Amber's narratives - Arrival

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

Arrival was fast, sharp and noisy with people yelling and everything zigzagging in my head. A dull throb in my wrists. I didn’t see the building so I can’t say it made an impression at all from the outside. I can just imagine what it looked like though – a big efficient building, busy with vents and fans, trying to be friendly, making a real effort. Just like the huge welcoming committee; I was the centre of attention but now they'll be fussing over someone else. I was Amber-How-Are-You-Feeling but now I'm that patient in room 46.

Moving quickly through uncomfortably bright corridors with banging doors, feet first, horizontal. The ceilings are so unsettling, you’d think they’d give you something soothing to look at, flat on your back feeling so out of control as you’re being whisked away to stitch up your wrists. Instead there are just strange flickering lights, sensors sensing unknown things, cameras (trying to be discrete), grids, strange vents....all flying past in a blur...

Shiny anonymous easy to clean walls and floors with a faint whiff of...nothing...or at least nothing I can recognise, perhaps it’s cleaning product. I think so. Maybe dead flowers from someone’s room, smells a bit like Gran's room.

This place is a hospital. I would recognise it anywhere. Just like the movies, or Shortland Street, or visits to Gran when she was dying.

Glimpses of trees through the windows, everything through glass. Look but don’t touch. Everyone can see me and there’s nowhere to hide, not even the bathroom. No rails to hang things (or yourself). No space that feels like mine, every room looks the same, I panic when I can’t find my room. Things are fuzzy in this too bright room with no rails or sharp things, no smells, no mess, nothing.

Arrival II. Amber [kingseat, to live]

Driving slowly up the driveway with that view!. It let all those fireflies loose in my stomach, sending sparks all the way out to my fingertips, leaving smoking tendrils of nausea. A ghost of a building with it’s white sun scorched walls. The glow of the setting sun silhouetting strangely irregular folding shapes where the roof line should be, almost like a blanket had settled there.

This is not a building trying to be friendly, but suggesting authority and paternalism. A second glance, however, suggests there is more to it and that perhaps there is something hidden, something unexpected inside.

The tall sentries lining the driveway are making sure we don’t turn back. I’m afraid to turn around and look behind us in case I'll see the huge palm fronds knitting together preventing any change of mind. My left heel is nervously tapping on the car floor.

The driveway sweeps us around the bare field giving up it's green scent of freshly cut grass undercut with faint traces of petrol and manuka smoke. Wafting in uninvited, interrupting my anxiety with memories of home on a Saturday afternoon. Dad mowing the lawn, later the fire lit inside.

We slowly drive right past the heavy ominous Entrance Door with its gaping mouth, surprising me. The fireflies slowly settle and my fingertips and lips stop tingling. The further we drive away from that Entrance Door and around behind the building, the safer I feel until the car finally stops at another. I feel cheated. This is the Same Door!

I’m ushered quietly towards this Door, under the heavy eaves, gravity pulling at my legs. The solid steps, dark chill porch, then that Door - heavy with solid wood slightly rough in places but smoothly worn by a thousand hands near the brass handle. Thick ancient glass panels ominously distort the view beyond like some bad movie scene.

My minder coaxes me through the dark entrance, that Door, and then gestures upwards. My feet seem to have a life of their own, heading up the dark stairs despite me. Glancing down at those traitorous feet, the intricate detailing on the tiles makes me wonder who thought it was worth using such beautiful tiles on us, the no hopers. What a surprise.

Another world is slowly revealed as the stairs take us up and break through the roof. Above the building, in the late afternoon sky, on the roof with those strange shapes.

The comforting scents of cut grass and fireplace smoke return, this time gladly received and welcomed – the smoke is stronger and mixed with the heady scent of Hoya – with an involuntary sniff I’m transported back in time again to my Gran's patio where Hoya clung to the warm brick walls, releasing it’s scent in the late afternoon sun. Anxiety is replaced with comfort and a sense of home, the scents of home.

There’s a garden in this roof! I was expecting white sterile, easy to clean plasticky walls and floors squeaking against my sneakers. The faint whiff of disinfectant perhaps, not the smell of fresh leaves and warm tiles as I’m shown to my room.