Read Online Madness by Kate Richards - Free Book Online Page B

Grams .’
    â€˜With Sean Penn? I know someone who saw that and said it was a bit, you know, blah blah blah. Awful script, I think he said. Did you like it?’ She looks at her watch. ‘Shit, sorry, teleconference. Catch up later?’
    â€˜Sure.’ I walk back to my desk carefully. I’ve got a deadline in two days for an article on community-acquired pneumonia.
    sick sick sickbitch hahaha
    I ring a respiratory physician to get a second opinion about some of the recommended medications in the article. His secretary pages him and he rings back and we chat for awhile and I thank him and finish the article and email it to my boss for his opinion and I don’t leave my desk all day because walking is too painful. I say I’ve brought lunch from home, thank you anyway, and leave my bladder to fill and fill until everyone has left for the evening and I half-creep half-limp to the bathroom and then to the train.
    Over the week the patches of grey enlarge like moss over tiles. I’m careful to wear opaque stockings. When the pain prevents sleep, I visit Jenny, my GP, who takes a look and writes a referral to the local emergency department. In the waiting room are an old Greek couple, some young men from Africa and a man lying on his back on the floor in a corner. The triage nurse takes me straight through to a cubicle. Next door someone is having a catheter inserted, I can hear him moaning.
    Vanessa, the nurse, sets up an IV line. ‘I think you’ll be admitted,’ she says. ‘Is there anyone I can call?’
    â€˜No thanks.’ She gives me a starchy white gown, open at the back. I wait several hours, staring at the nylon curtains; pale blue with a thin white stripe. I follow the stripe with my eyes updownupdown. The plastics registrar examines the leg. He’s young and efficient in his clean white coat, and he looks at my leg but not at my face.
    â€˜It probably needs surgical debridement and a split-skin graft. I’ll go and get your file.’ He returns some time later. ‘I’m not prepared to give you the surgery.’
    â€˜Why not?’ I ask.
    â€˜Because this is deliberate self harm, not an accident.’
    My insides sink down below the bed. The registrar shuffles through my file.
    â€˜Would you have the surgery, if you were in my position, with this injury?’ I ask.
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜Are you discriminating against me on account of mental illness?’
    â€˜It’s not cost effective for the hospital because you have a history of self-harm. In the same way we discriminate against smokers who need lung transplants.’ He walks away.
    sick sick sickbitch sick sick sickbitch sick aahhaha
    Vanessa looks surprised. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Would you like to make a complaint?’
    Still with my insides sunk down below my feet, I smile, ‘No bloody point.’ Anyway, the registrar is probably right. I’m not cost effective. After she leaves, I get off the bed; put my clothes back on and slide the IV needle out of my arm. Walk out into the night.
    It is Friday evening. Zoë and I are at the Northcote Social Club to see an Adelaide band called Fruit. Zoë and I found each other at a personal development course in St Kilda five years ago. Somehow we survived the barely controlled rooms of people shouting and crying and bashing pillows. We both knew depression and we were looking for a way through. Not a way out necessarily, but insight into the why of it. If we understood that, maybe we could stop it. Maybe we could become strong enough to just stop it – make it go away, make it never come back.
    Zoë is clever, shy, beautiful. Cornflower blue eyes, perfect skin. But much more than that, in her eyes and smile, is depth. The depth is, I think, part intellect and part warmth and part knowledge of suffering. We click without effort, occasionally opening our naked selves; finding connection and then