Everything is deliberately planned in the adult mind

Idara, we know what we're doing and we do it anyway, does that make us ghosts that cannot hold onto things, our own convictions becoming intangible? Or does that make us shameless scum?

Descriptions of schizophrenia in a health care worker, abuse and manipulation.

It's 7:30am on a Tuesday and I feel absolutely normal. I've convinced myself it was all a bad dream and it's worked, it's worked the same way it did in childhood when I'd tell myself I fell down the stairs after being beaten up and locked in the bathroom. I perfected maladaptive day dreaming and nothing can blunt my skill.

It's my world, I can make anything of it, convincingly so. Especially when I'm off medication. I don't know why I would be forced to take pills that ruin my whole world. I'm happy here. No. I'm functional here, not happy, but I can do things.

My mind is fractured but one thing that remains is that I have yet to be called “nani” again. It was the tag of the time 50 Naira was everything to me, when packing my hair in two shuku brought out the forehead that entered rooms before me, anointed with palm kernel oil. Gone are the times I went to school red eyed because the kernel oil would seep into my eyes, my eyelashes grew but my vision waned.

The end of an era, Nani stopped– I began, and now the world I've created can go perfectly with me, hand in hand. In fact, it's helped me perfect my craft.

---

Idara is new here, or not?

He's been trying to speak to me for the past 7 months but I could not hear him. I never could, like sound muffled by a pillow, my selective hearing is part of my adaptations to existing as a battered child playing a professional adult.

The first time the sound from his mouth reached my ears, he spoke of equivalent exchange.

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.

“That is Alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange”. I heard it coming from the Doctor's lounge after a seminar had concluded and people were having 30 second chatter before dispersing.

He’s not new here, but he's new here. It was the first time I had heard someone apart from me say those words in casual conversation. I had said it sometime last year and gotten strange looks at the hospital, looks that screamed, “what white nonsense is she spewing now?”

I had mentioned the law of equivalent exchange because a known local government chairman who had stumbled into federal level wealth suddenly had his just 21 year old daughter fall ill, fatally at that, she was pronounced dead 11:45pm that eerie night. Everyone else was devastated, but I felt it was fair. Of course these are not normal thoughts to the whole public.

My sentiment? Mr. Chairman had lost a life he cherished for the quality and calibre of life he always coveted, he stood childless in ward 15, but he would soon go to the Maldives to recuperate, while his constituency would remain without light or clean water.

I cannot remember where the conversation with Idara took me after he uttered same statement, but I know I started hearing Idara clearly after that, we spoke for 2 hours that fateful day.

Friends.

We're friends now not just co-workers. I now know a lot about him, like how he's 4 years younger than me but already engaged to Nurse Yolanda, who's been known to be a bit crazy apparently but a fan favourite in paediatrics ward.

It's been 4 months since I started hearing Idara, Dr Idara, the muffling stopped that day, I'm not sure why but I've felt surprisingly good, somehow I've found a mirror in a person. It's hard to articulate things from a fractured mind but he gets it, which saves me a lot of pretense and pleasantries.

Idara prays for me –that my mind be mended back together, that I hear everyone's voice again and that people's faces lose the beastly distortions I see while talking to them. I say Amen to all his prayers because I want the same things, but I am functional, I still do my job to almost perfection, I've never missed an IV line insertion no matter the chaos going on around the clinic, I have never misdiagnosed a patient and I can recall every drug, use, side effect and interaction. We both pray for the luxury of a whole mind, but like I've said– it's a luxury someone beaten and bruised for years cannot afford, yet I have some sliver of hope, I'm calculated so I will quantify it as 11% of hope.

The nights are getting longer during these August shifts, but we're doing clinic duty together mostly. I've never been one to blur the lines of co-working but I cannot vouch for platonicity anymore. Every cross consult begins with a hand on my knee, sometimes my thigh.

“Dr Janet, can you take a look at this for me?”, with unmistakably overextended eye contact. “Dr J, what are you having for lunch? I'm going to the canteen.” Said with a hand on my lower back as he brushes past me in the hallway, with a playful pinch as contact severs. Such things have been happening more often than not and when we discuss things one on one it's even worse, yet I'm indulgent because it feels good to be somewhat wanted.

I may be disturbed but I have some morals, and I would assume the person praying for my mind to be healed would have even more morals that me. For the first time in a long time I am confused. I tried making excuses but laugh abruptly while writing a prescription, everything adults do is deliberate, I should know that. I just frightened my patient.

I turn 31 tomorrow and as God would have it the clinic has been running at steady pace, the emergency ward has just 2 patients and if I'm extra lucky tomorrow will be even more uneventful.

I get a text from Idara,

Meet me at Rhubarb house, 7:30pm birthday girl 🥳

I didn't plan on doing anything this year, maybe just a slice of cake and a movie on my laptop, but I can't say I don't like spending time with Idee.

Mid shower I ask myself what I'm doing and why I'm eager. I'm hoping it's not a group event, that it's just the both of us, how careless of me. I'm applying face wash and realising mid lather that I've called Dr Idara, Idee like we ever mutually agreed on this pet name.

I'm dressing up, looking for something that will make me look a bit alluring, something to accentuate my cleavage, not because I'm a birthday girl that wants to look different, but because of who I'm going to meet.

Ah… I've successfully blurred the lines, I must admit I have walked through the doors of lust, for another woman's fiancé, both my co-workers, soon to be my newest regret.

To admit and be aware, is not to deny the evitable. I will let whatever may happen, happen. Because I am tired and I don't have the power to resist, I have started looking forward to it, just like when I turned 15 and realised I don't mind the nightly visits anymore, my body wants the attention. So 15 years later I am the version again, that is at peace with being the object of misdemeanour.

After all, I've enabled it this long. The hands on thighs, the long conversations throughout the night, though his woman exists in the same workspace. The information that could be passed via text instead passed through whispers and giggles in my ear, everything has been practice for the dance I will dance today, I dare not act shocked. Though I am disappointed in my blatant disregard for Nurse Yolanda, I've always thought of myself very pro-woman, I guess I'm not such an ally after all. I'll be hospital gossip for a while and the nurses’ station will frustrate my duties, but it won't matter because I will barely hear any of it, all muffled chatter, and I won't see faces either just alienoid distortions that I've come to accept as normal.

For a time, these things were not normal to me, I would have opposed with the remaining strength of what's left of my mind, but normalisation, it will creep up on you like the ghost of night, like mist, like fog, you'll never realise it until it's a bit too late.

It's getting late, I need to head out now.

---

Black heels, black dress, light make up, and I smell great. He's waiting at a table.

“Birthday Doc, three is a crowd so it's just us, dinner, cake and one balloon floating right next to you, this is better than rotting with chips and a movie the whole evening, isn't it?” He hands me cake with a grin.

He's so jolly for someone with obviously impure intentions, but I'm relieved, I had not prepared for the pretense or pleasantries needed for a small crowd. It's sadly amusing that I can see his real face, I'm not seeing any monstrous distortions, and I can hear every fake loving statement he makes in honour of my birthday, every word is echoing. And then what I expected has begun, he talks to me while holding my hand, stroking it gently.

“Did you take the medication today, you seem a bit tired Dr J?”

He knows I didn't, he knows I haven't for months and he knows he's not allowed to talk about it outside because who would let a doctor with shards of a mind practice?

“Don't bring it up Idara, and should you be doing this? I don't believe Yolanda would be thrilled.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry I don't want to ruin your day, and why would Yolanda mind, it's your birthday”, he laughs trailing off a bit awkwardly. “Let's take a walk Janet”.

—

We're where we were always going to.

“Are you man enough to take the blame for this?”, I ask.

A wolf is staring back at me, silly of me to even ask. All the blame will fall on me, as it always does, I might as well just have a good time. The law of equivalent exchange; to have someone that understands the state my mind is in, the broken vase I am, and still stick around, well it deserves some illicit payment.

1…2…3…

I always count things unnecessarily, I count my steps when I step out of the car and walk to my office, 249 total. I count how many splashes of water it takes to wake me up, 5. I count how many items Yolanda threw when she barged in and screamed, as tears poured out of her manic eyes. And then I count how many hotel workers it took to carry Idara to the hospital after the 3rd item caused him a head injury knocking him unconscious.

I'm unscathed but disappointed.

Worried about work? Not at all.

It's 7:30am on a Tuesday morning and I feel absolutely normal. I've convinced myself it was all a bad dream, and it's worked, it’s always worked and I'm attending to my patients like nothing’s happened, everything is deliberate even in the fractured adult mind.