The Butterfly House by Katrine Engberg

Author:Katrine Engberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

THE MUSIC PRESSED on her eardrums. Marie Birch raised her face toward the vaulted ceiling of Holmen Church and tried to follow the organist’s race up and down the musical scale. The hard, wooden pew yielded beneath her as she lay down. Churches were good places to find shelter when it rained. Mostly they were quiet and empty, but every now and then the chorus would practice, and then it was almost as if they were playing her a private concert.

The organ sounds crashed down over her and left her nerve endings bristling. Sometimes she would get so angry. Even if she knew there was no point to the anger, that it was only taking a toll on herself. With time she had learned to talk sense into herself, but it didn’t always work.

The thought of all those times she had stood outside a locked office door and waited humbly for a doctor who was too busy with paperwork to see her. The thought of backs turned, testy side looks, and stressed out, understaffed departments with nothing to offer but their exhausted sympathy. And pills.

So sorry.

You know how it is.

We’re increasing your dose.

Marie clenched her fists and pressed them to her eyes.

Kim had been different. The only one to take the time for those long talks she so needed; he had helped her toward understanding herself. It was mainly thanks to him that she had found the strength to break free from psychiatry and was now able to stand on her own two feet. The thought of the open wards’ weekly doctor rounds where so-called sensible plans for the future were made in just fifteen minutes. Psychiatric hospitals just didn’t have the resources to treat people; they were merely parking garages, where the sick were supposed to share the space with other sick, who weren’t getting the help they needed, either. Plenty of expertise and goodwill, but no time, no hands.

Marie had lost count of the number of times she had waited in a group of psychotic patients only to learn that there was only one bed left in Copenhagen and that they were going to have to choose among themselves which one of them needed it most.

She hadn’t chosen to live on the street; she had been pushed out. Society wasn’t spacious enough to accommodate her, especially now that she was an adult. On the contrary, she sensed mistrust and even outspoken aggression from a world that otherwise gloated about how it cared for the sick. It was a lie meant for the healthy to maintain their self-image as being decent and inclusive. But their caring didn’t extend to the mentally ill. There was never any real sympathy for diverters, for the crazy ones who hit their heads on the wall. They were dangerous.

When did I become dangerous? she wondered. Quiet, introverted, damaged Marie. Somewhere along the way the anxious child she was had let go of her fear and embraced her fury. She was no longer afraid of the dark, of being alone, of the shadows.

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