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.
