Mary Harley

by Mary Harley

Before I came to Spain, I was a psychiatric nurse known as Olive Oil the enema queen. And after nineteen years in the mental health services, my advice is: if you go mad don’t tell anyone.

One day I was working on a rehabilitation unit. It was a typical day: the patients were sitting in the smoking room, and the nurses were sitting in the office. The only difference between the two groups was that one wore badges and went home at night. As the staff listened to Louise, the ward manager, moaning about her problems, Dennis, one of the patients, suddenly appeared at the office window and stared in at us. Normally, he preferred not to mix with the staff; he did not trust us at all, but since fracturing his leg and having it plastered, he occasionally needed some assistance. “What do you want?” shouted Sue, the care assistant.
“A shower,” he called back.

Everyone groaned, then the task got delegated down through the ranks and Sue was sent to help him. A while later, cries of terror were heard coming from the bathroom, so we all rushed off and burst in to find Dennis standing under the shower, screaming and pointing at his leg. We all looked and then stared in bewilderment at a jelly-like substance which was slithering down his plaster and oozing over his foot. To me it looked odd, but to a paranoid schizophrenic it must have looked terrifying. Just as Louise bent down for a closer inspection, Sue suddenly burst out laughing and said that she must have mistakenly picked up one of the dissolvable linen-bags to cover his plaster.

Louise went up the wall and ranted and raved for a while and then went to telephone the general hospital for advice. They were quite rude and told her that a hair-dryer would not do and that the patient would have to return and have his leg re-plastered. I went and broke the news to Dennis. He was still extremely agitated and it took a lot of time, reassurance, three cigarettes and a chocolate milk shake before he would agree to come with me. Fortunately, the general hospital was just next-door, so I fetched the ward wheelchair, the non-user friendly, bruise chariot, and off we went.

When we arrived at the general hospital I leant over and patted Dennis on the shoulder. I knew he would be feeling frightened; he hated being in a strange environment, always fearful and on the look-out, as he believed that he was going to be kidnapped and taken to South America to be tortured. I told him that he was safe with me. The fracture clinic was at the other end of the hospital, so I pushed the wheelchair along the corridors, passing various wards, until we rounded a bend and reached the final corridor. It was long and in the distance I could see the sign for the fracture clinic.

When we got about halfway, I noticed a fire-hose lying across the floor, so I sped up in order for the chair to bounce over it. We approached fast, but then to my horror, the instant the wheelchair struck the fire-hose, it stopped dead, just as if I had hit a brick wall. All I could do was gasp in fear as Dennis was catapulted out of the chair, through the air and landed on all fours. “Oh my God,” I muttered as I first checked to see that nobody was looking, and then I ran up to him. He looked up at me fearfully. “Don’t let them take me to South America, I don’t want to be tortured,” he wailed in anguish.

“It’s alright Dennis, you’re safe now. It was a close shave, but I managed to get away,” I said.
He looked relieved and could not stop thanking me as I helped him back onto the wheelchair and we continued on our way to the fracture clinic.