Abe's narratives - arrival

Arrival I. Abe [acute psychiatric ward, to be treated]

Arrival was blurred and in slow motion but at the same time I couldn’t sit still. Hard edges and sterile cramped corridors. What are all those sensors and cameras for? Who is watching me? I can’t really remember my first impression of the hospital as everything that day was too mixed up with too many other thoughts crowding in.

But I do remember the chapel. The only place I could be still and feel quiet without the drugs. We were all still and quiet – like one entity, felt a bit weird but I remember a strange kind of comfort knowing the wards were on the other side of the door. I can hear my own breath. The top of the pew in front of me has a sheen to it, polished by a thousand glancing hands. The chapel had that smell of old churches, even though it wasn’t that old. That incense-wax-rubbed wood-old hymn book kind of smell. I think of my mum & dad, dragging me along to church as a kid. Sitting for hours on those hard seats staring at the back of the seat, memorising all the lines in the wood or the creases in Doug’s suit jacket in front of me.

Outside the chapel, the hospital was cold and white with anonymous corridors not giving away any evidence of previous use – scrubbed out beyond trace. But the chapel was warm and proudly displayed it’s history of use in the cracked leather cushions with the impressions of a hundred bums, the wooden pew top rubbed smooth from arms and elbows bent to contemplate, pray, cry.

The chapel is the only place I felt at home. The rest of the hospital is just too frantic and bright with sterile clean newness - if I hadn't had drugs, it would have been too much.

Arrival II. Abe [kingseat, to live]

We drove up that crazy entrance drive with the Pheonix palms towering over us like some kind of alien welcoming committee. Living pylons – like those ones along the desert road. I used to imagine they were walking when we weren’t looking. Even in the dark I could see the palms and imagined what might be lurking up high in their fronds, watching us drive in.

The building was familiar, I felt that I knew it - like the others I’d been sent to years ago. The shivers up my back had nothing to do with fictional ghosts and graves but my own real ghosts of memories I’d rather forget. Damn. I thought it would be different. Even in the dark with friendly warm yellow lights in the windows, beckoning and promising a welcome. I could make out the old familiar outlines though the lights on the roof promised something different, they highlighted something unexpected which captured my thoughts and pulled them away from the past.

Instead of entering in the front, we kept driving around the back where the lights were far more welcoming that I was expecting from a service entrance - it certainly didn't have the look of a service entrance. I could smell dinner cooking, roast beef maybe, like Sunday lunch after church with my mum in the kitchen fussing over the gravy. My dog under the table sneaking the bits I didn't like, doused in gravy. My dog...we're allowed pets here which is the only reason I wanted to come in the end. If I hadn’t been able to bring Obi...

I’m ushered quietly out of the car with Obi sniffing and straining to catch the aroma of roast beef (now we're closer I think maybe it’s lamb). Imagine that, cooking roast lamb for us (my minder tells me that's my dinner cooking) The this-is-no-service-entrance is warmly lit, guiding our steps up towards the door with the same feel as those wooden pews. That same smell.

The walk up the steps into the night air and stars is magical. With only the sounds of our breath and Obi’s whining to be let free. Crickets and moreporks have replaced the constant staccato of car tires, helicopters overhead, sirens in the distance. My thoughts have room to organise themselves here, like the chapel.