The wind howls around the hospital towers. I squint through the rain, and for a moment the birds overhead look like tiny witches on broomsticks, swooping unpredictably in all directions.
‘Meadowside Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit,’ a sign announces. Like everything else up here, it is wonky, madness seeping into any semblance of order.
I shudder. I need to get Emily out of here.
Inside, they have tried to make the place look welcoming. Bright sofas form an arc around the reception area, but they look like a clown’s smile, bleeding into the cracked skin of the walls.
The woman at the front desk stares bleakly at a couple. The man is carrying a bag with a teddy bear’s head poking out between the handles.
‘I’m sorry. You can’t come in outside of visiting hours,’ she’s saying. ‘I’ll ask one of the nurses to bring it to her.’
Then the door beside the desk beeps open. A woman, one of said nurses I presume, breezes through, beaming so widely her eyes are squeezed shut.
‘I’m an advocate. Here to visit Emily!’ I say, slipping through the door before it closes. No-one replies. No-one follows.
I know where to find her.
Two teenage boys are playing table tennis, limbs and elbows jerking awkwardly. The ping pong ball taps out a disjointed rhythm.
And there she is in the corner, fidgeting as she flicks through a magazine, too fast to be reading it. She jumps when I call her name and looks up with startled eyes. The magazine falls to the floor.
Sitting beside her, I grip her hand.
‘Remember me, Emily?’ Her hands are shaking. She looks down without answering.
‘They’re trying to convince you that you’re ill again. We must get you out of here before they kill you.’
She’s still staring silently at her feet, the toes of her fluffy socks curling inwards.
‘Here comes one of them now!’ My panic rises as the man draws nearer. I can tell by the over-confident swagger that he’s a psychiatrist. ‘Quick! Grab a bat from one of those boys and whack him!’
She snatches her hand away and screams.
The psychiatrist is here now. He pretends to be all soothing, speaking softly as he strokes her shoulder.
‘Don’t touch her!’
He leads her away, ignoring me.
Once we’re seated in his office, Emily sobs, ‘She’s back.’
I can’t see her face because the psychiatrist is sitting between us. He has no right to shut me out. She’s allowed an advocate! But before I can move around him, his arm shoots out towards his desk, blocking my path.
‘We need to up the meds,’ he’s saying, passing her something.
I nudge him. ‘You can’t increase the dose without…’
I collapse, suddenly weak. I hear foil popping. The glug of water being swallowed.
It’s my hands that fade first, curling into a tendril of smoke. The rest of me follows, until I am just one of the mad whispers in the air.
