Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
She ran out onto the road and got hit by car and broke her leg.
That was how it ended one time, after the crisis assessment team came too late and she had run off in the night and gotten run over.
They patched her up and put her in the psych ward. I’d go to visit and sit opposite her in the chair while she berated me, flung accusations and recriminations.
If I didn’t go, she’d always ask me when she was well why I hadn’t come. No matter how much she didn’t seem to be herself when she was in hospital she always remembered if I was there or not.
* * *
She was the smartest and most talented girl: prefect, dux, tennis captain. I looked up to her, my older sister.
When she first heard the voices we were not surprised – we had grown up Catholic, taught by nuns, and they had told us about ‘The Call’. They had been called by God to their vocation and one day we might be too.
How will we know? We asked. God will call you, they said.
We had learned to pray but those prayers were in the ether. We listened carefully but all we heard was the murmur of own thoughts humming inside our heads.
The idea of hearing the voice of God in return was intriguing.
Behind closed doors my sister confided to the nuns about the voices she was hearing.
The nuns said – No – it was not the voice of God.
I am not sure how they knew.
These voices were not vocational or beautific– they were violent and harassing and scary.
The internal dialogue soon took over my sister’s life. She dropped tennis, forgot school-work, and prayer.
* * *
My parents took her to a psychiatrist. She got a diagnosis –schizophrenia.
The psychiatrist sat me down in his office.
He said you have to help her; you have to look after her.
No, I said, let Mum and Dad do it.
No – They’ll get old and sick and she is going to need somebody to be her friend. And no matter how hard you think it is for you to do this and no matter what you think you have to give up, it’s nothing compared to what she will go through.
* * *
She’s been a good patient, ‘compliant’. She’s taken her meds and obeyed instructions -sometimes she is well for months, sometimes its years – but the voices still return.
As for me, I long ago gave up on God but still I wish that now it was his voice that she was hearing.