Flame

We sat chatting in the smoking room of Birch ward. It was years ago, when smoking rooms were the beating (or failing) hearts of the psych wards. Everything happened there, friendships were kindled, light and deep conversations sparked up, grumbles smouldered and rants about staff ignited naive plots for protests.

Over the course of time, the smoking room became a comfortable space for most that were brought through the prison style doors of Birch. Both regular and new faces congregated there. Every morning on the ward was a clone of the morning before. There was always a queue for the smoking room door to be unlocked. There were rules for everything. Even the door had a rule. The door was only allowed to be opened after meds had been distributed. 

When it was opened then it was time for the first smoke of the day. 

Everyone would file in with slippers on and hoods up and find their usual seat. Then the same pestering characters would begin to dodder around the room trying to bum smokes off anyone that would remotely engage with them. Then skins and filters were shared, rollies prepped and lighters passed around. A peace would then descend and there would be a palpable release of tension as the smokers exhaled and the smoke disguised our despair.  

 The walls of the room were like lungs that absorbed the smoke and with it everything else – illness, disorders, addictions, obsessions, violence and trauma. Hidden away from the clinical clipboards and the peeping prying eyes, there was to some extent a sense of relaxation. I could breathe at last. It had been a month since I had been detained, enough time to have observed the daily rhythm of the room.

We were all here for something. No one introduced themselves solely by name. Nine times out of ten, it was name, diagnosis and the length of time they had done so far, as though inmates in the jail.

There were exceptions though. With some you only got a name (if you were lucky). The rest you would never ask. It was an unwritten rule.

In the smoking room, time felt like an extinct concept. There was no clock. I guess, there may have been, but I never noticed one. It could have been concealed by the smoke but I never even heard a ticking, not even on quiet days.

A non-smoker myself, I felt an odd yet comfortable familiarity sitting in the fog. An appreciative, enthusiastic passive smoker would be an unusual but good description of me. 

It was the smoking room or my bed. Time seemed to pass excruciatingly slowly sitting on my bed, it just got so fucking boring in the dorm.

The smoking room also took me away from the smells on the ward. I actually counted the smells one afternoon. There were three main smells. Firstly was the overpowering smell of the congealed hospital food that was regularly waiting to be slopped out.

Secondly, was the hostile smell of urine that wafted continuously from a patient with incontinence issues. He reeked, and left a smell trail wherever he shuffled, similar to a slug leaving a slime trail. My nostrils felt like they were under continual attack. Nauseatingly, he shuffled around the ward all day. There was literally no escaping his urine drifts. I didn’t understand why the nurses didn’t address the pishy issue. I mean surely it would be in their best interests too? At least he wasn’t a smoker, thank god!

The smoking room was a safe bunker from that offensive stench. The third smell was an unwashed body, wearing dirty clothes kind of smell. Not as bad as the urine but not pleasant either. With time I got used to it somewhat.

It wasn’t a surprising smell. As patients in Birch, we were all completely downtrodden with life, overcome with thoughts, voices, and hallucinations, most of us had stopped washing ourselves and our clothes. For most, it just wasn’t our priority. Self-care was abandoned. Paranoia or depression or whatever diagnosis we were embossed with caused us to forget about our bodies. Whatever had taken over our minds came first. Minds first, bodies later. 

Back to the smoking room, where we were chatting. We sat in the fog at one end of the room where I chatted in hushed tones with Aspen. He was a quiet solitary creature. Mysterious. In a strange sense I felt privileged that he would speak to me at all.  I spoke quietly and unobtrusively so as not to scare him into retreating back in on himself. He read a lot. I noticed that in between drags of his cigarette he would expel the smoke slowly and thoughtfully after each paragraph, looking up to gaze pensively as though chewing on and digesting every word he had just read. 

The way he read was similar to the way he listened to me. 

I would speak, he would listen. Then he would pause. Take a long drag and slowly, thoughtfully expel the smoke. 

He was similarly digesting my words. Never providing a hasty answer but rolling the questions or statements thoroughly around his mouth and thoughts. Tasting them and thinking upon them before responding. He had a soft Manchester accent. Soft but masculine, a dichotomy that sounds impossible but does exist. The way he listened intently and gave each of my words a stage to be heard, displayed great respect. He never interrupted, half listened or disengaged with what I was saying. It was intensely attractive.

Over time, we discovered tit bits about each other. He discovered far more about me than I did about him. He examined my face as I spoke but always tilted his head away to blow the smoke he had created in the opposite direction. 

He was astoundingly handsome. Brown hair, slight stubble and beautiful deep brown eyes. 

He fed me tiny morsels of information about what led him to be in the hospital. Telling me he had been in Carstairs high security for setting fire to things. He had been diagnosed with pyromania.

I was shocked.

Surely not.

I looked at Aspen. This beautiful man with his soft accent…holding a cigarette lighter. 

He currently had the ability to create flame between his fingers.

My heart started to beat furiously.

He was well read, a good listener, intelligent, respectful and handsome. My brain would not allow me to believe what he had just told me.

I nodded, broke eye contact and looked at the floor. It was less foggy on the floor. Summoning clarity as I focused on the sheet vinyl, the smoke rising around me. He slid his cold hand over mine. My heartbeat faster. I lifted my head and looked through the smoky fog at him. I examined him, his face, his dark hair, his stubble, then we locked eye contact.

It was then I caught a glimpse of it. In the deep wells of his eyes burned flickering flames of fire that no one could ever extinguish.

Lesley Johnstone