NEW JOB IN AN OLD SETTING

‘Gosh, this feels strange, I feel like a fraud in this uniform. I don’t know anything’ said Pam nervously as she walked down the corridor towards the day room. The grubby green emulsioned walls offered a fragile sense of a natural setting, and smirking faces stared up from the wood block flooring in contradiction.
‘Well, they won’t know that. They will just see the badge and think you know everything!’ replied Julie with a smile.
‘Yeh, but it’s really strange’ continued Pam ‘The last time I was in here was twelve years ago and I never thought I would be here in a nurse’s uniform.’
‘Come on, big breath and here we go, a couple of sick minds to the rescue!’ said Julie as she pushed open the door to the day room. One of the long side walls was broken by six sash windows; years of over painting making them draught proof. Each window fell from the ceiling like huge a waterfall as the rain crashed against the glass, and then appeared to settle on radiators which looked like ridiculous oversized yellowing teeth glaring from a menacing smile. Brown fibre glass curtains with fiery orange psychedelic swirls hung at the windows offering an alternative reason for having a headache, as they clashed against the familiar sickly green emulsioned walls. It was just as Pam remembered it. She looked around the room at the empty drugged faces and shivered. ‘I am really not sure I can do this.’ she thought.

The grey carpet was still discoloured with an intricate map of individual encounters of coffee, cigarette burns, urine and chewing gum. The old black leather sofa still sat beneath the far window with a collection of odd chairs huddled around it. Pam remembered sitting there listening to Neil Diamond singing Porcupine Pie on the stereo while she had been crying one night, and Brian, the charge nurse, had made her a cup of cocoa. "Leave enough room for desert, Chicken ripple Ice cream". She remembered wondering why Neil Diamond was not in the unit with her if he wrote lyrics like that to songs. A coffee table now separated the furniture and was strewn with an incomplete pack of playing cards and few chipped mugs.

‘Another new lot again then’ said one of the patients to no-one in particular, while a cigarette perched warily between her lips ‘Always new bloody faces. They’ll want me name next, for the hundredth bloody time this month. Well, what you looking at then?’ she continued vaguely directing her words towards the girls.
Pam felt her heart skip a beat and her chest tighten as if it was an elastic band ball. She knew that some of these people had been in this unit for years and remembered being afraid once that she might end up the same. Now she was here on different terms, opposite terms, and she was not sure how her head was going to cope with the change. No-one would know her on this ward as it was short stay ward where no-one stayed longer than six months.

‘Ah, good morning girls’ called the Sister from the office door ‘Come on in, we are just about to do handover so you are just in time.’ Pam and Julie followed the navy uniform into a small compact office. There was barely enough room for its current occupants of Sister and the other nurses already sat in two of the small shabby chairs.
The girls nervously sat in the vacant chairs under the window. The small cracked window panes implied that they had long ago surrendered to forgotten screams from the adjoining room.

Although handover went smoothly, Pam found it difficult to remember which illness was related to which patient and felt overwhelmed by the whole process. She was given two patients to get acquainted with; Robert, who was struggling with his voices telling him to eat all the magazines, and Audrey, who had had a nervous breakdown.
Checking her name badge was still pinned to her uniform, Pam left the office and made her way to Audrey who was sat at a large Formica table staring at a part completed jigsaw puzzle nestling between several ash trays bearing the remains of multiple moments of denied relief.
‘Here goes girl. You can do this, you really can.’ she coaxed herself as she walked across the room.
.
.