The Skeleton Cupboard (23 page)

I shifted in my seat. Whose discomfort was I feeling?

“Another?”

“My Mollie. Another one for me.”

I jumped at a sudden knock at the door, a reminder of the ward round. I brushed them away.
Shit, the atmosphere had been broken.

“So what's Mollie's prognosis?”

Shit. Damn that knock. I'd lost her.

“Please carry on, Eleanor. What you were saying was really interesting.”

“What's Mollie's prognosis?”

“Why was Mollie another one for you?”

String of pearls clutched. Knuckles white. Voice firm. “What is Mollie's prognosis?”

I was stuck. She wasn't going to answer me.

“Her prognosis based on her developing insight and ability to self-feed is good.”

Eleanor stood up. “Many thanks.”

And then she left.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

*   *   *

A couple of weeks later I got to work and for the first time noticed that I was actually looking forward to my day there. As I arrived, the ward was alive with music and everyone was dancing—I felt like I'd walked into a big party. When they smiled, the young women looked alive, their hollow pink cheeks radiant with the exertion. Even the nurses were smiling.

Mollie was sitting in her chair tapping along to the music.

“Hi! What's going on?”

She looked up and smiled; her face was filling out and she looked beautiful. “Dunno! Everyone woke up happy.”

I dumped my bags and coat by her bed and sat down.

“Are you feeling happy?”

“Yeah, I am. Today when I woke up, I wasn't crying. That's got to be a good thing, right?”

“Sounds like a good thing to me, Mollie.”

Mollie looked down. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I was wondering. Why did you choose to do this job?”

Blimey, another question requiring me to self-disclose. Do I tell her about my grandmother?

“I guess I'm nosy.”

Mollie grinned. “No, really. I mean, don't you get depressed listening to people's problems all the time?”

I thought for a moment. “No, I don't get depressed as in depressed depressed. But sometimes I do feel sad when people tell me about what makes them feel so unhappy or confused about their life.”

“Do you ever cry?”

Mollie was looking hard into my eyes.

“No, I've never cried, but I have felt tears in my eyes sometimes.”

“That's because you're human.”

“I suppose so, and also I haven't been doing the clinical work very long.”

“Yeah, but do you worry that you might hear things that will just really upset you and you won't know what to do to help that person?”

“Well, we have a lot of support from colleagues and I have a supervisor who I can talk to about my cases and she helps me think them through.”

Mollie looked down. “Have you told her about me?”

“Would it bother you if I have?”

“No. What does she think about me?”

“It doesn't really work like that, Mollie. You know, the whole point about supervision isn't for my supervisor to tell me what to do but to help me with what I am thinking and feeling, and make sure my treatment plans are evidence-based and robust.”

“What's her name, your supervisor I mean.”

“Dr. Moorhead.”

“What's she like? Do you like her?”

Well, there's a question.
I paused.

Mollie quickly cut in. “Sorry, now I'm being the nosy one!”

We laughed.

“That's OK. I can understand you must be really curious about us and how we work.”

“Yes.” Mollie smiled and nodded. “But as you once said, ‘How would it help me to know about you?'”

The tea trolley came around and I ordered a strong tea with milk and one sugar.

“I'll have one too, please.”

“Way to go, Mollie!”

Mollie gave a small tight smile and in that moment looked just like her mother.

She took a sip of tea. “Am I the most difficult person you've ever seen?”

“Difficult how?”

“I dunno, just difficult. You know, I don't really tell you much.”

“Well, we've not known each other long.”

“Yeah, I know, but I do like you, you know.”

“I'm glad about that because I like you too, Mollie.”

She grinned.

The music on the ward was switched off—party over. The girls were groaning, but the nurses were unrelenting, watching for patients doing a little too much exercise in the name of burning off calories.

“So, I was wondering—can we go out today perhaps to a café and have a snack and a chat?”

I was stunned.

“Well…” I hesitated; I wanted to give the right answer here. “Do you feel ready for that?”

Another small tight smile. “Of course I do. Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked!”

“Yeah, of course. Good point.”

We shared another smile.

“Listen, let me ask the nurses how they feel about it.”

“OK.”

Mollie went back to sipping her tea and so I gathered up my things and walked into the nurses' office, wondering why, with Mollie, I so often felt like I was two steps behind her.

Ten minutes later, given the thumbs-up to a trip out, I made my way back to her room, where I found her mother. Today Eleanor looked pale; she was trembling. Mollie was looking at her with concern.

“Hi, Eleanor,” I said. “Didn't know you were coming in this morning.”

“Sorry—isn't it allowed?”

“Well, I think you have to call ahead, you know, if you want to come in outside visiting hours. I mean, just in case Mollie is in a session or something.”

“Well, forgive me. Whom shall I sign in with?”

She was slurring her words and having obvious trouble focusing. She attempted to sit up in her chair before slumping back down and closing her eyes. I smelled alcohol.

Eleanor was drunk.

It was barely ten in the morning and she was absolutely off-her-face drunk.

“Mummy, are you OK?”

Eleanor smiled and patted her pearls. “Of course I am, darling. Very OK.”

“Eleanor, let me get you a cup of tea.”

Eyes still closed, Eleanor started to laugh. “Tea? Tea is not what I need.”

This was awkward.

“Coffee?”

Eleanor snapped her eyes open and sat up. “I do not want a drink.”

Her tone was sharp and abrupt.

“Mummy! What's wrong? Why are you being like this?”

Eleanor closed her eyes again and sat back into the chair. “Darling, you know I despise stupid questions.”

“Mummy, you were being offered tea. That's not a stupid question. What is wrong with you?”

Eleanor wobbled slightly as she sat forward and took her daughter's hand. “Sorry, darling. Was Mummy being rude?”

Mollie nodded. “What's wrong, Mummy?”

Eleanor looked at me. “I apologize for my rudeness. Nothing to drink. Thank you.”

I just did not know what to say; Mollie rescued me.

“Mummy, we are going out to a café for a snack today.”

“Are we, darling? That's nice.”

“No, Mummy, not me and you.” Mollie gestured toward me. “We are.”

Eleanor opened her eyes, sighed deeply and then pushed herself up unsteadily, wobbled slightly and fell heavily back down into her seat.

“Mummy!” Mollie looked horrified.

I leaned forward.

“Eleanor, can I help you?”

“No!”

The ward fell silent, everyone quieted by Eleanor's outburst.

Mollie, visibly upset, leaned back and closed her eyes, while her mother sat forward, patting her hair and adjusting her pearls.

“I shall go now. Thank you.” Eleanor stood up stiffly, looking straight at me. “And of course next time I want to see my little girl, I shall phone to book an appointment. Just like I have to do with her bloody father.”

The nurses were closing in as Eleanor staggered off toward the ward exit, but as she got to the double doors, she fell forward onto the ground. Mollie cried out as two nurses and I ran to her mother's aid.

“Please just let me be.”

“Eleanor, let me help you.”

Eleanor swatted my hand away, and as she pushed herself up off the floor, she caught her necklace and broke it.

As a nurse opened the doors for her and gently guided her out, Eleanor turned to me and pointed her finger into my face. “Just you make sure you get my little girl better. That's an order.”

Eleanor stumbled out of the ward as her pearls rolled across the shiny linoleum floor.

*   *   *

A while later I was sitting in the nurses' office having a cup of tea with Linda, the senior nurse in charge.

“You OK?”

I nodded.

“Want a biscuit?” Linda offered me a tin.

“No, thanks.”

“Listen, sweetheart, don't feel bad about what happened—you didn't see it coming.”

“Actually, somehow I think I probably did.”

Linda smiled. “What, you got some crystal ball that we nurses haven't?”

I smiled back. “No. But sometimes I wish I did.”

Linda jabbed the tin at me. “Have one of these to cheer yourself up. In the meantime I'll contact the family GP and let them know about our concerns. Perhaps they can organize some counseling for Mollie's mum. We can talk about this at the case meeting with the consultant psychiatrist.”

I took a chocolate-covered shortbread. “You mean ask his thoughts on the management of the alcoholic mother of one of the patients.”

Linda laughed. “Well, you know what they say. When in Rome, ask a Roman. Or something like that!”

A couple of other nurses joined us to see how I was. They were all so nice. I felt grim. A traumatic experience for Mollie and her mother on my watch, and now the nurses I had so arrogantly despised actually turned out to be really nice, supportive colleagues.

But worst of all, I realized that the day had begun with Mollie checking on me to find out whether I was robust enough to hear what she wanted to find a way to tell me. Not for the first time I began to doubt whether I should actually be doing this job.

*   *   *

Mollie did not join the body-image group session I ran later that afternoon, and guessing that she felt upset and humiliated by her mother's episode earlier, I decided not to push her to come.

After the group ended, I finished my day packing away the chairs in a corner of the ward from which I could see into Mollie's bed space.

Sitting in her chair and bent over her sketchbook, Mollie was concentrating hard on what she was drawing. With her long hair flopped forward and her face determined, she looked like a little girl, all alone, and although she showed no emotion, her vulnerability in that moment cut straight into me.

Her parents were clearly unhappy and disconnected, and it struck me how when she was ill, they appeared more often together, united in their concern for her well-being. I began to wonder whether now that she was getting better, the chasm in the relationship had reappeared. Robert seemed always away on business and Eleanor more and more fragile and alone.

Was this what Chris meant by taking a systemic approach to the problem of Mollie's eating disorder? Was her anorexia the glue that held her parents together as their relationship fell apart?

I wanted to go and give this vulnerable young woman a hug, but that felt inappropriate and intrusive, so I finished stacking the chairs, and as I began to get ready to go home, Linda called me into the nurses' office.

“How you doing after today's incident?”

I yawned. “Knackered.”

Linda laughed. “Yes, this place can be challenging, that's for sure!”

I smiled. “Listen, Linda, I just want to say thanks for being so supportive today.”

Linda brushed my comment away with her hand. “How are you doing with our Mollie?”

“Mollie is gorgeous and sweet and brilliant, but you were so right when you told me she's tougher than she looks—and deeply unhappy at the same time. You know, I just struggle to get my head around how she seems just unable to let go of her compulsion to be really, really thin, even though it has almost killed her.”

“Yes, she's tough.” Linda sat down with a sigh, took off her shoes and rubbed her tired feet. “What's making her do it, do you think?”

I slumped down, also kicking off my shoes. “A need to be in control. An adolescent crisis of identity. A family in crisis. A society that champions thinness.”

Linda laughed. “But to be fair, her BMI is getting healthier, which is amazing given that when she came in, it was so low that we had to NG-tube her.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I still need to get to the narrative of the problem. I mean, why would this girl with everything to live for risk her life? What is so urgent?”

“She doesn't eat because she has to show that something in her life is going badly wrong. She can't talk about it, so she shows it.” Linda stood up and began to make tea. “Her parents are interesting, aren't they?” she said.

“Well, on the surface they seem nice, caring. Dad's a bit of the ‘just get a grip and eat' school of thought…”

Linda chuckled. “Well, we can empathize with that frustration at times.”

“Yeah, but given all the therapy they've had, he can sometimes seem really insensitive.”

Linda handed me a cup of tea. “Compensatory parenting?”

“You mean his behavior compensates for Mum's?”

Linda nodded as she sipped her tea.

“Eleanor is terribly protective of Mollie, really attentive to her daughter, treats her like a fragile little wounded bird. Perhaps she's compensating for his bullishness,” I suggested.

Linda shrugged. “I'd say it's a chicken-and-egg situation.”