Feeding Time

It was something of a jolt to find the nurse tucking the thick hospital blanket over her lap and around her hips - she had barely been aware of the restraint cuffs being slipped around her ankles and the padlocks being clicked into place, but experimentally shifting her weight was all that was required to confirm the reluctance of her legs to come together, her thighs now slightly parted and legs kept from bending at the knee more than the minimum to allow for comfort. Her hands, now resting alongside her hips below the comforting weight of the woollen covers, refused to surface.

The constant, unyielding, if light, pressure around her wrists confirmed the vague impression she had of the coiling of soft yet firm and extraordinarily secure leather around her wrists and the jarring click of locking shackles - she could feel the hard metallic bulk of the one of the padlocks securing the wrist cuffs pressing against her left thigh, digging into the flesh even through the thick flannelette of the pyjama bottoms and the vinyl legs of the bloomers she had on beneath.

As stupefyingly dumb as it seemed to her, Lavinia found herself fawning over the young girl, following her guidance and listening intently to her instructions - a measure of the effect her time with the doctor had had on her. Somehow when the spoon finally came to her lips and she felt the soft rubbery plastic brush her skin it came as no surprise to find her lips parting and her mouth opening obediently to receive the first proffered dollop of goo. This was what this place could do to a woman, even one as fiercely independent as Lavinia or that defiant kindred spirit that she had thought she had recognised in ‘patient 10’ - the sleep-deprived woman now listlessly sitting up in bed just a short distance across the narrow ward from herself, docilely licking the last dregs from the spoon being teasingly dangled in front of her.

As she watched between taking mouthfuls of her own, the young woman’s nurse ran the index finger of her latex-gloved hand around the bowl, scraping off the last of the sticky residue before, having gathered a sizeable dollop on and around the fingertip she offered it up to her patient’s mouth for the woman to suckle on. The sleepy young woman, eyelids drooping and head nodding, seemed to momentarily bristle with indignation - or had she imagined it - before succumbing to the moment and seemingly shrinking down into her bed with embarrassment, her cheeks burning with humiliation.

Lavinia watched, appalled, as the nurse, positioning the woman’s arms to either side of her hips out of the way, perfunctorily pulled up the front of the woman’s pyjama jacket, using the bottom half to wipe the woman’s mouth while apparently oblivious to her patient’s unrestrained breasts spilling out as she did so. Yanking the hideous garment back over the woman’s bosom, the nurse unbuttoned the jacket, loosening the lower three of its ugly rubbery buttons, and Lavinia could only watch, dumbfounded, as the then nurse used the inside of the now open flaps of the jacket to wipe around the inside of the bowl and to clean off the spoon before again refastening it. The poor woman had instinctively lifted her chin while this had been going on and Lavinia could see to her distaste that in addition to the dollops of porridge that had found their way down the front of the woman’s pyjama jacket, thick trickles of the slimy lumpy goo had made their way down her chin and neck and worked their way under the tightly-buttoned Peter Pan collar.

Had it been the fourth or fifth aliquot of that spoon-fed slosh that had been the first to dribble down her pyjama front? Had she been in some way personally deficient or to blame, or had the spoon somehow stalled of its own accord, balancing on the edge of the precipice of her lower lip before tipping over like an off-balance wheelbarrow of garden shit? Whatever... Either way, the slosh now ran down her chin like effluent scaring the base of a West-Country chalk stack. The stodgier, more viscous, component - momentarily hanging suspended thread-like as if beyond the reach of space and time itself - was now sleeting down on the front of her pyjama jacket, fanning out on impact into the splatter-shame pattern only too typically indicative of mental incapacity. Her cheeks burned anew - tears welled again from that cornucopia of despair that had now manifested in her soul.

Instinctively she made as if to wipe her mouth only to meet with the frustration of the chained wrist restraints, her hands steadfastly remaining beneath the irritating, scratchy rough underside of the blanket. As far she could tell, all of the other women were being fed now, not one of them suffering the indignity she was of having their hands restrained - at least not as far she could see from her vantage point.

The young woman in the bed immediately to the right of her own was partially obscured by the glossy vertical folds of green plastic curtaining that hung from a curving metal track on the ceiling and that served to separate one bed from the next. Between mouthfuls of slush, when the nurse feeding her straightened up, she could just catch sight of a woman’s hands lying passively crossed on top of the blanket covering her lap and the first couple of inches or so of her neighbour’s green and white striped pyjama jacket sleeves.

Of the three women she could now see, sitting up in their beds on the far side of the narrow room, two now sported a greyish, semitransparent bib over their pyjama jackets. More of a tabard in style then a bib per se and apparently of some soft polythene-like plastic, the childish looking round-necked garment appeared to simply pop over the head and fasten at the waist by a bottle-green ribbon bow tied either side. The rounded beading edging running around the neck hole and along the edges of the front and broad shoulder straps was bottle green as if to complement the green striped pyjama jacket it protected beneath - the latter mistily visible through the plastic, even down to the bold black pair of digits used to identify the wearer. There was the same obsessive attention to detail in evidence that she had met time and time again on her journey deeper and deeper into the institution. To someone somewhere - and for whatever reason - it was somehow deeply important that everything should complement, match, be identical - whether clothing, furnishings or equipment, everything was standardised down to the finest, tiniest minutiae of detail.

It was the same when it came to the hospital crest and department designation - it seemed to be printed, painted, embroidered stamped or embossed in one way or another just about everywhere she looked and on everything she glanced at. It was as if the most important thing in the world was for the patient to be continually reminded of where she was, what she was, and the inevitability of her staying that way and in this desolate place with its tedious unvarying routines and soul-destroying sameness. Somehow, when the woman in the bed diagonally opposite her twisted slightly, she was not surprised to catch the light glancing off the satiny soft plastic where it billowed out over the swell of her breasts and see spotlighted across the front the embossed lettering spelling out ‘ St Mary’s Hospital, long-term secure psychiatric unit’. It was as inevitable as nightfall - except there was no nightfall here. It was on the breast pocket of her pyjama jacket along with her patient number - designation they called it... How long had it been since she had heard her name? They didn’t even bother with the designation patient any more, it was 3...0, three zero - it was three zero stand here, three zero wait there...Her namesake had committed suicide, or apparently had as far as the world was concerned; how could she tell anyone different locked away in this place? Who would listen anyway - these babbling simpletons sitting passively while their dignity was being more and more eroded, simply to suit the authorities, simply for ease of handling? Perhaps patient ‘10’, there - one zero, she probably was - she looked as if relatively new to the place, she looked as if she had a little fight left in her and what was more, she gave out the impression that - despite a level of exhaustion that had near pushed her to the edge of a mental breakdown - she might, like herself, have arrived here in error.

Except that she wasn’t here in error, was she? Someone, somewhere wanted her here and now she knew who - but it wouldn’t do her any good, the doctor had made sure of that right enough: She giggled, laughed sometimes cried, sometimes all three. She muttered when she would like to speak out, she stammered and stuttered, unable to look anyone in the eye, let alone the doctor or a nurse. Her hand would shake when she tried to write, words moved on the page when she tried to read, she talked to herself without knowing what she said and she was agoraphobic to the point that she would scream in terror at the mere sight of an open sky or field and drop dizzily to the ground unable to take a step in a fit of hysterical paralysis. She dribbled her food, salivated when a bell rang like one of Pavlov’s dogs, yawned when another rang out and wet herself, or sometimes worse, when yet a third peeled.

In short, she was becoming a neurotic, psychological mess - perfectly and expertly prepared for her new, if temporary, home... But would it always be so temporary? How many cycles would there be of being kept here for a time, signing whatever her guardian wanted signed then being returned under the doctor’s personal care to be kept under lock and key in the little cell leading off from her office and undergoing what the doctor had now revealed to her to be a form of brainwashing. The doctor had not been at all coy about revealing that little nugget of truth - she had even laughed a little, openly smiling in pleasure at her patient’s shocked, uncomprehending, expression: “... Well, my dear; I just thought it was time you understood a little what has been going on. But don’t go imagining, for a moment, that knowing what is being done to you will somehow stop it from working - quite the contrary. Just think about it for a moment; knowing how a firearm operates does not make it any less deadly when it is discharged at your head - and when that weapon is one’s own mind... well, let’s just say; I have just cocked your firearm for you and handed you the trigger - the rest I leave up to you.”

Lavinia was jolted rudely back to the present - a cold slimy sensation was playing around her lips and her tongue was again being depressed by the rubbery touch of the hospital-issue desert-spoon’s bowl, the young nurse’s voice urging her on to swallow:

“...Come along, honey, open wide - do try to concentrate on what you’re doing...Oh! Now look what you’ve done, it’s gone everywhere again, all down your front - what a mess! There’s more down the front of your pyjamas than in your tummy. The Ward Sister will be furious - and as much with me as with you.”

The nurse had a young, sweet, sing-song voice and was murmuring low under her breath, her tone slightly tremulous as if fearful herself, as if perhaps worried that she might be overheard. There was something sincere about her, about her smile - just something about her that made Lavinia think that surely this young woman could not be part of the setup that had put her here and that was responsible for her continuing incarceration. Here was a young person simply going about her job and as keen as mustard to develop her career - here was somebody who was genuinely caring and filled with the kindest of intentions. And yet... well, Lavinia’s mouth had still been chock-full of the sticky, tasteless grey sludge when the spoon had again been pressed to her lips - and the nurse seemed to have angled it down in such a way that it was inevitable that the contents would have been left trickling down her chin and raining down on her pyjama jacket.

But surely it couldn’t have been deliberate - could it? This young student nurse with her honey blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes and soft northern-mill town working-class accent - she just seemed to Lavinia too nice to be the sort who might be tempted to be deliberately tormenting. On the other hand; the nurse was already scooping another overfilled heaping spoonful from the bowl she held in her hand. Yet, the soft-edged spoon with its rubbery flexibility - an utensil made near-useless by health and safety considerations - was hard enough to take food from cleanly as it was, let alone while still struggling to clear the last load from the mouth - and without gagging. This was something Lavinia felt sure the nurse must realise, trainee or not; just as much as she must surely be able to see that she was still chomping on the tenaciously-clinging chow. Gulping hard, Lavinia forced herself to open her mouth wide in response to the young woman’s instruction, eager to avoid further embarrassment. The result was inevitable: again it went everywhere. The stuff was stuck around her teeth, clung wetly and heavy around her mouth and lips, dripped from the tip of her chin and even somehow had made its way onto the end of her nose - the urge to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand was now well-nigh uncontrollable and she tugged frantically under the blanket against the unyielding control of the wrist restraints.

The gradual realisation that this young woman charged with feeding her as if a helpless neonate or retard was almost certainly younger than she was herself, heightened the humiliation inherent in the situation to an unbearable extent. At a conscious level this realisation made Lavinia bristle with indignation, leaving her more determined then ever not to conform to the well-thought-out path of incremental degradation she was beginning to imagine she could see sketched out before her. Subconsciously the converse was true: like it or not, she was striving harder and harder to succeed, driven by a growing urgent determination to appear apart from the rest, aloof from the poor mental cripples around her. Simultaneously and ironically, in so doing - and even without realising it - she was more and more bowing to the young nurse’s authority and drawing ever closer to the very group she was so keen not to emulate.

In response to yet another bumbling accident the young student nurse just smiled reassuringly, her tone patronising, yet somehow calming:

“Now, now, calm down - I have some tissues in my pocket and I’ll wipe your mouth for you in just a moment; don’t worry, I can imagine just how it feels. I just want to get a couple more mouthfuls into you first. Now concentrate and open that mouth of yours nice and wide and try not to spill any. If you want me to help you by wiping your mouth for you, then you must help me by getting a couple of clean spoonfuls in you - any spillage and it won’t count, mind!”

Glancing down at the bowl of viscous sludgy porridge, spoon hovering above the surface the young nurse paused. For a moment she couldn’t help but ponder what it might be like to have to perform on a bedpan perched on a chair under close supervision, to be denied possession of personal belongings and be kept beyond any contact whatsoever with the outside world. The thought ran through her head: What must it be like to be kept confined to the four walls of a sparse hospital ward seemingly purposely designed to restrict mental stimulation to the minimum? How all else might one explain the use of opaque plastic covers kept padlocked over windows that were surely secure enough in themselves, their being triple glazed for soundproofing and protected by steel bars both inside and out? The thought made the young woman shudder... And yet, at the same time, she couldn’t deny that the effect her actions were plainly having on the young woman restrained in the bed before her made her shiver - and in a slightly different manner than through dread or empathy.

There was something worrying about it all, but she pushed the thought to the back of her mind, turning her attention instead back to her patient. Spoon in hand and carefully balancing the wobbling glob of porridge piled up on its extremity as it trembled its way towards her patient’s slightly quivering, porridge-plastered lips, she continued on where she had left off, barely aware that she had even left a pause:

“Furthermore I know for a fact that the Ward Sister won’t let you have a nice clean fresh pair of pyjamas until she is sure that you won’t drop food down them, wet yourself or mess yourself in them - and you smell and look as if you have been wearing that pair for weeks. The women here all get a nice freshly-laundered pair of pyjamas, clean knickers and a fresh sanitary towel each day, but the Ward Sister is an absolute stickler for spotlessness, especially where the dribbling of food and drink is concerned.

If it was up to me I would do something about you right away, get you cleaned up, get you more comfortable and so on. But as it is; you want me to clean you up, give you a nice sponge bath and get you some nice fresh clothing so that you don’t smell like a cross between a urinal and a fish market, then spotless is how you’re going to have to be - and stay. It is the reason the other women have all opted to wear a bib - I know it looks embarrassing, but it is optional after all and it would help me out because it wouldn’t be so obvious to what extent you’ve spilled your food; it’s plastic and I can just give a quick wipe over with a sponge afterwards to hide the evidence. If you ask the Ward Sister nicely, when she comes to see you later, I’m sure she’ll let me get you one for your next meal. It’s nothing to worry about, it’s not as if you’ll be the only one wearing one - you’re only going to be looking the same as all the other patients, other than ‘one zero’ opposite you I suppose; and you’ll be amazed at just how quickly you get used to it.”

Lavinia despite her usual inability to make eye contact - something pretty much perfected under the care of the doctor - somehow managed to force herself to look up at the young nurse’s face, desperate to read the young woman’s intentions, fearing that she might yet read duplicity - was it all deliberate after all - the spilling of her food down her front - a tactic aimed at making her take the next couple of stumbling steps to becoming like those other poor pathetic looking creatures around her, all those other patients? After all, didn’t she just say something about “being, looking or becoming just like all the other patients”?

Two thoughts struck Lavinia near simultaneously, each equally devastating, each in its own way acting to stifle and extinguish the little spark of hope that had begun glimmer in her breast when first she had heard she was to be transferred to an orthodox secure ward and away from the private isolation of the Department of Experimental Psychology:

One: she had just mentally lumped herself in with these other poor psychiatric cases as if she actually was one herself, she had...”Oh my God!” A dread realisation had just intruded. “I’ve just done it again...these other poor psychiatric patients... OTHER... OTHER PATIENTS”. The doctor was winning - or had she won - she was beginning, quite without reason, to think of herself as a mental patient.

Two: Ironically and conversely she also, at some level, realised she could not lump herself in with this group of mental patients, nor did they truly outnumber the staff, as they appeared to do on the surface of it: They were a group only in the sense that they shared the same geographical locus - psychologically they were each as isolated as if in solitary confinement; and none more so than Lavinia herself.

Yes, she had been told that the other patients held here were allowed to chat among themselves, but only under close supervision... and that meant close supervision. She didn’t doubt that the subject matter would be carefully monitored and controlled and their conversation was limited to the most mundane of time-passing reflections. What was more; she knew that not one of these women would dream of breaking the rule that she was not to be spoken to, nor listened to and would undoubtedly blow the whistle - even on each other - over the tiniest of transgressions if it would curry favour with her carers. It was all part of the psychology of control - separate, divide and rule. Even Lavinia knew that - they probably all did, or had once; it didn’t stop it from working. It was just as the doctor had said to her; “...don’t worry my dear; my revealing the methodology to you wont lessen its efficacy.”

This was why she had been placed here, in amongst a group of psychiatric patients. The seclusion the doctor had provided had been replaced by a different kind of isolation, her prison of iron bars and stone walls had now been replaced by a different kind of barrier, a psychological barrier - it was clear these women were already hopelessly overawed by respect for authority. Wasn’t that what the Soviets had done with dissidents, kept them locked up with the hopelessly insane, labelled them as unstable or mentally deficient so that none would take notice of them? She had read that somewhere, though she couldn’t recall quite where - perhaps it had been in history at school. Yes, it was a system of divide and rule, not a group, but a collection of isolated individuals.

A similar rationale governed the provision of the sign boards that hung over their beds and that revealed to all and sundry their diagnosed conditions - the words spelled out up there hung around all their necks like millstones creating suspicion, distrust. Along with the assignment of their so-called ‘patient designations’ - something Lavinia was surprised to find here, persisting in the more orthodox environment of a hospital psychiatric ward - this division served to further strip them of their individuality, made them easier to control. She understood now that it was all part of the process of breaking them down psychologically. She couldn’t help but wonder if after many years kept under such constant psychological pressure any of them, even herself come to that matter, would be able to even remember their own names let alone those of their family, friends or loved ones.

The thought made her shiver and she began to weep more profusely, prompting the nurse to place an arm comfortingly around her shoulders - she really was becoming quite the archetypal mental patient, given to uncontrolled bouts of weeping. That thought, in turn made her giggle and she watched, horror struck, as that conflict of responses was duly noted by the Ward Sister, standing stern faced, clipboard in hand: the first of her reports would soon be winging its way to the review panel members... And she only had herself to blame...or was that a part of her problem, a part of her condition... was it all just her imagination, just some part of what was wrong with her? Paranoia? She knew now that it was that far from certain that she would be released upon turning twenty-one, as she had once conjectured in a more optimistic moment: The doctor’s words still rang in her ears:

“...You will find that despite what you expect to gain from your case-review hearing - assuming you are even granted one this time around, and it’s by no means certain - at the end of the day, I will decide when, or even if, you’re allowed to leave here.”

Up to now she had managed to hold on to at least a modicum of belief in the justice built into the system. But these women around her were blatantly being denied any form of constitutional right, just as she herself had now been ‘put away’ been placed into a mental home and locked up like a criminal, yet without trial - and worse; with out any known pre-agreed limit to the sentence.

The doctor had gone a long way to breaking her spirit - conversely, this place was designed to break her mind. In terms of outcome, this was intended to amount to a lobotomy without the surgery - if she was to allow it to. But what could she do? Unless... unless, she could somehow convince her nurse of her normality. But what if the nurse was part of the conspiracy? What if she was genuine, but had already been too swayed by the diagnosis and the patient notes she would undoubtedly have read beforehand, not to mention her appearance? If either proved to be the case then all she would achieve in attempting to deny the existence of her mental illness would be to lengthen her own incarceration. It was a quandary to which at present there seemed no answer - and could she even hope to behave normally, in any case, given the way the doctor had conditioned her?

With a condescending farewell pat on the head the nurse was gone, taking the empty food bowl and spoon with her. Just beyond the foot of the bed the Ward Sister was again scribbling on that clipboard of hers, her lips moving as she wrote, uncannily reiterating under her breath something of the thoughts that had been running through Lavinia’s head is if able to read her mind: “... believes nurse might be part of ‘conspiracy’ against her.” Still sitting up against the raised backrest Lavinia felt herself go ridged in her restraints; now she knew for sure her thoughts were no longer her own private realm. Her inner-dialog was no longer confined to what went on inside her head - in short she was talking to herself, out loud! Out of the corner of her eye young Lavinia watched as yet another note was recorded on the Ward Sister’s clipboard. Then dropping the clipboard to her side and with a sweep of her hand the Ward Sister, a smile now breaking out on her thin lips, drew the bed curtain around and with the faint screeching of age-worn metallic runners the ward disappeared behind a thin division of rustling bottle-green plastic fabric.

So here she was, buried alive, locked behind bars, presently secured in a hospital bed in a full four-point restraint system on a mental ward and with ankles that were to be, by comparison with those patients that were allowed up to shuffle around, permanently hobbled in padlocked leather ankle cuffs linked by short length of stainless steel chain - but the hopelessness of her situation did not end there, she knew. She was bound, too, at an even deeper level, some would say at the deepest possible level - she was bound to the place at the psychological level.

Her agoraphobia was now so acute that even if she did by some miracle get outside, she doubted that unaided she could as much as get across the courtyard within which she remembered being disgorged from her aunt’s car on the night she had arrived all that time ago. It was simply unfeasible that she would be able to traverse the substantial distance that separated the main hospital complex from the nearest road, much of which was laid to open pasture - and as for the moors beyond...

And if she were to meet someone along the way, try to enlist their aid, what then? Doubtless the speech deficit she had acquired and that was apparently worsening month by month would reduce her explanation to an irritating babble that - unless she happened by chance to collide with the right form of officialdom - would quickly see her branded as a drug addict... Or a madwoman! No! She didn’t want to think about that! Tears came and heavy sedated eyelids began to droop...