion had come to him he had forgotten it again. He focused his attention on a wide bandwidth; wide enough that he might be able to hear all sounds and try to give them equal importance.

His setting was ideal, he reflected. There were just too many distractions in this quiet, timeless room, to follow one line of thought alone. He had always found that difficult, but lately he had given up on trying to focus his mind as he was bombarded constantly by the everything of things.

It was a sizeable room. Along one side were the accoutrements of group activities in plastic boxes stacked lopsidedly toward the rear wall. At the end they rested themselves on a functional bookshelf. The books here were a surprisingly eclectic array of mostly fiction, with the odd self help book left behind by the more motivated, and probably less ill, inhabitants of the room. Numerous weighty bucket seats were arranged loosely in what could be termed a circle; loosely, as no one was offering therapy at the moment. No one wanted the job.

The room had no windows whatsoever and the hermetic seal of the door, when closed, disguised any form of daylight. In here it was endless night, punctuated only by the optional yellow glow of parallel strip lights that could at once lull people toward the cliff of a stupor. People generally zoned out in here and once seated, this could easily feel pretty permanent. Once snared amidst the pale unrippable leather, even the staff struggled to move again, particularly the agency staff he had found.

He would prefer to sit in darkness really but the staff thought it odd and turned on the lights if they found him doing this. He had now stopped trying to do this when he realised they came around every hour and naming time like this was more disconcerting than languishing in his all at once yet limitless space. They also had a habit of attempting to engage him in small talk, which to him was both idiotic and frightening.

The lighting was effectively a tranquiliser. He didnt think this was by design; the NHS hadn’t put that much thought into the place. If they had the ethics committee would never have allowed the drugging of patients with such specific lighting? The staff insisted on telling you about every tablet they thought you should take. They gave you leaflets that openly stated they were likely to make you feel ill, in some way or another. They told you when they were going to jump on you to give you an injection if you didnt take them. So why would they hide the effect of lighting? It was likely just a budgeting matter. Taking tablets was difficult with a chorus singing at you about poison. Couldn’t they just laced his bedding or something, so he could lie down and feel better all at once. So why would they hide the effect of lighting. It was likely just a matter of budgeting where edible food had fortunately won out.

Nevertheless there it was, this timeless, thoughtless light.

He thought about the lighting some more whilst he waited. It was not an unpleasant experience. It was probably an unplanned effect of the constant changes in management. Rather than hire someone experienced in psychosis to enter your world and guide you out of it, it was far easier to focus on the lighting and decor. And forms. And tablets…and how these are taken or not. Once their focus passed to more complex matters they would inevitably move onto another job and change something about that he supposed.

And so time could travel slowly in the dayroom, whatever the hour. It was the perfect setting for his current way of being. Time had increasingly become irrelevant to him. What use was time when it was continuously forgotten? When life was one expanse of moving boundaries and emotional shifts of gear? One minute time could bound across the skies as he sat in terror. The next, it hunkered down in the sludge of his passing thoughts, that dropped into his consciousnes between long pauses of emptiness. His head a could be a hive or a vacuum, whilst his body sat motionless in a bucket chair, eyes fixed on one place. Either way he had come to feel and appear much like a manikin left behind from the packing up of a group.

It was here he had spent, what he estimated to have been the entirity of the afternoon, staring at the cracked perspex screen layered over the television. Not the television itself; for this had been assaulted yesterday. He and a few others were pleased with this change. The television was stretchered away by a couple of men in identical clothing and with it went the constant drone of other people gloriously untroubled by what could happen if their brain was temporarily broken. He hoped this was a permanent change. The transparent glaze over what had been the television was more interesting anyway. It allowed more projections onto its surface that ever the television had.

In this hermetic bubble he had sat, noting very occasionally the day felt different somehow, before zoning out again in the general funk of this beige timecapsule.

Here he waited.

The day had started like any other. JJ and Lloyd-e had woken him from his nightly stupor by screaming in his ear, as they liked to do. This caused him to rouse suddenly; startled and confused he lay listening to their raucous laughter. This that progressed into moderate level taunts and he was back in the room. He noticed it was the daytime and ambled over to the toilet. He sat and listened to them for a while. They wittered on about how stupid he was and how he should kill himself. As though in response he wiped his backside and flushed. There was nothing new to their commentary. He found he was able to zone them out by staring at a blank strip of paper on the floor. He didnt ask where it had come from; it was usefully there, but the one he had called Sebastian – he was quite posh sounding – tried to implant some paranoia about its presence, but he did not find him convincing.

He pulled down the handle of the door and wandered out into the corridor. A staff member came and told him to go back and put some clothes on. He had forgotten that. It seemed like a reasonable request. He used his fob, opened the door and found some clothes on the floor. They were probably his. He put them on. JJ told him how much of a faggot he looked once he had finished. He looked in the mirror. He was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt. They seemed ok to him. If it turned out he was a faggot when he got his bearings, would that be such a bad thing? JJ goaded Lloyd-e into joining him. He sat on the bed trying to remember.

“Ah…you found some…good.” A female staff member, he noted, had opened the door. He stared at her. She was quite pretty. He liked her he decided.

“Yes” he said. “What do I do now?”

“Come down and get yourself some breakfast” she smiled. Yes, she’s pretty, he thought, that answers that one for now. I can’t sit here thinking about that all day. She says I get breakfast now.

He followed her down the corridors and they passed a young woman looking equally as disorientated as him.

“Morning Clara”, the staff member chimed. He and Clara stared at each other blankly as they passed one another. He thought he heard the staff member call Clara a bitch. If she had Clara portrayed no reaction whatsoever. Either way, he followed the staff member into the dining area. He looked at her badge. Her photo was pretty too. Sarah, it read, Healthcare Support Worker.

Ah yes. This was Sarah. He remembered her now. She had helped him get out the shower the other day when he had become transfixed by the falling of the water onto the floor. Snippets of that time passed before him. He shuddered. He couldn’t shower today. Axel, the male nurse she got to help him, said he had been in the shower for over an hour. So they had wondered if he was ok. Axel steered him, placing a hand on his elbow, back to his room, where he reminded him patiently how to get dressed. Successfully it turned out. Though, he recalled, even then, according to JJ, in a homosexual manner. What did it matter what sexuality he was when the world was ending?

“I guess it wouldn’t…true enough”. This he realised was Axel, answering what had thought was an internal matter.

JJ now squealed delightedly. Axel now thought he was gay, he said.

“So what, the world is ending…what’s it matter?” Axel realised he was not talking to him.

“Don’t forget the shoes” he said, pointing to where they could be found, and left. So he went and put them on.

Yes, Sarah.

“Hello Sarah”, he said, “How are you?” Sarah seemed pleased, if a little taken aback. She said she was good thank you before asking him the impossible question in return.

“Erm…hmm…” he shrugged. That was a difficult one. And he was trying to follow her instructions on how to get a spoon, which seemed more important. He pretended she hadn’t asked and was thankful when she poured cereal into a bowl.

“Oh sorry” she said, “I didn’t ask…do you like Frosties?” He nodded immediately. He would. It didnt matter. He was going to eat it. He had decided he trusted her.

Sarah reminded him where the seats were and he went and sat down.

“Whore…Bitch…” He crunched on the flakes. “Hey you little bitch!” He turned as nonchalantly as he could to see who that was. But the dining area was empty. That one was new, he thought, not had one call me that before. He was then distracted by Clara walking past the window in the garden. He liked Clara. She was pretty as well.

Don’t mean nothing, JJ snickered. Yeah she’s pretty, so what? You’re still…

He hadn’t heard the rest. Clara seemed to be in some sort of trouble out there in the garden. Her face contorted. He stared as she walked past the window again, this time in the opposite direction, her eyes fixed on the grass beneath her.

“No” he saw her mouth. He knew she wasnt talking as the window was open. He wondered who she was talking to. Then he remembered where he was. Clara glanced to the side momentarily and scuttered away.

Breakfast had been a long drawn out affair and Sarah had to keep tapping him on the shoulder to remind him what he was doing there. He remembered mealtimes as a child and how it had taken hours to finish the plate. But he couldn’t get down from the table until he had. Every time he thought about getting up the Frosties prevented him. As long as there were Frosties in the bowl he was stuck here.

Bitch, he thought, he had never been called a bitch before. Then Sarah would come and say he didnt have to finish it if he didnt want to. And he would smile and thank her. But he was stuck. Stuck there with the task of breakfast. Even if it drifted into lunchtime. It wasnt about what he wanted or not.

He parsed the voices around him as the morning continued without him. Something different, he thought. Something…

“Sorry its late buddy”, a nurse put a pot in front of him. “It’s been a busy morning and I’m only getting to you now…here you go…”

He was still thinking of that word. Different. Different…
He put the pills in his mouth without thinking and swallowed them.

JJ went berserk. Lloyd-e joined him. A chorus of angels sang to him about death. Voices condemned him in Spanish and as a solemn death march began to play louder and louder, until he couldn’t hear them anymore. For some reason the urgent dose of adrenaline this caused did not phase him.

Whore, he thought, the music so loud he found he could actually think. Why would they call me a whore? I mean, its like calling me anything. A house, a pencil…it just didnt…it doesn’t do anything. It didnt register to him. He was used to being called names and generally this got him down. But this one? They usually know just what to say, he thought.

Then something else came into his mind for quite some time.

Anyway, that was breakfast. Sarah asked if she could take him empty bowl and he was free. It had been quite a morning and he was exhausted. He tried to stand up and almost fell to one side.

“Woah steady…” Sarah and the bowl looked at him anxiously, “why don’t you come with me…we can watch a bit of telly…”

And so he was guided to the lounge area where with great relief Sarah remembered the telly was broken and apologised. He wobbled over to a chair and collapsed into it.

Yes, it had been quite a morning. What Sarah and other people might think of as menial tasks – she probably ate her breakfast whilst driving and listening to a podcast all at once – took a lot of effort, he thought. That’s enough for one day. The lights were on, he noted, happily. He called to Sarah to close the door on her way out and as the door closed, he sighed, almost contented. He would sit here for a while.

____________________________________________________________________

Clara had, technically, been an adult for some time now, but for her adulting had proven difficult. Even as she passed the age of twenty five, she looked and lived like one far younger. Years of her mother’s petty criticisms, her constant commentary on everything she did, endless lectures on how life should be lived, had constructed a world of frightening uncertainty. One in which she was ill equipped. When faced with any sort of decision Clara found herself paralysed, wholly unable to choose her own path in life. Clara had adopted the approach of watchful waiting toward life in general, often hoping decisions resolved themselves without her involvement. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t, and when they did not, Clara found herself plunging deeper and deeper into a mire of troubles that would not go away. Troubles that had accumulated since the demise of her arch critic, mother.

Her mother had cared for her. She had cooked every meal, cleaned, completed all tasks in relation to her daughter to the highest of standards, as this, she impressed upon Clara daily, was the only way to do things, “Or you should not do anything at all”. Clara hadn’t realised she had chosen the latter; life with her mother was just easier that way. Instinctively she had managed to steer clear of the worst criticisms and lengthiest lectures by doing nothing at all. Being labelled useless and idol was preferable to the criticisms unleashed should she attempt something and find she was useless at it. And anyway, she tended to agree with her mother’s appraisal.

At the age of fifty three her mother had decided to die. It was unclear if her overuse of painkillers was intentional or not the Coroner decided, as her mother was always in pain. And mother never let on either way. Her mother was forever complaining of this or that, as a series of baffled GP’s ushered her out the surgery with increasing amounts of opiates and other pills or potions. Over time these affected her memory. It was quite possible, the Coronor declared, that her mother had taken them again and again that fateful day; not realising she had done so already. By the time Clara had ventured out cautiously from her room to find out why tea was 48 hours late, her mother was dead. There she lay on the sofa, as cold, pale and frightening as she ever was in life. Clara did not know what to do. So she did what she was compelled to; which was nothing.

It wasn’t until the following morning, when a delivery driver rang the doorbell, Clara had any idea of what she should do.

“Hello”, she said, “My mother’s in the lounge, on the sofa. She’s dead”. She looked at him for some sign of what to do about it. The delivery man, having more experience with telephones, called an ambulance for her. The ambulance then came and took her mother away. And suddenly Clara was alone.

Her mother had completely failed to prepared Clara for life, preferring instead to live it for her. If Clara could not do something quickly enough she did it for her. If Clara couldn’t do something to her own exacting standards, she would tell her not to bother, she would have to do it. She was a useless child. Always had been. She was a useless teen. Then she was a useless adult. How was it she had produced such unlikely an offspring? She blamed her father for that. That was clear. She even looked like him. Whatever she did that girl, she did it like him.

Clara was not like a real person. She had no will. She just sat there. Staring into space. She didnt do anything! Whilst she did everything! She was such a burden. A real burden, that’s what she was. A dead weight. A millstone from out of her own uterus. Put there by that man, that stupid stupid man.

It was only right she haunt the little bitch in her death. Look at all the work she had caused her. All the stress and concern. Mothering such a child! It had taken everything, all her strength, everything. No wonder she passed away so early. She had taken so much and given so little. It had killed her in the end! Fifty three! Who dies at fifty three! People who have their lives stolen from them, that’s who.

“By useless little bitches like you…”

Clara shuddered. Her mother could be very loud and she worried people on the ward might overhear her.

“Yes mother”, she muttered under her breath, teasing a thread on her sleeve.

“Yes…yes mother…too right mother…” Mother wailed. Fifty three was not her time to die. Fifty three. Her own mother was still alive! Her own mother was eighty seven!

“And you, you little bitch. You just sit there. With all your years ahead of you. Sit there why don’t you. You in your mid twenties, without a care in the world…you little leach…”

Clara sat motionless. She resisted the urge to blink. If she were frozen in time like this, she thought, she might cease to exist. She should never have existed. By just existing she had caused her mother such pain. If she hadn’t existed her mother would not have needed pills. Her memory would have been sound, as good as it ever was. She wouldn’t have taken all those tablets and she wouldn’t have ended up dying on the sofa.

Clara focused on her breathing. She tried to make it stop, but her mind was feeble. She had to keep breathing, despite not wanting to.

Her breathing slowed and she noticed mother had gone. She looked up. She was in the patient lounge. It was dark. She hadn’t noticed until now.

Suddenly the door opened. One of the staff turned the light on and looked at her puzzled.

“Sitting in the dark Clara? Alright if I leave the light on?” Clara stared at her knees. “I’ll take that as a yes ok?” They scratched a pen on their clipboard. Paused, then scratched again. “Right then, see you guys later.”

“Who is that?” Clara realised someone else was in the room. “That woman?”

Clara pursed her lips tightly as she tried to recall who that had been. Their face, their badge. She remembered badges more than faces.

“Jenny? I think?” The woman had looked like Jenny’s badge. But it could have been Marie. They had the same hairstyle. They were both about the same age.

“No, not her. Not the staff. The woman. The woman shouting all the time.”

Clara’s eyes darted forward. There sat on the opposite side of the room was the strange boy who always said hello to her. She could not bring herself to say it back. She avoided walking past him, when she saw him coming. He didnt want to speak to her really. She was making him do it. He was one of those people who felt compelled to say something, anything, and she didnt want him to feel like he had to. Especially for her.

“You know,” he said, “the one who calls you a bitch all the time.” He was looking at the chair beside her. He was awkward, not sure if he should have said anything about it. She watched as he fidgeted with his hair. He rubbed his eyes and tossed himself about in his chair.

“Sorry” he said, “Ignore me. I thought she was one of yours. She must have been mine all along.” He stood up. “Ah…” he paused, considering if she should elaborate. “Yeah, sorry. Just another day I guess”.

Clara watched him leave. His trousers were comically short. He was barefoot. On the sole of his foot had been a smudge of dirt. It had looked like a ladle, or a musical note. She had been startled to find someone else in the room with her and hadn’t recovered her composure. He glanced at her as he closed the door behind him. His eyes, like hers, were utterly lost.

Clara giggled to herself. What was he on about? He’s funny. Sweet even. And he had spoken to her. Not just said hello this time, for once. That was nice of him. He didnt have to. He was just being kind.

Her mind was slow on account of all the drugs she was taking. It was a further five minutes before Clara realised what he had said. She pinged several messages back to her memory store. It was unlikely, very unlikely. She checked again. And again, as a growing sense of panic arose in her chest.

“Mother’, she whispered, “that man heard you”.

“No he didnt you silly little bitch. He thinks you’re an ugly little nutter. A stupid little whore. And you know what? He’s right”.

Her mother was right. She was always right. She was the Oracle of her life. She knew. She knew what he’d said. She didnt. She had misheard. She wasnt very good at talking, or listening. She needed to be quiet. Needed to listen to her mother. Her mother had always known things and she hadn’t. She couldn’t even hear properly. She was that useless. She was stupid.

But for once – and she kept this to herself – whilst agreeing with mother as she was conditioned to; she was not sure, not sure mother was right. About this. She was always right otherwise. She was not sure mother had even heard what he’d said. She would have said. If she had. And she hadn’t. Clara realised she would have to keep this from her mother. She would have to keep it as her secret. She would have to keep it to herself. Not tell mother. Clara realised then that she had done something else also; she had decided to do this. She had decided to do this herself.

The rest of the day was a blur.