SCOUT by Sanjiv Lingard

Author:Sanjiv Lingard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

You can guess what I thought it looked like.

Chapter 22

Next morning news came that Eileen had been assessed and that I was allowed to visit her. Molly offered to drive me to the hospital.

The Bethesda Institute was fifty miles north of town, on a promontory overlooking a lake. It used to be known as ‘The Pool of Bethesda State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, the Crippled and the Morally Delinquent’. I think I made up that last category of inmate; but though the name had changed, Bethesda remained an intimidating asylum of the old school.

The wind roared as dry and cold as a witch’s curse. It threatened to blow my legs from under me as we crossed the parking lot. Grey towers loomed above. I wondered how terrified Eileen must have been, arriving here in the middle of the night strapped to a gurney.

It was no warmer inside. Though pipes fed hot water along the lower edges of the wall, the place held the dank temperature of a root cellar. Here were corridors cut off from natural light, where the fluorescent strips burnt for twenty-four hours.

“I’ll wait here,” said Molly, patting me on the shoulder, assuming that I wanted to have a private chat with my mother. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded company.

I was guided into the bowels of the hospital. A nurse – or was she a guard? – opened a set of double doors, much like an airlock, and led me into a ward that smelt of disinfectant and urine, though not necessarily in that order.

Apart from the smell, the first thing that hit me was the sound of The Beach Boys. A young woman was singing ‘Surfin’ USA’ whilst accompanying herself on a Yamaha keyboard. Sat around her, in the communal space in the centre of the ward, was a group of older patients in high-back chairs. The nursing staff, dressed in white scrubs, were leading a rhythmic clapping. Most of the folk managed to contribute, though they rarely caught the beat.

Slumped amongst them was Eileen.

Perhaps you have, at one time, spied your mom from afar. Maybe she was shopping, or stepping out of a car. But you knew that at any moment she would spot you, and her face would light up. Eileen used to be like that. It was such a long time ago that the memory of it seemed like a dream. But at one time Eileen would sweep me into her arms and smother me with kisses, just like your mom does.

I had to stop hoping for that. ‘Expect nothing’ was my mantra, and to forget it would lead to painful disappointment.

Eileen stared right past me. She looked thinner, which was no bad thing because at home she often forgot that she’d eaten and would raid the cookie jar until there was nothing left. Now she appeared shrunken in her cotton bathrobe, as if she were caving inwards. She did not look out of place amongst the geriatrics.

I waited for

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