The Missing Mental Patient

I still remember the day I found the body. It was a sunny morning in the spring of 1974. I’d just graduated from nursing school and this was my first day at a new placement.

Happy Grove was one of those old-fashioned psychiatric institutions, a kind of gated community for the disabled and mentally ill that was halfway between a prison and a spa. From the road at the foot of the driveway I could just see the imposing Victorian building that had once been a kind of backwoods Bedlam. As I walked up the long, shady driveway I saw the more modern additions: a tennis court, a bowling green, a group of identical wooden wheelchair-accessible buildings.

Relishing the sunny morning and inhaling the scent of macrocarpa and eucalyptus, I saw a girl wandering on the grounds. She must have been about sixteen, of Chinese extraction, dressed in a pink wool sweater and trackpants that were a couple of sizes two big for her. Someone had given her an unflattering bowl haircut. She was talking gently to herself, twisting her hands.

I waved to her and she waved back uncertainly, looking nervous as I approached.

“I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl,” she murmured.

There was something unsettling about the way she said it. Her eyes looked beyond me and there was a kind of anxious, listening quality to her expression.

“Hello there, what’s your name?” I smiled.

“Janet,” she said, looking at me sideways.

“Nice to meet you, Janet. I'm Ben. I’m going to be working here now. Can you tell me something?”

She didn’t reply but took the hand I offered. Hers hand was warm and limp. As her arm fell back down by her side, she looked down at the ground.

“I’m a good girl,” she said.

“OK,” I said.

“I won’t tell. I’m a good girl.”

“Ah, but you can tell me can’t you?” I joked.

She looked up at me doubtfully.

“You can whisper it,” I said. “Go on!”

“You can’t tell!” she said seriously.

“I promise,” I said.

“Cross your heart!” she demanded.

I dutifully crossed my heart.

She nodded and came to me, whispering in my ear.

“Billy’s in the garden.”

“Billy?”

She put her fingers over her lips and shhh’d.

I remember thinking that her naivete was quite charming and, being a young fool, framed it in terms of pathology. Was she delusional? Was it a case of arrested development? What was her mental age? At that time I was still interested in such categories.

“Janet, can you do something for me?"

She nodded.

"Can you show me the way to H-block? I’m late for work.”

“There,” she pointed across a closely clipped lawn to one of the low houses. It looked identical to the others except it was painted a pale yellow.

I knocked at the door feeling nervous and enthusiastic in equal measure.

The door opened to reveal a huge, affable man with an impressive beard, peppered with grey. He was probably in his forties but had an ageless quality and it occurred to me that he’d make perfect Santa Claus at Christmas parties.

“G’day there! You the new boy? I’m Nick.”

“Ben Thurlow,” I stuck out my hand and felt it crushed in a hammy vice.

“Right, let’s show you around,” he said, ushering me into a sterile looking room. The walls were painted a kind of washed-out primrose yellow and the floor was covered with pale green lino. The furniture was all strictly functional. There were no ornaments or homey touches at all.  

“This is the living area and that’s Dorothy. We call her Queen B because she’s such a high-toned lady.”

A frail woman who might have been in her sixties perched on a chair, smiling and nodding regally. She wore a cotton dress printed with hollyhocks and fluffy pink slippers.

“Hello, Dorothy,” I said.

“How do you do? I’m very pleased to meet you,” she enunciated clearly.

“Very proper, as you see,” said Nick. “And this here is George who’s a grumpy old bugger.”

A stout man with bird’s-nest hair and thick glasses sat ensconced in an armchair. He glared at Nick.

“George doesn’t speak to anyone but Carol, the other nurse. He’s putty in her hands though, aren’t you?”

“Carol!” George bellowed, grinning suddenly.

“Fair warning, George will only attack you if you’re late with his morning tea. He will be timing it and he packs a powerful punch. He starts checking his watch at a quarter to ten.”

“How d’you do George,” I said. “I’m Ben,” I stuck out my hand but he just stared at me with those magnified, oyster-like eyes. His lip curled a little, contemptuous.

“Let’s see…then there’s Janet, who’s out for a walk.”

“I met her on the way in.”

“She’s a delight. No trouble at all is Janet.”

At that moment a woman bustled into the room. She wore a nurse’s uniform that showed off a trim figure and shapely legs. Her auburn hair was done up and covered with a nurse’s cap.

“What is it George? Did you call me?” she said.

“False alarm,” said Nick. “I was just telling our new recruit here that you’re the only one George bothers to talk to around here. So he called out your name, in an ecstasy.”

“Oh,” she turned and looked me up and down. She had really remarkable eyes—a bright, clear blue. I was uncomfortably aware of the sharply critical quality in their gaze. I was wearing my hair down to my collar, a white shirt with epaulettes (my uniform) and bellbottom trousers.

“Ben, isn’t it?”

“That’s me.”

“You’ve just graduated?”

“Last week,” I smiled.

She did not smile back but nodded abruptly.

“Here’s some advice I give all new recruits. The patients are not your friends, you must maintain a professional distance. Punctuality is expected. Do not smoke marijuana on the hospital grounds. Lastly,” she looked me up and down, “We like a tidy appearance here—you’ll have to get regulation trousers. Short hair looks better on men.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said, smiling to disguise my annoyance, “but I like my hair the way it is. Unless you can cite a study where there are drawbacks in therapeutic practice?”

“Academics aren’t much use around here I’m afraid,” she said crisply. “We live in the real world and our patients are living people, not case studies. Excuse me, it’s time for Shef’s enema,” she stalked out of the room.

“Bit uptight isn’t she?” I muttered.

“Don’t mind Carol, mate,” Nick said, rolling his eyes. “She has a Florence-Nightingale complex, and Hammond encourages it. She’s like the warlock’s cat.”

“Who’s Hammond?”

“Happy Grove’s onsite GP. His office is in that big Victorian house at the end of the drive. Odd bird. Anyway, there’s more madness to come, and I’m not talking about the patients. You haven’t met Sam or Tina yet. At least there’s never a dull moment round here, eh Dorothy?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Dorothy, tilting her head in a ladylike manner as she emerged from a reverie.

“I said it’s never boring around here, is it ducky?”

“No it isn’t. You’re quite right dear.” Dorothy nodded sagely.

“Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others,” said Nick.

A skinny blond man with stubble lurched in through the front door. He smelled quite strongly of pot.

“Speak of the devil,” said Nick “Here’s Sam. Where’ve you been mate? Nearly time to give out the meds.”

“I had something to do at head office. Paperwork,” the blond man mumbled.

“Rii-ight,” Nick said with obvious scepticism. “Anyway, this is Ben—his first day.”

Sam nodded at me.

“Howzit going?”

“Good, yeah,” I shook his hand.

“Listen,” said Nick, looking at his watch. “I’ll get Sam here to show you the ropes in terms of pills and things. I’ve gotta take Dorothy to her physio session at the pool.”

“Right on,” I said, relieved that we were getting on to the actual work.

When Nick left, Sam and I started chatted guardedly, feeling each other out. We talked about music and cars and he must have decided I was OK because he passed me a joint.

“Morning tea,” he grinned. “Homemade.”

“Cool. Thanks man.”

I soon learned that my suspicions about tension between him and Nick were correct.

“Watch out for that guy,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’ll pretend to be your friend and then stab you in the back. Total creep.”

I took this with a grain of salt. Nick had seemed normal and friendly, while Sam had a shifty look and occasionally looked over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be spying on him. Paranoid, I thought at the time.

“Here’s the sheet with the meds,” his hand shook slightly as he handed me a clipboard where the patients’ names were listed along with the doses of their medication.

“So who all lives here in the villa?” I asked with interest. “I’ve met Janet and Dorothy. And Carol mentioned Shef.”

“Right. There’s also Kenny—he’s a little guy.Sixty-five years old but the size of a three-year-old. Completely blind, deaf and mute. And then there’s Pete. He’s got Down’s Syndrome. Mad about cars, just like me. We get along like a house on fire,” he grinned.

“So five in all?”

“Yep,” said Sam.

“Who’s William Cole?” I squinted at the sheet.

“Billy? He used to live here.”

“Got transferred to another villa?” I asked casually.

“Nope. Disappeared. Went for a walk one day and never came back.”

“Far out,” I said. “When was that?”

“A few months ago. He was bipolar along with his disability, poor guy. He liked to wander in his manic phases. He slipped out one night.”

“Was he ever found?”

“No. Some people think he might have ended up in the bush in the hills behind Happy Grove. It's a huge sheep station up there. They sent out search parties, but…” he shrugged. "Best guess, he fell off the cliff into the sea."

“That’s horrible,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. It was tough on Janet I think. The rest of them took it in their stride.”

For the next couple of hours I was totally occupied with learning everyone’s names, figuring out the routine and trying to navigate the social undercurrents. When Sam sent me off on my thirty-minute break, I was more than ready for it. I was looking forward to having a smoke so I headed for the garden area, where there were a couple of likely looking wooden benches. For a moment I considered smoking a joint just to annoy Carol but I was really hanging out for nicotine so I opted for that instead.

Once I’d exhaled a couple of times I was relaxed enough to look around at my surroundings. I realized I was sitting right in front of an overgrown vegetable garden. Cabbages grown to giddy heights and covered with snails, leeks that had become thick and wooden, flowering broccoli trees. I smiled, remembering what Janet had said.

“Billy’s in the garden,” I chuckled.

Then, on the far edge of the garden, my eye caught something odd.  I couldn’t make it out at first and it was bugging me. I suppose even then some part of my mind suspected the truth. Finally, I got annoyed and decided to stand up, go over and have a look.

Sure enough, between a couple of potato plants, I saw the remains of a human hand.