Short Story: The Other Side Of The…

Short Story: The Other Side Of The Bottle

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John shuffled in his chair, not because he was particularly bored, the reason was more that he had been sitting in the chair for four hours straight. His legs longed to get up and roam. His hands trembled where they rested on the desk. He could feel sweat prickle at his forehead, he leaned over and opened the tiny window behind him. Regrettably his small office was not that accommodating, and today, with having back to back patients, moving around and towering over them as they released their troubles was probably not the best form of therapy.

He looked in his diary and saw that his next patient was Leah, a mixed up kid if ever he saw one. She was seventeen nearly, eighteen. Leah had been an unfortunate child that had been given no chance at all. She was born in the dregs and all likelihood would die there too. Her mother was a drug addict and a prostitute who dragged her baby from one trick to another. It was an embarrassment that Leah hadn’t been saved sooner. The wounds that she accumulated over those young years had scarred any hope she had left in her face. Leah was overweight, plain and she didn’t have control over anything in her life. Two years ago her mother had forced Leah to accompany her to a party on the large council estate on the outskirts of town; she was to be introduced to some of her mother’s friends. Leah ended the night in the hospital, when the police photographer showed her the pictures a couple of days later, she was not able to recognise herself. It was only then Leah fell into the grasp of social services. There was, however, some intelligence in her manner, which gave John hope. If only someone would pick her up and dust her down.

‘Hi doctor.’ She quietly greeted as she entered the room and slid into her chair.

John really should have corrected her, he was not a doctor, but he let it slide this time, he needed her to trust him.

‘How are you?’ he smiled.

‘Ok.’

She was not going to make this easy for him.

‘Is there anything you want to talk about?’

‘Like what?’ Leah looked up at him.

‘I don’t know. What films you like? Music? College. Your dream…’

‘My dreams, I want to talk about my dream.’

‘Ok.’

John saw her loosen her shoulders a little and relax further into her chair.

‘Well, it’s a bit strange, really. I’m in this room and I realise, I’m in a prison. It’s not like a real prison with brick walls and stuff.’

John wondered if Leah had actually seen the inside of a cell at any point. He made a note to check her file when she had gone.

‘Instead the walls are like thick glass. So when I look through, it looks hazy, like I’m drunk or something. Actually I remember my mum had this perfume bottle. It was some expensive stuff that my real dad had bought her and when the perfume was used up she had kept the bottle. It was really fancy; it was like a ball of glass, dead heavy. On the screw top there was this gold butterfly just sitting, like it’s smelling the sweetest thing. When I used to ask my mum if I could visit my dad. She used to hold the bottle to my eye and say if I was lucky I could see him in the bottle, nice eh?’

Leah held out her hand as if imaging the bottle in her hand.

‘Do you think the bottle is represented in your dream?’

‘I don’t know. In the dream, I seem to spend alot of time trying to make out what I’m seeing through the glass, and it’s not my dad.’

‘What do you see?’ John asked.

‘Sometimes I see different shapes and colours, and I get this really strong feeling that I recognise them, but I just can’t remember what they are.’

‘Do you ever recognise them?’

‘No, no, but I get the feeling that what’s on the other side of the glass is what is keeping me in this prison. I feel worried that I will never be free and that I will spend the rest of my life searching in the glass for my escape. Then, just when I’m about to give up. It hits me and I realise something else, something I know is important. I realise that I made this prison for myself and it’s my fault that I’m stuck in it. Does that make any sense?’

‘Yes Leah, that is really insightful, you know? How do you feel after the dream?’

‘I don’t know, relief, I’m not sure.’

Leah paused and looked out of the window. Though there was not really anything to see but the surgery’s car park. He wanted to give her a moment before he asked her any more. She looked ill, though obviously she was eating enough. Her face was grey and she had dark circles weighing around her eyes as if she had been awake for days. Her hair was greasy and uncombed and the ends stuck into the collar of her shirt. He felt his hands start to shake again, he clenched them tight and laid them on his lap. She had told John in an earlier session that her mother had thrown her out of the house. She explained that her mother owed a loan shark a couple of grand. When Leah refused to help with the repayments, her mother had pushed and kicked her out the front door in the middle of the night. Leah hadn’t managed to get on a pair of shoes. Though she did manage to get into a hostel and did not end up on the street. Leah had some sense, he thought, she might just make it.

‘Do you think we make our own prisons?’ she asked eventually.

‘Yes, I think we do, though not all the time. Sometimes it’s not our fault, you do know that Leah?’

‘I think, I can break out of my prison.’

‘Leah, I know you can.’ John smiled.

It was maybe three of four days later when the GP, Dr Phillips, called John into his office to tell him that Leah had died. John wasn’t really shocked. Dr Philips, a sturdy, gym obsessed man, with a penchant for brightly coloured ties, handed him Leah’s file and casually commented that she was probably using like her mother, though John wasn’t so sure. His chest burned. They were too late, if she had been taken in when she was a child, and then maybe, she wouldn’t have become another victim to one of the many low life pushers that hung around lonely dark corners preying on the vulnerable. He took the file back to his room to fill in his side of the paperwork. He sat behind his desk and opened the file. As he read he began to cry. It was something that he had not done in thirty years, he let go and sobbed like a school boy. The file stated that Leah, clean of drugs, had slit her wrists and was found in her bed tucked under the covers in the foetal position. Later he wondered if he cried for her or cried for himself because he had failed her.

In the evening, once his children were safely asleep upstairs, and away from the moaning gripes of his wife, he searched out the gin from the back of the bookcase. He pored himself one shot after another. Soon he would find that numbness and only then he would be able to sleep. He flicked through the channels on the television, never stopping for more than a few seconds. Nothing seemed to distract him or hold his attention. The series of events and choices circled in his mind always landing in the same awful conclusion. What had he done wrong? The question spun around in his head. John remembered a time when his life made a difference. When he looked at his superiors and quaffed at their inability. When his evenings were spent discussing literature and playing chess with his beautiful young wife. When his afternoons were spent in the pub watching the football, where they would laugh at the world because no one could stop them. Now he felt blocked, nothing he did anymore made any difference. The bottle already empty, he picked it up and balanced it in his hand and leaning forward to get a better look, he peered through the glass searching for his escape.