According to the brochure Dr Lovelock gave her mother, the Tranquillity Trust administers several private facilities, or ‘Houses’, as it prefers to call them. Each one offers a ‘specific type of treatment’ and has a gentle name.
Greenhills.
NoH-where, Maddie thinks.
That’s her name for Greenhills. She watches her mother fill in the admissions form. Name of Home it says on the first line and there-after NoH.
When her brother walks into the adolescent unit at Greenhills, which according to the brochure supports young people with a range of issues using appropriate techniques in a safe and caring environment, that’s where he’ll be. In a NoH-where place filled with NoH-bodies.
The only thing she can do right now is to make things as smooth as possible for him. Take him through the Greenhills brochure, suggest what he might like to take with him to make his room more ‘homelike’. That’s what the Greenhills information booklet says: A few small personal items. She gives her mother a shopping list of bits and pieces she thinks Noah might need. His own teaspoons, a plate for his biscuits, a ream of paper for creating new timetables. He won’t have his laptop, or a printer, like he has at home, so an extra stash of pencils, a couple of erasers, and some coloured pens.
Ever-practical, Maddie has found a cardboard cylinder for the charts that cover his walls, those that detail the minutiae of his daily routine, his homework schedule, his exercise regime, not to mention the ever-expanding Family Tree diagram filled with name after name from their mother’s side of the family, all the way back to when the first Cilliers wrote in their Family Bible – the book that Noah pores over whenever they visit Ouma and Oupa.
Their dad’s side is completely blank – no matter how often Noah asks, his father stonewalls him with the same exasperated reply: ‘There’s nothing to tell, Noah. How many more times do I have to tell you?’
‘C’mon. Let’s roll them up,’ Maddie says, but Noah doesn’t reply. Her brother’s reached the point where he can hardly talk, despite Dr Lovelock’s adjustments to his medication. Maddie’s seen him anxious before, but never like this. He’s sitting at his desk, both hands drumming out fives. She carries a stool over to the wall near the window, to the first printout. Small boxes, annotated by Noah’s neat hand. She pulls carefully at the bottom right-hand corner. The Prestik parts from the wall. Nothing tears.
‘I’ll do the bottom corners, Noe,’ Maddie says, ‘but you’ll have to help me with the top ones. I’m too short. Right?’
Her brother nods and hauls himself to his feet.