The Girl Behind the Gates

by Brenda Davies

Nurse Jamison slips quietly into the sluice. How cold it feels. The baby lies uncovered on the cold slab. Nurse Jamison tiptoes towards her. She knows she’ll be

She’s in here for being pregnant, taking medicine to cause an abortion and attempted suicide. Yet they can leave a full term baby to die on a cold slab of hypothermia 😡😤

Nurse Jamison stares into Cummings’s eyes and for just a moment imagines standing up to this monster. But the chill of the cruelty she sees there kills this fantasy, just as surely as Sister Cummings is killing Nora’s baby. Nurse Jamison lowers her eyes and, ashamed, walks away. Sister Cummings follows, closing the door behind her.

The rage I feel!! The injustice of it all

understand that, at Sister Cummings’s order, the child was left uncovered on the slab in the sluice and died there. I’ve heard of such things happening, of course, but for it to be one of my patients . . . It amounts to infanticide.’

Infanticide!! Yes!! Straight up murder. Sorry, my man, you cannot ever justify what is being done. I’m sick

there another term that could be used for this barbaric act?’

‘I’m sure you’ve read Mr Darwin, and also Mr Churchill, D.H. Lawrence and the many other eminent scholars who have written on the subject of the hereditability of the gene that causes morally defective behaviour?’

And though indeed it’s very sad, we must do our best to contain the situation. Those who may already be infected – like this child – well, for the sake of her, who may have suffered dreadfully in life, for the mother and for all of us, this is the best route.’

Oh my word the hypocrisy and self righteousness of this man is incredibly upsetting - the unfair judgment. I am ill

What would have been gained by allowing this creature to live?’

‘This tiny newborn . . . on a cold marble slab in an unheated sluice on a cold spring evening, gasping until it could gasp no more. You surely cannot condone that?’ Dr Mason, his face now almost puce, hammers his fist on the desk. ‘Doctor, let us not forget that the mother had already attempted to abort this child – that is, to kill it! Who knows what serious damage such a large dose of quinine may have caused to the foetus?’

And then his justification smh!!!

‘Are we just seeing the diagnosis rather than the person? I just wonder who Nora Jennings really was before she made the mistake – or series of mistakes – that led her here.’

have a painful moral dilemma, you see. As I see it, there are two options. If I do what I believe to be the right thing, which is to prompt them to grow and get well, I know they’ll need to go through a phase of being even more angry and frustrated about being here. That will get them into trouble, and they will be punished. The second option is to stand by silently and watch as they collapse in on themselves and become empty shells that no longer resist being here at all, but that means sacrificing all hope of them ever being well again.

Miss Jennings is one of them. The moral defective is genetically programmed to behave that way.’

I might actually throw up! It is hard to believe that society descended into such a dark era of thinking. I can see the Biblical foundations of such thought but it is so far twisted from the truth of God’s Word (which offers hope and life). They speak of hereditary things and Hod warns of generational curses - an iniquity passed along from one generation to another making such sinful behaviour more tempting for the next generation. But God’s Word does not support this type of “treatment”. Nor should the medical Community ever have walked these dark roads. Mental health facilities have done horrors upon humanity and those involved should have paid the price for their crimes. And what of the men???? Why are they not dealt with in such harsh manners???

‘What if we’re wrong about that? What if there is no such gene?’

They look at each other and, without a word, a friendship is forged that will last for the rest of Peggy’s life and, for Nora, much longer.

‘I don’t think so. It’s all a ruse. She knows the moves. She’s done it before.’ ‘Maybe she just had a little slip,’ Gladys says, her voice firm. ‘A slip? And do you think she was that lucky? To get pregnant on one slip?’ ‘Some do,’ Gladys retorts, shrugging.

Oh this makes me so mad!!! What errant thinking! What absolute stupidity!!

‘I don’t think so. It’s all a ruse. She knows the moves. She’s done it before.’ ‘Maybe she just had a little slip,’ Gladys says, her voice firm. ‘A slip? And do you think she was that lucky? To get pregnant on one slip?’ ‘Some do,’ Gladys retorts, shrugging.

This entire interaction. This head nurse is ignorant, self-righteous, and cruel. May karma bite her back

‘But where am I going?’ He hesitates slightly, then mumbles, ‘You’re going out for a ride . . . to have your appendix out.’ Her brow crinkles in a frown, the green eyes below questioning. ‘Why?’ Stan looks away, colour creeping up his neck. ‘It’s just a precaution,’ he says. ‘But I don’t need my appendix out.’ ‘Nora, best not make a fuss. Come on now.’

This absolutely should be a crime!! Unauthorized medical procedure- and they lied about what the procedure was. Absolutely horrific!!

For the first time she realises that she can be the architect of her own fate, can take command of her life – or death. And with that realisation comes a sense of freedom and hope.

The resilience of the human soul! “Hope is a thing with feathers, that perched in the soul”

passage in her Bible that has kept her sane in the face of all the humiliation and abuse she has endured. It’s too dark to see, but her fingers trace the outlines of the precious flowers. They have always sustained her with their fragile beauty, oases in her emotional desert.

Oh….he certainly seemed okay with it all. What a terrible thing to look back on the devastation and death his hands had a part in. What utter desolation of the soul

‘Tomorrow I will be departing with a heavy heart with regard to the legacy I leave behind, but hopefully future generations will think before they demonise us dinosaurs of psychiatry too much. We can do that well for ourselves.’ He pauses and looks at the few faces he does know well – Tom Stilworth, Matron, Stan, Gladys . . . ‘Some may have thought that I was not in possession of a heart, let alone love and empathy, but I assure you today that I have all three. I will think of you all, as well as those who have been and still are in our care – your care. Go well. Thank you.’

Wow. Not exactly an I’m sorry.

‘Thank you,’ she mutters, her voice barely audible. Dr Mason lifts his head and his eyes find hers. He will hold onto those two words until the day he dies.

And that was her form of “I forgive you”

We can’t undo what’s been done, but sometimes with hindsight we can see it differently. That goes for the things people have done to us and the things that we, ourselves, have done too. And, since blame doesn’t really help, and neither does guilt, hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to banish both these things. If we can do that, it allows us to take responsibility for who we are and where we are, and that gives us the power to move forward.’

All these people with wounds tracing back to their childhoods. Lost potential. Lost relationships. Lost peace of mind. The ripples from long-ago traumas still disturbing the waters of the present.

‘Emotional wounds need the same amount of attention as physical wounds, but often we don’t give them that,’

‘Memories always have several parts – an emotional bit, a physical bit and a psychological bit.

when really you’re just trying to survive and stay sane.’

“the measure of our greatness is in how we stand up after we fall”.’ Janet reaches towards Nora and places a finger under her chin and lifts it gently. ‘Nora, you have to stand up – to get out of this on your own. You have to make the decision. No one can make it for you.’

She’s been so full of her own pain and patients’ pain that she hasn’t considered his pain – and how alone he must feel in it.

I wonder if this is the way of trauma? The wounds are so deep, so raw……that to survive you give in? You are drowning and while you drown the ones who love you drown in the pain of you refusing help- they die a little watching you. And eventually the trauma ripples out and over, seeping everywhere until it’s dealt with. Until it’s addressed

‘When your inner child feels scared and lost and like she can’t cope, your inner parent can kind of put her arm around her, and comfort her. That part of you – the part that can take care of you, what I’ve called your inner parent – started to

develop when you were only thirteen or fourteen, long before you came into hospital, so we need to find it and help it to get strong.’

‘The thing is, if we had harsh parents or other authority figures, we tend to become critical about ourselves, and instead of our inner-parent part taking care of us, cherishing us and treating us lovingly, it can often shout at us, say awful things – like that we’re useless or no good. Are you with me?’ Nora nods, and Janet gives her a reassuring smile. ‘So, what we really need to do is to take the very best of each of our parents, and mould our inner parent from that. And we can also add bits we’ve learned from other people too – people who show us a way to be kind to ourselves.’

Sometimes we’re so busy trying to forget the nasty stuff that we forget there was also a lot of good too. We can find those good bits again, and even now, despite all that happened between, the nice memories can heal us, and also help us learn how to be kind to ourselves as we remember how people were kind to us and each other.’

Is Robert her brother and not actually her cousin? Please no!

The war’s over. Don’t become your own abuser.

After forty-seven years and four months, she is free.

Holy heck!! It’s a wonder anyone survived that long.

Her enemy is unaccounted time. Everything is planned so that there are no treacherous caverns in which fear can linger, waiting to grab her and drag her to the depths where she could drown.

The man in this photograph never returned from the war. What he brought with him was a damaged brain, a ravaged mind and a wounded soul.

This evening will last her until she dies.

You see, Nora, I am your half-brother.

And there it is! I called it.