The first time I saw Faye in anything less than her perfect, controlled, poised demeanour was in our final year of physical therapy school. We were on surgical placement, almost at the end of our academic year, and the hospital was short-staffed and thrilled to have students free up their caseloads. It had been a gruelling week of rehabbing very ill patients, liaising with their anxious family members and trying not to step on anyone's toes while navigating through endless shifts. I was grateful that Faye and I were posted together.
We'd been best friends through school, but there's something irrevocably binding about surviving together in the trenches, which, in our case, was a sanitised hospital ward with glaring white lights and the smell of antiseptic and bleach, commandeered by our equally tired clinical supervisors.
It was the end of our shift, and I was looking forward to getting a coffee with her and discussing her thoughts on the mystery novel I'd lent her. After half an hour of unsuccessfully searching for her, I checked the on-call room just in case Faye had dozed off after her shift. I'd heard from one of the nurses that Dr. Priya had been uncharacteristically hard on her. That was unusual because Faye was a happy, golden student to everyone – she wasn't just smart but determined to a fault. She once motivated an entire elderly ward to get up and groove to Dancing Queen. Sure, some patients got mild wheezes later, but we dealt with that. What mattered was how happy that day was for all of them.
I peeked through the tiny circular window of the on-call door. She had her head in her hands and was sobbing uncontrollably. I had seen Faye break down before, but not like this. Just like other things in her life, her breakdowns were orderly and neat and never where she could be found easily by other people. She'd schedule what she called her 'crying time' for maximum efficiency on busy days.
I went inside without a beat, knowing she wanted to be found today. I asked Faye if it was Dr Priya giving her a hard time. She said no one could give her a harder time than her own mind. That everything hurt – her feet, her hands, her head, her chest. She said existing felt like another chore on her meticulous list of things to do. She said she needed to schedule longer cry hours regularly now. One of the nurses had complained that she was negligent, taking extended coffee breaks.
I wish someday medical textbooks had guidelines on comforting your best friend at their most vulnerable, but back then, they could only tell you the signs of depression. Faye had been so collected and ‘happy’, so full of enthusiasm even in the bleakest surroundings, that I never thought that her obsessive need for order and perfection, her low moods, could be a cry for help.
We'll figure it out, I told her. I started accompanying her after shifts to her therapist's office. When she eventually started taking antidepressants, we threw a little ‘mental health party’, where we arranged Faye's books in order of height and colour and played cards ‘til late into the night. Navigating through work was slightly harder; we confided in some of our colleagues to get her extra support. 'Coffee break’ slowly became a call sign for when she wasn't feeling like herself. And it eventually became a code name for any staff needing a time-out or a brief cover. It was a sign that there was help available and that we all struggle, some more than others.
We graduated and moved across the country to work in different specialities. Still, after all these years, ‘coffee break’ is our sign to drop everything and get on call if we need each other.
Faye works as part of a mental health team today. She loves treating patients and when she's not converting them to ABBA fans, she leads her team and is in a position to make policies for change in her workplace, her latest: mental health breaks for healthcare workers and peer support groups. She sent me a photo of their first group meeting yesterday. People in scrubs, tired but smiling. The words on the wall behind them caught my eye and made me smile too – 'Sometimes hope can come in the form of a friend knocking on the door’.