Waiting for that door to open by Nick Gerrard

‘Medicine!’

We line up for our named plastic drug cups. Neck them quickly then line up again for our smokes.
Packets and lighters checked from the basket from the second draw down.
I was the only one with an electric one; I fill it with liquid and check the battery. Ready to go.
I sneak to the toilet before they let us out; I smoke quickly to pre-empt the emptying of my bowels.
I need the nicotine but my body is still fucked up and my bowels move suddenly and violently.
I go back to the door, put on my coat and boots and wait for the reluctant nurse to turn the key.
Finally we are out.

My fellow patients place a chair for me to sit. I am still detoxing and too shaky to stand and the buzz of the nicotine makes me shake even more. I hold off the shits and the need to vomit. I take in as much as I can before I am too sick to take more. We are on the side of the old Monastery and beautiful baroque place now a hospital, drink tank and psycho unit. The masonry work is beautiful. We stand on the top with majestic staircases either side of our place. Down below are gardens and a scout hut in a corner, then fields and factories and the railway yards. I smile and try to think good thoughts for a second but then my sickness returns and I can no longer smoke, I get up and wobble, am helped inside as the smokers frantically light another fag. I stagger to the toilet and shit painfully, then lie down and wait for the dizziness to pass.

This is my second day here. Three times a day this happens; it’s not enough. Three times a day after meals and drugs; we all need more nicotine than this. Shit we are all in long term recovery from alcohol. I had come here after the one night of hell in the drink tank via the intense psycho ward. Before that I had had three weeks of non-stop vodka, three hourly trips to the 24 hour shop, then a head wound and stitches, screaming fighting and eventually hospitalisation. I took the short sharp shock of the drink tank, to get my alcohol level down to zero so that I could get the drugs to help with the withdrawals.

The drink tank...one night of being strapped to a bed, tied to your bad trip, your shakes. Unable to escape the screams and shouts of madmen; the stench, the vomit, the crying.
You wait in the morning to be checked and hopefully to god to be let out. A doctor came to check me; he remembered me from the last time.
-You are going straight to the unit right?
-I hope so doc.
He took pity on me and got a nurse to inject diazepam into my arse. It helped me a little. I got my stuff together...I couldn’t check if I had everything as I didn’t remember what I came with. The ambulance took me to the unit. I hung around with my wife; signing forms, vomiting.

We chatted to another doctor...’Give me drugs now...please.’ He was helpful and did, and it helped for a while.
I am admitted, given ill fitting pyjamas and too big plastic slippers, and then I am tested and prodded and thankfully given more drugs. I try and sleep but only doze, and then I feel bad again and start the pacing.
I pace to pass the time in between drug out-givings. I pace to stop from thinking, I pace to stay sane.

I am given food, but don’t eat, I drink thin tea and pace and wait for drugs to get me better.
Three days I pace...I am then transferred here to the long term alcohol place, the Baroque asylum.
The drugs here are better, stronger, but we have to do therapy sessions...everyone here has been here a while and has stopped withdrawing...I am still fucked. I skip as many therapy sessions as possible...the Physical exercises in the morning, the group talking; the meditation...the doctors get angry but I don’t care, the nurses get mean but I don’t care.

Every morning the early shift nurses wake me up
-Good morning, let’s go, arses out of bed!
Loudly and bangily. I know that’s not a real word but Jesus it really describes how they wake us up. I could have put a swoosh here to signify the sweep of the curtains. But that’s not how the early morning shift nurses do it; they bang them open, and then bang everything; your clothes off the floor onto the chair, your fresh water jug onto your bedside rig. Then they go about their tasks with swift efficiency.
Toilets are being mopped as the waking dead shuffle to pee, to brush and just to shuffle; up and down the corridor, waiting to be fed meds.
Little white plastic Drug jugs checked next to long lists of names, and what pharmaceuticals go with each patient. Blood pressures taken, beds stripped; new patients stripped. All smart and military like fashion.
-Sleep OK?
-How you feeling today Mr Clarke?
-Look at this rain!
Friendly, unsmiling but friendly, and busy. Breakfast to get done.
It’s 6.30 in the morning and the factory is up and running.

I drag my hard stripped hospital issue baggy pajamed arse to the toilet, shuffling along with the rest of um.
-Morning.
-Yes.
-Huh!
-Good day!
The actor is sullen today, just a grunt.
The hippy kid smiley, but silent.
The Baroness is yet to appear, she needs to put on her face.
The doors to three rooms are half closed to hide terrors.
We all look for glimpses as we drag past.
A body inside a netted cage, another strapped down, another in a corner trying to disappear into the wall.

Originally from Birmingham but now living in Olomouc where he writes, proof-reads and edits, and in between looking after his son Joe, edits and designs Jotters United Lit-zine.

Nick has been at one time or another a Chef, activist, union organiser, 

punk rocker, teacher, traveller and Eco-lodge owner in Malawi and Czech.

Short stories, flash and poetry have appeared in various magazines in print and online including Etherbooks, Roadside fiction, The Siren, Minor Literature and Bluehour magazine

Nick has three books published available on Amazon

twitter@nickcgerrard