I think this came from various conversations about the state of the world. And staring at my duvet cover when overtired.
Patterns by Gaie Sebold (747 words)
Maeve, Binty, Joachim, Frank.
“There you go, dear, take your pills. What are you making today?”
Maeve looks up, but doesn’t say anything. Passively she swallows her pills. But as the nurse moves on, Maeve and Binty flick each other a quick, impish smile.
Maeve’s fingers twist and weave. The nurses bring her wool; before that she used whatever she could find, sometimes to the detriment of the hospital fittings. They have decided a crochet hook is permissible, so long as they take it away from her at night. She’s quite capable of making another one from the most surprising things, anyway.
She’s probably safe. After all, she only really gets upset when someone asks her if she ever thinks about her old life, when she worked in the City.
Binty doesn’t crochet. Binty weaves baskets. It’s so traditional it’s almost embarrassing; but she makes baskets and placemats and needlecases as though she had a deadline, as though she were on commission.
“Hello, dear, oh, that’s pretty,” says the nurse. For a moment she pauses, frowning, and glances back at Maeve. Then, pills dispensed, she shakes her head, and moves on. Binty used to work in banking. Such a shame, they say, so bright, doing so well! She’s another one who’s mostly co-operative, unless they ask her about her job.
Joachim is on another ward, with Frank. Joachim fills in crosswords; but seldom all of one crossword, and not in words that seem to have anything to do with the clues, most of the time. Or words that seem to have anything to do with language, either. Joachim first saw Frank as he was frowning over a couple of Joachim’s crosswords that were lying side by side, looking at the exact juxtaposition of the filling in of certain squares, a sort of recognition rising on his face.
They haven’t talked about it. Frank does sketches; tiny, intense sketches, thousands of precise narrow lines. There are no people in them, no monsters, from the id or elsewhere. Just lines. The therapists have theories. That’s all they have.
Joachim was a stockbroker, too. Frank dealt with computerised banking systems.
They all went mad within a few months of each other. Are there more? Each of them sometimes wonders, but it’s no longer really relevant.
A very young nurse is being tried out on the women’s ward; they’re considered slightly more easily handled than the men. She deals with the patients confidently and well, and is eventually transferred to the men’s ward, which still, strangely, is considered a position of slightly higher prestige. Just before she is transferred, however, she speaks to her supervisor.
“You did say to report anything that was bothering me,” she says. “It’s not bothering me, exactly, but I did wonder. Binty, and Maeve.”
“Ah, yes, sad cases,” says the supervisor.
“They don’t seem sad,” the nurse says. “Actually, they seem very contented. But I just noticed that, well, the stuff they make…there’s a kind of similarity about it. I couldn’t say what, exactly. It just seems to follow a kind of pattern.”
“They’ve been on the same ward for months,” the Supervisor says. “These things happen. And sometimes we see patterns where there aren’t any. It’s what the human eye looks for, after all. Patterns.”
“I asked Maeve what she was making.”
“Oh? Did she answer you?”
“Sort of. ‘A new pattern’, she said. But it looked the same as everything else she’s made to me.”
“Ah well,” said the Supervisor. “At least she interacted with you.”
On the men’s ward it isn’t long before the young nurse notices Joachim’s partially completed crosswords, and Frank’s sketches.
One day she has a sketch laid side by side with three crosswords. She’s glaring at them as though they were one of those magic-eye pictures, and can feel some kind of focus dancing just beyond the reach of her aching eyes.
Frank sits down opposite her, and pats her hand. “You’ll get there,” he said. “It was trauma, for us. Hope you find a better way.”
“But what are you making,” she says.
“The world,” says Frank. “We’re making the world.”
And the young nurse feels a trembling in the soles of her feet.
The next day the headlines announce collapse of the markets, trembles in the metal heart of finance.
The young nurse reads the headlines, and knows that on the wards, Maeve and Binty, Joachim and Frank, are weaving and stitching and sketching and smiling.
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