What Goes Around

chapter FORTY THREE

Doctor Patel has one of those heads that is constantly nodding.

I don't mean to be rude but I have to concentrate on not nodding back as I tell her what's happened.

But sometimes I forget and I do.

‘It wasn't the alcohol, it was the cream…’ I explain.

Nod, nod, nod.

‘And Charlotte found me.’ Nod, nod, nod.

‘But it's not just what happened on Friday night that I'm worried about.’ I spill it all out, a condensed version, of course. I tell her about my lack of personal hygiene, how impossible it is to get in the bath, to take my clothes off sometimes but her eyes don't widen–she just nods.

And she listens.

I tell her that sometimes things get better, sometimes I feel great but it never lasts and I always mess things up.

I start to cry and I tell her that I keep on messing up, not just a little bit, but big time.

She asks questions.

I'm taking up too much of her time, I tell her.

No, I’m not.

Nod, nod, nod.

She asks me questions and she tells me things, she goes through leaflets with me, but properly. I burn when she talks about promiscuity and heightened sexuality. Maybe that explains what happened with Noel and my increasing thoughts about Luke but I don’t want to be bi-polar, I don’t want that to be Charlotte’s mum.

‘I’m not saying that you are, I’m just explaining things,’ Dr Patel says when I start to cry. ‘Depression is very complicated and it’s not something you can manage on your own.’

She really is lovely to me; she really does seem to get me. She just holds my heaving shoulders and she tells me we are going to take things one-step at a time. That, just as depression has many facets, so too does grieving.

‘I’m not grieving.’

She nods but with Doctor Patel, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she agrees.

‘Right now, we need to deal with your grief and then we’ll see how things lie.’

She just keeps right on talking and nodding and when she tells me that maybe I’ve always been a little bit that way, that there are many facets to bi-polar too and that his death has perhaps exacerbated it. ‘A lot of clever people are,’ she says and no-one’s ever called me clever before but I didn’t really want to hear it that way but she smiles when she says it. ‘A lot of notorious people are too.’

And, yes, I guess I can be a bit notorious at times! That’s a very nice word for it.

I’ll keep that one please.

Doctor Patel sort of talks me off the ledge of madness I’ve wedged myself on and tells me that things will calm down.

I’m not going to lose my daughter, she tells me. The social services rang this morning and were pleased to hear that I’d already made an appointment. They’ve already spoken to the school and it would seem that the case is closed.

It was a one off.

I’m not going to lose my daughter, she says again.

I'm to go on tablets she tells me. Just a very low dose but she’s going to be keeping a very close eye and, any hint of suicidal thoughts and I am to ring her. She just says all the words that no one else does. She wants me to see the grief counsellor. It's not a grief counsellor I need, it's a psychiatrist, I think. Maybe I could ring Alice and ask if I can borrow Hugh for a few weeks (and no, I wasn't even thinking of that).

I don't think Doctor Patel fully gets it. I don't think she understands just how bad I am.

‘I don't think I'm grieving.’

She nods and I've given in trying, I'm nodding back - I'm telling her the truth.

‘I don't think I loved him.’ She doesn't react. ‘I don't know if I ever loved him,’ I reiterate. ‘I don't know if I was just married to him for what he could give me, for the sake of Charlotte…’

‘Well, you can't have a grief counsellor then,’ Doctor Patel says. ‘Not on the NHS…’ I'm the one nodding, because it isn’t grief. ‘They're very specific with their criteria - only perfect wives, grieving perfect husbands are allowed to speak with one.’ Then I realise she's joking and also that she’s terribly kind. ‘Lucy, you are grieving.’ She takes my hands. ‘Of course, you are grieving.’

She doesn’t kick me out of the door with my prescription, she carries on talking and she looks at my swollen hands.

‘Your ring!’

It’s so tight, even more than it has been lately, they pumped some fluids into me at the hospital and I’ve had about fifty cups of tea with mum and my finger is actually hurting.

‘Cut it off,’ I say.

‘No, no…’ she gets soap, she gets lubricant and she wiggles and she works it but it is simply not going to come off.

‘Cut it off,’ I say again. ‘It didn’t mean anything.’

‘Lucy…’ Doctor Patel gets out the ring cutter and seems more upset than me. She gets a sheet of paper and rests my hand on it and then she gets this huge silver thing and slips it beneath my ring and starts turning a little wheel. ‘Hopefully, I won’t go through the hallmark or engraving…’

The metal gives and she gets two forceps and peels the metal away and slides off the ring and then she folds it up in the paper with all the little bits of gold dust and puts it all into a small bag plastic zip lock bag and she hands it to me. ‘They can fix it and you won’t even know.’ She massages my swollen finger and the indent where my ring has been. I mention my weight and that I really want to lose it, but slowly this time, sensibly, instead of all the mad diets I go on and I swear her eyes light up.

‘You should join the slimming club,’ she says, bundling me over to her scales. ‘You'll need a note from me because you've got an eating disorder.’ I want to interrupt and explain that one binge in ten years does not an eating disorder make, but she won’t let me get a word in. ‘I'll have to see you regularly too–they're very strict about it.’

I'm going to love it apparently, she assures me - Dr Patel lost seven stone. I have to be sure that I go to Beryl’s meetings, she does them all around the area. There’ll be one near me.

Bloody hell!

She seems delighted!

I’m her new project.

Mum’s waiting for me in the waiting room and I make an appointment for the grief counsellor and I get my pills dispensed. I think it’s going to take a bit more than that to sort me out.

A whole lot more than that, I am quite sure.

But, I do feel a little bit better.