I was in Pagoda Ward, in Queen Mary’s University Hospital, which is in Roehampton, which is (if geography is your thing) somewhere in-between Wimbledon and Richmond. I had had a number of admissions in this place so by now there was nothing new about it for me. The routine never changed. I was sitting in the room where they do the ward round. The consultant was talking to me, asking me questions so the rest of the team could hear what I had to say. He already knew my story. He wasn’t a bad guy, this doctor. His name was Jim. There was something about Jim I liked – he had a curious type of gentleness or softness to him, which was a quality that was rare here. There was more to Jim than the others, who appeared to me to be completely shut down, completely blank in themselves. Malignantly so, in some cases. I wouldn’t talk to the other doctors at all. Sometimes I got the sense that Jim might even understand the odd thing that I said, and this was perhaps why I bothered to go through the gratingly tiresome rigmarole of answering all these formulaic questions. Though probably I was mistaken in this.
Jim was asking me where I came from, and inviting me to explain about the nature of the problem that I considered myself to be experiencing at the present moment. He didn’t use those exact words, however. I answered him willingly enough, as always. I always said the same thing. It was like this business of coming out with name, rank and serial number when you are captured by the enemy. I came out with my story, even though I had no expectation of being believed, or even understood. I told the doctor, whose name as I have said was Jim, that my spaceship had crash-landed on this planet, and that I was from a far-away star-system – a star-system too distant to be seen with the naked eye. I told him that the drive in the spaceship had been too severely damaged for us to repair, and that myself and my fellow crew members had been obliged to leave our craft to see if we could obtain the elements that we needed to replace in the damaged star-drive. I explained to Jim that although this planet appeared hospitable, it soon became clear that there was some kind of anaesthetic gas present in the atmosphere, the effect of which caused us to lose our memories of who we were and where we came from.This gas was both irresistible and irreversible in its operation.
I had seen with my own eyes the other four crew members become convinced, within a matter of a few days, that they had always been on this planet, and that they were native terrestrial humans, like every one else here. In addition to this amnesia, I had observed my friends develop a very great interest in all the activities and pastimes beloved of the natives of this world, despite the infinitely trivial nature of these pursuits. Somehow – to my very great dismay – my crew-mates had become convinced that there was something extraordinarily valuable to be gained by engaging whole-hardheartedly in these totally empty activities and had devoted themselves to them accordingly. They had given themselves over to time-wasting as a result of the corruption that had entered into them. To my sorrow, I realized that I could not even begin to reason with them, for their powers of attention had dwindled to the extent that they could no longer understand anything of what I was saying to them. Their attention span was too short for anything other than the trivial, the banal, the inconsequential. This I found abhorrent in the extreme, as I knew well the true capacities of my fellow Starfarers, and could not bear to see that they had come to this. I was silent then, as sorrow had overcome me.
After a few moments, the consultant psychiatrist (whose name was Jim) spoke: “And why do you think you have not succumbed to the gas, as your friends have done?” His imperturbable grey eyes met mine and their quizzical look echoed the question on his lips. “My Gift is different to that of the others,” I replied, as I always did. My response was always the same. “My task is to look after the unity of the group, and see that we do not fall asunder. I am the communicator and the Key Holder. I am the holder of the Sacred Symbol. But I have failed. And now I am also losing the struggle to remember my own identity. The periods during which I forget get longer every day. I can hold on no longer…”
The rest of the interview was quickly over and I returned to my bed. A nurse came after a while and told me that Jim had decided to increase my medication, saying that it would help me to feel better. I knew this was not the truth however. The purpose of the medication was to numb my brain, to cause me to forget who I am, and also to block the PSY Gift, which is the gift of communication with other minds over great distances. I knew that there was no way I could avoid taking this medication, as it would be administered by injection if I refused it in oral form. Every night I would lie there on my hospital bed – fighting off the heavy smog of drug-induced sleep as it inevitably descended upon me – listening out for the inner voices which would on very rare occasions come to guide me. But now it appeared that this door, precariously open as it was at the best of times, was finally going to be shut…
3 thoughts on “Pagoda Ward”
Clarissa Smith
I was also in Pagoda Ward. I “escaped” after two days by lying to the staff that I was well enough to go home. I did this because it was so chaotic, dangerous and catastrophically depressing that I knew if I didn’t get out, the place would eat me alive.
While I was there, I was given someone else’s prescription (Haloperidol) by mistake, which had me dribbling and almost unable to walk for a day. I was admitted for suicidal depression and the only drugs I was prescribed were anti depressants.
I also discovered that an under age women was in the ward because there were no other beds in the area for teenagers. She had been there for about a week. She was sexually assaulted in her bed one night just after I was discharged. The assault was by a male patient.
The assault and probably others, were able to happen because the ward had a common area where the reception was located just off a locked corridor. Many times, I noticed the reception was unmanned, especially at night. The women’s corridor was unlocked at night with the door kept open. The men’s was also unlocked. Sex between patients was commonplace, and possibly even tolerated by staff. Sexual Assault, while less common, also happened because male patients could sneak into the women’s corridor without too much trouble at night.
An old man, Charlie, was on the ward while I was admitted. He was a quiet, tobacco smelling, brown suited man who wore a Trilby hat. Charlie had been on the ward a lot. I don’t know what his diagnosis was, but he seemed very familiar with all the patients who were stuck there. He only lost his temper when someone harassed him for cigarettes. On day two of my admission, one of the men came rushing out of the men’s corridor shouting “Charlie’s dead! They fucking killed Charlie!”… Lots of commotion went on and it was true: the poor old man had died. Whether someone had killed him, I don’t know.
I watched in horror one lunchtime as a man lost his temper and threw a small sofa through the windows into the outside area. I hid under the kitchen sink and listened in terror as the security staff piled in and subdued him. Other patients there described how they gave him two shots of something to knock him out. He was taken to the isolation room to come round.
Another incident that I witnessed when visiting a friend there was where a man went outside for a cigarette and proceeded to climb up and over the security fence and razor wire, and legged it barefoot off the premises. He was caught carrying a shotgun several days later and I think was placed in prison.
The saddest memory I had was seeing a very thin woman huddled up to a radiator, begging for her daughter’s blanket and her medication. She was sitting there shivering for about 45 minutes. I asked a member of staff why she had been left there like that, and eventually someone came and gave her some methadone.. they discovered she had burn marks on her arm where she’d been meaning against the radiator for too long. They also brought her a baby blanket from her room – apparently, due to her drug use, her children had been removed from her and were in care. The blanket belonged to her youngest daughter. When it was given to her, she kept stroking the satin edging of the blanket against her the end of her cheek and crying, “where’re my babies? Whose taken my babies away?.
As for me, the first day I was asked to see the psychiatrist and walked into a room of about 10 people. Social workers, students, psychologists and psychiatrists… All staring at me and looking very serious. They asked me lots of questions I couldn’t answer and eventually, one of them said there was no point in further discussion because I was being admitted and that was that. They literally cut me off from saying anything further and filed out of the room as if I wasn’t there. That was when I realised I had no actual rights if I got sectioned, which fortunately, I wasn’t as I went in voluntarily. But, after all the ensuing commotion and chaos, I realised quickly that this ward was actually killing people because it was so dangerously run, that people were being harmed. There was also rampant use of strong antipsychotics that were causing patients to have tremors and repetitive movements, as well as extreme nausea and catatonia.
In short, it was like being placed in a maelstrom. It took all my courage and guile to worm my way out: aided I guess by the local need for a bed. It took me many weeks to recover from the experience and to deal largely unaided with the suicidal ideation that had caused me to be there in the first place. I cannot express well enough just how ill I actually was – I just knew that if I stayed in that place, I would probably never get out of the system and might actually die inside it.
Thanks Clarissa, it was a real surprise to get a comment from someone who has been in Pagoda Ward. Although of course it could have been any psyche ward… I was there as an occupational therapy student on placement and the story I am relating here was one that was told by a patient in a ward round in another psyche unit. You write very clearly and what you’re relating comes across very well. Did you ever write more stuff about your experiences?
Hi ‘ I was here for a while ‘ in the early 90s ‘ I must say it had it’s flaws like anywhere ‘ but no where near as bad as Long Grove hospital where I had been some years before.
I was also in Pagoda Ward. I “escaped” after two days by lying to the staff that I was well enough to go home. I did this because it was so chaotic, dangerous and catastrophically depressing that I knew if I didn’t get out, the place would eat me alive.
While I was there, I was given someone else’s prescription (Haloperidol) by mistake, which had me dribbling and almost unable to walk for a day. I was admitted for suicidal depression and the only drugs I was prescribed were anti depressants.
I also discovered that an under age women was in the ward because there were no other beds in the area for teenagers. She had been there for about a week. She was sexually assaulted in her bed one night just after I was discharged. The assault was by a male patient.
The assault and probably others, were able to happen because the ward had a common area where the reception was located just off a locked corridor. Many times, I noticed the reception was unmanned, especially at night. The women’s corridor was unlocked at night with the door kept open. The men’s was also unlocked. Sex between patients was commonplace, and possibly even tolerated by staff. Sexual Assault, while less common, also happened because male patients could sneak into the women’s corridor without too much trouble at night.
An old man, Charlie, was on the ward while I was admitted. He was a quiet, tobacco smelling, brown suited man who wore a Trilby hat. Charlie had been on the ward a lot. I don’t know what his diagnosis was, but he seemed very familiar with all the patients who were stuck there. He only lost his temper when someone harassed him for cigarettes. On day two of my admission, one of the men came rushing out of the men’s corridor shouting “Charlie’s dead! They fucking killed Charlie!”… Lots of commotion went on and it was true: the poor old man had died. Whether someone had killed him, I don’t know.
I watched in horror one lunchtime as a man lost his temper and threw a small sofa through the windows into the outside area. I hid under the kitchen sink and listened in terror as the security staff piled in and subdued him. Other patients there described how they gave him two shots of something to knock him out. He was taken to the isolation room to come round.
Another incident that I witnessed when visiting a friend there was where a man went outside for a cigarette and proceeded to climb up and over the security fence and razor wire, and legged it barefoot off the premises. He was caught carrying a shotgun several days later and I think was placed in prison.
The saddest memory I had was seeing a very thin woman huddled up to a radiator, begging for her daughter’s blanket and her medication. She was sitting there shivering for about 45 minutes. I asked a member of staff why she had been left there like that, and eventually someone came and gave her some methadone.. they discovered she had burn marks on her arm where she’d been meaning against the radiator for too long. They also brought her a baby blanket from her room – apparently, due to her drug use, her children had been removed from her and were in care. The blanket belonged to her youngest daughter. When it was given to her, she kept stroking the satin edging of the blanket against her the end of her cheek and crying, “where’re my babies? Whose taken my babies away?.
As for me, the first day I was asked to see the psychiatrist and walked into a room of about 10 people. Social workers, students, psychologists and psychiatrists… All staring at me and looking very serious. They asked me lots of questions I couldn’t answer and eventually, one of them said there was no point in further discussion because I was being admitted and that was that. They literally cut me off from saying anything further and filed out of the room as if I wasn’t there. That was when I realised I had no actual rights if I got sectioned, which fortunately, I wasn’t as I went in voluntarily. But, after all the ensuing commotion and chaos, I realised quickly that this ward was actually killing people because it was so dangerously run, that people were being harmed. There was also rampant use of strong antipsychotics that were causing patients to have tremors and repetitive movements, as well as extreme nausea and catatonia.
In short, it was like being placed in a maelstrom. It took all my courage and guile to worm my way out: aided I guess by the local need for a bed. It took me many weeks to recover from the experience and to deal largely unaided with the suicidal ideation that had caused me to be there in the first place. I cannot express well enough just how ill I actually was – I just knew that if I stayed in that place, I would probably never get out of the system and might actually die inside it.
Thanks Clarissa, it was a real surprise to get a comment from someone who has been in Pagoda Ward. Although of course it could have been any psyche ward… I was there as an occupational therapy student on placement and the story I am relating here was one that was told by a patient in a ward round in another psyche unit. You write very clearly and what you’re relating comes across very well. Did you ever write more stuff about your experiences?
Hi ‘ I was here for a while ‘ in the early 90s ‘ I must say it had it’s flaws like anywhere ‘ but no where near as bad as Long Grove hospital where I had been some years before.