The Chemical Angels Came for Us.

By Anna Cogan

Jacqueline, Miriam, Ava, Rob and Paudge are people, souls, lost and found and lost agian.  Each one striving to live and to have their lives, in a desperate and determined detente with mental illness, diagnosis and medication.   A quintet of stories about people who are so much more than their diagnoses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Cogan
• Release date: May 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393668886

Anna Cogan

Anna Cogan is a Lawyer who has been wrting as a blogger for a number of years finding time to write in that medium whie rearing her children. The Chemical AngelsCame for Us is a labour of love and the start of a journey to give voice to some remarkable people most truely engaged in a heroic struggle to live.

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Anna Cogan.

CHAPTERS

Lemon Cake  (Jacqueline).

2.  Apparition  (Miriam)

3.  Still Ava  (Ava)

4.    Lover  (Rob)

5.  Sweet Jesus  (Paudge-Jesus)

LEMON CAKE

(Jacqueline) 

I told Doctor Devereux that I hadn’t, no, never, never went near the weed this time, nothing like that at all, just drinking like. Well you’ll consent to a blood test in that case he said, (it wasn't a question) for ‘marijuana’ as he called it, or anything else he added. You could tell he didn't believe me.

I asked him if he’d let me out for Christmas. On leave, even, I said Whatever.  Whatever you think is best, Doctor. I always find it best to go along with them, to give them the say. That’s only when I’m thinking that way though. When I’m the other way it doesn’t really matter.

We’ll see he said, looking at me and not looking at me at the same time, in the way they do, "Your family...they’re... worried about you, Jacqueline, they say there was drinking and drugs. They can’t manage...your...the situation at the moment I’m afraid, so..."

I reminded him that he couldn’t keep me here just because they, other people,  couldn't cope, or because I was drinking, or drugging (which I hadn't anyway)

"Suicidality, Jacqueline.  You told them you wanted to kill yourself.  And your brother’s wife too. Yesterday.  You said you were planning to shove her in front of a car. Do you remember  yesterday Jacqueline?"

I told him I was only messing about that, I didn't actually mean that.

"I mean, I can't  believe they told you about that. She started that. When we were in town getting my meds. She wouldn’t stop talking...I mean I thought about it, yeah, she’s awful hard going, but... don’t you think I would have done it, shoved her I mean, if I meant it. Wouldn't I?"

His eyes gleamed, no really, gleamed,

" Do you think you would?  Do find you self thinking about that often Jacqueline?"

No! No! I only meant, I only wanted to....

Yes? 

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"Oh fuck off with trying to catch me out on the mad stuff, Doctor. I know your game, I know how ye operate in here, you and The Team, and the nurses, always with the goddamn loaded questions, the observing, the recording."

Do you think you’re being recorded, Jacqueline?

"No! Not actually...and anyway, I didn't mean I was feeling suicidal, or... or homicidal? yeah homicidal, Doc. You had to be there, to  get the...I mean, context? Like, it was this way..."

I started to tell him about what actually happened then. About how mad Rebecca was in her ultimatum about the house. I was talking faster and faster when he didn't look up or respond.  But you could tell by the way his hand was dashing across the page at his notes, the way his eyes were neutral and sort of flying away from me, that it was a done deal. The best thing I could do now was to shut up, take the meds and hope he’d let me out for Christmas.

The garden was stone dead, leaden with smoky winter cold when I went for a cigarette after tea. I leaned against the high wall at the back and, pulling hard on the fag, didn't notice the skinny man beside me straight off.  He was staring ahead, not looking at me at all.

You’re back then, Jacks. Back in the dump. Do you have any cash on you? I have some nice stuff for you, if you want it.

Jimmy Brady, with his lovely Kerry accident, sent back again by some pissed off relation, some harried sniggering guard, to offer me one of the alternative universes he bought and sold for the rest of the mad people.

I said no to him.  On account of the old drug induced psychosis, I explained, which I never want to suffer again. After the last time. I am a borderline, alcoholic, personality disordered depressive if you wanted to know, if you looked at my hospital notes.  i.e. I feel deeply, am of a melancholy disposition, and sometimes really really need a drink. My last addiction councillor taught me all about ‘reframing’.  I am not psychotic. I aim to stay in reality most of the time anyway. Beside, I want to go home for Christmas, like I said. I promised my daughter. 

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11

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Devereaux let me go out on leave, for New Year’s.  Another week he said when he did his rounds a few days before Christmas.  You’re doing marvellously, Jacqueline. You’re nearly there.

"No! I am there. I am taking the meds, I am not mad...anymore. You can’t..."

I  was getting desperate. I only see him twice a week for about five seconds and I knew I wouldn’t get another chance to try.

"They are...they are concerned. About coping with the ah situation  at Christmas, Jacqueline."  Everything started to spin on me then, like leaves caught up in a gale, all my thinking, my feeling flying past me in a dance I wasn't leading. Anyway I held on, kept myself still and quiet until it stopped. I can do that.

I left a message on my daughter’s phone from the nurses station, See you for New Year’s, angel I said, love you!. She didn't reply, but that was okay.

My brother Damien came for me. He picked up my bag at the nurses station, stuffing my prescription into his back pocket without comment.  He didn't say much on the way home either.

Quiet enough Christmas and that kind of thing. There wasn't much to say back from my end. About Christmas anyway.

It rained all the way. The house, a biggish redbrick in Terenure left between us by my Father, was battered and dripping with rain water, leaking from gaps in the gully,  tinkling melodically into the drains. There was an exhausted air inside, whiffs of stale turkey, cigarettes, damp, in the kitchen basement where Rebecca sat at our scarred oak table smoking, sipping yellowish coloured wine from a glass tumbler.

Oh, It was alright she said back to my carefully polite enquiry. " Depressing really, if you want to know. This house! Too many bad memories for Damien is what I always say. And then there’s your stuff, having to cope with your..." 

How are you angel!  My daughter, Alice, gliding into the kitchen, stopped abruptly when she saw me. She muttered something and turned back