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With vulnerability and candour, Patient 12A reflects on the moments, large and small, that led Lesedi Molefi to unravel. “I can only offer a tender reminder to be gentle with yourself or anybody else you might know who is working through unimaginable answers to difficult questions,” he says.
Molefi is a Soweto-born writer, documentary filmmaker, photographer and copywriter who lives in Johannesburg. The manuscript for Patient 12A was a finalist for the prestigious City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award in 2018, and the book is out in print this month.
Writer and award-winning social entrepreneur Gavin Weale describes Patient 12A as “brave, poetic, brutal, always honest”.
“By leading the reader through his chaotic childhood and immersing us in a mental health treatment centre, Lesedi forces us to confront conversations that are often hard to have. I was moved and challenged,” he says.
More than anything, in Patient 12A, Molefi allows himself to filter out the noise in his head to find the truth, however uncomfortable it may be. Read the excerpt below.
***
My eyes creak open slowly revealing what isn’t the ceiling of my apartment. Nor is it the stained ceiling in Kwakwa’s room. This ceiling is a clean and shiny white, with lightbulbs that sit like eye sockets on a smooth cardboard-like surface. The clinic.
This is not home. Zuri is not lying next to me. The single bed is comfortable, though narrow, and the white duvet is small but warm. The base is not broken through the middle like the one at home. My bed in Braamfontein boasts a small crater on its queen-sized surface. Zuri begs me every other day to buy one that doesn’t dip into the shape of a boat. Still, I call it my resting place. Unlike ‘The Crater’, this bed is firm. Assured.
There is scratching against the floor in the direction of the door, around the corner from my bed, where a short passageway leads past the toilet and into the rest of the institution. A nurse appears and stops abruptly.
‘Lesedi, please report to the nurses’ station for your medication after breakfast. And then you must go to the Art Room for orientation, neh?
‘Okay, sisi,’ I respond tamely.
Before my eyes can adjust to see the details of her face, she’s gone. The click of the door confirms her absence. It’s 08:07. The room is silent, save for the distant hum of voices coming from the direction that the nurse left in. People are active. They have spoken words and completed tasks.
***
There’s a long queue at breakfast. Finding my way from my bathroom to the kitchen was easy. I followed the smell of freshly made eggs until the sounds of plates clinking, movement and churning – like a classic factory floor – came within earshot. The kitchen is on the ground floor, to the left of the elevators and behind a double-sided door that leads into a large dining area. There are faces from yesterday’s gathering and Kevin walks with one of them to the buffet. I follow their example.
I’ve forgotten my earphones. There’s no way to drown out my surroundings or to ignore the beeps and baritone hum of hospital machinery. ‘You would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your neck,’ Mason likes to say to me. It’s going to be a long day. Minutes later, my breakfast lands on my plate.
The food is bland. My tongue can feel the load of boiled objects, but no indication of a cooking method. There’s no evidence of a recipe or the use of salt. I take chunks out of my plate anyway. My phone buzzes. It’s Phumlani. He’s coming to the clinic tonight for an AA visit and wants to know what to bring. Cigarettes! I respond via Facebook Messenger. And a chef.
It’s 09:45. Once I reach Group Room 3, a nurse closes the door gently behind me. It’s my first stay at a private clinic; they rarely close the door gently at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital.
The room isn’t large. It’s a perfect square and stretches eight metres in either direction. Unfamiliar faces turn towards me. There are about nine people sitting in a semicircle and in front of them stands a tall, black woman in a pink and orange frilly skirt and a tight top. She wears thick prescription glasses and welcomes me with a smile.
‘Hi, come in. I’m Thembi,’ she says, as she points to an empty seat. She hands me a pen and a worksheet. It feels like school: timetables, worksheets and double periods. I’m only staying for seven days, I decide, knowing I can survive nothing more. My seat is to the left of a greying, middle-aged Indian woman with a moonboot on her left leg. She’s on the edge of her chair and her right foot won’t stop tapping against the floor. Her nametag says ‘Farida’. My entrance happened in the middle of her sentence.
She continues, ‘So, how do I practise mindfulness when it makes me feel negative things?’
‘Finding your wise mind is about being able to look at things in a way that gives you time to assess what is fact and what is not. What is negative self-talk and what is not?’ says Thembi.
What the hell are they talking about?
‘For example,’ she continues, ‘perhaps you are mindful of the fact that no one invited you over for lunch. So, you think, “No one wants to have lunch with me”. But what evidence do you have of that?’
Thembi’s making no sense: if nobody invites you to lunch, they don’t want you at lunch.
‘In that scenario, you haven’t invited them out for lunch either. Others might think you don’t want to go out for lunch with them,’ she says.
The faces here resemble the ones I saw in the courtyard. Glazed over. Sunken. But this time, they’re patiently taking in cheesy self-help bullshit.
According to the worksheet, DBT stands for ‘Dialectical Behaviour Therapy’. It’s a type of cognitive therapy that teaches you to have a conversation with yourself as you experience events, in order to become more mindful of life as it happens.
Time moves quickly but is deathly silent inside this room. By the end of the session, more patients have asked more questions, but their voices and anecdotes grow to match the hum of the air conditioner. I could have used my sick leave to hit the beach instead.
I remember nothing. I have forgotten to listen. I have forgotten to be here. DM
Patient 12A will be launched on Wednesday, 14 August, at Exclusive Books Rosebank in Johannesburg.
Patient 12A by Lesedi Molefi is published by Picador Africa (R370). Visit The Reading List for South African book news, daily – including excerpts!
