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«Don’t give me that nonsense!» and the emotional nature of her incorrigible soul boiled over inside her, «at least not on your birthday! Have you thought about us?»
«You need to face facts. I have cancer. I am completely disabled. Life, if this state of being can be called life, has taken a turn for the worst. The doctors shrug their shoulders and won’t even look me in the eye. They’ve already written me off.»
«Whilst your lungs have breath in them, Kevin, you are fighting. You are alive, even if only for our sake.»
«But why? Why should I go on without hope? If the pain killers are now useless? If new and intolerable suffering and gloom increases by the hour? But the law of life is simple: one must pay for one’s own sins…»
«Will you stop beating that into the ground?» she choked out through tears. «I forgave you a long time ago for that fling with the trainee… Although I swore once never to forget about it!»
«But you spent a long time exploiting my guilt… That exploit has left a small scar on my conscience… and shame… But I’m not talking about that.»
«What are you talking about then?»
«That’s not important, Kathryn…»
«Is there something else I don’t know about? Tell me, Kevin, sharing a problem halves it. Don’t let your conscience torment you.»
«I can’t. It’s a long story…»
«I’ll find out sooner or later.»
«Please be patient, Kathryn. Everything has its time. But today, on my birthday, I wanted to speak to you.»
«Well then, speak… I’m listening…» she looked at him patiently.
«My dear Kathryn, my love,» he said, and then went silent. It was obvious he was trying to gather courage. She looked at him, and her lips faltered in desperation and powerlessness. «I do not see a reason to keep on living. It can only get worse for me. Why should I be a burden on you, the children, and on myself?»
«You’re not a burden!» Kathryn said, trying to reassure him.
«Don’t lie to me, please. That’s the one thing you’re no good at.»
«Put yourself in my shoes… could this not have happened to me?» she asked, a lump forming in her throat.
«I have thought about that too. But imagination and reality have little in common…»
«But there is still hope, no matter how little… There is always a sliver of chance…»
«Rubbish! I don’t need a false saviour! Don’t you understand, I have no more will to live, at all! Yes, truth be told, this is principally for my sake. This is not about you or the children. It is very moving that you want with all your heart to ease my pathetic condition…»
She hid her eyes and stared into the far corner of the wardroom. He said her name, and there was an urging in his voice, asking for her to understand, to forgive him. «You’re a kind person, and that is important!» said Kathryn, after a pause. «You have so much warmth inside you! And you can love with your whole heart! I have always looked up to you! I have always admired your work ethic, I always admired how you worked towards your success.»
«I had a long and tiresome road to go down, Kathryn, you know that…»
«If it was not for your perseverance and endurance, your ambitious hopes…»
«That is the only way you can not only stand on your own two feet, but also reach for the stars…»
«But dear, you were not born with those things, but you reached the moon anyway… You never promised your family anything more than you were in a position to deliver.»
«You know, dear, who stopped us…»
«From reaching the stars? Yes, Margaret Thatcher…»
«The very same. The «Iron Lady’. With her inhumane policies and relationship with the people. Do you remember, her economic plans were meant to end up with high unemployment? She strangled the trade unions with her bare hands, she ended the subsidisation of unprofitable companies. She raised taxes and lowered spending on social development. How many people ended up on the streets, without a penny in their pocket. All because she judged inflation to be a greater danger than three and a half million unemployed.»
«Yes, those were hard times… The people went bust…» Kathryn answered sadly.
«And then in 1981, in Ireland our homeland, there was a big string of hunger strikes and riots, and the Baroness’ response was overly brutal. No wonder there was an assassination planned against her. Do you remember the bomb at the party conference in Brighton? If it were not for her victory in the Falklands War, she would have lost the 1983 election.» Kevin continued his endless search for historic justice. This seemed to be one of the few things that could intermittently take his mind off things.
«The next two years were overshadowed by the miners’ strikes. Without batting an eyelid, the lady premier destroyed the nation’s coal industry with a single stroke, and left tens of thousands unemployed, and the pound crashed. That was why, when she died, there were celebrations in many of our cities, London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. People had placards with Ding-dong, the witch is dead written on them, people celebrated with champagne…»
«But you cannot argue, Kevin, we both felt sorry for her… Despite everything she did…»
«Yes, despite all that, she was still a human being. And a woman. Of course, you remember that poor woman had several strokes and a broken arm. Before she died, she had to go to the therapist for hallucination and dementia. I felt sorry for her, of course. Only death could bring her escape from her anguish, and, I hope, forgiveness for everything she had done, even though she never expressed regret for anything…»
«They should stop feeding you and just let you discuss politics and economics all day and all night, dear, you understand the ins and outs like the back of your hand… I can see it brings you great pleasure…»
«It is good that we see eye to eye on these issues, Kathryn!»
«Well obviously! If I was not also of 100% Irish stock, these discussions of ours would always and inevitably end in an overblown argument.»
«That’s where you’re wrong, my love! It wouldn’t end in an argument, but in a speedy divorce! That’d be it!»
«I value your sense of humour! You could outdo Tony Hancock at this. You’ve always been able to make me laugh, or at least force a smile.»
«With a big more luck… I could have you rolling on the floor in laughter…»
«You were lucky enough to be an Irishman, is that not enough already!» she retorted.
«Kiss me, Kathryn. I want to be reminded of the taste of your lips for the rest of time.»
For a moment, she felt embarrassment. But then, a second having passed, she leaned over to him and firmly kissed him on the mouth with her kind and pink lips, and briefly picked up the partially sweet, partially bitter smell of almonds. Her heart was racing. As their lips parted, he noticed that her large, dark eyes held a sad smile, and that her soul seemed completely void.
At this time, it was getting dark outside. The day of the Heavenly Patron was coming to a close. The weather started to get worse, the sky became overcast with big, grey clouds, and then came a drizzle of rain. Gloomy and grey. Kathryn sighed heavily and exited the hospital, feeling an unexpected coldness. She opened her large umbrella over her head, which partially concealed her face from passers-by, her face which had in the course of her visit become pinched and worn, and also covered over her fragile figure, now permeated with a great sadness. It also hid her eyes in darkness, brimming with tears of salt, like a boundless ocean. A feeling of hopelessness enraptured her body.
Deep in thought, she wandered the streets of Birmingham, this great industrial English city. The streetlights had already come on, the shopfronts were shining brightly, tempting the city’s shoppers, drunk with everything from ale to whisky with green shamrocks, with brightly coloured celebratory wreaths, and discounts advertised on brightly coloured signs. But she noticed none of these sights at all. Her strikingly transparent eyes, with their indescribable grief, gazed off somewhere in the distance, and her head was filled with the realisation of the hollowness of her existence.
«What is life?» she asked herself. «A single moment. And everything must come in this moment, birth, a baby’s cry, their smile, their first timid movements and the unintelligible babbling, the happy and carefree childhood, the first love, laughter and tears, victories and defeats, loss of loved ones, the overcoming of all kinds of problems. All of this must be done in this single moment. And what is death? Alas, it is not a moment, but eternity itself. Its arrival is inevitable. Who on earth has the power to stop it? Or at least delay it? To succeed in savouring the moment, in which we were all so happy…»
3. Rachel
Erin began to tire from the journey to the Central Psychiatric Hospital in Northern Nottinghamshire. She had been driving her two-year-old, beige-coloured Peugeot 307 quite fast, and without stopping, but there was still an hour and a half until her destination, even if she drove quickly. She was enjoying the warm yet wet weather, despite a soft wind blowing, but inside she was somehow anxious, confused, and grim. For a moment, something like a ray of light caught her eye and she looked up to the sky, but she saw no sunshine. She saw a few single clouds and a small gaggle of sparrows overhead, followed by a small gaggle of rooks. Hills and uplands were replaced by lowlands and thick woods, fertile lands of broad pastures and wild grasslands with cultivated fields. Brave yet skinny deer appeared along the road, hungry foxes ran past in search of fat partridges, and fat wild rabbits crawled into bushes of boxwood…
Finally, Northern Nottinghamshire came into view, with its landscape of rolling hills and large ducal estates. Once there were mining towns here, they reached up to the north out of Nottinghamshire and into Yorkshire. But of these mines, workplaces for thousands of able-bodied men, almost all were closed by the Conservative government in the 1980s, and all that was left to remind people of their former existence were abandoned windmills standing over the mineshafts. On the bright side, another interesting attraction came into view, Sherwood Forest, or at least what was left of it since the Middle Ages. Robin Hood, leader of the forest bandits, took refuge in this forest along with his merry men… And there was the family home of Lord Byron: Newstead Abbey. Erin remembered that in Nottinghamshire once also lived the father of Lemuel Gulliver, who she believed was a minor landlord, and the main character of Jonathan Swift’s novels «Gulliver’s Travels».
She caught sight of the building of glass and metal off in the distance, rising menacingly through the trees and shining with a brilliant white. An unidentifiable magnetism emanated from the building, beckoning to nonchalant and careless souls. Erin stopped the car and felt a cold biting through her body, causing her to seize up and clench her teeth. This hospital was considered one of the best in Britain, and possessed the highest level of security, which gave a deceptive air of comfort and protection. These conditions were considered the most important, for it was here that patients were brought who had mental health problems making them a danger to those around them. The appointment with her sister had been booked in advance by telephone, and agreed to by Rachel’s doctor. And now, having arrived, the first thing she wanted to do was talk with Doctor Johnson.
Waiting for the doctor, and having made herself comfortable in an armchair in the visiting room, she got her new iPhone from her bag and began taking pictures of the room to show to her father later on. Before long, Doctor Johnson arrived, a woman with a no-nonsense appearance, she reminded Erin that her sister needed calmness and positivity, so she must under no circumstances excite her at all.
«Your sister, Miss O’Brian… can at times manage to make a good first impression on people, because she can be charming, enchanting, and witty. She thinks very highly of herself… But she is unable to build long-term bonds with people, since the more they get to know her, the more they begin to see her darker side,» the doctor was clearly tense, and her tension seemed to grow in the course of their conversation. She straightened up in her chair, bore into Erin with her penetrating gaze, and continued: «Miss O’Brian, I should tell you that as an experienced psychologist, I have managed to «get the hang of’ her, even though she is a master of trickery and manipulation. This is a common for sycophants like your sister. In addition, she is displaying signs of schizophrenia. She has no guilty conscience whatsoever. Quite to the contrary, she very often blames others for her own actions, twists others’ words, and is skilful at distorting a situation so that others are always to blame. She considers everyone else to be beneath her…
«How are you treating her, doctor?» Erin asked anxiously.
«I hope that you’re in the know, Miss O’Brian. You don’t think, contrary to common myths that have come about, that psychiatry is frozen far in the past? We haven’t been using lobotomies, electroshock therapy, or other dangerous experiments as a means of treatment for about 50 years now. Understand?» She looked at Erin in a kind of severe, anticipating way, fixing her cold, analytical eyes on hers, and the latter heard the clear stolidity and starkness in her question. Recognising medical terms the doctor had used, Erin felt a shudder run through her legs. She remembered that not long after Rachel was put in the hospital, Erin happened to come across a long article in a magazine, in which the darkest and most truly disturbing aspects of psychiatry were described.
This scientific field very often subjected patients suffering from psychological problems to horrible operations… Erin couldn’t remember the name of the Portuguese psychiatrist, Monish, maybe. This doctor conducted an operation on a chimpanzee to remove the frontal lobes of the brain, after which he claimed to have changed how it behaved, that he had made it become obedient and calm. Later, he proposed to drill a hole in a patient’s skull, and to insert a wire loop into the brain, rotating it to remove the white matter from the frontal lobes. For this he received a Nobel Prize in Medicine. His successors conducted tens of thousands of such «operations», using electroshock therapy as pain management. A new instrument was devised for this kind of operation, which brought an ice pick to mind. The sharp end was pointed at the eye orbit to penetrate the thin layer of bone with the help of a surgical hammer, and the instrument was inserted into the brain, inflicting irreversible damage, and turning every third patient into a vegetable. There was even a special «Lobotomobile’, a van in which psychiatrists travelled around different countries, offering miraculous healing and conducting operations in front of live audiences, in the same manner as a circus. They even put restless and simply uncooperative children under the knife, it changed them permanently… The operation permanently destroyed part of the person’s personality and individuality. Many of them then had meningitis and epileptic seizures, and if they did not become vegetables, then they committed suicide.
Erin remembered that victims were men with alternative sexual orientations, as well as women. Women, who never had as much social status as men, were more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and hysteria, and the simple solution was to declare them insane and have them hospitalised, where a lobotomy keenly awaited them. These operations may have been arranged by their close ones; the woman lost her individuality, and she became far easier to control, she would become completely dependent and obedient, provided she survived the operation…
One of the women described in the article was Rosemary Kennedy, the oldest sister of the American President John Kennedy. Doctors concluded that she had made little progress in comparison to other children. For 20 years her parents did not know what to do, Rosemary became uncontrollable, she developed a nymphomaniac propensity and aggressive behaviour. The doctors convinced her parents that it was necessary to try a lobotomy, and this immediately became popular as the latest method of treatment for these patients. That was in 1941. As a result of the operation, Rosemary remained a feeble, incapacitated invalid until her death, with the developmental level of a two-year-old.
Remembering that chilling article now, Erin felt her skin become covered with sweat, her eyes darkened over, and her mind began to pound, as if an ice pick had penetrated her skull under the strike of a surgical hammer.
«Are you alright?» she heard the doctor’s voice. «What are you thinking about? Your sister?»
Erin forced a gulp and answered quietly, «Yes, about a sister… Kennedy’s…» In these endless seconds she felt as though the doctor’s glaring eyes had crudely penetrated her brain and seized control of her very consciousness. «Alas, the poor Rosemary, there was nothing for her in those days… Nowadays, I wouldn’t turn down such an opportunity… But you, Miss O’Brian, should really be thinking about your own sister…»
«Maybe she needs something else? Some sort of stronger medicine? I can have a look for something…»
«Don’t worry. We have the whole range of essential means. We have looked at her clinical picture, as well as the development and stage of her illness, to prescribe an effective course of therapy for her. This includes antidepressants and neuroleptics which, I hope, will help her overcome delirium, hallucination, and aggressive behaviour. But you have to understand that, unfortunately, a sure-fire method of curing schizophrenia does not yet exist.»
«No?» Erin repeated, and felt her wild heartbeat rising in her throat.
«No, it does not. But in most cases, carefully selected treatment can allow the patient to work, have a family, and carry-on life as they did before,» but her words were not convincing.
«And what do we, as her relatives, have to do now? How should we treat her?»
«It is most important not to push her away. Remember, it is the illness turning your sister into the unstable person she is at present. The world these kinds of people inhabit is entirely different to our own. It’s a different planet. At this point in time, she remains a threat to society, so there can be no question of discharging her home for some time yet. By the way, I wanted to ask, when did you first notice this abnormal behaviour in her?»
«She’s been like this since she was a child, Doctor Johnson,» Erin answered. «She was cruel to other children, she also liked torturing animals. When she got a bit older, she became violent, damaging others’ property and getting into fights. She stole things from school on two occasions. Then she ran away from home a few times, started to drink, and even use soft drugs… The paediatrician called it «social deviance’…»
«As I suspected,» the doctor cut in suddenly. «The clinical picture was very precise. I’m certain this is genetic.»
«What do you mean?» Erin was nonplussed.
«Was there anyone with a similar illness in your family? Amongst your very close relatives, members of your immediate family maybe? Is there anything you’d like to tell me about that?»
«No, there weren’t,» said Erin firmly.
«Are you sure?» the doctor narrowed her eyes, and it struck Erin how masculine she now looked.
«Yes, of course.»
«Strange…» the doctor remarked doubtfully. Clearly the conviction with which Erin had refuted her authoritative opinion had made her less certain. «Very well, if you don’t want to talk any further, then I’ll leave you. I have other patients… Goodbye!» she frowned one final time and then got up, marching out of the room along the large, yellow corridor with quick yet heavy steps.
Erin did not have to wait for long. Rachel appeared at the end of the corridor, moving slowly in her direction. Her frightened red eyes darted from side to side from under dishevelled black hair, as if searching for something. She was wearing a knitted jacket with a small collar with edging. She was also wearing trousers, and her hands were in her pockets.
«You’re right on time,» she said coldly, coming up to Erin.
«Rachel! Sis! Give me a hug!» Erin held out her arms for a hug. But Rachel recoiled, saying spiritlessly, «Must you?»
«What do you mean? I don’t understand…»
«Must you arrive bang on time?» she repeated her question in a demanding and meticulous tone.
«Punctuality shows respect to the person waiting for you.»
«You’re nothing but a killjoy, always on about your sense of duty. And who said I was waiting for you?» her initial coldness was replaced by a chilliness.
«Sorry, Rachel. Were you busy?» asked Erin apologetically.
«Busy? Hmm, sounds interesting… was I busy?» she asked again mockingly. «Don’t know. Give me a moment and I’ll ask for you…» she turned her head to the left and whispered loudly, «Hi Rachel, you busy?» this charade made Erin’s heart seize up. But then her sister turned sharply to face her again, saying, «No, the voice says she isn’t busy. As it happens, I have heaps of time. So, my dearest Erin, Daddy’s little girl, I courteously invite you into my world! Welcome, ha ha ha!» this mean-spirited jeering reverberated in Erin’s ears as a disturbing, repetitive echo.
Rachel rubbed the armchair very intensely three times with her hand, the same armchair on which Doctor Johnson had sat before, before sitting down on it. Dishevelling her black hair with even more force, she gazed at Erin with indifference.
«You’ve lost weight! Do you eat at all?» Erin asked with concern.
«That’s not my fault… that’s all them…» her hands began frantically waving along the length of her body.
«Who are «they’, Rachel? What are you talking about?»
«The tapeworms. They’re taking over my body, gnawing their way through and eating me from inside out.»
«Rachel! What are you on about? That’s all in your head.»
«You mean your big sister is lying? No, it’s not in my head. And my blood is not flowing through my veins in the right direction, it’s going in the opposite direction. Granted, that odious little doctor does not agree with me. I know her intentions…»
«What?»
«She’s a bad person, Erin. A real monster! She dreams of drilling into my brain and digging out my gyrus. But I won’t let her!»
«That’s rubbish, Rachel! She can’t do that! Please…»
«Have you brought Mum’s beads she promised me?» she suddenly asked quietly, changing the subject.
«Yes, here,» Erin reached into her bag for them.
«Beautiful!» she said, taking the amber coloured beads and studying them with interest. «Thanks! Help me put them on. Appearance comes first for a woman, right? You like them?»
«Stunning! No need to do yourself up now.»
«Really? It’s a shame you’re not a man saying that. I’d never leave you alone… Give me your little mirror, I want to admire myself.» Having studied her reflection in the impartial, oval-shaped surface of the mirror, she immediately pursed her lips, and started to get worked up:
«I don’t recognise myself anymore…»
«You’ve not changed at all. You’ve just lost weight…»
«You’re a great liar! Mastered it, have you?»
