Iris - Swiss Cheese

Duncan's Story

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It’s hard to sleep in here at night. My bed has stayed made for weeks now, I can’t say exactly how long because there are no calendars in here and time has ceased to exist. I sit on a chair in the corner of the room and listen to the screams surrounding and the attempts of metal against wrists. One day I’ll find out if the screams are mine or not.

I don’t know how long the screams go on for. They start when the bars of light on the ground turn from sunset to night and stop when it turns from night to sunrise. If I look up I can only see a streak of sky. It’s always grey.

The screams have stopped by now. From somewhere I can the rattle of the cart. It always comes right after the screams stop. The creator fiddles with the padlock on my door and opens the door. I have to close my eyes as the light from the hallway hurts them. I can’t stand artificial light anymore.

‘Duncan Sheffield?’

‘Close the door,’ I say to the darkness.

I hear the door shut and open my eyes. I see the cart of syringes and medication. I enjoy blood tests. I enjoy watching the syringe dip into a hair-thin vein in my elbow and feeling the soft sucking of the blood, watching the syringe slowly fill with the thick, warm, metallic liquid. Brings back the old days. It’ll be completely satisfying if they still gave me something in return. Anything.

I humour the nurse by noticing something else for once. ‘What is it?’

She keeps staring at me. I can feel it when someone stares. She’s a pretty, Chinese girl, her hazel eyes wide. I don’t know how I look anymore. She comes here once a week to shave my jaw, in the afternoons. She started doing it when she realised I wasn’t going to bash her or claim her like apparently everyone else. I don’t know why she’s stuck in a dead-end job.

‘You’ve not been sleeping again, have you? You look like you’ve been punched in the eyes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Why don’t you sleep?’

Which reason does she want? ‘You try sleeping, listening to the screams.’

‘Do the other patients bother you?’

‘Either them or me.’

She sighs and picks up a small plastic cup with multi-coloured pills. They were never fun. Too big to snort. ‘The doctor wants for you to see the psychiatrist again.’

I exhale. ‘I’ve told you people. It is not a mental illness. My mind is Swiss cheese.’

‘Do you want water?’

‘That would be nice.’

I swallow the pills and water, watching the syringes glitter in grey light. ‘What’s out there? What colour is the sky today?’

‘It’s blue, Duncan.’ The slight gasp at the end of my name has both of us realise that she’s said something she shouldn’t.

‘Nurses like you do not refer to their patients like me by their first name.’

The cups and pills and syringes rattle around quickly as she tries to escape. ‘I know, I’m – ‘

‘Why?’

Defeated. She turns around and comes back, closer than she’s ever been. Closer than anyone’s been since I found the recreational use for syringes. Her lips press against my own.

It inflicts nothing.

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Rebecca comes to visit. Now, Rebecca doesn’t like coming to visit because she says she doesn’t like the idea of me being in a padded psychiatric room but I know the real reason is that she doesn’t like the idea of me at all. And the idea that she’ll seem the bad guy if she tries to divorce her ‘mentally unstable’ husband.

She sits on the edge of the bed. I watch her from my chair.

‘What day is it?’

‘Saturday. 7th of October.’

‘When did I come here?’

‘12th of February.’ She looks at me. For once. ‘I come every week. Every Saturday. Don’t you know how long a time that is?’

‘Seven days. One hundred and sixty eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes, that is, if you come at the same minute of the same hour every Saturday.’

‘How do you remember that?’

Honestly, I have no idea. Now that I know that it is Saturday, I just have to count seven nights of screaming.

Rebecca clenches her hands around a brown paper bag. She doesn’t like to look at me. Her fears aren’t justified because she won’t see anything if she does look at me. ‘The nurses say you have insomnia.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Don’t you care?’

‘No.’

‘They say you look like death.’

‘I presume so.’

Rebecca’s long hair falls down over her face. I used to want to stroke that hair. I used to want to be near her. Her body shudders. Not again. ‘Duncan. Why did you start?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You loved me. Why did you destroy us?’

‘I didn’t destroy you.’

That went for much shorter than it usually goes for. It won’t happen again. ‘Don’t come and see me anymore. It doesn’t do you any good.’

Rebecca stands and throws the brown paper bag to me. ‘I made it for you.’ She leaves, taking pains to shut the door. I hear the bolt of the padlock and then open the bag.

Swiss cheese sandwiches. My favourite.