The Quantity Theory of Insanity Read Online Free PDF Page B

it, not too convincingly.’
    Busner had abandoned his search for a pipe, if that’s what it had been. He now turned and presented me with his outline set against the window. In profile I could see that he was in reality rather eroded, and that the impression of barely contained energy which he seemed determined to project was an illusion as well. Busner sat talking to me, rolling and then unrolling the brown tongue of a knitted tie he wore yanked around his neck. Overall, he reminded me of nothing so much as a giant frog.
    Behind him light and then shadow moved across the face of the hospital at a jerky, unnatural speed. The clouds were whipping away overhead, out of sight. All I could see was their reflection on the hospital’s rough, grey, barnacle-pitted skin.
    The hospital was big. Truly big. With its winking lights, belching vents and tangled antennae, it slid away beneath the cloudscape. Its bulk was such that it suggested to theviewer the possibility of spaceships (or hospitals) larger still, which might engulf it, whole, through some docking port. The hospital was like this. I couldn’t judge whether the rectangles I saw outlined on the protruding corner opposite Dr Busner’s office were glass bricks or windows two storeys high. The street lay too far below to give me a sense of scale. I was left just with the hospital and the scudding shadows of the racing clouds.
    Busner had given up his tie-rolling and taken up with an ashtray on his desk. This was crudely fashioned out of a spiralled snake of clay, varnished and painted with a bilious yellow glaze. Busner ran his fleshy digit around and around the rim as he said, ‘I’d like you to stick close to me this morning, Misha. If you are to have any real impact on what we’re trying to do here you need to be properly acquainted with the whole process of the ward: how we assess patients, how we book them in, how we decide on treatment. If you shadow me this morning, you can then get to know some of the patients informally this afternoon.’
    ‘That sounds OK.’
    ‘We’ve also got a ward meeting at noon which will give you an opportunity to get to know all your fellow workers and appreciate how they fit into the scheme of things.’
    Busner set down the turd of clay on his desk with a clack and stood up. I stepped back to allow him to get round the desk and to the door. Despite being the senior consultant in the psychiatric department, Busner had about as much office space as a postroom boy. I followed him back down the short corridor to the association area. By now the sun had risen up behind the clouds and the bank of windows on the far side of the dining area shone brightly. Silhouetted against them was a slow line of patients, shuffling towardsthe nurses’ station where they were picking up their morning medication.
    The patients were like piles of empty clothes, held upright by some static charge. Behind the double sliding panes of glass which fronted the nurses’ station sat two young people. One consulted a chart, the other selected pills and capsules from compartments in a moulded plastic tray. They then handed these over to the patient at the head of the queue, together with a paper beaker of water, which had a pointed base, rendering it unputdownable, like a best seller.
    ‘Not ideal, but necessary.’ Busner cupped his right hand as if to encapsulate the queue. ‘We have to give medication. Why? Because without it we couldn’t calm down our patients enough to actually talk to them and find out what the matter is. However, once we’ve medicated them they’re often too displaced to be able to tell us anything useful. Catch-22.’
    Busner cut through the queue to the dining area, muttering a few good mornings as he gently pushed aside his flock. We sat down at a table where a young woman in a frayed white coat was sipping a muddy Nescafe. Busner introduced us.
    ‘Jane, this is Misha Gurney, Misha, Jane Bowen – Jane is the senior registrar here.