A WEEK IN BEDLAM

“What the ‘Chronics’ are – or most of us – are machines with flaws inside that can’t be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot.” – Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

DAY 1: TUESDAY

I am playing chess with a mummified man. He is black, I am white. We are seated in a locked psychiatric unit in one of the country’s largest public hospitals, and we are locked in a friendly game of war.

Marlon, my competitor, is here for the same reason as me. He tried to kill himself. As he confessed to me one morning: “I drove my car at 80km an hour into a tree. It was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I guess neither of us do, which is why we are here.

Marlon carries the physical scars of his mistake. All I can see of his head are strands of oily blond hair hanging down over his drooping, bloodshot eyes. Everything else is bandaged, even his nose, which appears hammered flat. He says 10 metal plates hold his skull together.

He is tall and gangly, painting a slightly frightening figure – a sort of pagan effigy. His arms and hands are shattered, supported by two blue paddles that hold everything in place. This makes it impossible for him to feed or toilet himself.

“I’m not popular with the nurses,” he says in a Californian drawl, not lost after living here for 20 years. “I’m high maintenance. No one wants to spoon-feed me or wipe my bum.”

There is a pause as I process what he’s just said. He claims my bishop.

He has movement in a couple of fingers, which allows him to meekly shake my hand or move a chess piece. I assist when he knocks over some of the taller pieces.

“This will take years to fix,” he says, and I wonder if he’s