Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kate
I Feel Love by Donna Summer
Time often passes in a blur on the ward. Minutes melt into hours and hours tick by in a blink when you’re hopping from emergency to emergency, mess to mess and terrible news to terrible news. But today, tonight, time is whizzing by for a very different reason.
Time is flying because we’re having fun.
Each song the DJ plays seems to get better and better, prompting louder and louder whoops from the boys, many of whom haven’t sat down once.
I have stopped glancing over at the DJ and trying to determine what he makes of this scene: an army of underweight men in pyjamas or hospital gowns shuffling on a dance floor and in between hospital beds and chairs that have been moved for those who only want to watch.
Sharon had told me he was the ninth DJ she called and the only one who was willing to work on an AIDS ward.
I suspect she paid him more than the going rate to be here, but he doesn’t look reluctant or under pressure.
He’s nodding his head and smiling at us all in between rummaging through his record box.
I have been dancing too. With the boys, with the other nurses and with Danny. At one point, he and I dragged Sharon out of her spectator’s chair next to Jonathan but barely five seconds later she claimed more water was needed and she disappeared.
“Not much of a dancer, our Shazza!” Danny called out to me.
“So I see,” I’d replied before taking his proffered hand and letting him spin me around to I Feel Love by Donna Summer.
Every few minutes, I’ve been sure to survey the ward in its entirety. Looking for potential problems, signs of dehydration or exhaustion, and checking nobody from management has appeared by some highly unfortunate fluke on a Saturday night.
But there hasn’t been any cause for alarm. There have just been smiles and laughter and singing and dancing. Just like there is now as I move to the side of the dance floor, needing to catch my breath, and yes, have another look around for possible issues.
In the centre of it all is Danny. He’s acquired another feather boa – a blue one – and there’s a bright purple Kangol beret on his head, backwards of course.
He’s moving to the music like he’s in his own little world.
Eyes closed, head flung back, lips mouthing the words.
The disco colours give his skin a warm glow and the hair and moustache trim Joanna gave him yesterday has him looking exactly how he should; young, smart, alive.
Watching him, I couldn’t stop the smile on my face from growing if I tried. It’s like meeting the real Danny for the first time. I often wonder what my patients were like before AIDS and here I am witnessing it play out right in front of me for Danny.
A quick glance at my wristwatch tells me we only have twenty more minutes left of the agreed time we booked the DJ for and I am adamant to get another dance with this happy young man who I already believed was the life and soul of any party, but now I want to enjoy it.
I want to enjoy being bathed in his illumination.
But then my smile drops.
I’ve seen this before. The glow. The light. The energy.
It’s the surge.
That inexplicable rush of alertness, awareness, aliveness that brings people back to life just days or even moments before they…
Die.
It’s like somebody has dumped a bucket of ice cold water over my body. I’m frozen in place, feeling bereft and shaking slightly.
Instinctively, my eyes roam the ward, looking for Sharon, like maybe I can somehow stop her seeing Danny like this and stop her from coming to the same realisation.
Not that I think Sharon even knows about the surge or about what end of life really looks like.
The chances are she has no clue, and yet, I still want to find her. I still want to make sure she’s okay.
Or perhaps, maybe, I want her to help me feel okay.
When I can’t see her anywhere obvious, I move so I can start searching for her in earnest, but the music suddenly changes. Gone is the synth and staccato rhythm of Donna Summer and instead, the ward is full with the slow drumbeat of Roxette’s It Must Have Been Love.
Oh God, the DJ is playing typical end-of-night love songs. Depressing end-of-night love songs. Exactly the kind of music terminally ill patients do not want to listen to.
I’m fixed in place again, unsure if I should rush to the DJ to get him to switch the music or if I should find Sharon. In the end, something else catches my eye and my full attention.
Pushed by Orla, Deepak approaches Danny who is stood in the middle of the dance floor, hands on his hips, looking both perplexed and a little pissed off at the change in music.
Deepak reaches out a hand slowly and tugs on Danny’s pink feather boa.
Grabbing Danny’s attention, he says something once Danny’s eyes are on him.
For a second or two, Danny just stares at Deepak, and a million possibilities of what Deepak asked run through my head. But when I see Deepak tap his lap and Danny start to smile, I realise I’d not thought of what Deepak really said.
He asked Danny to dance.
And by the looks of Danny’s slow-growing smile, he’s about to say yes.
I watch, transfixed, as a brief exchange occurs between them both and with Orla who, a second later, walks away with a very smug little grin on her face.
She catches my eye and winks, but I don’t look at her for long because my gaze is pulled back to Danny who is moving to sit on Deepak’s knee sideways.
His arms come to wrap around Deepak’s neck and then he retreats, only to arrange the feather boas around them both.
Deepak has one hand on the wheel of his wheelchair, and he moves it back and forth the smallest amount, not even close to being in time with the music, and I’m doubtful how long he can do it for because he’s lost a lot of muscle strength, but it’s enough to qualify as dancing.
Deepak’s other hand comes to rest on Danny’s leg and Danny stares down at it, his expression a perfect mix of shock and delight.
“What the fuck is the DJ—” Sharon’s voice is loud and hard-edged but then it disappears completely and I don’t need to turn and look to know it’s because she’s just spotted Danny and Deepak.
“Oh,” she says, much quieter.
“Yeah,” I say in complete agreement.
“And look at Harvey and Mr Fredericks,” Sharon says a moment later, and that finally pulls my gaze away from Danny and Deepak. She’s right. My two oldest patients are slow-dancing together too, their arms around each other’s waists, side-stepping on the spot.
“And Jonathan and Liam van Dijk” I point at them doing a much more professional-looking ballroom step I couldn’t name.
Liam had mentioned he used to do Gaelic dancing, but I never imagine he knew some ballroom.
Next to them, Orla and Joanna are also slow-dancing together, giggling and winking at the other couples around them.
They all look so happy. They look so free. They look…
“Shall we?” I turn to Sharon and find her hand with mine.
Sharon’s eyes drop to where my fingers are lacing with hers. “Dance?”
“Yes,” I clarify. “I promise you slow-dancing is nothing to be afraid of. It’s basically shifting your weight from one foot to another on the spot.”
“It’s not the dancing I’m…” She doesn’t finish her sentence until she looks directly in my eyes. “You want to?”
I know why she’s asking. She’s confirming that I’m happy to be seen in something close to an embrace with her.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that we’ve managed to avoid being caught the many times we’ve snuck into the Ladies or the linen cupboard, but it’s been unspoken that we don’t want anyone to find out.
“I don’t give a flying fuck what people will say or think. Unless…” I loosen my grip on her hand. “Unless you don’t want to, because of Danny.” I nod in his direction and she looks towards him.
“No, it’s okay,” she says eventually and she tightens her grip on my fingers. “Let’s dance.”
She pulls me into the space we made a dance floor and gets close enough to Danny that it attracts his attention. He watches Sharon pull me against her body and place her hands on my waist, and the most perfectly evil grin takes over his face.
“I fucking knew it!” He points at us as I lock my hands around Sharon’s neck.
“What?” Deepak says, a dreamy smile on his face, although I suspect it has nothing to do with us.
“They’ve been… cavorting in secret!”
“Cavorting?”
“Snogging, heavy-petting, shagging, fucking!”
“Say it a bit louder, why don’t you?” Sharon rolls her eyes. “I don’t think they heard you in Zone 4.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” he demands.
Sharon shrugs. “Did you tell me about all your illicit affairs?”
I shouldn’t feel like I’ve just been stung by a wasp. Not when Sharon’s hands are on my hips and her body is pressed up against mine and we’re moving together in a rhythm that is only ours. But I do. I do feel like the words ‘illicit’ and ‘affair’ just stabbed me right between my breasts…
“Every sordid detail,” Danny grins back.
“Whether I wanted them or not,” Sharon adds. I lean back to see she’s smiling now too and the ache in my sternum eases.
“You look good together!” Deepak says. He’s smiling harder than any of us, which is hard to believe if not to see. The man was closer to death than life less than a week ago.
Sharon’s fingertips dig into my hips a little harder and I rest my head on her shoulder.
The music changes – Sinead O’Connor’s haunting voice starts to sing Nothing Compares 2 U – and I suddenly don’t want to talk anymore.
I want us all to just keep dancing. I want Danny and Deepak to absorb whatever comfort and affection they can from each other for as long as the music plays and the disco lights glow.
I want the same for all the boys who are still on our makeshift dance floor.