The Sleep Room by F. R. Tallis Read Free Book Online

you so much for your comments.’ He wasn’t, as far as I could make out, being disingenuous.
    The rest of the morning was spent on the wards, and after lunch we made our way to the sleep room. I could now identify all six patients: Sarah Blake, Elizabeth Mason, Marian Powell, Kathy Webb, Isobelle Stevens and Celia Jones. Apart from their names, dates of birth and diagnoses I knew nothing else about them. Their notes contained pages of blood-pressure readings, pulse-rates and drug dosages, but no biographical details. I wanted to know more about these women, as individuals, as living, breathing human beings. In effect, I wanted to know who they were, but when I pressed Maitland for more information, he was, once again, quite evasive. A shade of irritation had entered his voice and I thought it best to let the matter rest. As far as Maitland was concerned, case histories were entirely irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was treatment.
    In those post-war years, men like Maitland wanted to distance themselves from the past: the personal past as well as the historical. They didn’t want to grub around in the unconscious, looking for horrors. They had seen enough of them already.
    One of the women, Elizabeth Mason, had been talking in her sleep, and the night nurse had jotted down some of the things that she, Elizabeth, had said : I won’t take it off. No, I shan’t. He’s on his way. None of these utterances made any sense. Even so, I couldn’t help wondering whether such disconnected phrases might become more intelligible, if I only knew a little of her case history. Maitland wrote ‘Sodium Amylobarbitone 400 mg’ on the chart, and then pointed at Elizabeth Mason’s face. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘cracks in the skin, spreading out from each corner of her mouth. Angular stomatitis. A common complication of narcosis, but easily rectified with a B vitamin supplement.’ Before leaving, Maitland paused at the door and emitted a soft grumble, as one might after a particularly satisfying meal. He turned to me and said, ‘Cigarette?’
    ‘Yes. Why not?’
    ‘Let’s go outside.’ The fetor of the sleep room was tenacious: it clung to one’s clothing, lingered in the nostrils, and made the prospect of a cleansing draught of fresh air most welcome.
    Standing beside the Bentley, we smoked and admired the desolate landscape. Some distance away, a solitary doe appeared in a patch of dead fern. She stood very still, determining whether we represented a threat to her safety, then cantered down the incline that swept off to the marshes.
    ‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ said Maitland. ‘Would you mind doing an assessment?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘It won’t be for a while yet. I’ll tell you when. The only snag is that you’ll have to give up one of your weekends. There’s a woman who lives down in the village’ – he gestured towards Dunwich – ‘Hilda Wright: a catatonic schizophrenic. She hasn’t got out of bed or said a single word in years. Up until July she was being cared for in a private convalescent home, but the family can’t afford the fees any more. Her sister looks after her now, with a little help from a nurse.’ Maitland blew a stream of smoke into the air and his expression became contemplative. ‘There were a lot of dissenting voices when it became known that Wyldehope was to become a mental hospital. If – pending the result of your assessment – we accepted this patient into our care, that would be good for our reputation.’
    I remembered the man who had shared my carriage on the evening of my arrival, and his reference to people not wanting a ‘madhouse’ on their doorstep.
    ‘The patient sounds very . . . appropriate.’
    Maitland dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his heel. ‘I knew you would appreciate the importance of good community relations.’
    On the men’s ward, everyone was comfortable apart from Michael Chapman, who was experiencing one of his agitated episodes.