All stories

It’s 12.43.

Sun streams through the window and I know from the ‘I’m sorry’ look in your eyes that this will be the last time I see you. I take in the room to make the moment more vivid; the smell of the margarine on the sandwiches, the flowers on the side, your kind and patient mouth. I’m astonished at how you’re able to stay in control despite the frantic energy of the hospital, the constant beeping, the people rushing in and out. Your kindness and the stillness you have brought to my world has left you silhouetted in my mind.

But these are the facts, the infection is deep in the lungs and the heart is too old and weak. After a point there is nothing left to do. We had agreed an advance decision to prevent resuscitation.

I had tried to insulate myself by insisting you not refer to them as ‘my’ lungs but the lungs, not ‘my’ heart but the heart. You told me that no matter how I dress it up it the facts are the facts. I see the knit wear by the side of the bed, you look at it too, a present that will never be worn.

You tell me it will be OK, that there will be no more pain, but how do you know? Pain and fear are everywhere. They are in the faces of everyone who has passed through this ward, fear for what happens next, pain that the morphine can’t stop. For all you know this pain will be eternal. I’m angry at you then, and I find I don’t have the words.

The sun continues to stream through the window. We are next to each other, the light reflecting off stethoscopes and IV bags.

My life is now run to the the rhythm of the cardiac monitor, every second punctuated by beeping. A visitor, I can’t remember who, had tuned their string to the note.

‘It’s a B! Isn’t that amazing?’

Don’t you know that this is not about you? That this is not an open mic night? That a heart monitor is not a fucking tuning fork? Your smile, the same then as it is now, brings me back to the present and as the beep of the monitor slows, I am ashamed to say I cry. The thought crosses my mind to beg you to reverse the advance decision, to exchange the pain and humiliation of cracked ribs and plastic tubes for more time, but you just look into my eyes, mop my brow and stay with me in silence.

…

…

I gather myself.

‘It’s 12.55. Time of death is 12.55.’

I feel guilty then, for having stayed so long when there are others to see, then I feel guilt about the guilt.

I was prepared for losing my first, theoretically speaking, and when they told me it would hurt I had assumed it would not, that I’d have the ability to see you as a number.

But the love and kindness you showed me destroyed my ability to think of your lungs as ‘the lungs’ or your heart as ‘the heart’, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

I look at your limp silhouette in the streaming sunlight and I etch it in my mind.

It was another busy morning at the busy teaching hospital, Our Blessed Lady of the Holy Shoehorn of Saint Giles. Sandwiched between the radiology department and centre for iffy genital rashes was a desolate courtyard. Winona was here.

She was crying again. Silent tears coated her lashes and crept for freedom between her fingers. As her hunched shoulders rocked so the dandelion clocks of her hair shivered in time with the beat. Her boots scuffed his floor but he didn’t care. Today it was her Thursday socks that rose from the scarlet leather, twin tubes of purple climbing almost to knees that peeked from beneath the hem of a dress cut from rainbows. She was a slash of colour in this drab place, yet all they wanted was to drag her down to their world of beige and shoes with tall heels.

He would watch them in the cafeteria, see them call to her with their smiles.

‘Oh, please tell me where you got that outfit.’ Then see them whisper - (‘So I can go firebomb that shop.’)

And as she took their prompting and spun for them so did the plaudits follow.

‘You made that chunky knitwear yourself?’ (Made it in the dark did you?)

‘Oh, I think it’s perfect!’ (For a time travelling hippy.)

‘And that hair, well, it’s so, it’s so...’ (...so long boyfriend.)

She sat on the top of the steps, spirit hunched along with her body. He watched from his place in the shadows, peering between the crack he had eased between the basement doors. He clutched his mop, spinning the handle between his palms, not caring as the head danced and brought damp to his trouser legs and chaos to the floor he had cleaned.

Behind the wilted flower was her dark shadow, black eyeliner and skintight black leggings despite the sunshine. Comfort was needed yet all this friend could muster was a bored look and a tissue at the ready. Yet even as he cursed he loved her. She was the reason that he lurked, she was the reason he did not leave his cave and climb the steps to offer comfort. She was the reason, not the way his knees withered and his stomach trembled at the thought of it.

When they were gone he emerged blinking in the sunlight, wary lest other students notice him. The echoes of her sadness were fading from the concrete, the surface of the droplets puckering as they sank from view. It was a message for no one else. He raised his mop, and then he paused. It was the mop that travelled with him everywhere. To the labs where the caged animals sprayed their filth, to the medical rooms where the fresh young butchers emerged screaming, the afterbirth their last meal laid over the floor.

From the breast pocket in his overalls he took a packet of tissues. He laid one down over the fading tears, careful that his fingers handled only the very edges as he pulled it tight. Her sorrow pressed itself upwards, instant pinpricks that rushed and then swelled into fat circles. He folded the tissue and wrapped it inside two others before stowing it carefully in the pocket next to his heart.

He stood guard with his mop, waiting for the sun to finish the job.

Grey Cardboard boxes filled with an old man’s wee. Dad woz ere!

Still is! Laughing and joking.

You old devil- says mum - you’ll outlive the rest of us.

A middle aged Irish nurse in a faintly unhygienic looking cardi coughs into her hand. I sometimes think about all those Germs hanging in the air in hospitals however careful you are.

She talks to him like he’s a baby, - eat up all your sandwich now there’s a good boy!

He looks at it with an infant’s face of distaste.

They’ll keep him in for a few more days to make sure it’s all ok, then he’ll be home annoying mum as always. -Getting under her feet.

He’ll get another 95% of his self-respect back at home but that 5 will lost be permanently gone, like the 5 that left when he had to give up playing football, the 5 gone when he retired and the 5 he lost when he got demoted from the first team at bowls club. Given smaller things like the mugging and the time he wet himself on the way back from The Legion he’s probably on about of total 60% self-respect now. Still enough that it doesn’t show in his face unless you know him.

All in all not too bad for 75. But I have to remember to talk to him when he comes home, to remind him we haven’t forgotten he was a breadwinner and a good dad and someone to be respected and as children, even slightly feared. And to subtly convey, whilst still appearing to think of him as a demi-god, how proud I am that he has taken the reduction of circumstances with cheery good grace.

He’s got a cough but then he did smoke for most of his life. He’s alright though, he’s pretty happy all things considered and this heart thing apart, pretty healthy too.

We leave via four wrong turnings and the main concourse. The kid’s phones come out as we walk. Nikita by Elton John emanates from the Hospital Radio booth.

In the concourse we go into WHSmiths to buy quavers and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Mum wanted them. No idea why. To eat probably.

Then we take her back to her house in Coryton and say we’ll collect her on Friday to pick him up.

When Friday comes we had a call about some minor complications, the cough is worse and you can’t be too careful.

They’re keeping him in over the weekend, nothing to worry about.

I speak to mum on the phone, we won’t visit this weekend but I’ll take the day off on Monday then I can pick her up on the way to collect him from The Heath. She’s fine.

So now it’s the Monday and these things have happened.

Johnson has announced a complete lockdown. Mum has to isolate for the foreseeable. The kids are trying to explain to her how to get on Houseparty. There’s nothing else to do for now. I’ll try to call him later but you know what old men are like on the phone.

Also, the hospital has said there are further complications and we can’t visit. Dad’s cough has got worse. They aren’t sure yet but yes, I reckon it might be that.

I have mixed feelings about hospitals. I know that most people hate them, hate the smell, hate the associations the place forces them to remember; the awful night Grandpa died, the time they fell off something tall and were kept in overnight for observation. The uncomfortable visits with friends on the maternity ward to meet their pink, squealing offspring for the first time

But for me, there’s something almost appealing about that antiseptic blandness, masking a darker story, tucked just out of sight. I always enjoyed the anonymity of being one person in the midst of all that bustle and bother, wandering down to fetch yourself a Marks and Spencers packet sandwich and a cup of watery tea and singling out faces in the crowd: what’s their story? Why are they here? What’s hidden behind that blank, neutral expression? Shock? Boredom? Fear? Excitement?

It can be soothing to sit there, still and watchful as people hurry around you, heads full of their own thoughts and worries. Wondering what theirs are can help you forget about your own. For a while.

Of course there are the staple extras in the crowd. You could play hospital bingo. The woman with the bag of wool that’s destined to become shapeless knitwear for some unwary relative - she’s usually in for the long haul and has cultivated a stoical, no-nonsense expression and knows the cleaners’ names by heart.

There’s the bored teenager on her phone, knowing she needs to show at least a degree of sensitivity, but seriously, they’ve been here for like two hours and there’s practically no wifi.

There are families, bustling and smiling, in for a quick visit - long enough for the kids to delight and charm the patient, but off again quick before they get bored and start showing their true pain-in-the-arse colours.

And the cleaners themselves, who move in packs, armed with mops and gloves and pink disinfectant spray. Brutally efficient, throwing out greetings to the regulars and moving fast through the crowds with quick, practised movements.

The exhausted, wonderful doctors and nurses, if they can grab a second to themselves to snatch a sandwich or a packet of crisps. They always deal with such terrible things, but can usually manage a smile for anyone

Everyone works hard to keep their faces as blank as they can, not wanting to end up in anyone else’s story, or else too busily wrapped up in their own.

And then, as the daylight begins to fade and visiting hours draw to a close there is a final surge, a crush of people, no longer carrying their flower and balloons and bags of sweet treats, all hurrying home. There’s the kids to get to bed, the tea to cook. Work in the morning and maybe back here again tomorrow, maybe not.

And then, when the atrium has nearly emptied and the cleaners have removed all traces that those crowds were ever here at all, I stand up, alone with my own story again. My phone is pinging and vibrating like crazy and I need to get to whatever meeting it is I’m almost missing.

The hospital won’t run itself you know.

It was my sixth day back in hospital and all around was bedlam, which was inconvenient, given the problem I was having. Eddie had been missing since breakfast, possibly before, but it was only after I’d choked down the tepid assault of porridge that I noticed.

I tried to communicate the situation immediately, but when I opened my mouth all I could force out was the same incoherent wail which always appeared. Hungry, wail; itchy, wail; lonely, wail; shat myself, wail. If it’s language which separates us from beasts, I don’t see why I couldn’t have been born fully evolved from the start, instead of this insufferable period of ‘growing into it’, as if being human were badly scaled knitwear from a well-meaning but slap-dash grandparent. Speaking of which, where were they now? It’d been visiting time for fifteen minutes, and I required assistance. Sure, they’re always on hand to pinch a cheek, or pretend to have disappeared behind their own hands. I usually can’t get the tobacco stained geriatrics to leave me alone. I’ve literally voided my bowels on them and achieved nothing but an ‘oh deary me’ and a disease ridden danger hug with hands they think they’ve somehow disinfected by the cursory grazing of a wet-wipe.

Usually, even the inept sirens which ushered from my vocal cords would have been enough to catch the attention of a tired-eyed nurse, or drag a passing cleaner from their mop, earning me opportunity to attempt a desperate round of charades. Whatever had caused this disarray better be important, I understand this place has to handle emergencies, but if anything less than war is keeping my clammy paws from the soft fur of my bear, then there is going to be a strongly worded letter, just as soon as somebody teaches me to write.

I realised I was going to have to take matters into my own hands, and began kicking my stumpy legs against the sheets until I managed to get enough purchase to slide off the bed. My podgy limbs hit the floor with a slap, my cries becoming immediately louder and more pathetic, which would have been embarrassing if anyone were actually listening.

I scuttled a distance, then rolled onto my back to rest. That’s when I saw it, the fuzzy brown triangle sticking out from the edge of the portable table above - Eddie’s ear! My heart swelled in excitement and a ridiculous giggle bubbled from my slobbering mouth. I manipulated my position and rolled back, snapping my chubby leg straight and delivering a kick to the table. It juddered, but not enough. I kicked again, and again, and finally it worked. The pale brown object rocked, then fell directly toward me. I held out my arms to welcome Eddie Bear home, blinking my eyes in anticipation.

Then it hit me, right on my forehead, exploding into its component parts and spreading around the floor. A slice of tomato here, cucumber there, a malodorous stain of tuna sliding down my cheek, and the soft brown bread which I’d thought was Eddie’s ear, bouncing hopelessly away.

And there I lay, clobbered by someone else’s discarded sandwich, screaming through snotty sobs, oblivious legs hurrying around me, thinking just how much I could do with the comfort of Eddie Bear right now.