Notes from the ice cube

It began in Dr Roque's surgery.  He'd retired a year ago but the penurie of doctors had bought him back.

I've spent many hours in this room opposite the taciturn but amiable Roques; firstly with my children who drew him picures which he'd pin on the  wall behind his desk alongside  anatomical drawings, then increasingly with Bobby who Roques had saved from death on countless occasions, referring him to heart specialists, diabetic consultants, cancer screeners and latterly a gerontologist who scanned his brain and found it to be nibbled away and beyond repair.

Sitting in this room again I felt the loss of Bobby for the first time in 6 months. For many years bobby would crack jokes to Roques which I'd have to laboriously translate ans the doctor would chuckle, initiating a chesty cough, him being a 60 a day man. but latterly Bobby, sat in the chair next to me, was clearly journeying elsewhere.

It struck me that this time I was here for myself.   Bobby had gone and the children away and I suddenly felt exhausted.

He breathed wheezily and brought out his pad.  I watched as he wrote 'Mon cher confrère' and waited for him to fill two pages.

I'd looked the clinic up.  I'd promised I'd go. It resembled an ice cube and put me in mind of the coping strategy Id been taught when confronted with fierce emotions.  As he wrote I imagined holding the cube in my hand until the feel of the ice drove other thoughts away.

Emma picked Nico and I up.  She said she was ignorant of the protocol involved in driving a friend to a psychiatric hospital and handed me a bag containing a bottle of water, a pack of playing cards and cigarettes and a packet of tissues.

The ice cube turned out to be two cubes seared together by a third. The north cube looked over a chateau in parkland and the south one looked over towards the Pyrenees. Emma reckoned the chateau wing denoted fortresses and locks and keys and was obviously for the real nutters, while the Pyrenees wing suggested freedom and vistas, more suitable for those with more minor pathologies. She said she'd wait to see whether I was taken to the North or South side. 

I was taken up to a room in Pyrenees side and felt vindicated.

Doctor Balon was my designated psychiatrist and I felt like I'd come in 18 to 1.  Her room was full of Rothko prints and trailing house plants.
I lay my life on her polished desk while she scribbled away.