on my face. It had felt as though he’d broken my cheekbone. My head was aching, but on the surface of the skin there was just a barely perceptible swelling and a small red mark. As though he hadn’t hit me at all.
Thursday 31 January 2008
I got off the bus at Denmark Hill. Across the street, King’s College Hospital, brightly lit, an ambulance with lights flashing and sirens blaring going to the side entrance and the Accident and Emergency department. I stood at the pedestrian crossing, watching the ambulance, until I realized a car had stopped to let me across. I headed for the Maudsley Hospital, a beautiful old building with huge pale porticos against red brick, just across the street.
I stood looking at it for a moment thinking of how it must have looked the same a hundred years ago, maybe with less traffic. The last time I’d been near a hospital was when I’d been taken in through the back entrance, in the back of an ambulance, sitting crouched and squeezed tightly into a corner. I promised myself I’d never go back there, I’d never let them take me like that again. Now here I was, standing in front of a psychiatric hospital and I was going to walk in through the front entrance just like a normal person. If I could just pluck up the courage to move.
“Looking for someone?”
It was Stuart. He was wearing a shirt that looked badly in need of ironing, the sleeves folded up to his elbows, his hospital ID pass clipped to his breast pocket.
“I’d almost forgotten what you look like,” I said. It had only been a couple of days, with various shift patterns and me being at work too, but it felt like years.
“Shall we go inside?” he said, after a moment.
I looked at him and looked back at the entrance. I could see people inside, walking around.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“We could go somewhere else, if you like,” he said gently, “but I haven’t got long.”
I took a deep breath. “No, let’s do it. Just make sure I get let out again, all right?”
We walked through the main entrance and down an endless corridor, passing doctors and visitors and medical reps and orderlies, until suddenly there was a restaurant on the left. “I take you to all the nicest places,” he said.
“It’s fine. Don’t be silly.”
I sat at a free table while he got us some drinks and food. I watched him in line. Crowds of people always made me nervous, but being in here made things worse. It was easy to spot the medical staff since they clearly belonged there; others, probably visiting family, looking up at the blackboard menu with everything except jacket potatoes scrubbed off, debating over the few remaining sandwiches or the stale cake. Maybe some of them were patients.
Three people behind Stuart in line, a man with his back to me was making me feel uncomfortable. He was with some other people, laughing and talking to a girl, but there was something about him that reminded me . . . the laugh? I could hear it from here. I concentrated on Stuart, watching him, but the man was still there. He had muscles, too, big shoulders. I started to feel a bit sick.
I turned in my seat toward the wall, concentrating on the bright white walls, trying to think about other things. Counting to six. It’ll be fine. It’s not him.
“Cheese or ham?” Stuart put the tray down in front of me and I jumped.
“Cheese, please,” I said. He passed it over and started unwrapping his ham.
“Let’s go out at the weekend,” he said. “What do you think? We’ll go out Saturday—the weather’s supposed to be good, isn’t it? I’ve got a match on Sunday, assuming the shoulder’s up to it.”
The man who’d been behind Stuart in line walked past then. He was more like him than the man in the café in Brighton had been. I looked, though. I did it. I looked at him, forced my brain to spot the differences.
Stuart followed my gaze, watched as the man sat a few tables away, with his friends and the girl he’d been talking to. They were still laughing.
“That’s Rob,” he said. “Plays rugby with me.”
“Oh,” I said.
I looked up and saw his eyes on me. Watching me steadily. “You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“You look a bit—pale.”
I tried to laugh. “I’m always pale. Really, I’m fine.”