Chapter 3
My colours have all been washed away and I want to swirl with them into a universe of nothingness.
In dreams I wear purple tights and short flowery dresses that flow loose and make me skip through blue skies with rainbow clouds.
In dreams I don’t hide my colours but in life I wear black leggings and grey jumpers and they help me to not take up space.
Once I bought some purple tights and Marcus told me I was ridiculous and then I threw them away.
Now my colours have faded, and I can’t grab hold of the edges of them anymore; there is a black hole underneath me and it looks like all the clothes I wear, and it is dragging me down, and I don’t want to resist anymore.
But then Jake’s face is there, and he is holding all the colours with him, and I have to fight for them.
???
In the middle of the night I’m wide awake.
A young Filipino healthcare assistant called Ernesto has been taking my observations every hour because my sats are too low and they are worried about me, he says.
He is short and wiry, the vital signs trolley towering over him as he trails it around the ward, wheels squeaking like a disgruntled seagull on every turn.
He has a smile like sunshine in the rain.
A new patient is arriving, the same porter who brought me to the ward pushing her bed into the bay and winking at Ernesto, who grins back at him and grabs the front of the bed.
They pull her in next to me, and I stare at her.
She’s not much older than me but looks a bit scary; all nose piercings and purple hair and tattoos crawling over her arms and neck.
Her eyes are dark pools of exhaustion, like everyone else’s in here, including most of the staff.
Jodie is up on her feet in seconds with her cigarettes tucked in the pocket of her dressing-gown, her oxygen cylinder trailing behind. ‘Hey,’ she says to the new woman. ‘Nice tats.’
‘Thanks,’ the woman says, her voice worn.
‘I’m Jodie,’ Jodie says, and I wonder what it is about this Jodie, that she needs to announce herself so quickly, that she wants everyone to know who she is.
She’s unlike most patients I meet in here, people who just want to sleep the days away until release.
She’s loud and crass and I don’t want to know her.
I want her to go away and leave me alone. I want everyone to leave me alone.
‘Kat,’ the tattooed woman says, and turns her back to us, coiling herself up into a tiny ball.
I can read the pain on her, see it in the stiffness of her body, in the set of her shoulders.
Her hospital gown is open at the back, the tie loosened, and through the opening a large tattoo of what looks like a phoenix is visible.
Jodie whistles. ‘Woah. Must’ve hurt.’
Kat doesn’t respond.
A shock wave of agony snakes through my body, intensifying in waves with every breath. I call out to Ernesto, a thin reed of a call, but he doesn’t hear.
I pinch the skin on my arm and button my lips together.
Stop bothering them, Penny. Stop making their lives more difficult, those nurses who work tirelessly, battling through twelve-hour-shifts with little break, hardly off their feet.
I want to be a nurse, to have a body that will stay on its feet for twelve hours.
I want to be a Tesco checkout girl or an packer, a teaching assistant or a lorry driver. I want to be anything at all.
I will squeeze my eyes tight and lie as still as I possibly can because that helps just a little bit. Maybe if I lie still enough I will disappear altogether, stop taking up this bed and let it go to someone more worthy.
???
Doctor Chowdhury is standing at the foot of my bed, clutching an iPad, with stooped shoulders and his most pitying gaze levelled at me.
I know that look; it’s the one that shouts out this-is-not-good-Penny, but his tones are calm and measured as he relays the damage.
‘It’s the big three again, like last time, I’m afraid. The Unholy Trinity.’
I am empty. I am numb. He does not tell me what I do not already know.
‘Pseudomonas, some heavy growth there. Aspergillus. Mycobacterium abscessus, again. Thought we’d seen that one off last time.’ He smiles gently, as if he is making a little joke.
‘Oh.’ I’m sorry, I want to say. I am sorry for being such a fertile breeding ground.
‘You know why we call these the Unholy Trinity, don't you?’
I shrug.
‘Bacteria, fungi and mycobacteria, all three conspire to do more damage to your lungs.’
‘I know.’ I do know. They are my friends.
I have made them a nice, warm home to hang out in over the years, and they are reluctant to leave.
Just when we think one has been successfully evicted, it pops up again, laughing in my face.
Marcus would say I don’t try hard enough to kick them out the door.
‘We’ll do our best with these IVs. They’re the big boys. We should review your anti-fungals, too.’ He taps his pen against his mouth and gazes at me. I don’t want him to gaze at me. He has more important patients to see. Patients who are dying.
‘You are brave,’ he says unexpectedly, and I dig my nails into my palms. He doesn’t know how I get under my duvet and pinch myself at night, to try to make myself cry, because the tears are there in my throat and they push at me until I think I will burst into pieces.
He doesn’t know I scream at the sky and at God or whoever is up there.
He doesn’t know that I am really a coward.
‘Your infection markers are very high, still, and we are not happy with your oxygen saturations or your temperature. We’ll repeat the x-ray later to see if we need to put in a chest drain after all.’
Not a chest drain. Please not a chest drain.
‘Is your cannula okay?’
I hold out my hand. They put it in the wrong place; it’ll be blown within hours. Dried blood crusts around the site and it stings deep.
‘I’ll ask the nurse to do you a new one,’ he says.
???
At lunch time, a catering supervisor I don’t recognise slams a tray down on my table. ‘Dinner,’ she says, walking away.
‘Wait.’ My voice is a weak croak. ‘Sorry. I’m vegetarian. Sorry.’
She gawks at me as if I am an alien from another planet. ‘It’s fish,’ she says, slowly, as if I am hard of thinking.
‘Sorry. It does say, up there.’ I point to the board on the wall behind my bed. VEGGIE scrawled in great black shouty letters. It could as easily say PICKY or DIFFICULT. That’s what Marcus thought about my food habits, anyway.
She stares at the word as if it is written in a foreign language. ‘But it’s fish.’
I sigh. ‘Fish is not vegetarian.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘All the other vegetarians eat fish. No one else ever complains.’
I have been veggie for much of my life. I think I know what constitutes vegetarian. But I don’t. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugs and walks away, and I’m left filled with self-rancour and nausea at the offending fish on the plate I will not touch.
‘I’ll have it,’ Jodie says, up from her bed and hanging over my table. ‘I’m hungry and this dinner is far too small. I’ll eat anything, me. Well, apart from hospital food.’ She laughs, her whole belly shaking like a jelly.
Amina says, ‘Can I have the food?’ On her table is a tray with pork chops and overcooked, mushy broccoli. ‘I must not eat this pig.’
Jodie raises her eyebrows at me.
‘You have a problem with this?’ Amina says.
Jodie shakes her head. ‘Nah. Just… I think you should get to make your own choices, that’s all.’
Amina says nothing. Jodie shrugs, takes the fish to Amina and the plate of pork back to her own bed.
I wasn’t hungry anyway. The nausea still churns through my stomach like a washing-machine on its spin cycle.
Barbara doesn’t have the mask on today. Nicki is sitting with her, spoon-feeding her yoghurt and chatting away. ‘You’re doing well today, lovely, aren’t you? We’ll have you home in no time! The doctor’s pleased with you, isn’t he?’
Barbara dribbles yoghurt down her chin. Nicki scoops it up, spooning it back in. ‘Come on, flower, you need to get your strength back, don’t you?’
Barbara pushes the spoon away. ‘Did you see the mouse?’
‘No, Barbara, I told you, no mice in here.’
‘There’s rats.’ Barbara’s voice is a low growl of anger.
‘No rats, either.’ Nicki casts a sideways glance back at Jodie.
‘I have to go to the sea to find her.’
‘Find who, petal?’
‘Do you not listen, woman? My MOUSE.’
Nicki scoops more yoghurt into Barbara’s wide gape of a mouth, and Barbara splutters.
‘Come on, get this down you. Stop worrying yourself about rodents, my lovely.’
Barbara is quiet and obedient for the remainder of the yoghurt.
When Nicki has left the bay, Barbara sits bolt upright and points over at me with a wizened, crooked finger, as if she is accusing me of something. Jodie follows her gesture and sits forward. ‘What you doing, Babs?’
‘You’ll take me there, won’t you?’ Barbara says, her watery eyes still on me, finger quivering.
I don’t know what to say.
‘You have to take me. You have to.’ Her voice is rising in volume.
Jodie throws off her blanket and goes to Barbara. She takes her hand. ‘It’s okay, chicken. It’s okay.’
‘You take me,’ Barbara shouts in Jodie’s face, droplets of yoghurt spraying over her hair. ‘You get me to the sea. You will, won't you?’
‘Shh,’ Jodie says. ‘We will. I promise we will.’
Barbara grips Jodie’s hand tightly between hers.
Even from here I can see the translucency of her skin, mottled and veiny and stretched so taut I wonder if it might rip to shreds any moment and the bones all spill out.
She leans in closer to Jodie and says something in a raspy croak.
I think it might be something like, ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got left in the world now. ’