It was a totally different type of place but just as depressing. The outside was painted dirty egg white and inside was a dirty dull yellow. When I stepped inside, I was asked to take off my black jacket. As I slid down the zip, I felt all protection slip away. I handed it over. All the nurses I had met so far had uniform-looking faces.
The starched cotton shirt and pants grated on my skin as we walked down the corridor. The nurse opened the door and I went blank and stopped dead as a dead baby looking at Liz. Liz standing was outside. I didn't realise it was her at first. The nun had lied to me, though I didn't surprise me, about her going home to help her mother. Her beautiful phoenix fire hair was now a bottle-bleach blond styled like cotton candy fluff. She lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils. After a few puffs she came back in, dressed in a starched cotton top, but underneath she wore a full-length nylon and lace number that was the colour of nothing, just white. You could half see her skinny legs.
I later found out she had taken it from one of the older women on a different ward; she got me one too, a beautiful shiny black that was decorated in black lace and black ribbon. It came down to my feet and I felt almost naked in it.
A nurse bustled me away before I had the chance to say anything to her, but I wiggled my fingers at her. We arrived at the nurses' station. The nurse handed over some papers to a colleague sitting behind big brown desk. I was told to sit in the corner of the room on a chair while the talked for ages. When the other nurse was finished writing something down in a notebook, she led me down a corridor and showed me to a dormitory with about six beds. It was smaller and seemed much nicer than the dormitory at the reformatory school.
After I put my limited possessions in a cabinet besides my bed, the nurse took me to the playroom. When she opened the door the noise was almost deafening. The first thing I noticed was the children were screaming and shouting like wild animals. But somehow the ones that were stewing in their own sweet air whilst staring vacantly at the walls or quietly rocking themselves on the floor, were far more disturbing. Some of them were making funny noises. Others didn't seem to know how to talk. I didn't know what to do but there was a huge sense of relief when I saw Liz and some of the other girls who had gone missing. Liz was now thirteen and she was glamorous.
"I thought you had all gone home."
We were stood casually in corner on the right far side next to the window.
Mary looked at me and laughed.
"You feckin' eejit. Didn't I tell you some of the girls were sent to the asylum?"
Mary, thirteen, just wore the same standard uniform as me and her hair was tied back. Her skin had a bronzy polish. She fiddled dumbly with her straight black hair before flicking back behind her shoulder. She had a lime green barrette and it suited her, with her gold skin and ebony hair.
"Yeah, you did. Why were you sent here?"
"They said I was mad. Needed treatment," she replied.
Doreen joined in. If Liz was Marylyn then Doreen would have to be Garbo.
"You are only sent here if you talk about things you are not supposed too." She held out her hand coolly and Liz handed her an emery board so she could file long, nicotine-yellow nails. She hadn't changed at all. She'd whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath when we worked for the nuns and she would do the same here about the nurses.
"They say we are mad. Sinners…children of devil…compulsive liars…"
The three of them didn't say a word, just looked at the tiles that made up the floor and they returned to being girls for a moment. I felt so angry; we were being punished. We complained about being abused and we were punished and the priest got to continue his evil ways with other girls, who, if they protested, would end up in a mental hospital like us. We had no voice.
Liz broke the silence, in the only way it could be broken; humour.
"Damn nuns, eh? They should be in here, stupid cows."
Mary told me that if I thought the reformatory school was bad, this place was worse. I shivered.
I then asked what was wrong with all the other girls but they didn't know any more than me. I learned that they weren't insane. Some of them had learning difficulties, others suffered from autism. Some were hyperactive, while others where perfectly normal just like me and Liz and the girls who had come from the reformatory. Many came from troubled backgrounds. A lot of them had been neglected at home. Two or three of them had been caught stealing sweets from the shop.
One girl, I didn't know her name but she was about six, had been out with her mother shopping and she had picked up a stone and threw it. It hit a shop window and broke the glass and that's why she was here. I got friendly with another girl there, Ellen. She was depressed. She told me the only reason she was depressed was because her brother had sexually abused her and her sister for years. It was hard to believe all these girls had been locked up when there was nothing wrong with them. I couldn't stand that no one helped them or even cared.
Life in the hospital soon fell in to a routine. All the children in the unit went to the schoolroom in the morning. I learned nothing in the classroom because the children were always screaming and roaring and fighting. But again, for some reason, I was seen as special, brilliant minded…gifted and I was given work to do outside of the classroom. Every Monday a different book would be placed on my bed. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Joyce, each with there own obscure theme. I'd borrow Liz's lighter so I could read them at night. I half way through 'Finnegans Wake' when I was caught and it was confiscated. Liz got so angry with me; she had become dependant on those white little sticks since she was twelve. It didn't last long as she stole another one.
After my ninth birthday, I was sitting at the table with the other girls talking one evening when a nurse put a little plastic tumbler on the table besides me.
"Drink all that down," she said.
"What is it for?" I asked
"It's good for you, drink it all up."
I put it to my mouth and started to drink but the taste of the thick syrup was too horrible. She made me drink it anyway by holding the tumbler to my mouth. I was nearly sick and the taste lingered for ages.
After a while I began to feel drowsy and I excused myself from the other girls. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I needed to find Liz. I felt my jaw slacken and it just hung. Everything slowed down, my body felt like a sack of potatoes. I felt like I was drunk with fatigue and I marched limply in sleep. It was a huge effort to breathe.
When I awoke, I was staring at the ceiling and I thought what an odd texture it was. It was white and had a crack running across it. I didn't know how I had got here from the hall and I stayed still for a few minuets on my coffin shaped bed. Eventually I swung to my feet and balanced dizzily. I made my way the playroom.
"That was two days ago, you really can't remember anything." Liz was brushing my hair. She loved playing with it. I didn't think it was that special. I shuck my head and I looked at the clock. According to Liz I had been asleep for over a day. She told me that she had seen me slumped against the corridor wall and I had toppled in to her arms. I still felt half asleep.
"I bet they gave you Largactil." Doreen raised her eyebrows, the perked up over the large black sunglasses which made her look like she had eyes like a wasp. She was sat opposite me, legs crossed.
"What's Largactil?"
"Makes you go all dopey." I found out it was used to treat schizophrenia and mania and since I was neither I assumed that they were just using me as a guinea pig.
I got a glass of Largactil in the morning with my breakfast, at midday and in the evening. I began to sleep in school, in the playroom and I walked up and down in the corridors in stupor, like many of the other patients. Everything started to take place in slow motion. Ordinary things like lifting a cup, getting in to bed or going to the toilet became a burden and my vision was hazy. Sometimes Liz fed me, as I couldn't even lift the spoon to my red mouth. I wandered around half-dead. It was a horrible state to be in.
After about five months I got used to the stuff, it was like drinking water. I must have become immune to the drugs effects because it no longer made me drowsy. It good to get some energy back after all that time floating around in a twilight zone. I started to feel a bit better. I tried to escape in to the field that was behind the window at any opportunity.
A nurse would notice that I and either Mary or Doreen were missing and would bring us back inside. Liz hardly ever came with us. That's when the punishments really started. Liz was right when she had warned me that things here were even worse than at the school; she was always right.
Our punishment was being sent to bed for two days. We were supervised for each of the twenty-four hours that make up the day. The tumblers of Largactil stopped. They gave it to us by injection instead. It made it so much more powerful. When we were finally allowed to get back up and go to school, I wasn't in class for five minuets when a nurse came in for me. The psychiatrist, who was in charge of the children's unit, wanted to see me.
I went into the office and she told me I was to go back to bed. I started to cry and said no, and then I ran out of the office and ran back to the classroom. Two nurses then came in to the classroom and dragged me out, kicking and screaming. The other children went quiet and I could see, even thought I was struggling, that they were frightened. Liz moved to get out of her chair but the teacher told her to sit back down.
They took me to the nurses' station and gave me an injection. I was in bed for three more days and every time I woke up I was given another injection. Then one day the doctor told me to go with the nurse, as I was to have a test done. She took me to a room down the corridor. I had to sit outside on a chair. There were lots of people. Some of the patients were going in and out of the room on trolleys, shouting and screaming. There were black straps across their knees and chests, holding them down. Others just walked in, while the male nurses dragged some in. Everyone was brought out again on a trolley looking like a zombie. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and I began to shake all over because I knew something awful happening behind that door. I thought that they were all going in for operations but it turned out to be electric shock treatment.
