The Plaited Leather Cure For A Refractory Patient

It had taken surprisingly little time to have the straitjacket stripped from her again, the doctor’s hands both nimble and practiced. Why she should have been stripped back to her pyjamas and knickers when the restraint afforded by the straitjacket would have seemed eminently suitable for what was to come would remain a mystery to the young girl, but was clarity itself to any that knew the doctor’s methodology. It all came down to that one word - discipline - it always did. For now though she could only sit and wait. She had defied her doctor, refused to comply with her treatment, refused to let the woman hypnotise her with that spinning disc of hers and there would be a price to pay.

“Stand up! Let’s have those pyjama trousers and knickers down - grasp your ankles and let me hear you ask sister, here, nicely for correction... Or would you prefer me to call in your sweet young student nurse friend and ask her to put you across her lap for a good, hard strapping! Oh, yes! I know all about what has been passing between you. Don’t look so shocked, dear - you don’t think either the Ward Sister or I would have placed you under the care of anybody unless we were both one hundred and ten percent sure of her reliability, do you?”

The psychiatrist’s intonation had that implacable frigid clipped-tone edge to it that the woman kept in reserve, to be unleashed only in the case of the most blatant, confrontational recalcitrance. Her face - as striking as her well made-up features were, her fine-boned cheeks picked out in subtle rouge and steely blue eyes enhanced in a reflection of subtly shimmering eye-shadow - was stony, delightfully feminine yet set in tight-lipped determination. Lavinia, for her part, was plunged into a state of shock.

From the earliest days, Lavinia had barely considered for more than the briefest of times that the young woman she had come to think of as ‘her nurse’ might be complicitous in any of this. Now, having had the student nurse’s involvement practically spelled out to her, albeit implicitly... Well, the knowledge was devastating, the prospect of now being punished by the girl - a young woman possibly actually younger than she was herself - even more so.

“I said, Knickers down, please.” The psychiatrist’s tone was sharpened by impatience now, her foot tapping and her fingers toying with the wicked looking switch she held in her hand.

Lavinia knew better than to tarry. Her fingers fumbled under the now quite unfamiliar task - one now ordinarily undertaken by her nurse. Gradually her fulsomely-rounded buttock cheeks emerged from beneath from a peeled-back second-skin of soft, pliant stretchy plastic to be defencelessly exposed to the air, still glistening with perspiration and worse.

The hospital examination gown was no less troublesome with its fiddly ribbon ties to the rear, its provision just as unexpected as the removal of the straitjacket had been. Of thin white nylon trimmed with bottle green edging around the neck and sleeves and fastening with bottle green ties, it continued the colour scheme so beloved of the institution, even down to the embroidered hospital crest over one breast surmounted by the hospital’s name and underlain by those hated and somehow so humiliating words: Secure Psychiatric Wing. Falling to no more than mid-thigh at best, the lowest fastening was positioned at the lower back leaving the rear split open by the wearer’s full, protruding buttocks, the gown clearly having been designed to fall away once a patient was bent at the waist, whether it be for examination, lying facedown on a couch, or for punishment; standing and grasping the ankles or bent over a nurse’s lap for a good hard strapping.

“Six strokes, I think to start; then we’ll see where we go from there.” The doctor’s regal tone somehow seemed well suited to the surreal context, a smile playing around her lips. “Bend and grasp your ankles please; knees locked out straight.”

The dressage whip, with its plaited-leather handle and its lightweight fibreglass core, could be a spiteful implement indeed when wielded in the doctor’s hand. Hissing through the air with an angry sound like a snake about to strike, it now fell methodically again and again across the girl’s well-filled-out womanly bottom. Expertly the doctor worked it upwards, stroke by stroke, from the tender flesh of the dimpled overhang just above the girl’s chubby thighs to the taut but resilient curvature of the centre line, the point at which the cleft between the globes was at it most defined. The doctor paused a moment at that point, poised to lay the sixth and final cut across the very centre of the hysterical weeping girl’s buttocks, yet contemplating something more... The thoughts were simply tearing around in the striking psychiatrist’s brain, each in turn scrabbling for her conscious attention:

How much more pleasing the well-rounded curvature of the girl’s hips and thighs were now - so much more pleasing to the eye than the skinny, wiry rump of the coat-hanger catwalk model; or a tutu-clad dancer’s, come to that! That bottom was so... so... breathtaking! Just as chubby as nature intended, if not a little more so - and as rounded as a well-ripened peach, yet still firm, and with such youthful resilience! Such succulent perfection; the anal cleavage going so, so deep while the buttock cheeks remained so sharply delineated as to give the girl’s backside the appearance of a perfect, if heavily-upholstered, inverted heart shape, wobbling enticingly with each step - or rather, shuffle.

That newly ripened-off, fulsome femininity, that wondrously squirming bottom with its milky drum-tight velvety flesh visibly quivering between fine but swollen blood-red fiery lines - all of that was testament to the dietician’s skill as much as the doctor’s own. Not that she wanted to underplay her own role in having skilfully psychologically manipulated her innocent young charge to overeat. But in the main the pivotal role had been that of the dietician; together they had surreptitiously piled on pound upon pound, distributed around the girl’s once-slender frame, in time entirely changing the girl’s body composition.

She ran her fingers appreciatively across the bending girl’s bottom, feeling the finely-ruled raised tracks drawn out by the wicked kiss of the dressage whip beneath her finger tips. Cruelly she trailed her long freshly manicured nails across, under and around each cheek, marvelling at the way that in striking, the long thin switch had conformed to the softly curving contours of the girl’s buttocks to such an extent as to have curved around at the sides following the swelling curvature of the girl’s broad hips.

Absorbing the inflamed warmth through soft fingertips the doctor again paused, pondering: There was something about having the ability to determine a girl’s body-shape, something deeply thrilling - and at a most fundamental level. To be able to manipulate an individual’s physical appearance at such a fundamental level through the induction of behavioural changes was the ultimate in psychological control. To have relieved her patient of the responsibility of adhering to all those fad diets and celebrity-endorsed exercise regimes, to have taken control, to have made decisions and then watched the outcome of those decisions come to fruition - this was something that was thrilling indeed.

Yet there was much more to this than simply glorying in the undeniable thrill of wielding control over another - indeed, there were many ways in which she could impose her will over her charges. This was different: There was something very special, something... empowering... for a young woman to find buried within herself the ability, the inner-strength to take charge over her figure, to diet, exercise, refine. To have that element of control taken away from her, to have another individual take charge of all those most fundamental of personal life-choices, could have an incalculably severe psychological impact on a patient. There was nothing quite like a little enforced weight gain - or, indeed, weight loss - when it came to impressing upon the mind of some recalcitrant young miss the degree of control hanging over her. What better expression of discipline could there be than for a young girl to be aware of herself changing physically from day to day in accordance with another’s wishes, as a result of some imposition or restriction, yet be powerless to intervene? Surely this was especially the case where the young woman concerned might perceive that metamorphosis to be one likely to make her less attractive to a perspective partner - or to handicap her ambitions and prospects for the future!

Her eye wandered back to the substantial feminine hind-quarters presented before her and how they parted the shimmering soft folds of the hospital examination gown she had decided to put the girl in. For a split second she clenched her teeth - the urge to continue to slash in the dressage whip was almost more than she could deal with. But if she was to discipline her charge, she had first to discipline herself - she had announced six strokes and six strokes she would deliver... unless, of course, the girl gave her legitimate cause to award more. What had been slim, sculptured hips a couple of years previously now swelled with fecund promise. The modest, springy apple-firm and gravity-defying bosom of that time would have been practically unrecognisable as the heavy, pendulous fleshy globes that presently hung earthward like milk-laden udders beneath the exam gown. Now as the girl moved about the ward they swung disconcertingly beneath her pyjama jacket like a pair of encumbering and embarrassing appendages, as if having a life of their own and struggling for freedom against the constriction of the fabric, the outline of the inflamed, turgid and ridged nipples thrusting through the once shapeless garment. Similarly the girl’s once flat, well muscled, dancer’s stomach had now evolved into a much more eye-pleasing curving, slightly swollen little belly that hung down temptingly in a manner that suggested both feminine fertility and all sorts of hidden delights that might lie below. Taken together all that flesh, though well-toned, had now come to fill the otherwise near formless, billowing fabric of her sack-like mental-hospital pyjamas.

In particular, the girl’s much-expanded waistline, along with her thighs and that big fat arse of hers, had become sufficient to fill and stretch the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, thereby negating the necessity for her to continuingly hitch up her trousers with her hand as she walked. The doctor had been well aware of this particular turn of events for some time of course - careful records were kept of all aspects of a patient’s progress, physical attributes included. For a while it had served her purpose to let the girl become used to this new freedom. Now, she decided, was the time to curtail that privilege - she made a mental note to order a larger size for the girl. The last thing she wanted was to have the girl come to think of herself, now possessing as she did what some might euphemistically term ‘a fuller-figure’, as having become attractive in some way.

The pyjamas and plastic pants, that together constituted what the unit’s governing body considered the ‘patient uniform’ were as devoid of styling and as loose fitting as they were for good psychological reasons - to discourage vanity, ‘untoward attention’ and ‘attraction’ between patients. The absence of either a drawstring or elastic at the waistband of the pyjama bottoms - and the similar absence of the waist-elastic that might have otherwise have kept up the thick but soft plastic knickers a girl was obliged to wear beneath them - was simply written-off as a sensible safety precaution where the ‘mentally-disturbed’ were involved. That peculiarly demoralising aspect of the ‘patient uniform’ - that which involved the continuous hitching up of trousers and underwear and the sense of humiliation that went with that - was rarely openly discussed; that wasn’t to say it was to be entirely glossed over, though.

Now running the satin-soft open palm of her hand around and then down, feeling her way over the spherical expanse of one of the hair-pin bent young girl’s bottom cheeks, the sapphically-oriented doctor slipped her fingers beneath the puppy-fat over-hang, exploring deep within the hot moist folds and savouring the girl’s reluctant shiver. Watching the globes quiver and clench defensively and the flesh ripple, the doctor found herself making another of her mental notes - this time to come up with some excuse to have the girl’s hobble shortened. Reducing the linkage between the girl’s ankle cuffs to just a few inches or so would enforce an attractive mincing gait, which in turn, she felt, would induce a delightful jiggling in all that girl flesh. It would also serve to reinforce the futility of the girl holding out any shred of hope that she might one day be permitted to rejoin the pathway she had been on towards becoming a dancer - a skivvy scrubbing the floors on all fours dressed in a nylon work dress, cap and apron... just maybe.

The latter mental image had the doctor licking her lips as if savouring the last nectar droplets of fine, rich Sauternes. Momentarily irritated, if not alarmed, by her own weakness she once more drew back her arm, meaning to slash in one final strike of the dressage whip with all the ferocity due the object she had to blame for her temptation; that big round, jiggling succulent bottom. Then she stayed her hand - those wondrously cavorting, convulsing mooning globes deserved something very special... And she suddenly knew what that ‘something very special’ should be. She had been about to land the final slash right across the centre line, right above the point where the girl’s tender young anus lay - she knew just what to do next as a fitting encore to the afternoon’s proceedings:

“You can release your ankles now, if you please... No! I didn’t say get up. I want you to remain bending at the waist. Now reach back with both hands and pull apart your bottom cheeks, as wide as you can. Come along now; let’s face it you have enough to get hold of there. Just imagine that I need to examine your anus. I am your doctor, I have that right don’t forget; or would you prefer that we start your correction afresh?”

Mewing pitifully, her downturn face drenched in tears, Lavinia moved to comply, reaching up and back around her sides and grabbing handfuls of flesh: “Please, no, doctor...not from the start, doctor. Please, doctor, I’ll be a good girl, doctor, I’ll do what I’m told.”

“Yes you will, dear... you’re going to do what ever you’re told, exactly whatever you’re told - without question and no matter who it is that is instructing you; whether it be myself, the Ward Sister, one of the trainee nurses or indeed one of your visitors, such as your guardian, when the time comes.”

Bending the doctor was repositioning the girl’s fingers as she spoke, shifting the girl’s grip further round to the sides of her chubby globular buttocks so that her digits would be well out of the way and helping stretch apart the cheeks.

“Hold them apart, just like that - it’s not a pretty sight but you’re going to show me and the Ward Sister here exactly what you look like back there, nevertheless.”

Rather than the pink and sweet and puckered thing, as neat as a perfect rosebud, as once it had indeed been, this most secretive of tissue had become over time distended, opening out like a fleshy mushroom. The lumen or opening with the wreath of surrounding sphincter musculature rather than being squeezed closed as would be expected in nature instead existed as neat dark circular invagination, the passage beyond dilated to a degree a little greater in diameter than a man’s thumb. Within, encircled by tissue that ordinarily would lie beyond the probing reach of daylight, the agent responsible for this lewd display could just be perceived. A glistening black ring, set internally and barely visible, pressed outward against the anal walls, its obsidian gloss interrupted at regular intervals around its circumference by fine silvery thread-like bands that seemed to extend outwards, intruding into the puffy tissues themselves. This deeply embedded rubber ‘O’ ring had been the third in a series of increasing diameter to have been fitted. Held permanently in situ by sutures of surgical platinum, this particular anal dilator had been in place some six months. The stretched and now useless sphincter tissue had outgrown, spreading out in a radial fashion around the opening in her bottom and forming a swollen circular pad of singularly tender flesh. It was this delicate tissue that the doctor now sought to punish - that and the usually-protected soft flesh on the insides of her bottom cheeks and the sensitive erogenous area lying between the girl’s anus and her vagina.

“What do you think her boyfriend is going to make of that, not exactly attractive is it?” As she spoke, the Ward Sister’s fingernail was tracing a teasing path around and then across the out-swelling delicate coral petal-like structure encircling the opened dark channel mouth of the girl’s anus like a crinkled carnation flower with its centre punched out.

The doctor smiled back pleasantly, regarding the Ward Sister with a look on her face that spoke of something more akin to affection than mere comradeship. All the time absentmindedly running her fingers up and down the thin smoothly-tapered dressage whip, her tone was measured, conversational:

“No, not really; especially when one considers the amount of money young women and girls like these spend on procedures such as anal bleaching and so on nowadays, just to improve the way they look ‘back there. It seems such a shame that the anal dilator should have the effect that it so often does - it’s quite surprising. It’s just a rubber grommet holding back a ring of muscle, after all, and a perfectly legitimate and effective treatment in cases of anal occlusion.

Of course the rationale behind its utilisation in certain of the behavioural psychology investigations we carry out in the research unit is completely different and the timescales over which our studies are conducted bear little resemblance to the normal medical use - months or even years rather than days or weeks. The thing was never originally designed to be kept in situ for such a long period, nor was it intended that it should be anchored in place with platinum wire stitching - both of which I think have something to do with it. I guess all that fleshy overgrowth piled up around the sphincter is just the body’s way of attempting to deal with the continuous stretching and pressing outwards of the anal sphincter muscles.

As for her boyfriend: well, she’d lost contact with him well before she was brought here. What with the length of time we’ve had her here already, he’ll have long ago moved on. And I’d imagine her old school chums will have done something similar, perhaps even been through University by now, found jobs, new partners, got married, moved away. Whichever the case; they’ll certainly have forgotten all about our little patient here by now.’” The doctor gave a condescending little laugh to finish off.

The Ward Sister had been continuing her ministrations, bringing velvety fingertips to bear in a wavering, circling tickling motion and drawing confused gasps from the sharply bending humiliated girl. Now, as if taking her cue from the doctor, she stood back delivering a sharp slap to the inside edge of a fleshy but resilient buttock cheek, watching the flesh ripple and the outline of her palm and fingers begin to develop in red over the finely-traced lines left behind from the doctor’s earlier application of the dressage whip. Bending slightly at the waist she quietly addressed the yelping girl, her voice mocking and filled to brimming with mock sympathy:” Such a shame! Life’s been passing you by while you’ve been in here, hasn’t it honey?”

In any other situation this would have been a rhetorical question. Not here, not in this institution:

“Answer the Ward Sister, please dear.”

It may have been phrased as an invitation, but the cold sensation of the length of the doctor’s dressage whip being softly drawn across the back of her thighs told otherwise. She went to answer - struggling to put together the thoughts she would have done anything not to of had to entertain, to string together the words she knew they would want to hear from her lips - but was too slow, way too slow. The sentence begrudgingly twisting off her tongue was prefaced with a screech as the fine-tipped dressage whip slashed, not into those tender thighs but rather across the backs of her knees; the tightly stretched flesh there was equally tender if not more so and oft a favoured target of the doctor’s. She’d been aware of the Ward Sister’s tormenting fingers breaking contact, but that had been the totality of the forewarning. The upwardly-sweeping, high-pitched, swish of the supple switch cutting through the air had been all but imperceptible above the sound of the pounding of blood in her ears caused by the extreme standing hairpin-bent posture she was being obliged to hold. Now her knees buckled and her voice crackled brokenly and hysterically in her ears, sounding foreign and strange as if coming from afar and proceeded by sound like a macaw having its tail feathers plucked.

“Eeeee! Yes, yes... passing me by... life’s passing me by... yes, thank you, sister.”

To have thanked the Ward Sister for her concern was essential. It was just good manners and if there was one thing she had been taught during her time in this institution it was good manners - and obedience, of course. She had now learned ‘good manners’, taken on board the need for obedience, learned to forego the notion of free will in favour of the nurturing control of the hospital - even to the point of having her most basic bodily functions regimented to the rhythm of the institution. She had even to some degree begun identifying with a mindset commensurate with her new given identity of ‘mental patient’. Those lessons, though, had been relatively easy to accept once her will had been broken at each step - it was a process that had started the very first time she had given in to one of her aunt’s restrictions; simply that she should wear a skirt rather than the denim jeans she had become accustomed to.

To have to knowingly submit to treatment designed to befuddle the memory and limit the intellect, to have to learn to accept another’s decision as to what she might or might not concern herself with mentally or be able to concentrate upon - these were much harder lessons to come to terms with. The knowledge that the whole rationale behind the treatment was to teach her to better mimic the signs or symptoms of mental illness, so that even under impartial external expert scrutiny her incarceration could be legitimised and her stay extended indefinitely, made this form of tutelage bitter indeed. The latter was daily becoming even more unpalatable with the growing realisation that in tandem with her being trained to adopt the actions and behaviour of a psychiatric patient - and along with her gradual acceptance of that compliant, docile ‘mental patient’ mindset - she was more than just simply being groomed for a role.

The doctor’s voice, when next she spoke, had a harsh commanding edge to it. Lavinia felt herself cringe inside - the punishment proper was about to resume:

“Get those knees locked-out straight! And don’t you dare relax your grip on your buttocks - not for one second - or so help me, I’ll start the whole thing over afresh from the beginning - and you know that I mean it! Then, when it’s over, I’m going to give you a few minutes to calm down and get over it and then you’re going to take your place at the desk alongside patient ‘09’ there. Then, when told to do so, you’re going to look exactly into the centre of that rotating spiral device, you’re going to relax, you’re going to listen to my voice, you’re going to drift down into a trance state - and then we are going to do a little work together toward helping you forget all about one or two little things, that you no longer need to remember. It’s nothing to worry about, nothing important, just a couple of simple little things that you no longer need to know, that’s all. Then, right at the end, I leave you with a couple of posthypnotic suggestions designed to help you adapt to your new life as a psychiatric patient by drawing you closer to the nurse caring for you and helping you to become more compliant with the wishes of others. Any further signs of non-compliance with your treatment and I’ll march you straight back into the ward, bend you across your bed and cane you in front of the nurses, the other patients, everybody.

It’s all so silly anyway; you have been through countless therapy sessions such as these, both with me and with your aunt’s psychotherapist before you were sent here. I doubt that there is one single aspect of your life that is not already influenced in one way or another by some form of implanted posthypnotic suggestion, one single mannerism or behaviour that you can truly be sure is of your own volition. There are all sorts of areas of your schoolwork and aspects of your educational background you would have major difficulty recalling. There are certain dance-steps and movements that you either can’t remember clearly or, if you were to try them, would simply trip you up and leave you sobbing in frustration. There are certain words, speech sounds - or phonemes as we call them - phrases and idioms that you just don’t seem able to get off the tip of your tongue or pronounce properly or that you stumble and stutter over repeatedly like a retard.

It’s only when we started to work together on helping you forget one or two things about your past home life, just trivial things really, such as the name of this blessed old pet of yours, that you seem to have suddenly woken up and started to swim against the current. But I won’t stand for it. After all, it is for your own good; I work with all the women here in this way. We discourage pondering on past lives and the outside world here, encouraging instead our patients to embrace the new identity we give them, simply for their long-term happiness. We have found that it’s far easier for a patient to settle down to life behind the walls of an institution if she can’t quite remember the details of past relationships, boyfriends’ names, that kind of thing. The less she remembers of that past life, the less likely she is to hanker after it and so the easier as it becomes for her to accept and embrace the structured, strictly-disciplined world we have created for her here.”

The long, slender dressage whip, though not as heavy as the doctor’s cane or the conventional riding switch she sometimes carried with her made up for sheer weight of impact by the whip-cracking velocity it would slash in at and the cruel way it which it would cut in to the flesh... it also had the uncanny ability to conform to and wrap around the contours of the target upon impact. Satisfied her charge was bent as tight as a hairpin, with knees locked straight as can be and with her forehead pulled in to the point at which it was actually touching the front of her shins, the doctor manoeuvred herself directly in front of her patient. Raising her arm to full stretch and bending back her elbow so that the lengthy dressage switch hung back over her shoulder the doctor issued a simple warning:

“Leap up, release your ankles or bend your knees and you will be going back into a straitjacket again and the correction will be restarted from scratch - and I might well consider having you kept in a straight jack permanently.” The doctor paused, as if for thought before adding: “I think that’s what your guardian would prefer anyway; we’ll have to ask her when she comes to visit you.” With that she brought her arm swinging down, bringing the dressage switch to bear hard. The stroke landed longitudinally, the pliable long, horse whip, being perhaps twice as long as a conventional crop, curving round deep within the cleft between the girl’s peachy bottom cheeks and whipping in to the soft artificially distended radial rolls of corrugated flesh surrounding her anus. The implacable doctor’s arm swept up and back then brought the dressage whip to bear once more, the cracking strike landing on the exact same point and before the girl could as much as even begin to rise from her prescribed posture.

The scream that rent the air defied all reason and was beyond anything the girl’s lungs had ever before produced - surely it must have damaged her vocal cords; or would do so if repeated many more times.... It was a consideration not entirely absent from the smiling woman doctor’s mind as, placing her dressage switch down on the well worn wooden top of closest of the two school desks, she reached for the swage of thick white fabric waiting patiently folded across the back of its seat. Feeling the heavy canvas of the straitjacket abrade her fingertips as she closed her grip, the thought struck her that if indeed she was to subject this girl to the permanent helplessness of the straitjacket for a few weeks then perhaps to really drive home the lesson, not to mention leave her more receptive to hypnotherapy, she might have her fitted with opaque contact lenses - other than for these sessions of course. She made a mental note to also have the girl placed on a ‘reduced sleep cycle’ as she had once subjected her to when she had had her all locked up and to her self - the girl hadn’t responded at all well to the sort of permanent tiredness and mental exhaustion that had produced.

Still sobbing uncontrollably Lavinia Vitesse was led back out into the ‘recreation room’ and hence back out into the ward per se. All the while steered from behind by the Ward Sister’s hands resting authoritatively on her shoulders, she was pressed through the milling throng of whispering patients that hung like midges around and between the ends of the beds. Their empty bovine stimulation-starved minds attracted like wasps around jam by any activity out of the ordinary it was only natural that they should have clustered around that end of the room. Nevertheless young Lavinia could hardly be blamed for feeling like a prize exhibit at some demonstration of the efficacy of animal husbandry - tamed, domesticated and now returned to the herd; except she was not part of the herd - never had been. She was an isolated satellite cow; on occasion allowed to watch, but never to join in with, this activity that they joyously named the ‘social interaction period’.

All that half-whispered chatter was of the result of privilege; and privileges were something that had to be earned. She knew they would stare with their wide frightened eyes, she knew too that, had she the temerity to stare back, each and every one of them without exception would lower her eyes rather than risk eye contact. Of course she lacked that temerity herself and so, at the first glimpse of a curious glance, averted her eyes as was required by the protocol of the long-term psychiatric ward... Besides; who would want to communicate the kind of soul-consuming humiliation she was currently undergoing? To have done so would have surely only served to heighten the shame presently wracking her mind - and that, in turn, could only serve their purpose or purposes; who ever they were.

As she was being led by her hand, back to her bed, the very last thing she would have expected was to have been verbally addressed in any manner, let alone that there should have been a note of protestation bordering on outrage embedded in the outburst... And as for physical contact! Well, physical contact was the most outlawed of all ‘illicit communication’ - an unimaginable scenario.

Who ‘patient 21’ had once been, Lavinia could not begin to imagine. She could hardly conceive of this bowed, shuffling, apologetically cowered early-middle-aged woman as having once been the figurehead of a pre-bubble-burst dot-com initiative, but such had long-previously been her stature in society. Indeed, outside of these four walls her name would have been widely recognized still, if not her physical appearance and stilted, hesitant tone. That old sound-bite-regurgitating, microphone-facing, camera-defying, confidence was long gone of course, as was the sparkle of ambition that had once burnt so brightly in those vivid sky-blue eyes. Five or six years of carefully-engineered isolation in a time-displaced mental hospital could do that to a person.

In fact it was only now that her attention had been drawn and she was up so close that Lavinia had become aware of the woman’s relative maturity - or even of her individuality, such as had survived. What with the ‘patient uniform’ - externally consisting of green and white stripped, shapeless and oversized pyjamas - and the near identical styling of their hair, universally chopped back from the face in the regulation, committee-derived and hospital-authorised manner, there was little to differentiate one patient from the next; other than the number emblazoned on her breast pocket, of course.

The thing about the hair was quite obsessive in fact: A sort of mid-way mousey brown seemed the order of the day - a committee-led decision, if ever there’d been one. If blond, one had one’s hair dyed down to the required shade. If dark brunette or as inky-black as Whitby jet, as Lavinia’s waves had naturally been, then it was lightened and bleached as necessary. Whatever the direction, the chemicals used were somewhat harsh and the results bore little resemblance to the glossy magazine and television advertisements with their promises of vividly-glowing healthy wind-swept manes trailing out behind silvery Triumph Bonneville motorcycles or surf-striding white Arabians. The reality of this enforced institutional conformity was one of hair slashed to length around a pudding-basin rim whenever thought necessary - but always within a half to one inch’s growth time of the last - and of continuously-repeated condition-robbing treatments that in time led to even the most luxuriant growth being reduced to a brittle, split-ended and desiccated earlobe-length corn-stalk bush.

It was little wonder, then, that to Lavinia so much individualistic detail should have gone overlooked - after all, at a distance they all looked the same; just mental patients, all. It was only now that a voice had spoken out that Lavinia had truly become aware that an individual might still lurk somewhere beneath that institution-crafted exterior - even if that vocalisation had barely lifted above a whisper, the timbre only just hinting at the recruitment of the, lower-registered, vocal cords:

“A, a, a... are... are yo, you...are you alright, honey?”

Stepping almost coyly - even coquettishly - out from the cowering huddled green and white stripped huddle of self-loathing psychiatric cases one particularly docile-looking specimen had thrown her left arm - her free arm, the other being obliged to be employed in hitching up her pyjama trousers and knickers - protectively around Lavinia’s shoulders. The incessant soft chatter of the other three patients instantly fell away as, hesitantly, patient 21 went on - the nervous, yet once supremely self-confident, woman now visibly shuddering in fear of the consequences of her own ‘forwardness’:

“Wha...wha...what ha...ha...have th,th...they d...do...done...t,t,t,to y,y,y...y,..you?”

It had cost patient 21 much to have pieced together that sentence - it was about to cost her much more.

“You, girl! Yes... YOU GIRL!!!”

The Ward Sister’s voice had that ‘bite’ that commanded attention. Accordingly the nurse supervising the so-called ‘social-contact’ or ‘interaction’ period spun on her heel, her young fluttering Wedgwood-blue eyes wide, her jaw dropping and cheeks colouring. Fiddling sheepishly with the glassy top button of her blue-checked dress with one hand and smoothing down the white plastic pinafore apron she wore over it with the other, she began to apologise for her charge’s behaviour - only to be silenced by the raising of the Ward Sister’s hand:

“You and I will speak about this matter later, nurse - but make no mistake there will be ... how shall we say? ...certain... repercussions? For now, though, I’m only interested in addressing patient 21... Yes, I’m speaking to you, girl! It says 21 on the breast pocket of your pyjamas, doesn’t it, you stuttering retard? Do you want a thrashing right now, right here in front of all your little mental patient friends? Do you want me to bend you across your bed and have you beg for clemency in front of everybody, just as I did that time when I finally tamed you, strapped down over that stool I keep in the back room there? Remember how you whinnied and whined and sobbed like a broken filly under the pony-switch? I’m sure you do - I bet that big obese bottom of yours still has the marks to remind you too! I imagine you wouldn’t be as keen to put your bottom on the internet now. Not that anyone would be interested nowadays - you’re long forgotten, I’m afraid!”

With her head the Ward Sister had simultaneously nodded meaningfully towards the vertical bars of the iron gate separating off the ‘recreational area’ from the rest. Not one person present, including Lavinia, could have failed to have understood that this referred to the strangely-adapted and appointed, leather-topped stool that resided in the far corner of the individual consultation room. A hand-carved oddity left over from the Victorian period and incorporating a raised back with an integral yoke for neck and wrists as well as a horizontal platform mounted between the front legs that doubled as ankle stocks secured by a pad padlock, the thing was fairly drenched in possibilities for securing the recalcitrant female for correction. But the venomous Ward Sister was not one to be satisfied by inference - there had to be some semblance of real punishment too: Now the smartly uniformed women addressed the whole room, looking around as she spoke, cowering her assembled group of patients and quite deliberately making eye contact with the student nurses bustling around in the background:

“Right... Patient 21... Who are you? “

“Per... per.., patient... 21... Miss.”

“Sister... SISTER!!!”

“Sister... Miss... I mean...Arrgh!”

The slap resounded feet away - the hand print could be seen developing on the woman’s well-boned aristocratic features.

“Sister, Sister, Sissster... please... I’m so sorry, sister!”

“Well, you only have yourself to blame! You know the rules - you are not to speak to this patient, ever; or at least not for the foreseeable future: This girl is severely delusional. Doctor’s orders are that she be kept in seclusion. I should have thought you have been here long enough by now... Exactly how long have you been here, by the way? “

“I... I’m... I’m no, not...” The woman seemed to Lavinia as if visibly shrinking before her eyes, shoulders rolling forwards and hands coming up to cover her face - non of which seemed likely to find any fertile compassionate ground in the Ward Sister’s credo:

“Don’t you have any Idea? Any idea at all?” The woman shook her head in response, slowly and dejectedly - the Ward Sister pressed on regardless: “Of course not - why should you have?”

“Th...the... they keep saying my case is going to be reviewed... But, well... I never see anybody... I’ve never seen anybody... Why am I still here? Does anyone even know I’m here?” The woman’s stammer seemed to drag out each sentence forever, her desperation obvious to all.

“I’m certain somebody, somewhere knows you are here - otherwise, who do you think is paying the bill? Hmmm? As for the rest: I can tell you that your case has been reviewed in the past - more than once, actually and...”

“What?... but I’ve never had a say, I’ve never made an appearance at any hearing!”

“Nor will you - at least not while you insist on carrying on in this manner - as I have said before!”

“But... don’t you know who I am?” The stammering drew out the exchange in an excruciating manner, as painful to the ear as it was trialling to the listener’s patience.

“As far as anyone here is concerned you are a long-term psychiatric patient, registered under the designation of patient 21 - what you may - or may not have been - outside these walls is neither here nor there. Here you are just a mental patient - and who is going to pay any attention to anything a mental patient has to say? As for the rest - well, they tend to take notice of our reports as much as anything else, the doctor and myself. Why squander expensive resources and manpower on organising complex appeal proceedings when there is so little of benefit to the patient likely to accrue from it,”

Drawing in a deep breath the Ward Sister made her next pronouncement clear to all within earshot, as if passing solemn judgement:

“Nurse: patient 21, here, is herby stripped of her socialising privileges. Henceforth - and for an indefinite period - she is to be confined to her bed - and in full four-point restraint. If you would be as kind as to keep the curtain drawn around her bed I would be much obliged - other than for toileting purposes, of course,”

Then addressing the patient directly: “You can accept your lot and go quietly with the nurse to your bed now or you can stand there and make a fuss; in which case you will find that you have just volunteered to test out one of the new humane restraint jackets we recently took delivery of - it’s up to you, honey.”

Lavinia could only watch as the pathetic heap was led aside. Moments later and the plastic curtaining around the poor thing’s bed had been drawn around her and she had been ‘put away’. Social exclusion - it was one of the finest forms of correction known to man, being ‘sent to Coventry’ as it had once been known.

Moments later and Lavinia herself was being rolled into her bed and watching the curtaining being drawn around. The sedatives were now kicking in, the gentle soothing numbness settling heavily around her limbs. No sooner had her head flopped down on the latex reassurance of the hospital-bed pillow then her heavily-hooded eyes had closed and her mind departed. How long it would be before she would again be roused for a re-visit to the ‘one-to-one therapy room’ she could have no reckoning - after all; it had nothing to do with her.