Silver

Chapter 77 - then

After my course in Sydney, I got a work placement position at an institution near Cronulla. It was live-in accommodation, so I had a roof over my head and three meals a day to eat. I was making my own income and learning on the job. For the first two years I also worked the night shift on weekends and earned penalty rates. There was nothing to spend my money on, so it grew in my bank account like weeds.

My first group of clients were tough, they smelt out a newbie as a cat sniffs out a dog. In my first month, a young lady named Tammy had a manic episode and she pinned me to the ground and kicked me until I was bruised all over. At nights I cried myself to sleep, fearing the next day, drowning in the colour of dirty dishwater. These women screamed at me, one attacked me with a pencil, another threw a chair at me, but on other days I had to shower them, help them get dressed and soothe them to sleep. I had to forgive the nasty words they'd said. I had to build bricks around my heart, cultivate thick skin and pretend to be made of stone. And slowly those women eased up on me. Perhaps they realised that we're all as damaged as each other.

At the end of each shift I retreated to my windowless room, with a small bookshelf, a set of drawers, and a single bed. This room, didn't even have an ensuite. I had to share a bathroom with twenty other people on the floor. I'd lie in bed with memories of Jarvis as my only comforter, hope for Jarvis as my only motivation.

Those two years were like a paper doll chain, arms stretched, folding up, opening and folding, opening and folding. The same thing repeated over and over again. No escape. I didn't talk much with the other workers, I knew my stay there was only temporary, until I could move to another institution.

Sometimes I would ask questions of other staff members. 'How many institutions are there in Sydney?' I asked, but no one was able to give me a proper answer. I thought about trying to get promoted, move my way up the chain of command to get access to files on patients. But I'm not a leader, and even then, I didn't know if I'd gain access to files in other institutions. My best hope was to get transferred to a different centre, to see if I could find him there, and if not, spend another year in that institution and get transferred to the next. And on and on until I found him. If I worked anywhere for less than a year it would seem strange on my resume, so wherever I went, I had to commit to a year, at least.