A Note of Madness (8 page)

‘I’m getting concerned, Flynn. If you don’t open the door, I’ll have to force it.’

He would too. Furiously, Flynn jumped up, kicked the chair out of the way and fell face down back into bed. He heard the door open, then close.

His desk light clicked on and the swivel chair creaked. ‘Blimey, what’s been going on in here?’

Flynn breathed heavily into his pillow, his lungs crying out for air.

A hand on the back of his head. ‘Hey, you.’

He screwed up his eyes. Go away!

Another creak as Rami sat down again. ‘What’s going on, Flynnie?’

Irritation sparked at the stupid childhood nickname.

Flynn turned his head towards the wall a fraction to allow himself to speak. ‘I’m just tired. Leave me alone.’

‘’Fraid not. I’ve driven all the way down from Watford and I haven’t seen you in nearly two months, so I’m going to expect a bit more than this.’

Flynn fought to keep his voice steady. ‘I’m tired, Rami. I didn’t ask you to come, so just leave me alone, OK?’

There was a long silence. ‘I’m concerned, Flynn.
Your friends are concerned. Professor Kaiser’s concerned. We’re just trying to help.’

‘I don’t want your help!’

‘You’re being childish.’

‘Oh, shut up!’

‘Listen.’ Flynn could tell by Rami’s tone that he was struggling to stay calm. ‘I’m not going to ignore you while you’re like this, however unpleasant you decide to be. But if you refuse to talk to me then I’ll have to find someone else who can. Do you want me to call Mum and Dad?’

Before he knew what he was doing, Flynn sat bolt upright. ‘Don’t you dare! This is none of your business! You know how much Dad’s having to fork out for me to be here! You know how Mum worries about the slightest little thing!’

‘Flynn, OK, you’re talking to me now. I won’t—’

‘You have no right to blackmail me into speaking to you! You can’t just come in and demand that I do what you want! This is none of your business! Harry had no right to call you!’

‘Hey, hey, easy, Flynn! Calm down. I’m sorry I said that.’

But the suppressed fury continued to erupt within Flynn until all he wanted to do was throw things and punch Rami’s stupid face. All he felt was anger, pure and undiluted and of such power it was as if he would burst with the force of it. He hated himself for actually wanting to hurt his brother, while at the same time
knowing nothing could bring him more satisfaction.

‘I just want to be left alone! Get that through your thick skull! This has nothing to do with you. Go back to Watford! Go and live your life and let me live mine! I don’t want you here! I don’t want you to come and – and – I don’t – I don’t want—’ Suppressed sobs were building up in his throat. He gulped for breath and pressed his hands to his face, horrified to feel hot tears against his cheeks.

‘Hey – hey—’ Rami was on the edge of the bed now, gripping the back of his neck.

‘I don’t w-want you to – to—’

‘You don’t want me to be here? But I am, Flynn, and it’s not the end of the world. Harry rang because he was worried. I know you just want to be left alone. If I’m feeling crap I usually want to be left alone too. But sometimes what we want is not always what’s best. Sometimes when things get in a mess it’s too much to manage alone. Remember when Sophie and I broke up for a while? I didn’t leave the house for a week. And you came over and forced me out for a game of tennis. Getting out of the house did make me feel fractionally better!’

Flynn pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, sniffing hard. ‘I’m not going out!’

‘OK, I can’t make you. But you
are
going to try and tell me what’s going on.’

‘Nothing!’

A small sigh. ‘Flynn, something’s not right, that much
is obvious. You’re in bed all the time, you’re drinking yourself silly, you’ve stopped going to lectures, you won’t talk to anyone. You’ve even stopped
practising
!’ A smile in his voice. ‘What on earth could be bad enough to cause that?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Something must have happened.’

‘Nothing happened! I just feel crap all the time!’

‘Crap as in ill?’

‘Yes! I don’t know – just crap!’

‘Are you in pain?’

‘Yes, no, I dunno.’

‘You must know, Flynn.’

‘Well I don’t! Stop playing fucking doctors with me!’

There was silence for a few moments. Rami was looking at him carefully.

‘I think you’re depressed, Flynn,’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s not that unusual – a lot of people suffer from depression. It can be biological, or there can be a psychological reason. Either way, there are lots of different kinds of treatment available.’

‘There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do!’

‘That’s nonsense, Flynn. People get treated for depression all the time. Listen, I’ve got a colleague at Watford General who is very successful in treating patients with depression.’

‘I’m not going to see a psychiatrist!’

‘Flynn, a psychiatrist is just a doctor who specializes
in a certain part of the human anatomy. You’re not well and so you see a doctor. That’s what we’re for, mate.’

‘What the hell is a psychiatrist going to do about it?’

‘Talk to you first, better than I can, and hopefully you won’t swear at him as much. Then most likely prescribe you anti-depressants.’

‘How are pills supposed to help?’

‘Clinical depression is due to an imbalance of the chemicals in the brain. Anti-depressants just correct that imbalance.’

‘Why can’t
you
prescribe them to me?’

‘Because it would be better for you to see this guy first. I’m not a psych. Don’t let’s argue about this, Flynn. I’ll take you to see him tomorrow and if he’s of no help I’ll prescribe you a short course of anti-depressants until I can find someone else.’

‘I don’t want to take fucking pills! They’re not going to work!’

‘Look, just try them and then we’ll have this discussion. But you have got to stop drinking. Alcohol might make you feel better temporarily, but it’s a depressant. It leaves you feeling ten times worse.’

‘So Harry told you I’m an alcoholic?’

‘At this rate you will be. You shouldn’t drink with anti-depressants anyway.’

‘I never said I was going to take anti-depressants.’

Rami gave a short, exasperated sigh. ‘You’re going to give them a try, Flynn, because you’re not stupid and you don’t want to feel like this all the time.’

The faint glimmer of hope that had started to grow within him was suddenly replaced by a knot of fear. ‘What if they don’t work?’

‘Then you’ll try a different type, or other treatments such as talking remedies.’

‘Therapy? I don’t think so!’ Flynn exclaimed.

‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Suddenly drained of all arguments, Flynn fell silent. His mind was reeling. Was this what they called depression: wanting to cry all the time, unable to tolerate doing anything or speaking to anyone? But, as a doctor, Rami was bound to try to find something medically wrong. That was just the way he was. But this wasn’t just a sore throat – how could pills possibly take the pain away? And yet if alcohol managed to close down his senses and stop him from feeling so keenly, then perhaps there were pills that would do the same thing. But a psychiatrist? Was he really losing his mind?

‘How’s the old plink-plonk?’ Rami asked, breaking the sudden silence.

Flynn rubbed his eyes and managed a wry smile. ‘Doing my head in.’

‘Professor Kaiser still as intense?’

‘He’s all right. Goes crazy when I’m like this, though.’

‘We all have our off days. Working on anything special?’

‘The Rach Three and “La Camp”, still.’

Rami grinned. ‘No longer punching the piano over it, I hope.’

Flynn smiled slightly in reply. He remembered the endless practising of ‘La Campanella’ in his early teens. One day he had got so frustrated with the piece that he had punched the piano, fracturing his little finger. Their mother had come back from the shops to find his hand swollen huge. There had been a big concert coming up the following week and she was aghast. So instead of admitting what he had done, Flynn had told her that the piano lid had fallen on his hand while he was playing. It was only when she had finished dismantling the lid that he finally admitted the truth.

Rami elbowed him in the side. ‘Come on, let’s go and order pizza.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Well I am!’

THE WAITING ROOM
of the Watford General Mental Health Unit was about as appealing as a cold shower on a winter’s day. It consisted simply of the end section of a badly lit hallway, with a few plastic chairs and a coffee machine. Flynn sat on one of the chairs, elbows on knees, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. There was a Gothic-looking woman on one side of the room and an unshaven old man on the other. People drifted in and out. He glanced up occasionally to try to guess whether they were staff or patients and struggled hard against the urge to flee. He entwined his fingers, squeezing them until they hurt, battling the urge to gnaw at his nails. He desperately wished he hadn’t let Rami talk him into this.

Hospitals were awful. Although Ear, Nose and Throat was slightly more cheerful than this, he didn’t know how Rami could bear to work there every day. He remembered how miserable he had been the time he had broken his collarbone after falling off his bike and had been kept in for observation. The nights were the worst – the strange smells, the moans and groans,
the endless sound of footsteps and the exhausting lights that never went out. He would have escaped this if Rami hadn’t gone and stayed the night, at Harry’s suggestion. Rami had slept on the sofa bed and was up cooking Harry bacon and eggs by the time Flynn headed for the bathroom. He had refused to let Flynn go back to bed.

‘I spoke to Dario last night and made you an appointment for first thing this morning,’ Rami had said. ‘Don’t start arguing – he’s a friend and has put himself out to make time to see you.’

Flynn hadn’t said a word to him in the car, despite Rami’s attempts at idle chit-chat. It was drizzling and the steady swish of the wipers made him want to scream. They sat head-to-tail in traffic all the way up Watford Road and then Rami had brought him here.

‘I’ll wait with you,’ he said.

‘Don’t wait with me,’ Flynn had whispered between clenched teeth. ‘I’m not a child!’

‘OK then. Come and find me when you’re done?’

Flynn had nodded, desperate to get rid of him, and had now spent the last fifteen minutes anguishing about whether to stay or go. If he left, Rami would probably never speak to him again, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, yet a certain kind of loyalty entrapped him and, with a mounting sense of dread, he found himself watching the minutes tick by. I can’t believe I’m here. A psychiatrist? Christ. This is a complete joke.

He started when a voice called his name. A dark-haired man in a stiff blue suit with a non-descript face
hovered nearby. Flynn got up, feeling as if he were moving in slow motion, and followed the man down a long corridor and then another, through several fire doors and finally into a messy office. Once inside, the man turned and shook Flynn’s hand, shooting him a brief smile.

‘I’m Dario Ludic. You must be Rami’s brother.’

Flynn nodded wordlessly, unable to articulate the slightest sound. He could not believe this was happening. At the doctor’s without so much as a cold. What on earth was he going to say – oh, I’m here because I sometimes feel a bit fed up?

Dr Ludic indicated a seat opposite his desk and Flynn sat, too close for comfort, staring at the piles of folders strewn across his desk. Dr Ludic took out some paper, spent several seconds hunting around his desk for a pen and then asked for Flynn’s details – name, date of birth, nationality, family background, schooling . . . The list went on. Flynn answered robotically, chewing his thumbnail and staring at the stained, beige carpet.

Dr Ludic didn’t look up as he wrote. Minutes passed. The doctor continued to write into the silence. Then he looked up and started talking about data protection acts and patient confidentiality, and Flynn continued to nod and wondered how soon he could politely leave. But, unlike the GPs, Dr Ludic seemed in no particular hurry. And there was a box of tissues on the coffee table that separated the two chairs. For some reason that box of
tissues was asking to be picked up and hurled out of the window.

‘So tell me a bit about what’s brought you here,’ Dr Ludic asked eventually.

Flynn looked across at the doctor. He looked straight back. Flynn averted his gaze and pulled a face. There was a long silence. He could feel his cheeks reddening. There was only so long he could keep examining the carpet for.

‘Rami mentioned you seemed depressed. Would you agree with that?’

Flynn chewed the corner of his lip. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled finally.

Dr Ludic wrote something down. Was he going to take down his every word? Uncommunicative, he would hazard. Monosyllabic.

‘Can you try to describe how you’ve been feeling recently?’

Flynn opened his mouth to say ‘crap’ and stopped. ‘Down,’ he substituted.

‘Describe what feeling “down” consists of.’

They were going around in circles. Flynn fleetingly thought back to the agony of the past few days and knew there was no way of putting it into words. He couldn’t describe his innermost feelings to a perfect stranger, especially when those feelings revolved around fear and torment and morbidity.

Finally, Dr Ludic asked him a series of one-word-answer questions relating mainly to his sleeping habits,
daily routine and social interaction. As Flynn replied, he started scribbling again.

‘So when did this all start?’

‘A few days ago.’

He looked surprised. ‘Have you felt like this before?’

A shrug. ‘I suppose so.’

‘When was the last time?’

‘Mm – maybe a couple of weeks ago.’

‘And is there ever any trigger?’

He shook his head.

‘You said you were at the Royal College of Music.’

‘Mm.’

‘That’s a competitive place. I imagine it’s quite a high-pressured environment.’