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and outdated with a tiny little television that was hard to see unless you were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.
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