She Runs a Tight Ship

Outside it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the scorching early-July sun is still high in the sky - it wont get dark 'till nearly 10PM. The Saturday afternoon shoppers buzz like bees around the stalls in the market place in front of The Corn Exchange, holidaymakers lounge beneath red and white umbrellas outside picturesque pubs lazily supping cider, ales and wine. Incensed, the locals steam behind the steering-wheels of their cars bemoaning the permanent near-gridlocked tailback snaking back and forth through the narrow streets from one end of the market town to the other - a constant carnival parade of tourists; horns sound, angry remarks rend the air, a police siren screams irritatedly. And all this against the background of the constant rumble of the motorway which was built far too close to the edge of the chocolate-box hamlet.

In here, on HER ward, all is deathly quiet, only the tap, tap, tap of her heels on the lino and the hollow, resonant tock, tock, tock of the wall clock she had installed - the time it gives is what SHE calls 'hospital time'; it has nothing to do with the world at large; 'bedtime' here is when SHE says it is, when the 'night bell' rings, a healthy dose of sedetives and sleeping pills helping to ensure sleep comes quickly. The routine has little to do with circadian rhythms and much more to do with staffing levels and shift patterns.

All is neat and tidy and stripped of anything and everything not ENTIRELY essential to the care of 'difficult' girl's in their late teens to early twenties. Thus there are six caged beds with six plastic chairs, one alongside each, and six enamel bedpans, one perched on each chair. There is a desk and chair at one end forming the nurse's station - and that's about it. There IS ONE other thing present - on a hook on the wall behind the nurse's station hangs a slender, wickedly pliant crook-handled cane. Under HER influence corporal punishment has been introduced - they've given her a free hand, so why not? Glancing up at the clock, presently showing ten thirty, she smiles to herself. She knows that strident, insistent ticking is driving certain of the girls to distraction, but if that encourages certain individuals to accept the medication she is keen to introduce, so be it