The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 50

'Maya Alexander' was written on a white piece of paper above the silent hospital bed. It was there so that those responsible for the care of the female admission could use her name as they checked her statistics or secured an oxygen mask over her mouth; or just spoke to see if she would respond to her name. She did not. Her chest continued to rise up and down beneath the white hospital gown, but her breath remained shallow. Her pulse and blood pressure were normal as were her reflexes. And what baffled those assessing her physical condition most, was that despite her apparent state of deep unconsciousness, her eyes flickered from side to side as though she were dreaming. Such eye movements were not typical of a coma, yet Maya Alexander made no response to her outside world.

Not a single visitor had rushed to her side in the first few hours after her admittance. Phonecalls had been made to her husband and mother but her unconscious body remained in its solitude, except for the medical practitioners around her. The police had confirmed that several witnesses had seen the young woman apparently push herself from the bridge and into the river. She had landed face down. Her face was a mess. If and when her relatives arrived they might not even recognise her for the swelling and bruising from what looked like a fractured nose and cheek bone.

Incredibly, the only other injuries appeared to be a broken wrist and a large gouge all the way from the top of her left thigh to just above her knee. They had managed to set a cast on her wrist and tp stitch the wound. A brain scan revealed no swelling or bleeding, which they all agreed was nothing short of a miracle. There were no medical records with regards to the large bulge in her abdomen. So they completed an abdominal examination and confirmed their suspicions.

Once the doctors had concluded that Maya Alexander's physical condition was stable, confirmation of the witness statements had led to the on call Psychiatrist being alerted. A middle aged man arrived at around 10pm. There were still no relatives who could provide any details which might allude to the state of the patient's mind at the time of her fall, and attempts to phone her husband had proven unsuccessful. The Psychiatrist had managed to access the GP records and noted that Maya Alexander had accessed two periods of counselling with the Oasis Counselling Service and that the referral had been preceded by a miscarriage in March. Unable to make any assessment of his new patient's current mental functioning, Dr Jenkins sent off an urgent request for copies of the counselling notes from the laptop in the office. He was scheduled to be on duty again on Monday, so unless something changed he would check in again then to see whether his team needed to become involved.

Dr Jenkins had signed up to be on call for several of the days over the Christmas week. He was a widower and had no children. He had sisters, living parents who did not yet need care and several nieces and nephews. But he knew that compared to most of his colleagues, his sacrifice over the Christmas period was much less. In fact he liked to keep himself busy so that he was less preoccupied with his own grief, following the loss of his wife several Christmases ago.

Christmas was a spikey time in the world of mental health. It seemed there was nothing like the perfect mixture of dark days, over indulgence and a requirement to be happy and joyous to take its toll on a nation's well-being. Of course it was a myth that there were most suicides at this time of year. Perhaps the services were just more stretched and less able to cope because the mental health care staff were human too and had families and festivities of their own to attend to.

In fact, Dr Jenkins had noted for many of his own patients, important calendar days like Christmas were a protective factor for their mental health. It seemed to him to be those not already known to services who emerged unexpectedly during the Christmas months. He had never verified this. It was just his own personal observation based on his professional experience over the years. It could be argued that this experience was really quite narrow, as he had always worked for the same health board covering the sparse population of an area in South Wales. Statistics were more difficult to argue with. Those numbers told a damning story of Spring which brought a rise in the suicide rate with its cycle of light and new life. A juxtaposition? Or perhaps a rise in energy which allowed suicidal plans to take form?