CHAPTER 88

2025-09-19

After I shared with my wife about my interactions with other patients, she felt much more at ease.

In the previous piece I mentioned that my younger son had joined Scouts activities — physically he didn’t take part much, but when my wife and I learned that he had begun to invest himself mentally, we relaxed. A similar thing happened during my first week in the psychiatric ward: once I told my wife about life in the ward, she started to feel reassured.

During that first week in the ward, what I needed to adapt to most were the routines and rules of daily life. Second was the medical team’s division of labour — who was primary, who assisted, who was temporary — because their responsibilities affect my treatment and discharge. Third was figuring out how much distance to keep from fellow patients to protect my own safety.

Patients were coming and going. A week later a good-looking Chinese youth, about twenty years old, arrived; he seemed mentally sound. All patients must register first, then be assigned a room. Newcomers often linger near reception.

As usual I paced the corridor at different times each day — partly to pass the time, partly to regulate my blood sugar. When I walked toward reception, I heard the young man speaking. Passing by, I saw him ask the female nurses in fluent English whether they had to have university degrees to be nurses.

The nurses’ reaction suggested surprise that this young man would ask such a question — something everyone should know — and they replied bluntly, “Of course.” The young man was then assigned a room, changed into ward clothes, and began pacing the corridor regularly.

I kept pacing too, and eventually we met in the hallway. We greeted each other and, because we were compatriots, struck up a conversation. He smiled and asked, “Why are you here?” I thought: this newcomer is a bit naive, so I answered, “Everyone has a story, but I won’t tell you.” I also explained the ward rules and gave him a few pointers about mealtimes.

The next day while I was walking in the corridor I noticed someone visiting him. From a few fragments of conversation drifting from his room I gathered that his father had taken leave and rushed from the United States to see him, urging him to get along better with his mother, who has an emotional illness. The young man and his family were clearly going through a hard time; the problem had been worsening for several years.

By then my own condition had been steadily improving. First, I could participate in recreational and social activities: after dinner we would go to the activity room on the third floor to play chess, table tennis, billiards and air hockey (a game in which you rapidly push a flat black plastic puck toward an opponent across a slightly inflated playing surface). I also attended small group talks and discussions before or after lunch — sessions on medical knowledge, patients telling stories or sharing feelings, led by staff. I interacted more with other patients, and once we got to know one another, those interactions felt safer. (Some staff members were recovered patients hired on contract.)

One day while the young man and I were pacing, he suddenly said, “The people here are all idiots…” I immediately raised my right index finger to my lips, tapped my forehead, and made a soft “shh” sound. “Even if that’s true, you mustn’t say it out loud!” I thought: he’d forgotten that both of us are a little odd ourselves.

Every day when my wife came to visit I told her the stories about how things were. For her, that was a good sign to become nosy— it showed that my social-worker instincts were waking up again: I was spontaneously noticing and caring about others’ difficulties, gradually recovering my cognition and capacity for empathy, no longer trapped by fear.