Read Online Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness by MaryJane Thomson - Free Book Online

good at reading my own. I start burning my wrist. Nola looks at me and I stop doing it. She says, “How many cigarettes you smoke a day?” I’m not interested in talking to her so I say curtly, “I don’t count.” I probably smoke roughly forty to fifty but they’re all thin, which is how I justify being able to smoke so many. Not that I’m worried about my lungs in this state.
    Nola talks as though I’m interested. “I let myself have seven a day when I’m in here.” She pulls out a Pall Mall. For some reason I tell her I have a doctor’s appointment. She reckons I should take someone with me. “Do you have any friends or an older respected person of the community who can vouch for you and say you are of sound health—anyone, even an old teacher?” Ringing any of those people is not, I think, a possibility. “Nah, can’t get in touch.”
    It seems that Nola had a part in creating the code of ethics you see on the wall when you walk into the ward. She worked it out after one of her stays years earlier. I don’t think she’s doing so well now: she lines her doorway with toilet paper and screams a lot.
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    When I feel it’s polite to leave I go in through the sliding door, past the kitchen, to where there is a couch and a vending machine. It’s an alternative place to hang out but I don’t sit there much. I look at the clock. It’s 10.17. I go into my room and pour a Coke. The voice says, “You don’t need a friend with you. I will be with you. I want you to get your phone later.”
    I take a sip of Coke and say, “Okay, I will think about it.” I suppose I should have organised for someone to come with me but I have cut myself off from my friends and family. I write another verse to my song and sing it. The voice says, “That’s amazing. Everyone in the world heard it. You are the greatest artist of all time; you’re a prophet.”
    I sit and listen. I guess I’m slowly starting to believe it.
    I decide I want to squeeze in a smoke. I walk past Waris in the hall. She says, “You ready?”
    â€œYeah, I’m ready. Can we go the outside way? I’ll smoke on the way.”
    We go outside and walk across the yard. I suck in the smoke deep and hard: five drags and it’s finished. We go through the sliding doors, then through double doors into the day hospital. On the right there’s a little room. Waris opens the door with a key and I follow her in. The room is painted lemon-yellow and has a still-life painting of flowers on the wall. There is also a big couch, the cleanest couch in the hospital, and four chairs. It’s clear they preserve this room for visitors, maybe to promote a healthy clean face to the hospital.
    Waris and I sit down and then Dr Aso and Dr Morrison come in. I sit facing them. Waris sits on the other chair, in front of the window.
    Dr Aso looks at my boots and then at me and says, “Do you think they are appropriate shoes for summer? You need some more shoes.”
    I look at my feet, then over his shoulder. “I came in here with no shoes: I left all my old shoes at my flat.” I look back in his direction; I still can’t meet his eyes. “How much longer am I going to be in here? It’s been a while.”
    â€œAt least a little while yet,” he says. “We are waiting for your psychotic symptoms to subside.”
    I start to get agitated. “But I’m not psychotic. I know the day, the month and the year.”
    He starts to laugh. Usually I try and make jokes with him, lighten everything up a bit. “I like your shirt,” I say. He is wearing a yellow shirt and bright brown leather shoes that look clean. Yellow is one of my favourite colours.
    He starts to look serious. “We have been observing you for some months now and we have managed to diagnose you with schizoaffective disorder, and your sub-type is