As you walk through the doors of the hospital, the full magnitude of the building hits you. Streams of wide endless corridors with ceilings thirty feet high greet you. Through the interior doors I could see some of the inmates shuffling around near the entrance. There seemed to be an invisible force field keeping them inside because none of them tried to escape as you would imagine. I suddenly felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed of my predicament. In my eyes, at that point in my life, I was a total failure.
The light at the end of my tunnel had been snuffed out. Did I have to come to such a place to re-ignite it? I didn’t have a choice anymore. Set in woodlands well off the beaten track, near Chigwell in Essex, the hospital had a stigma to match its size. The grade II listed building lay at the heart of an estate which covered a massive one hundred and fifty square acres of land.
Built in 1893, it had been a bombproof sanctuary for the mentally ill for over ten decades. In its heyday, Claybury could care for over two thousand patients. But due to government cutbacks, this figure had been dramatically reduced to just five hundred when I was first admitted in February 1993.
The wards were marked alphabetically, A1/2 right through to Z1/2. Fifty-two wards formed a huge circle in which all the departments extended. To give a clearer idea of just how big this place was, here is a list of just some of the facilities. There was a benefits office, sub-post office, a church, laundry, path lab and a massive kitchen, a dental surgery, an E.C.T. room, a dispensary and even a hairdresser.
I followed Bill to the reception desk where he asked for directions to ward N2. As we walked down a long gloomy corridor, I felt like a condemned man going to the gallows. There was no turning back now. I was entering this place of my own accord and at some point Bill was going to walk away and leave me there. I wasn’t looking forward to that all. We climbed a flight of stairs to find a large white door with a sign on it saying N2 in a bold typeface.
Bill pressed the doorbell and a few moments later somebody looked through the eyepiece and then unlocked the door. This entrance led us into a large pastel blue painted hallway. There were a few seats lined up against the wall, with a battered looking phone on it. When some of the inmates spied two bits of fresh meat walking in, we became an immediate target for requests for cigarettes.
A small group of patients were talking at the tops of their voices about things that made no sense at all. The nurse didn’t bat an eyelid. Obviously this was the ward norm, or abnormality as the case may be. Was this the real twilight zone?
Bill told the nurse my name and he showed us to a table next to the ward office. “Right,” he said. “Your name is Neil Walton.” “Yes,” I replied. He asked for my home address then proceeded to ask me a number of questions relating to how I was feeling at that particular moment in time. I told him, “I felt tired, freezing cold and just a little scared to death.” He asked me if I knew where I was. “Yes,” I replied with a lump in my throat. “I’m in Claybury Hospital.”
“Do you know why you are here Neil?” “I’m here to get better.” I answered pathetically. He went on, “Some of these questions may seem a little strange but they will help us to determine your mental state at the present time.” “Do you feel like harming yourself or anybody else?” “No,” I replied. “Have you tried to harm yourself in the past?” “Yes.”
The next question took me by surprise. The nurse asked me if I had heard voices in my head. I thought about it momentarily, not wishing to give him the impression I had. I then replied as nonchalantly as I could saying, “No.”
I had of course listened to my Dad’s voice, which to me was quite normal, as he had not long passed over. I have had a lot of psychic occurrences in my life that I would still like explained to me. However, this all happened when I was mentally healthy, so I was buggered if I was going tell a complete stranger working in a psychiatric hospital that I had heard voices. I would have never been discharged. I felt as though I had used my last remaining marbles wisely.
I felt my Dad’s presence when I wrote the first draft of these pages. It was 4.00 a.m. and the rain was pouring down the windows. It was still dark, and the ticking clock in my room was the only thing that broke the silence. Sometimes I can feel him with me, which gives me a great sense of well-being and strength.
I thought the signing-in procedure was nearly over and Bill must have had enough of hanging around. We had been in the hospital well over an hour by now. Once the paperwork had been dealt with I was shown to my sleeping quarters.
I wasn’t impressed with the thought of sharing my bed space in a dormitory with 26 inmates. There were clothes strewn over a big radiator and two patients were already asleep. One of them was snoring like a bull elephant. The only privacy you had was a thin cotton curtain that hung between each bed from a rail.
We were shown into the day room. At one end, near a huge bay window, was a table tennis table. In the centre of the room there were thirty armchairs, with some small tables scattered around. Most of them had dirty tin foil ashtrays on them, half of which were filled with hand rolled cigarette butts. We sat down again and I now had to give the nurse a list of my clothing in case anything was stolen during my stay. Bill was ever so patient while this was going on, I was so glad he was with me.
It was a terrible day for me; I couldn’t have coped without him. Once my clothes had been accounted for the nurse said, “That’s almost it, you just have to be checked over by a duty doctor.” Bill was about to leave. He gave me a long hug and said, “Don’t forget, Seron and I will be thinking of you and we will come and visit you as soon as we are allowed to.” His final comment was, “Take good care of yourself, love ya,” and with that he left.
I fought hard to stop myself from crying. I heard the heavy door shut behind him, and a few seconds after that the door was locked. I was now friendless and terrified of my first night in a psychiatric hospital and dreading the next full day.
The last hurdle I had to face was the visit from the duty doctor. I sat down smoking cigarette after cigarette. Half an hour must have past by when I saw a youngish man walk into the ward office. I presumed he was the duty doctor. A few minutes later the nurse introduced him to me and he asked me to follow him into a small side room. He took my blood pressure and then checked my breathing. Then he started to prod my liver about, asking me questions as he went about his examination.
“Do you smoke?” “Yes,” I said. “Drink?” He asked coldly. “Yes,” I replied. “Taken drugs?” He inquired harshly. “I smoked cannabis about fifteen years ago if that counts.” “Okay, that’s it,” he said. It was all over in five minutes. I didn’t much care for his bedside manner. I was glad when it was all over. I felt as though I had ruined his evening. By the way he was dressed it looked as if he had to break off a dinner date or a night at the opera.
Part four next week…
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