Valerie

IV: Lance

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ta da! Okay, so it's not one of the best chapters, and it is shorter than I would have liked, but I just delighted that it's finally finished. Because seriously, this has been floating around in various draft copies in the backs of schoolbooks, on grubby post-its in the back of my planner, and so on.

Mum's in the kitchen washing the dishes when I get home. She's wearing the faded floral apron, which she's had for as long as I can remember, over her work blouse and skirt, and she's tied her hair back from her face in a loose bun. Tilly's in the other downstairs room, watching TV in her school uniform - although by now she's barefoot, with her shirt untucked and sweater knotted around her waist. I kick my shoes off and head up the stairs, the folder Joanne gave me tucked under my arm.

I used to have my own flat, but when me and Linn broke up I couldn't afford the rent on my own, and anyway, mum's house is closer to Helios. I think she likes my company. She's seemed to need me more and more since dad died.

I lie on my bed and read through Valerie's file until I practically know it all by heart.

After an hour or so, I check my cheap, faux leather watch. 8:30. Tilly should be in bed by now. I walk the few short yards to her room, and poke my head round the door. She's snuggled up under the Dr. Who duvet which used to be mine. The ash blonde hair we both inherited from dad is splayed out over her pillow, various stuffed animals tucked up on either side of her. I recognise the drooping, goggly-eyed meerkat I bought for her at  Chessington World of Adventures and the two sparkly unicorns I gave her on her last birthday - one pink, one blue. I walk over and kiss her on the forehead. She wriggles a little, then allows her head to fall back down again. I switch off her lamp and wander back down the stairs.

Mum's serving up to plates of re-heated Macaroni cheese when I reach the kitchen.  She sets them down, and I sit down oppsite her, There's a jug of lemonade in the centre of the table. I pour myself a glass silently, allowing the ice-cubes to clink together. Finally mum speaks,

"How was your day?"

"Great," I answer. "Dr. Bertrand is going to let me work with one of her patients. A schizophrenic teenager. I'm staring tomorrow."

"Poor kid." I hear her mutter. I concentrate of my food, until she speaks again, "Lance..."

"Yeah?"

"Your dad would be very proud of you. You know that, don't you?"

I drain my glass of lemonade, and gaze down at it, waiting for the ice-cubes to melt. Mum watches patiently, as I ponder my reply. When there's only a puddle of water sitting in the bottom, I eventually answer,

"Yeah."

***

It's a cold, bright morning, and I can see my breath hanging in the crisp air. Tilly finds this hilarious and keeps blowing and blowing, so that she's surrounded in her own cloud of steam.

"Look, Lance, I'm a dragon!" She laughs, and heads into school, humming Puff the Magic Dragon under her breath. I laugh too, and carry on to the hospital.

Joanne meets me by her office, and drills me on the correct procedure with a new patient. I nod to everything she says, trying to take it all in. Unprofessional as it is, I am excited. I've only ever dealt with theory before.

The TV's on inside the room, where Valerie's located. A russet-haired girl is sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring straight at it. I push open the door and step boldly in. Joanne follows me, and walks over to the girl.

"Valerie," she says, "I have someone I'd like you to meet."

Valerie doesn't look away from the television screen, although I don't think she's actually watching it. Her blink rate is perfectly even and her expression is deadpan and unchanging. If you observe someone who's actually watching TV, there blink rate depends upon the flashing colours and lights on the screen, and their expression changes as the narrative progresses. Joanne taught me to notice these things.

"I'm Lance."

She nods.

"Hey." Her accent is typical of Camden, but there's an underlying tone which I can only identify as Glaswegian. She probably picked it up off a parent. It's hard to tell.

I don't really know what to do. I've done as much training as possible in the lead up to this moment, studied as hard as I could - and yet all I feel lost, and uncertain. I realise now that it doesn't matter how many theoretical situations you cover and revise, when it comes to treating the individual they can seem as useless and pointless as if you had never learnt them. I don't know how to connect to her. She's an individual, not a textbook example. What she feels and experiences has little connection to what the example patients felt and experienced. It's all different. Everything in my head is as jumbled as it probably is in hers.

What's useful. What's not.

Who is this girl anyway? I know her name, her parent's names, her birth date, her height, her weight, where she was educated, her precise diagnosis. But I know her. She's more than the 5 foot 7 inches, 8 and half stone, 17 year old, daughter of Elizabeth and Richard Argyll, who attends Haverstock School, and was recently diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and as being in the preliminary part of the acute stage of active Schizophrenia.

They're facts in file. Scraps of information, which are useless without a living, breathing human to embody them and give them meaning.

I can't work with a patient without knowing who she is.