The Pause (6 page)

The train is almost here now. I have to make it quick. I can't hesitate. I stand up and run, but for a moment I do hesitate. Just for a moment. And it's enough. Because it's here I feel my life split in two. Part of me carried it through, but the part of me that wanted to live, the part that knew that at some point the agony would stop, was stronger. Just. And although I have to stop the pain, this is not the way. So I pause.

I slump to the ground and curl up in a ball. I feel that if I can make myself as small as possible, the pain won't be as intense. It won't find me. I'm wrong, of course, because my nerve endings are still rupturing, but at least now they're not being
splattered beneath the train's wheels, though a strange sense of deja vu will not leave me.

Various arms scoop me up and half-drag, half-carry me over to a bench. Someone wants to give me water; someone else wants to give me air. No one seems to know what's wrong with me. They think I've had a seizure, that I've fainted, that I've OD'd, that I'm drunk. An ambulance has been called as have the police. A blanket appears from somewhere as if my problem is temperature related. A young woman in a business suit gently squeezes my shoulder while someone else strokes the back of my hand. A tradie in a bright orange shirt is kneeling down beside me as if asking for my hand in marriage. He might as well be because I can't hear or understand a word he's saying. He pats me gently on the head with a hand the size and texture of a baseball mitt. I look at the elderly lady who is stroking my hand. She smiles at me in that grandmotherly way that transcends generational, cultural and racial divides. Her tenderness, and that of the young businesswoman and tradie, tips me over the edge and I slump forward so that no one can see my tears. Crying over what I almost did. Crying over the agony that I must endure so as not to destroy the lives of those I love. Crying over the kindness of strangers. Crying because I don't think I'm worth anything.

The police arrive first – two young constables. One sits down next to me while the other talks to the witnesses. The one next to me asks me if I've been drinking or taken drugs. Slouched forward, I shake my head because I seem to have lost the power of speech. She asks me to look at her and although my eyes are bloodshot, they are not bloodshot in a way that concerns her.

Another train enters the station and my fairy grandmother squeezes my hand tighter, her grip vice-like. She's not letting go. Not until the train passes. She gets what no one else seems able to grasp.

The paramedics arrive and with no crime seemingly committed, the police are happy to hand me over.

The paramedics check my heart rate and my blood pressure and even give me some oxygen which, compared to the fetid air of the platform, is as sweet and crisp as strolling through a Tuscan meadow in spring. Not that I've ever strolled through a Tuscan meadow in spring, but still.

The paramedics ask me a series of rehearsed questions but I don't really hear them. I look about me but the tradie, the young businesswoman and the old lady have gone. Spirited away by a train.

Despite my grunts that I am fine, the paramedics insist on putting me on the stretcher and keeping me covered with the blanket. The older
of the two, Sandra, orders me about in a blustering matronly way. Despite her outward veneer of functionality, as they're wheeling me towards the ambulance she never lets go of my hand.

The looks I'm drawing as I'm wheeled across the concourse give me a brief taste of what fame must feel like. People staring at you in that not-staring-at-you kind of way, whether you want them to or not.

They roll me into the back of the ambulance and Sandra hauls herself in after me. Her partner, a young guy not much older than me, I'd say, seems happy to drive. He doesn't put on the siren. He doesn't need to. There's no rush for this. All of us know that my problem, and its solution, is long term.

‘So why did you do it?' asks Sandra after she's given me another taste of oxygen.

‘I didn't.'

‘Look, Declan. We spoke to the police, who spoke to the people on the platform. You bailed. Only you know how close you came to actually going through with it. Maybe you should think about your family. Can you imagine what this would have done to them?'

‘I didn't do it.' Or did I?

‘There's something I tell kids like you. Reckon you should get it tattooed on your forehead
backwards, so you can read it in the mirror each morning. Wanna hear it?'

My ruptured nerve endings are screaming at me so I don't say anything.

‘What you think is insurmountable today will probably be irrelevant in a month.'

I look over at her. ‘Who said
that
?' I manage to slur.

‘I did.'

I try to smile at her but my face can't quite manage to pull it off and it comes out more like a grimace.

‘Hang in there, kid. Someone loves you. And if they don't now, someone will one day. You don't want to miss that, do you?'

Sandra sounds just like someone's mum. She sounds just like
my
mum.

‘Okay,' I say, but I don't sound too convincing. Not even to myself.

Sandra gently squeezes my hand all the way to the hospital. I have neither the strength nor the will to squeeze back.

Even though the waiting room is quite crowded, Sandra has a word to the receptionist and I'm wheeled through to a small consultation room. Sandra helps me down from the stretcher and into a seat. She then slips into boss-mode and orders her offsider to go and make her a cup of tea. As an afterthought she asks if I want anything but I shake my head as words are beyond me. I feel as though I'm holding her up, that she has more important things to be getting on with, sicker people to attend to, but as if reading my mind, she tells me that she will stay with me until the nurse appears. No sooner has she had her first sip of tea than that's exactly what happens. Sandra wishes me
luck and tells me that she is going to dance at my wedding. Although I keep my eyes glued to the floor, I think of me and Lisa getting married and Sandra doing some sort of spectacularly uncoordinated mum-dance at the reception and I manage a sort of half-smile, just to be polite.

When Sandra goes, the nurse asks me what happened and I try to explain as best I can (I reckon I'm going to be doing a lot of that over the next few weeks). I don't mention Lisa or The Kraken, Hong Kong, Great-Aunt Mary who's long dead, or anything like that. Instead I tell her about my nerves. About them being twisted and contorted until all I can do is scream my silent scream and curl up in a tight ball. She tells me that she can give me something for the pain but that I'll have to see the doctor first. Before she goes she wants my home number as well as my parents' mobiles.

‘Can't I just go home?' I mumble to the floor. ‘Do they have to know?'

‘You've had a close call,' she says. ‘And now we're here to help.'

I tilt my head to look up at her. ‘What sort of help?'

‘Sometimes when we're young,' she says in almost a whisper as if we're in on a great conspiracy, ‘we have to be protected from ourselves.'

‘You mean a padded cell?'

She shakes her head. ‘That doesn't happen anymore. Well, not here.'

She asks me if I want anything – tea, book, magazine. When I decline, she wants to know if I'll be okay alone while she phones my parents and tracks down the doctor. Although I don't want to be left alone with my thoughts, I nod that I'll be okay. For a little while.

She nods her understanding, tells me that there are nurses just outside and a camera on the ceiling so I just have to wave if I need anything, and closes the door behind her – though it doesn't appear to be locked. I don't know what my rights are but I guess I'm free to go if I choose. Surely I can't be held against my will. I do want to escape, though not out the door. I want to escape – from me, from the world, from my shattered mind and my screaming nerves, from what I almost did – so I curl up as small as I can in the chair and close my eyes. I drift in and out of consciousness but sleep, real, escapist sleep, eludes me.

Outside the consulting room I can hear my parents talking to who I assume is the doctor. I don't know how they got here so quickly, or even if they did get here quickly. Time has no meaning. I look down at
my hand where I punched the tree. It's a little swollen and it's stiffened up a bit, but I don't think it's broken and I feel a sense of relief that it's still connected to me and not lying on a railway sleeper somewhere, reaching out to me. I stretch out my fingers. They're sore but they'll be okay. People will think I'm mad anyway. Probably best if I don't mention anything about beating up the local flora. They might just throw away the key. Hello padded cell.

The door swings open. ‘Hey, Dec,' says Mum gently. ‘What's going on?' Her soft touch tells me that she knows exactly what's going on but is at a loss as to how to handle it (that dreaded pronoun again). It's not every day your eldest child almost kills himself. She's not trained to deal with it. Or to know what to say. Parenting manuals don't really cover this.

Mum, Dad and the doctor crowd into my little consulting room, stepping carefully on eggshells as they do.

‘Declan. This is Dr Hitchiner. He's the psychiatrist at the hospital.'

I look up and feel guilty about Mum's smeared mascara.

‘I'm so sorry,' I manage to choke out.

She immediately drops down and hugs me, her body wracking with sobs. She tells me that everything is going to be okay. That she'll protect
me. That she'll wrap herself around me. That she'll quit her job if she has to.

I tell her again that I'm sorry, but it sounds half-hearted, even though it's not. I really am genuinely sorry for the hurt I've caused her. She doesn't deserve this. What was I thinking?

‘You should bloody well be sorry.' Dad joins the discussion in his own subtle way.

Mum gets up and glares at Dad. ‘Shaun. There are times when we have to shut up and just listen.'

‘Mr and Mrs O'Malley. This isn't really helping anyone.'

Dad glares at the psychiatrist. ‘So we're all supposed to pussyfoot around him now, are we?'

‘Piss off, Dad!'

‘That's it!' snaps Mum in what turns out to be the beginning of the end of their marriage. More guilt to shovel my way. ‘Get out!'

Dad folds his arms. ‘I'm not going anywhere.'

‘Some things are just too important to leave to chance,' continues Mum, ‘and I'm not risking this. So either get out, or I'll throw you out.'

Dad stalks out and Mum follows him. She closes the door behind them and basically tears him a new one.

While Mum and Dad go at it, Dr Hitchiner attempts to ask me a few questions, perhaps hoping to draw my attention away from the
divorce proceedings that have begun outside the door. I don't really hear him as I'm too busy listening to Mum slicing and dicing Dad. When it comes to a verbal joust, an accountant isn't going to be much of a match for a barrister at the best of times, but listening to their one-sided debate is kind of like watching Ironman taking on Mr Bean. It isn't pretty. She tells him in no uncertain terms that he is to be either part of the solution, or else seek his accommodation needs elsewhere. Either way he isn't allowed back in and
no
, she will not be taking a taxi home.
He
has to.

He tells her that he doesn't have any money, that he left his wallet at home. On hearing of Dad's impoverished state, her sigh is so deep and long that for a moment I mistake it for the breeze. She must have had a fifty on her because when she comes back in it's just her, or else Dad is hitchhiking home.

I kind of feel sorry for Dad, in a way. He can't tell me that he loves me. He's never been able to. The only way he can deal with what's happened is by getting angry. Getting angry with me. I realise that this
is
his way of telling me he loves me. That he's angry at me for almost leaving him. How messed up is that?

Mum and Dr Hitchiner take charge of my life. I drift into the background, content to let them.
Dr Hitchiner will give me something that will take the edge off the anxiety. He recommends that I be admitted to the hospital's emergency psych unit to get me through the next couple of days. After that he suggests a private hospital that will be better suited to my needs. Listening to them discussing my future, discussing various medications and facilities, I finally accept what should have been patently obvious from the beginning. I am sick. Desperately sick. And I need help.

When you get a viral infection you can literally feel it entering your system. You start to feel off, get the shivers or the sweats, your temperature rises, you lose your appetite. Mental illness is different. It leaches into your mind like a thief in the night. You mightn't realise you have it, even as you lay splattered beneath the wheels of a train, as you dangle from a rope in your bedroom, or as your severed arteries bleed what's left of your existence into the bathtub. It is an insidious and silent killer. For the unlucky ones, it's only when your body is being loaded into a drawer at the morgue that your family and friends backtrack and come to the agonising realisation that you were infected by the black dog. I'm one of the lucky ones. Now that it's out of my blind spot, I see it for what it is. And it's huge. It's so big, in fact, that I can't believe I didn't see it creeping
up on me. It took up residence the moment Aunt Mary disappeared into the mist and was let loose on the day I lost Lisa.

The ward nurse shows me to my room while Mum and Dr Hitchiner talk about hospital options. There are four rooms on the ward, each containing only one bed. Clearly we crazies don't like sharing. The other rooms are vacant at the moment, but the nurse assures me that it's early and they are usually full come Sunday night – depression, and its close cousin anxiety, are obviously more active on weekends. This part of the hospital is all safety glass and stainless steel, its gleaming surfaces a stark reminder of the functionality of the place. The psych unit's role is to keep us alive, get us through the first couple of nights, and move us on to a more long-term facility.

I don't know how Mum found the time, but somehow, following the phone call, she packed a little bag for me, which brings such a weight to my chest that I can barely breathe. The bag contains my PJs (boxers and T-shirt), toiletries, a few clothes and some books. My life cut down to the bare essentials. I think of an old man going into hospital for the final time, his life pared back to almost nothing, everything he's earned and accumulated over the years counting for squat. He's left with a toothbrush, a shaver, and an old
robe as his life begins to ebb away. The only things he'll need for the next plane of existence or oblivion are his memories.

The nurse now goes through the bag that Mum lovingly packed while her mascara made a break for freedom and her world was crashing around her. She sorts through it with a fine-tooth comb as if somehow my mother might be complicit in my self-annihilation. I loathe myself for the pain I've injected into her heart, infected her soul with. The pain that came within a whisker of permanence. How could I have even contemplated it?

The nurse sits me on the bed and removes my shoelaces. She does it as subtly and gently as possible but there's an elephant in the room the entire time. When they're under lock and key she shows me the bathroom, my Nikes flapping on my feet like flippers. The bathroom is more soulless stainless steel. The toilet doesn't even have a seat. You're obviously supposed to perch yourself on the thin metallic rim, or do what Lisa calls ‘hovering', which isn't as easy as it sounds. The opaque mirror is built into the wall and is either plastic or perspex. I guess they don't want us either slashing our wrists or gazing too long at the shadows we've become.

Back in the room I notice that the blind is sandwiched between two thick glass panes. You can
adjust the daylight or the dark by turning a dial built into the frame but otherwise there's no escape through either the window or the cord.

Even though it's still morning, the nurse helps me into bed and returns minutes later with the promised pills. I attempt to display an interest in my recovery by asking her what they are, but I couldn't care less. Anything's got to be better than this. She tells me that it'll calm some of my anxiety and help me sleep.

‘It will take a little while,' she says, ‘but you need to reboot. We all need to reboot sometimes.' She smiles at me. ‘Not everyone gets a second chance. You're one of the lucky ones. From this point on, each day is a bonus.' She pats me on the leg. ‘Make the most of it.'

I think she's probably going beyond her job description by saying this but I know she's right. I came so close to throwing my life away and so now I owe it to myself, my friends, my family, Lisa or the girls I'm yet to meet, and the children I'm yet to have, not just to survive but to prosper. But first I must heal. First I must reboot.

I swallow my meds, already familiar with the language of the psych unit, and the effect that washes over me is almost immediate. It's like gentle waves lapping at your feet on a blistering summer's day. I want to plunge into the ocean and
be carried away but Mum comes into the room to hug me goodbye and tell me that she'll be back later and ask if there's anything I need. I try to tell her that I don't need anything, not even Lisa, but my speech is slurred, because of the drugs, because of the day.

The pills gently unravel my twisted nerves so that I can breathe again. I try desperately to fight off the sleep it brings so that I can enjoy the effects a little longer. I reach for my phone to send Chris a text to tell him that I won't be able to hang at the mall with him tonight. I see that it's flashing. I pick it up and try to adjust my vision to the screen but the drugs aren't helping my focus. I adjust my eyes enough to see that someone has sent me a text. I open it but I don't recognise the number.

Through the haze of drug-induced semi-consciousness, I hardly even have time to process the idea that the text was from Lisa before sleep cradles me and carries me away.