I have had this story lurking on my computer for some time now and have been too scared to show it to anyone. However, I did enter it into a competition, but needless to say, I didn't get anywhere, never mind win!
As one of my resolutions is to try and progress my writing, I thought I would take the plunge and post a story. I hope you like it.
Short Stay
No matter how many times I come here, I never get used to the smell. It stinks; it’s the kind of odour that hits the back of your throat so you can taste it. It is a smell that is impossible to describe, as it slowly permeates into your every fibre, from your clothes, to your hair, and settles sneakily in your nose, so that even when you have left the department, you can’t shake it off. It is the smell of the great unwashed. Those poor unfortunate people who live on the streets – the homeless. They attract many names, and are given many labels (not always truly deserved) - vagrants, street people, alcoholics, drug addicts to name but a few. They are surrounding me in their different guises, but they all have the same smell. They try to strike up a conversation, but I am not in the mood to be polite. We have already been waiting for three hours. I am in the A&E waiting room of our local hospital for the third time this month.
We were seen on arrival. Then the real waiting began. “The injuries are superficial,” he said.
“Superficial?” I screamed. I was aware I was shouting at him, and probably nearing hysterical, but I didn’t care, I was desperate. “She is cut and bleeding, she needs to be seen now. She needs a doctor?” I was fighting to stay calm and in control. I fail miserably. My urgent cries falling on the Triage nurse’s deaf ears. He has seen it all before - I don’t think anything fazes him. Not that he is devoid of compassion, I don’t think that for a second – I just think he is incredibly busy, and I guess they have patients with more serious injuries than ‘a superficial laceration’. I don’t think he understands that this ‘superficial’ injury is the culmination of something much darker and deeper than I can comprehend. I am her mother and I don’t know what has messed with my daughter’s head so much that she feels that this is the only release she has. He doesn’t understand, because he didn’t ask the question. You see, this is the third time this month my 14-year-old daughter has felt that the only way she can feel better about everything, and to gain control over her life; is to take a pair or scissors (not always her weapon of choice – she will use anything she can get her hands on - razors, tweezers, nail files) and cut her beautiful, slender arms to ribbons. She will cut herself until the bright red blood trickles slowly down her arm and drips into a congealed puddle on the bathroom floor.
Strangely, as soon as the blood starts to flow, she screams ‘Mummy’, like she used to when she was a little girl and had fallen over, or banged her head. And I do now, as I did then, I come running. At first, I thought she had tried to slit her wrists and that she was going to die. There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to die, as no one could survive losing that amount of blood. But again, the cuts were superficial. They needed stitches, but they were described as superficial. I have since learnt that once it has hit the floor, the amount of blood is deceptive; and I am calmer now. The doctor said she was fine and she was discharged. We were back the following week. Physically she is fine. Mentally? Obviously not, as she is still cutting away and I am unable to help her or stop her. She needs counselling. I cannot afford to pay for it, the GP won't help as she refuses to go and my urgent, begging pleas to him failed to move him.
“She needs to come and see me herself,” he kept on saying whilst handing me tissue after tissue.
Magic fairy dust and fairy kisses stopped working sometime ago. All I can do is hold her, and cry with her until the blood stops flowing. And we sob. Tonight I was sitting on the bathroom floor in a sea of her blood. I wrapped a white towel around her wrists, and pulled her to my chest and we sobbed and sobbed until I thought my heart would break. The sound of my daughters deep wracking sobs, forcing out the word ‘sorry’ over and over again, will haunt my dreams for ever more. She is my baby and my job is to protect her. In this I am powerless. I can do nothing.
I don’t know why she does it, she won’t tell me or the doctors and I don't want to push it. I think everything is okay at school. Her grades are above average; she has friends, although come to think of it, I have not seen them for a while. They have stopped coming around. Maybe that is the reason? Is she being bullied? I just don’t know. Since this nightmare began I have been racking my brain for answers, theories and reasons for why she does it? I can come up with none. I have called school, her friend’s parents (I didn’t tell them what was actually happening, just that she seemed down, you know, a bit miserable). They weren’t much help, bloody useless in fact.
I have even spoken with her Father, although he appeared detached and disinterested. Since he left I will admit I have struggled with this single parent thing. Divorce was definitely not part of the five-year plan. I have found it hard. Maybe if I hadn’t gone back to work I could have prevented this nightmare, maybe even foreseen it. No, of course I couldn’t. No parent could foresee this. I am just consumed with guilt and I cannot seem to help her. She doesn’t see her Dad that often, apart from at school. He is always too busy to come and visit. Work you know. Always too busy and work comes first. However, this time it is different. It is not work, it is Leo, his son. I know I am sounding jealous of a newborn baby, but he is besotted with him. So entranced is he, that he appears to have conveniently forgotten his first-born. His beautiful daughter, who with her long, glossy chestnut hair and unusual blue eyes, is the image of him.
Maybe he is the reason? Surely not I would have known, wouldn’t I? The realisation suddenly dropped with a resounding crash. Of course, what else could it be? How could I be so stupid? How could I have missed this? But this theory doesn’t explain why her friends aren’t coming around anymore. Oh well, it is a new theory, a logical theory and one that I am going to cling onto in the hope that between us, we can fix her. The self-harming began shortly after he left, after he dropped the casual bombshell in his shock announcement over dinner one night. He blurted it out, like if he said it quickly, the hurt caused by the effect of his words would be less. A bit like ripping off a plaster I guess. He mumbled that not only was he seeing someone else, but that his ‘mistress’ (I cannot bring myself to say her name), no more than a child herself, was pregnant. He always was prolific in that department. Since he left I noticed she was quieter than usual, but I thought she was okay? She seemed to be handling the situation with her usual ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude, leaving me to focus my attentions on her younger siblings. It was easy to spot their distress – they cried, had nightmares and were misbehaving at school. Easy, nipped that in the bud. Lots of cuddles, reassurance that daddy still loves them, and quality time with mummy, the odd chocolate bar, and the occasional sleep over in my bed. Why does she do this? Is it some desperate need for stability and belonging that has driven her to this?
The nurse is calling her name and I bring myself back to reality. We both stand up and make our way over to the cubicle, which is to be our home for the next few hours. I observe the department as I walk over to the cubicle. My usually lively and vivacious daughter just shuffled in, head down and refusing to make eye contact with the world. I tried to make a joke about the brown and yellow curtain, which was reminiscent of the ones in Granny’s flat, but she refused to even acknowledge that I had spoken. The cubicle was small and contained only one worn blue plastic chair and a trolley, which was made up with sheets, a blanket and even a pillow! What a luxury. I just wanted to rest my weary head and grab a few minutes sleep. It was about 3.30 am and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. We had been here since 11. But I can't. All I can do is pace the floor, up and down, up and down - thinking, trying to make sense of it all, but I can't. My daughter is hurting and I am so worried about her – she is broke and I can't fix her.
“Mum sit down will you – you're driving me nuts.” Holly says. I glance at her and see a glimpse of my daughter – a shake of her head and a roll of her eyes, proved that my daughter is still in there somewhere, I just need to reach her. I do as she asks and I sit down. This time I express my anxiety by twisting my hair round and round. A bad habit remaining from childhood.
The place was heaving. A drunken kid was vomiting over the side of his trolley, the vomit making a resounding splash as it hit the floor, an elderly lady, who was crying out for ‘George’, and whose trolley was in the corridor, (she was waiting for a bed on the ward, the nurse informed me. She must have noticed the ill-disguised disgust on my face when she showed us into the cubicle). And one of the great unwashed, Will, was staggering around, singing ‘Delilah’, clutching a bottle of ‘White Lightning’ and avoiding the nurses, who were desperately trying to get him to sit down. After a couple of minutes a very junior looking doctor, who introduced himself as Toby, arrived, and swiftly left, muttering apologies as he ran into resus. No doubt to tend to the needs of a patient with injuries far more life threatening than my daughter's. Toby did get as far as asking her name though, before he rushed off again.
An hour or so later, he was back. “What happened?” he asked.
“I cut myself,” my daughter replied.
“Why do you think you did that?” Toby asks.
My daughter replies in the usual nonchalant manner of a fourteen year old, by a defiant shrug of her shoulders and a murmured “dunno.”
Toby gently removes the dressing, while trying to make eye contact with her. The smell of the congealed blood hits my nostrils and makes me instantly nauseous. I have to turn away. I cannot bear to see the angry, red slashes on her arms. It was both arms tonight.
How many times are we going to have to go through this? I wonder. It’s the same old routine. They see her, gently question her, get no response, stitch her up and send her on her way. She needs to talk to someone, I silently scream. She won’t talk to me or even her friends – I actually don’t think her friends know about this. She goes too great lengths to disguise her wounds, wearing long sleeves, even though it’s summer. Toby is talking to her, telling her something. I strain to hear what he is saying. But I can’t, he is talking in sounds so low my daughter can barely hear. But the words appear to be having some effect, as I see my daughter lift her head and smile at him, almost like she was flirting. I don’t care, she is now making eye contact and is talking, in a barely audible whisper, but she is still talking.
I have done my own research; the World Wide Web is a wonderful tool, full of information, from the newsworthy, to the surreal and the downright weird. They say that teenagers who self harm do it out of pure desperation, because they don’t feel that they can improve on their situation. It is often triggered by an argument or an event that is out of their control. Emotions are often high and apparently it makes them feel better about themselves, and they believe, however misguided, that they are in control of their lives. More often than not, it is a cry for help, but there are risks – the wound can become infected, and occasionally the distinction between suicide and self harm can become blurred, and it may be that the habitual self harmer, may end up killing themselves. I shuddered as I thought about the ‘what ifs? The finality this website proposed didn’t do much to help my situation. Does my daughter actually want to kill herself? Every time I consider that suicide might be a possibility my daughter is considering, every time she takes the scissors to herself, I get shivers down my spine and I feel sick. I cannot and will not lose her. She is so precious to me, and I will use every ounce of my being to take care of her. I will not lose her, I will not.
I drag myself back to the present. The noise is deafening. The ever present sounds of beeping machines, shouting, crying and the ever-calming mutterings of the nurses, who seem to move from patient to patient with their soothing manner. Although, they seemed to leave the soothing manner at the entrance to the cubicle when the abuse came flying – then it seemed they could take care of themselves without causing offence. How come I never noticed these sounds before? It was then I noticed that Toby was talking to me. I could see his lips were moving, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was in another world, a world where my family hadn’t been destroyed by that little tart.
“I am going to refer her,” Toby was saying.
‘Sorry, what, refer her to who?” I said, dragging myself kicking and screaming back to the brightly lit cubicle.
“From what she has told me, I think your daughter would benefit from talking to a counsellor.” Toby replied. “She will be seen as an outpatient, and I am hopeful that we should get a referral within the next few weeks”.
“Oh!” I was so astounded that someone had actually suggested something different, something new that might actually improve the situation. I couldn’t speak, I just muttered incoherently.
Toby’s lips were still moving, but I couldn’t hear him. Something to do with steri-strips, dressing and some antibiotics, as one of the older wounds looked infected.
“Could you also bring her back to clinic? I would like to keep an eye on the wounds, check they are healing.”
“Of course I can, when?”
‘Next week, you can make an appointment at reception. If you can just wait a moment longer, I will send one of the nurses in to dress her wounds.” Toby busied off, winking at my daughter as he went, and then Sarah came in with her trolley of various assortments of dressings and tape. I felt like a small weight had been lifted off my shoulders, Someone actually cared, cared enough to listen to her and cared enough to try and fix her. Not just by dressing the wound, but also by talking to her and actually listening to her response without judgement, he just listened. Easy huh?
As I sat there studying my daughter who was fascinated by what Sarah was saying. Again, I am not sure what it was. Maybe I need to get my hearing tested? Everything sounds so muted at the moment. I noticed her face change beyond recognition. Her eyes lit up, and her mouth broke into the biggest most generous smile I have seen in months. “Daddy” she whispered. And there he stood, right behind me. I knew he was there without even turning around. I always knew, I just could sense him, like we were connected in some way. And we are, connected by our three wonderful children. The tears started flowing, and at that moment I had hope. I just knew that between us we could fix her.
My favourite books from childhood were undoubtedly the wonderful Miss Blyton's Enchanted Wood series and Malory Towers, both firm favourites of mine and books that I read over and over again. Oh how I wanted to go to boarding school, be best friends with Darrell and swim in the pool carved out of the rocks! I can't wait until I can read these with my daughter. She is a little bit young for Malory Towers just yet, but the Enchanted Wood series I have bought her for Christmas, and I am so looking forward to re-living my childhood with her, Silky and Moonface. But it's a surprise from Santa so don't tell her!