[Buttons.]

Arriving at the hospital I fought hard against the urge to bolt. The two paramedics led me through a series of stale yet sterile smelling corridors until we arrived out our destination. The female paramedic wished me well and they left me sitting on a cold hard hospital bed with only my thoughts for company. Soon after they left a friendly looking nurse bustled over to me.

I felt a tad apprehensive of her approach, having found out the hard way that even the nurses who appeared the nicest did not always extend their kindness to those who had hurt themselves. When she spoke however, her voice was warm and friendly, she offered to get me a cup of water and for the first time ever for me when accessing A&E for self inflicted injuries, I was offered pain relief. I refused it, feeling as though as the pain crackling up and down my wrists was caused by my own doing, I didn't deserve to have pain medication wasted on me; however I was touched to have been offered it, and felt valued as a human being.

Eventually a nurse and doctor came over to examine my aching wrists. Prodding carefully at the wounds the doctor advised the nurse to attempt to steri strip to avoid extra scarring caused by stitches. Personally I felt the risks of stitches were outweighed by the benefits as steri strips seemed unlikely to hold the cuts together, but I remained silent, not wanting to stamp on the fragile respect I felt from the professionals.

The doctor left the nurse to patch me up but try as she might she couldn't get the wounds to close. By the time she admitted defeat and contacted a senior nurse to try, I was white as a sheet and sick with pain. The second nurse did succeed to streri strip most of my wounds and wrapped bandages tightly round, then added another lay as the cuts bled through the first, spreading like a disease.

I was sent to a medical ward to wait for an ambulance to take me back to the unit. I curled up in a chair, hugging my bandaged arms to my chest. In the gloom of the dimly lit sleeping ward I felt incredibly alone. The nurse on the ward didn't seem inclined to chat and appeared to be actively ignoring me. An hour or so later I managed to persuade the nurse to allow me to go out for a cigarette.

When I went out the back door I found a few nurses huddled under the only light. I asked to borrow a lighter, mine all having been removed from me at the unit. I accidentally pocketed the lighter out of habit and the nurse turned to me with suspicion and held out her hand for it, her gaze accusatory. I apologised and took long sweet drags off my cigarette.

When I returned inside, much to the relief of the now two nurses at the desk, one friendlier than the first, upon returning to my seat I found two girls sitting on seats beside mine. I returned to my chair and curled up in it again. The girls chatted softly, pausing only when an elderly lady, evidently confused, shouted or screamed from her room My heart ached for her and I remembered one of the most endearing patients from a ward I had worked on, who also suffered from confusion. She was the sweetest lady, quite small with big intelligent eyes, slightly dulled by dementia, who used to take my hand and lead me round the ward, telling stories about her former career and experience of the war.

I felt warmed by the memory and smiled a little myself. One of the girls caught my eye and smiled at me, so I smiled back. We gradually fell into conversation and I discovered that the quieter of the two girls had taken an overdose and her friend who now sat beside her had called an ambulance. They asked delicately abut my arms and honoured by their trust in telling me their own truths, I told them truthfully about the cause of my own injuries. The girl who had overdosed and I talked, I told her about mental health services and what to expect, then her and her friend helped calm me when panic threatened to engulf me. Her friend and I went out for more cigarettes, standing close together, hidden in a haze of smoke, talking as intimately as if we had known each other for years.

Returning once again to the ward the friendlier seeming nurse offered us all cups of tea, which we gratefully accepted. I could feel my anxiety building and self harm urges rekindling as I sat with too much time on my hands to think dark thoughts, but I resisted, focusing hard on calming my breathing and resisting the urge to go to the toilets and reopen my wounds. However as it turned out, I didn't need to hurt myself again, my body decided to do it for me.

As I reached out with my right hand for my cup of tea, I noticed a smear of crimson on the arm of the chair where I had just been leaning. Turning my arm over I discovered what I'd missed in the gloom-the bandage literally dripping with blood, completely soaked through by the cuts below it. I sat, frozen, not wanting to do anything or say anything about this unexpected gift. Unfortunately (as it seemed at the time) the friend of the over dose victim noticed, and when I refused to tell the nurse myself she went and had a word.

The nurse called me over and led me into a clinic room. Unwrapping the bandages we saw that the cuts were still bleeding, despite having been seen to hours ago. The nurse called the doctor, and he put different types of dressings over the wounds, though still, for some mysterious reason known only to him, didn't stitch, just wrapped bandage after bandage after bandage round my wrists. I felt sure they would bleed through again eventually but kept quiet. I wanted the blood loss. I craved pain.

A health care assistant with a round friendly face and soft eyes sat with me for a while, talking to me, trying to get me to see the world from a less bleak angle, but my mood had turned, and her words were all but wasted on me. She went to get me another cup of tea then catching my eyes drifting towards the trolley near me, subtly took hold of the sharp scissors that lay there, and pocketed them, before I could steal them away. I sighed, leaning back in my chair. Just another night gone by under the moonlight of self destruction.