Chapter 6 : the selfless and the selfish

Mughh, not sure about this... oh well... enjoy

 “Thank you Rebecca, that’s a very brave,” Esmee comment as she took off one of her gloves wrapped the blade up in it. That was when I saw Rebecca’s defeated eyes change in a moment of panic and before I had time to react to her or alert Esmee of the impending danger she had leapt off the bed with a snarl and lunged at Esmee.

Esmee shouted startled as Rebecca knocked into her shoulders and threw her off balance sending her lied flat out on the floor in one of the most venerable positions there was. I got to my feet in a flash and made a grab for Rebecca before she could do more damage but she was very quick and dodged out of my grasps bolting to the corner of the room where she stepped from side to side in quick deliberate movement with one arm wrapped over her abdomen and the fingers from the other in her mouth. Her face was pale white and her shoulders whole body trembled so much it looked like her legs may give way from under her. I could hear her breathing come as timid little huffs from her lungs and her eyes dripped with tears as they looked on at Esmee in an agonized panic.

Esmee got to her feet and brushed herself off inspecting her body for damage before turning to Rebecca again and walking gently towards her still without fear for her own safety. There was a part of me that I had to resist that wanted to throw her behind me in protection however it was hard to fear the girl that Rebecca was now.  She looked like she needed wrapping up in silk and blankets rather than being tackled to the floor like I had intended to do if she hadn’t so elegantly twisted from my grasps.

As Esmee got closer to her Rebecca backed up further into the corner whimpering like a puppy. Esmee stopped holding out her hands to her in what looked like surrender. “It’s OK,” Esmee whispered “I’m not going to restrain you or put you on the floor, I promise.”

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca whispered repeatedly through her teeth until Esmee got to her and very gently put bother her hands on her shaking shoulders while she still rocked from one foot to the other her eyes regarding Esmee with smoldering fear.

“ it’s OK, I know that you’re sorry, it’s all right. I know you’re scared but I’m not going to hurt you OK. I understand what happened. It isn’t acceptable to attack anyone but you know that already and I haven’t been hurt so we are going to say no harm done this time and move on OK? Now come on, that arm is still bleeding I need to know what’s going on under all this blood goo.”

She was amazing. It sounded corny and everyone laughed but it was still such a pleasure to watch her work. Out of all the great nurses over history I believed from the bottom of my heart that Esmee deserved a place with them. Very few showed such resilience and such understanding. Very few would have got back to their feet after being knocked over and immediately stood right back in the firing line and no other nurse in the unit could calm anxiety like she could. I liked to think of myself as a good nurse, but I was nothing without her. I had learnt nearly everything from observing her actions and above it all she didn’t just make me a good nurse. She made me a nice human being who happened to be a nurse.

“Come on Sweet, let’s get you down to the clinic, it’s going to be OK.”

I saw Rebecca’s eyes glance up at me as she put her effort into stopping bouncing from foot to foot. Esmee was trying to help her as best as she could but Rebecca still looked scared of her for some reason. I wasn’t sure why she was trying to find comfort in me. I would not have reacted as humanly as Esmee did in the situation. Rebecca was lucky that she had managed to get out of my first attempt at getting my arms around her because I had always intended on throwing her to the floor and carrying her off to the Extra care area. In there the padded walls could get the brunt of whatever she had to throw ant them and we would have all been safe. Esmee didn’t think that way though. She understood that she had to be careful. She understood that a fit of uncontained rage from a patient had knocked her to the ground; however she like Rebecca did the feared how an ECA would make someone feel even more. She was a series of selfless acts. At the same time she was my one most selfish act in the entire world. No one would hurt her. I would die before they did.

“Emmet can come too, if you want him too,” Esmee chirped in as she followed Rebecca’s gaze to my eyes. Everything about me instantly softened as her pure Ebony eyes locked into my soul. I would do anything for her, give her anything, become anything.

“He won’t let me hurt you again,” Rebecca whispered. “I saw the way he looked when I knocked you over. He was going to take me down and then I couldn’t hurt you anymore. You are too nice to hurt Esmee and I am scared of myself.”

“Rebecca, listen to me,” Esmee order turning to so she could lock Rebecca in her serious all powerful gaze. “You could have hurt me. I bet there was something screaming at you to get that blade back from me in whatever way that you could. Now you have me down and you had me vulnerable, you could have really tried to hurt me but you didn’t did you. You walked away and that’s power to you.  I know what it is like to be scared of how intently you feel and want bad things but you are good, and you are stronger than that  and I trust you. So come on, we’re going to be fine.”

Chapter 5 : Mutual understanding

 “Your arms…” Rebecca gasped lowering the blade down from her already bleeding arm so it sat by her side. She glanced at me quickly a warning that she was still not willing to give it up completely and that any hasty attempt to grab the blade would make her react but I almost didn’t want to grab for it any way. Esmee’s arms where the reason she managed to talk the blades out of the hands that I could not. They were her secret weapon. I did not envy it she had fort so had to gain her weapon and in the fight she had defiantly lost more than she had gained. She survived what some had deemed impossible and she was still here and almost unbelievably she was happy with her place by my side in the world.

“I don’t know what you’re feeling Rebecca. I can’t claim that these scars give me that insight but they do give me the right to say that I know it’s hard.” I watched Rebecca’s hand as she looked without words at Esmee’s arms. I was used to the scars by now. I had even held towels over some of them and felt her blood run through my fingers as she stared on not even aware that I was there. It was almost bad but the state of her arms no longer left me speechless but to Rebecca she signified something else.  She brought back a hope that she had long since lost and she had no real words.

“So, sweet heart was it just that razor that did this or did you use glass or something equally nasty as well?”

“Just the Razor.”

“Well that’s a good start, that means we might be able to deal with this without going over to the hospital if that’s what you would like. You as almost as much as an expert as I am in this I would imagine; are any of those going to need a few stitches?”

“It depends on whose standards you’re asking by. Officially there is probably a couple, by my opinion there aren’t.” Esmee smiled and took Rebecca’s bleeding arm gently into her gloved hands. Sticky black clots of blood smeared over her fingers and she gently brushed them away trying to get to see the cuts underneath. It was amazing how gentile she was with people. Over the years I had tried to mimic her feather touch but ultimately my examination of cuts always ended up in winces and hisses. Even when it was Esmee’s arms held between my fingers.

“There are a few that are either going to need steri-stripping or stitching. I can do either it’s up to you, I would prefer to stitch, you don’t have that great a track record with steri-strips.”

“There too tempting. You can just pull them off and then they bleed again. I mean you can… it doesn’t matter.” Rebecca looked at the floor.

“Hay…Hay, I understand, I understand,” Esmee said gently letting go of Rebecca’s arm and placing both her hands on her shoulders instead. “I get this; I know why you would peal them off. I have done it too. This is not easy Rebecca but it’s possible, now why don’t you hand that blade over to me and we can sort you out and then we can try again.”

Rebecca’s hand twitched again as she looked down at the blood stained blade but something in her gave up and with a sigh coupled by big fat tears falling from her eyes she handed the blade over to Esmee before looking away.

Chapter 4 : We are all scarred

 “Yeah yeah, I known no one forces me to cut myself. I’m the one who drags it across my skin i…”

“The choice isn’t to cut or not to cut Rebecca,” Esmee said cutting off her angry rant as she walked over the bed and squatted down in front of her. “The choice is to fight. You need to cut, I understand that feeling. I understand that it is deep set inside of you and feels out of control. No one thinks you can simply chose to stop but we do think, and we hope, that you will chose to fight.

There was a pause and then a lap in Rebecca’s judgment as she lowered the blade for a split second to a place where I was over 90% sure I could get her restrained and the blade off of her before hurting anyone and my heart did a strange little jump as I prepared myself for the action. Esmee had seen it to but unlike me she was not preparing herself to physically fight; in fact her eyes old me strongly to back off. She was confident in her ability to make the situation end without physically stopping it and I was confident in her too, she was amazing, but I wasn’t as happy with the threat of broken skin like she was. She understood, not just because studies and paper told her what it was like. She knew in her heart. She had felt it. 

“You don’t know what it feels like. To feel this urge. This need. It’s chocking. You make out like you understand but you have never cut yourself to know what happens inside of you.” A line of blood appeared across the surface of Rebecca’s skin as she lightly drew the blade over it. It was nothing more than a graze but I could feel my face pull into an unnatural shape as I watched and I could detect a sharper intake of breath from Esmee though no one else would have including Rebecca. It was only because I was so entwined with her that I could detect it. I would know if her heart stopped beating before she would. I also know that such acts where harder for her to witness then other people. It made her feel a little different.

“Rebecca, I know what it feels like to need to cut and I know the feeling of relief that it bring to you but you have already cut yourself so you have had that relief already. Your urge to cut more is just addition and blind hope that it may ease the pain. It won’t.”

“You know nothing about this!” Rebecca sobbed her whole body fighting against Esmee’s very right argument. It claimed that it would help. It forced her on with false beliefs. There was just a tiny part inside her head that recognized the truth and that stopped her from reacting. but it was a stupidly hard battle.

“I know a lot more then I think.” Esmee’s voice was firm and persistent before she produced proof by pulling her thumb out of the homemade holes in her long sleeve t-shirt and moving them up just past her elbow. Even perfection had scars.

Chapter 3 : Choice or not

I wondered my way down to the end of the corridor to the room which was hope. The rooms used to be numbered but Esmee had been the one to suggest that they were a little clinical. The rest of the staff agreed and took it upon themselves to go out by some paint and change the numbers for inspirational words. Rebecca was a room jumper because of her problems and had spent a fair amount of time in most of them but we seemed to have found a happy medium with “hope” which was the last one in the corridor furthest away from the night nurses’ station. She would have jumped at a chance to be back in one of our observation rooms which was love, dream, smile and wonder but we had made a tolerable gap with hope so that was where she stayed.

“Rebecca, it’s Emmet,” I shouted through the door to her after I knocked, “Jean said that you were asking for me a while ago. I was wondering if you wanted to have a chat.” There was a kafuffle form inside the room after I spoke and I could hear Rebecca hiss shit under her breath as something else banged against the wall and bear feet thudded dully against the carpeted floor. It was the sounds staff never liked to here. Something was happening inside that she didn’t want us to know about.

“Rebecca I’m coming in. Shove a blanket or something over yourself if you’re not decanted. I need to see what you are doing in there,” I yelled again before twisting open the lock with the device that was kept on the string with my card key before bursting into the room not knowing what I was going to find.

I was greeted by calm which I was not really that surprised about. I had prepared myself for puddles of blood and a make shift nose but it was rarely like that. Crisis points where not normally loud and boisterous events when it came to someone with Rebecca’s issues. Problems and overwhelming feelings where normally fought silently in the deepest hidden chambers of her head. In fact crisis normally presented as it was now, with a heavy and forced calm that was put on for the staffs benefit. To glance over her she was the perfect calm picture of health laid out on her bed looking into a book, she looked like she couldn’t care a less weather I was there or not. To me I felt as welcome in the room with her as an angry yeti would be. That meant unfortunately I had to be there.

There were only a few things wrong with Rebecca’s apparent display of normalness that made it clear to me what had happened instantly. First off was the fact that the pages of her book where turned down long past the page she was on meaning she had already read that chapter, the Second was the text in the book was upside down, and the third was the fact the sleeves of her long sleeve black t shirt where slick with wetness and there where tiny spots of blood on her sheets. That wasn’t mentioning the fact she was pale white in colour and her limbs shook slightly with her rapid breathing; effects of the added adrenalin coursing through her veins.

“So then Sweet heart, are we going to cut the crap and you tell me what’s happened or am I going to have to do some investigating,” I asked wondering over to her bed while I dived into my pockets and pulled on a pair of gloves. She looked at me with a confused and innocent expression on her face for a few moments before glancing at her book.

 “I’m reading,” She informed me even though the words come out as short pants of breath. I began to look around the room for some evidence of how much blood she had lost but could see nothing on show. She was presenting with some worrying symptoms of blood loss but the massive amounts of adrenalin the self-harm caused could also account for the symptoms as well. My job was to preserve her life at all costs but panicked reactions wouldn’t help either and stood a chance at making her worse.

“Your books upside down and you have already read that bit, so you’re not reading… Come on Rebecca, you know me, show me what you’ve been doing to yourself.”

Tears built up in her eyes before running fast down over the side of her cheeks. She pushed the book away from her and off of the bed with a thump moved herself into an upright position opening up the rest of her bed so I could sit next to her. It was an act of annoyance that I was there but an act of accepting it at the same time. She wanted me to leave but was happy that I had no choice but to stay and it confused everyone including her which made things even harder.

“If I sit down honey I’m not going to get a blade up my ass?” I asked scanning my eyes over the blood spotted blanket.  She shook her head slowly and uncurled her fingers of her left hand revealing a double edged razor. I had no idea how the hell she managed to get her hands on it and probably never would. I could force her to hand it over and ask her if she could get more from the same source but she could lie and she would. She didn’t mean to, she didn’t do it to offend or hurt other people it was just her addiction was too great to be truthful about. Every addict would lie and cheat to get there fix.

“You know I will need to take that off of you right.” Rebecca’s fingers clenched back around the blade hard, the thought of giving up such a prize was inconceivable to her mixed up head. Her expression looked like I had told her I was going to have to put her puppy to sleep; a mixture of fear and anger. She would fight for her “puppy,” if she had to.

“All right, let’s do this in baby steps; first of all can you just put it down beside you while I have a look at your arms so there is zero chance of any of us getting hurt.”

“Can’t you just go away Emmet? You don’t need to be here. I was doing just fine, just go away.”

“You know that I can’t leave you alone while you have a blade, and I don’t think that you were doing just fine anyway.” I sighed sadly, taking hold of Rebecca’s fee hand into mine smearing her blood over my glove. “I also think that if I was to leave now you would probably start cutting yourself again because you felt like you weren’t done when I came in.”

“I just don’t want to freak out in front of you. It’s like you have stopped a process half way through and I need to finish it off, I’m just going to get worse and worse until you let me, and I’m not giving up this blade. Would you sacrifice something so important so quickly?” Rebecca opened her had again with the blade in and twisted it around examining the sharp edges that where all ready tainted with burgundy dried blood. There was a chance I would have been able to make a grab for it before she even had time to know what I was doing but it would have been dangerous. There was a chance of one of us getting hurt, but even after all the time I had worked in the unit and experienced self-harm there was still an instinctual bit of me that I had to fight and that was to get the danger away as soon as possible.

“So what does a “freak out” consist of then Rebecca that is so terrible that we can’t work though together?” Let’s bear in mind I have seen you in quite a few states as well. Do you think you may have “freaked out” in front of me before?”

“Of course I have,” Rebecca hissed, that doesn’t mean that I enjoy it does it. Crying until your sick isn’t something I was used to being a spectator sport until I came here.”

“I know that for you it’s really embarrassing to get like that in front of other people but I need to say that I don’t find tears awkward or week in fact I see the value of them and I would much rather sit with someone who is sobbing then witness someone hurting themselves.

“Crying doesn’t work!” Rebecca yelled even though rolls of tears made her face shine with wetness but that wasn’t what was bothering me. It was the fact that far from handing the blade in or placing it beside her she yanked up the sleeve of her right arm and pressed it to the underside of her wrist. I had done this before. I had sat and witnessed the threat but my stomach still did a strange jolt of panic that it always did when cornered like this. She had all the control of this situation and it wasn’t ideal at all. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted the control either but it was preferable. Bad things happened when you handed control over to someone who had already lost it so badly. The other thing was my track record was not perfect when it came to charming razor blades away from people as distressed as Rebecca. It was only slightly over 50%. There was only someone who seemed to achieve it 99% of the time and that was Esmee. She would come to find me soon as I asked her too but I would have to stall for time. Using the alarm system was as risky as trying to restrain. I would as soon as it was safe to do what was needed which included using a “to the floor” restraint but all the cards where in her hand until then.

“In a situation like this Rebecca the ball is in your court. I can ask you from the bottom of my heart for you not to hurt yourself in front of me, but if you do that’s your choice.” I saw her eyes flash with anger and the rising and falling of her chest increase as soon as I finished what I said. She pressed the blade to her arm deeper and blood rose from where it punctured the skin. If she was to pull it back the cut would be deep; possible mobility limiting. She was pushing the stakes higher and I was saying the wrong things.

“This is not a choice!” Rebecca growled her eyes glaring into my body even though she found it impossible to make eye contact. “You chose what to have for breakfast or what top to where that day; you do not simply choose to cut yourself. Don’t you think it hurts? Do you really think I enjoy it? So you think that I wake up on the morning in my own little bubble and think today I chose to cut holes into my arms?” She moved her eyes off of me and stared at the blade in her hand with such intensity it looked like she was trying to telepathically move it across her skin but her hand didn’t want to; it was shaking on the spot in its defiance. Rebecca yelped clearly in pain from the way her body was reacting. It had been the wrong words to say. I had known it myself as soon as I said them. Choices didn’t make a chest heave up and down, or limbs to tremble, or the heart to race.

“It is a choice Rebecca,” The sweetest voice said from the door and I smiled without even looking up breathing a silent sigh of relief as my own anxiety’s relaxed. She said I saved her the day I met her and that might have been true but she had saved me every day ever since…

“Esmee,” I whispered under my breath. 

Chapter 2 : the thing with Rebecca

Glad to have gotten away with the mountain of paper work I exited the office that led into the main entrance of the unit but had to stop of a second as the heat hit me square in the face. It was stupidly hot for the very beginning of May anyway but it was only intensified inside the main ward because of the windows. For obvious reasons the windows had screws in so they only opened a tiny bit at the bottom and that was it. It was great for keeping people where they should be and safe but hopeless at not roasting the patients and staff in hot weather.

Regaining my composure about being in a room where a fan was not beating on my face I took the stairs slowly up to the first floor where the lounge was. It was old and outdated with a tiny little television that was hard to see unless you were sitting on top of the dam thing as its center attraction. the picture in its self was always awful but the worse thing was it had a habit of going a lovely shade of green whenever it felt like it, This would not of been such an irritation to the other staff and myself if it wasn’t the clients main source of entertainment for the evenings. Of course though the basic rule for funding was if it barely worked there was no money to fix it. There had been many a discussion between Esmee and myself of an evening when we were off shift on the best way we could secretly assassinate the damn thing without any of the higher ups finding out about it. The favorite choice was throwing it out the window but came across the hurdle that they didn’t open; others included lobbing it down the stairs or getting it “caught” in the middle of a particularly nasty restraint.

“Do you want to sit down Emmet?” Esmee asked bringing me back from my daydream on how best to write off the TV, “We can budge up a bit,” She offered with a smile before budging along up the sofa towards Marie who was sat in a ball at the end with her legs brought up to her chest while dabbing at her red rimmed eyes with a tissue. She was a new admission yesterday and our youngest one at that time at a grand old age of thirteen. She didn’t want to be here which was understandable but she didn’t want to be at home either. She maintained that what she wanted was to have another go at jumping off the multi-story car park and she maintained that next time she would make she landed squarely on her head. To her disgust and complete revolution we maintained that we would keep her on a section two of the mental health act for her safety and she hated all of us for it, maybe with one exception, and that was Esmee. Everyone loved Esmee, none more than me.

Esmee was my beautiful bewitching wife. She also happened to be a staff nurse like I was at the unit. We had met fourteen years ago when she was just sixteen and I was nineteen and training to be a nurse. She had not been well when I found her or for a while before that but none of it mattered to me. People still laughed at me when I told them how instantaneous the feeling was when I set eyes on her; how perfectly beautiful and amazing she was and how I knew within seconds that she had to be in my life forever. Amazingly she didn’t find it as hard to believe as others because she said she felt it to. When we met it was like our two lives merged into one instantly and none of us could remember how to be without the other. We were engaged on her eighteenth birthday and time she was twenty we were married and sharing a flat together.  I loved Esmee unconditionally with such a passion even I couldn’t understand it; physically, mentally, her body and her soul all where all perfect to me in every way. People told me that marriage was hard work that there would be bumps and regrets but it had been ten years and I didn’t regret a thing. There had been no bumps. I just fell in love with her over and over again a little bit more every day.  

“Thanks, but I’m looking for Rebecca,” I said finding it hard to drag my eyes away from her perfect face. I wanted nothing more than to take her up on her offer. The gap was so small we would have had to been touching to fit in and that was where I always felt at my very best. The heat of her body next to mine was like being caressed in the finest silk.

“In her room I believe. I haven’t seen her yet.” I screwed my nose and eye brows up at the answer she gave and Esmee gave me a small nod agreeing that it was quite strange behavior for Rebecca. Rebecca was normally quite social with people to the point of almost being described as clingy. She feared being abandoned and more than that she feared loneliness. She never chose to stay in her room when there was a chance of being somewhere the staff could make her feel safe. It was the main reason why she was still in one of the first floor rooms and not up on the second in a move on room. The first night we tried her there, she sobbed all night before trying to hang herself with the bed sheets. Some said we awarded her suicide attempt by moving her down a floor again but things where never as simple as the. She had not tried to kill herself to get moved back down a floor, it wasn’t a plea for attention. She tried to kill herself because she truly didn’t know how to cope with not being on the same floor as the night staff.  

I nodded once back to Esmee silently letting her know that I was going to go and check with her and that if I didn’t come back within ten minutes to come up as well, then I left the room.

Chapter 1 : Jean, queen of paper work

I enjoyed almost everything about my job. I liked looking after the patients, doing the medication and conducting staff meetings. In fact I liked my entire job apart from one thing and that was paper work, unfortunately it was inevitable. Patient’s actions needed recording, observations and assessment’s where constant and let’s face it… I was hopelessly behind. So reluctantly I had set aside nearly my entire shift to do the backlog of my paperwork.

“You really should take a break pumpkin, doing that to long with turn your brain to peanut butter,” Jean smiled as I tapped my pen to the side of my temple trying to take in reams and reams of information on the patients. It wasn’t that the patients where boring, I enjoyed conversations and support times with them and their stories where nearly all remarkable if not heart breaking but paper wasn’t something to get into. It was all just lists of medication and diagnosis and possible diagnosis. There was nothing passionate about a sheet of plain white A4.

“Arughhh!” I growled to myself and jean as I came across another page about the pros and cons of SSRI’S compared to SNRI’S and Trycyclic anti-depressants. “It wouldn’t be so boring if I didn’t already know it all anyway. It also wouldn’t be so frustrating if I didn’t know full well why Rebecca shouldn’t be on SSRI’s which is the exact thing the doctor has prescribed again.”

“Rebecca and SSRI’S, I’ll get the vomit bowls ready,” Jean smiled before rolling her eyes and going back to typing alarmingly fast on one of the unit’s old wheezing laptops that couldn’t keep up with her. “Seriously though Emmet, go and mingle with people. I think Rebecca was looking for you a while ago anyway. You’re not meant for all of this admin crap. Once I’m done here I will run for your pile see if there is anything that I can do.”

“You know that you are a complete star right Jean. I would marry you instantly if I wasn’t already spoken for. I got to my feet and stretched out my bones to their full height before wondering over to jean and placing my hands on her shoulders.” I am sure that that this unit would pretty much just fall apart without you.”

“Stop creeping Emmet. I already said I would do your paper work, now go before I change my mind”

Synopsis

“I’m Ok.” Mi sniffed rubbing her hands across her face roughly.

I smiled sadly to myself as I thought of the words and there real meaning. I’m Ok often means I’m lonely, I am scared and I am sad. I have been hurt and I have been betrayed and I am really not sure how to deal with it anymore and in this case that was exactly what it meant.

Emmet Bear had worked alongside his wife in apple gate house children’s psychiatric ward for five years as a nurse. He had seen self-harm, suicide attempts, angry out bursts and young people that had completely lost touch with reality.  He had been attacked made to laugh and brought to tears by the patients and staff alike as he completed his shifts on the unit. He also met Mi Dorado, a fifteen year old admitted with a BMI of 12.1 engaging in sever self-harm and making almost successful attempts at suicide. Mi was going to die without help and it was Emmet’s job to give it… He had to save Mi... 

*Disclaimer: Any other book, films, shops, brands or products mentioned in this story are not owned by me in any ways shape or form. Including the Twilight Saga and any of it’s characters who belong to the extremely talented Stephenie Meyer, (Seriously these books changed my life) and the Harry Potter books and any of it’s characters they belong to the also extremely talented J.K Rowling

** I would also like to point out that i am not a medical professional and any medical procedures, illnesses described or treatments mentioned are not in any means based on fact. In fact i am sure that most of them don't exsist at all. The story is fiction! It is all just imagination and sometimes very basic internet research. 

** this story is not for children! It contians graphic details on suicide, self harm, eating disorders and child abuse from the beginning all of which could be considered very upsetting. Do not read if you are offended easily, easily upset or "triggered" thank you