Titanium

I'd been sitting outside by myself for a few minutes, just soaking up my new surroundings and working my way through a bag of tobacco. Between myself and the entrance to the ward was a big tree. I pretended I was invisible. A woman in her early forties crossed the courtyard. She was telling whoever was on the other end of the phone that she was certain, sure beyond sure that as soon as they let her out she could go back to just one glass of wine a week. She exchanged smiles with another middle-aged woman, who peered around the tree and approached me.

'I couldn't leave you sitting out here by yourself.’ She extended an arm. 'Lizzie.'

'Catherine'. She shook my hand then took a small bottle of antiseptic hand gel out of her pocket. I wasn't quick enough to mask my facial expression; she excused her action with three letters.

'OCD.' I nodded. 'You're very young'. She said, rubbing her hands together. 'How old are you?'

'Just turned twenty.'

'Very young. The youngest chick in the cuckoo's nest.' She took a small case out of her pocket and began to roll a cigarette. 'Let's sit in the sun.' We followed the path away from the courtyard and sat down at a bench around the corner. I was grateful for the company but concerned that the nurses might not know where I was. I'd been there merely an hour; I didn't want them to think I was planning my escape already.

'Oh no.' Lizzie smiled. 'They always know where you are. They're watching. You don't notice it at first but there are faces everywhere.' She was right. The curtains seemed alive, the corners twitching; eyes appeared around corners, men with clipboards ticking names off a list. Lizzie started talking to a magpie, perched on the wire fence around the pond. I took a moment to look around. People began to cross the courtyard. They called out to her. She finished her conversation with the magpie first. She introduced me to three women and a man but the names didn't register.

I followed Lizzie through to the dining room; the whole building was a maze. It was smaller than I’d imagined it to be, with just enough table space to cater for the forty residents. The adolescents had their own dining area, and the main room was split down the middle, one side for the eating disorder unit, the other for patients on general ward and the addiction treatment programme. Lizzie gestured towards a round table, where a girl only a year or two older than myself sat alone, staring into her plate.

‘Hi Louise’. Lizzie sat down. Louise looked up briefly, and then wordlessly returned her gaze to her food. She chased little mountains of vegetables from one side of the plate to the other with her fork, and back again. Her hair hung over her face; she was shrunken into herself.

‘Lizzie,’ called out one of the nurses, poking his head around the coffee machine, clipboard in hand. ‘Tea time meds.’

‘Excuse me ladies.’ Lizzie followed the nurse out of the room and I looked over at Louise. Her head still bowed over her plate. We sat in silence for a number of minutes. When my turkey escalope arrived I tried to make conversation.

‘The food’s better than I expected.’ Louise didn’t even look up. I tried once more with no success. We sat in silence for a few more minutes before she got up and left. Lizzie came bounding back into the room.

‘I just had the silent dinner experience. I don’t think she likes me.’

‘Louise? Oh, she’s a selective mute. Hasn’t spoken in two years. She’s very troubled. Don’t take it personally.’ Lizzie stared at her plateful of food. ‘Blergh. Looks like it came out the back of a goat. Let’s get cake.’ She hid two big slices of marble cake under her jacket and smuggled them back out to the courtyard. ‘So good!’. I rolled a cigarette and sipped at my paper cup of hot chocolate.

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked.

‘Three weeks on Tuesday. Most people are here about four weeks. James has been here two months, Louise four months. Some of the EDU girls have been here years.’ I looked around. It was a grand building, in beautiful surroundings. I thought I probably wouldn’t have minded being there for a matter of years. It was safe, and soothing. I knew that this thought was part of the reason I was there. I couldn’t cope with the real world any more. I needed a time out, a break from reality. This was a retreat, a fancy building in an upmarket part of Essex, where finally I didn’t have to cope. I could just be.

The next time I ventured outside for a cigarette it was raining. I made a break for the shelter of the tree. There was a gazebo in the courtyard for smokers to make use of but it was occupied. I flicked the butt of my cigarette across the gravel and pulled the handles of the double doors. They were locked. A sign had been blu-tacked to the glass.

DOORS WILL BE LOCKED AT 8PM DUE TO A HIGH RISK PATIENT.

I shook my head at the flawed security. I had no idea where to find an alternative way back in. Pulling my jacket more tightly around myself I wandered over to the gazebo. A redhead in her twenties ground a cigarette butt into the ash tray. She introduced herself as Kelly. She figured a building of this size must have more than one way in and out. I took her word for it. I followed her, unsure that she actually knew where she was going. We left the courtyard and followed the path around to the main reception: doors locked at 7pm, after dinner. We finally found shelter from the rain through a side door that took us down a glass corridor.

'Have you been here long?' I asked.

'About two hours. What're you in for?'

'Oh, this and that. You know.'

'Come on.. crack? Pills? You're young for an addict.'

'Oh, no, I'm on general.' I don't think she knew what that meant. 'You?' I knew I'd regret asking.

'Booze. Coke. Pills. And sex. Anything I can get really, at any cost.' I made a mental note to keep my distance. But something pushed us together. Maybe it was arriving on the same day. Maybe that she was in her twenties too. We were poles apart, but we shared a title: monumental fuck up. A wrong turn took us to a dimmed room assembled like an old people's home. Lizzie spotted my face at the window and waved us in. She introduced me; I felt like the new girl at school, trying to remember names. She got up and pulled a chair over next to hers. Kelly went and sat in the corner of the room.

'Help yourself to Indian,' grinned Mandy, the alcoholic I'd overheard on the phone earlier. Chris explained to me that most nights they got together and watched a film. They were working their way through every film ever made about psychiatric wards. I understood; the evenings were a source of sanity, and the films were a source of amusement. Yes, we were psychotic, but we weren't in strait jackets yet. We weren't to tell the staff though, if they asked, 'Love Actually really is the ultimate romantic comedy'. I smirked and broke off a section of poppadum.