As luck would have it, Dominic cheerily gave Buki a sealed note on the Monday after her self-harming incident. It told her that she was down for a therapy session on Wednesday morning.
"A therapy session. I need something to cheer me up, innit,"she said in a disconsolate tone of voice.
"Cheer up, Buki. Look on Dr Waugh as a really understanding guy. He'll sort out your problems, yeah."
Buki didn't answer. In a way, it was harder dealing with men who treated her properly. If she messed up, they made her feel worse about herself, not better. She couldn't bear to think about telling the doctor that she'd cut up again and let him down again. It was fortunate that Dominic went on to deal with another problem and left her to her own worries. As she nervously got ready on the appointed day, she was only too conscious of her stitched up arm and how the man could see through her. Somehow, she felt that he could kill her with kindness and all his long words could see right through her. She made her uncertain way alongside Selena, feeling that she was going to her own execution. She could picture the man behind his desk, speaking in that posh accent, dead confident,
and knowing all the answers.
********
Thomas Waugh ran his comb through his thick unruly hair and placed Buki Lester's bulky file in front of him. A large steaming hot mug of coffee at his side couldn't dispel the sinking feeling in his stomach as he studied the papers. He was quite frankly nervous of facing her problems because he felt so inadequate. The fact that the man was positive and cheery in his outlook despite his share of life's hard knocks was almost a problem. For the life of him, he couldn't get an emotional handle on her self-harming. It seemed like the ultimate expression of negativity, of the most extreme instance of self-hating that he could think of. He was acutely aware that his powers of empathy either totally failed him or refused outright to go there. On an academic level, he knew that it was like any other form of addiction, one that kept its tenacious grip somewhere in Buki's psyche and the fact that it was perverse was almost the point.
He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, and started to reflect on the worst moments in his life to gain some purchase on the matter. He recalled the sick feeling in his stomach, a sense of betrayal as he remembered when his wife had run off with his best friend. He could only recall a nebulous period of darkness before his native drive and his work ethic pulled him together. He recalled how his dreams feverishly invested in that rare spirit, Helen Stewart, turned to dust in his hands but even then, he was now on the best of terms with her partner, Nikki Wade. He was especially thankful for her presence as she and her helpful subordinates possessed the eyes and ears around Larkhall that he needed. She collated all this information and relayed it to him, possessing that intuitive sense for what really mattered, however trivial it seemed. He appreciated such sympathetic backup as he remembered with exhaled anger how life at Larkhall had been after Helen had left and the reactionaries had been back in control. The trouble was that these troubles felt a long time ago and since then he had 'picked himself up, dusted himself down and started all over again.'
In this way, his thoughts finally zigzagged their way back to the positive and focused on what lay before him. Certainly, the last interview had gone well. Buki had reported eagerly that she was seeing the light and was feeling positive about herself at last. He had allowed himself a small feeling of satisfaction but not too much hope. That feeling had sustained him right up till Monday morning when that feeling of gloom had descended on him when he had realized that a lot of water had flowed under Buki's bridge since that last meeting.
As he heard the footsteps coming, he hoped for the best as he switched his mind into gear.
**********
He generously held out his hand as Selena escorted a reluctant, blank faced Buki into his room. He gripped her rather limp hand briefly and waved her into the armchair. Her sudden fixed smile and awkward body language gave out mixed messages.
"Take it easy, Buki," he offered.
"Yeah, Dr. Waugh,' came her submissive response, knees drawn tight into herself.
"So how's life been treating you since we last met?"
"I, like, tried to do what you said to, being positive and all that and not let my bad thoughts into my head," Buki said, halfway trying to convince herself of what she wanted to be true. After all, that night when she'd cut herself was a few days ago. She was in a different place now so she would make believe she was doing fine.
"Just how easy have you been finding this?" Thomas asked in even tones.
"Well, it's prison, innit. I have to do what I'm told. I think of my little boy on the outside and that gets me down sometimes."
"Do you have any worries that he won't be looked after properly?"
Buki stared vacantly for a little while and her eyes flitted about the room while she thought for the words she ought to say.
'I know, like I'm reading a book that he's being looked after, yeah? Most days, I feel like this. Only there's a day that I can't make it real like I believe it. Some days there's light days. Sometimes, there's black days."
"How much control do you have over this?"
"Not all the time. I try to think positive, like you told me to do. Sometimes it doesn't work."
Thomas was struck by the way that Buki relayed words back to him that he'd slowly and carefully offered her as a refuge that she could cling to. He'd done his share of book learning but he'd come to believe in them as something he could wear like clothes. His regular interaction with Karen and Nikki meant that he had tested those words out with others who were like-minded. By contrast, he was becoming uncomfortably aware that Buki had, at best, only completed this process of assimilation. The phrase 'at best' was kindly meant but cruelly exposed the gap between wish and reality.
"You've still got good friends with you, even at night, Buki. How real are they at nights?"
"Sometimes," Buki said promptly, a half smile on her face. "The Julies talk to me and make me feel good about myself and, like, I'm silly to let my bad thoughts get to me."
Thomas became slowly aware of how awkwardly Buki was sitting in the comfortable armchair. Instead of letting her hands rest naturally on the chair arms as it was designed to do, her right hand reached out to her left elbow, her fingers restlessly stroking her skin. Her eyes weren't engaging with his either.
"Is there something the matter with your arm, Buki? I'm a qualified GP and not just an ordinary trick cyclist."
His attempt at self-deprecating humour fell flat as a pancake. He saw the look of fear in her eyes and became conscious of how she really felt. Everything up till that point wasn't a cool calculated lie but an attempt at make-believe, which hadn't worked, least of all for herself. She read his slowly forming suspicion in his eyes, which crystallized into solid certainty. This was why she feared him. He saw too much.
"I really think I should examine your arm, Buki. It is for the best."
With an intense look of shame on her face, Buki slowly rolled back her T-shirt arm. As Thomas looked on, he expected to see a slash in Buki's arm. What he hadn't expected was a deep wound, which had been astonishingly and neatly sewn up with surgical precision. His mouth hung open in astonishment as he fumbled for the medical notes in the file to cross-reference this unexpected reality. Logic told him that such a professionally treated injury should be equally professionally reported. It was only afterwards that he smiled at the absurdly slow speed with which the cogs in his mind had revolved, drawing the inevitable conclusion.
"All I want to know, Buki is how this injury has come to be treated."
"It was that new doctor," gasped out Buki in a desperate attempt to lie her way out of this situation, as the consequences came home to her of her compulsive desire to be found out."He don't know what day it is though he's good with a needle. He's always losing his specs."
"I must hand it to her she's done a marvelous job in sewing up your arm. I am humbled by her skill…."
"Oh good, then everything's cool. Look, it's only the once. Julies talked some sense into me so I won't never, never, never going to do anything like this again. I swear it on Lennox's life……"
"Not so fast, Buki. I do want to talk to you how this happened. I respect the way you're taking this on the chin but you know as well as I do that these things have to be done properly…"
At this point, Buki's eyes were downcast. She knew that she'd lost everything.
"Let's put it this way. I'd bet three month's supply of peanut butter that this wound wasn't stitched up by any of the doctors that are in my practice….."
Word had past round Larkhall Prison's efficient grapevine about Thomas's devotion to peanut butter sandwiches. The quirkiness of his reply got right through Buki's guard. In a twisted way, she found that men who were bastards were easier to deal with. She knew where she stood with them, like her pimp, and they couldn't make her feel bad about herself.
"….which means that it was done by someone not working for the prison system and with clear medical competence," Thomas pursued in his relentless fashion, "….so perhaps you care to tell me what happened."
"OK, so I did cut up bad," shouted Buki angrily. "It's what you want to hear, innit."
"The last thing you need from me is me passing judgment," Thomas said slowly, clearly and deliberately, trying to fix Buki's gaze, "but I do need to get to the bottom of this. Anything medical or psychological is on my watch. I can't brush this under the carpet as I could be letting down my colleagues. Their faith in me is my responsibility that I have to carry. You see how it is, Buki."
Dumbly, Buki nodded. This was the first direct communication that day. She could see that Nikki and Miss Betts were his mates. She knew what the game was.
"OK, so I cut myself up last weekend when only a few screws were around. The rest of you were tucked up in your comfortable houses for the weekend. If the Julies hadn't called out for help, I would have bled to death. Only Bodybag was around. Gina was someplace else. You won't get the Julies in trouble?"
The appealing look in Buki's eyes commanded Thomas' desire to offer her comfort just at the right time.
"I would never blame anyone else being concerned about their fellow human being. You know that, Buki."
The man's infinitely kind eyes and soothing words got to Buki in ways she couldn't describe. They always made her confess all while Bodybag's tactless, hateful hectoring made her turn cold and hard inside.
"OK, so they called for Connie," Buki mumbled, not meeting his eyes. "Don't know how but she sewed my arm up. She was dead kind when I was scared of what she might say to me…like you do, sometimes."
Thomas laughed softly at the idea. He had no idea that he might be that formidable.
"I'm really not that scary, Buki. I don't shout at you."
"It's not the way you say it like some of the screws," Buki said, looking him right in his eyes for the first time since he came across her. "It's what you say. It scares me cos it's all true."
"All right," Thomas conceded graciously. "Do you want to talk about something less heavy to give you a break?"
"But I've still got to take my medicine, don't I?" Buki said with a strange sense of wisdom.
"You'll like it in the end, Buki. When I was a little boy, I used to hate my mother's cough medicine. I used to keep my mouth shut and aggravate my mother. I was a right little terror at times."
"You had a mother what cared. I bet she was a good one," Buki said promptly. Inwardly, Thomas became more reassured as Buki opened up as he had cut her some slack. It was strange that in his profession that the more indirect way of approaching people got there quicker in the end.