Chapter 5
I am nice Penny.
I am Penny who says yes to everything, because I cannot be a person who lets others down.
Like when I said yes to joining the Parent Teacher Association and got mercilessly sucked into the life of a mum that does school things.
I baked a thousand cakes, took meticulous minutes of long and pointless meetings, and organised discos for overexcited children who got high on all the sweets I got cheap from Costco and then traumatised the dazed-looking DJ with their squealing and squalling.
I was swiftly promoted to vice chair, but never chair, because Lucinda Williams would never dream of relinquishing her power.
Then I got myself voted onto the governing body and sat through endless meetings where I said yes to a lot of things I did not understand.
I said yes to going on courses about safeguarding and British Values and then had to give presentations at the full governing body meetings to scary people who sat and judged my poor communication skills.
But I was reliable, for a time, so I got asked and asked again, until I started being unreliable.
I sent my apologies to meetings and school trips I’d been earmarked for as an extra adult to herd reluctant Year Fives around the Botanic Gardens or eager Year Ones around the Farm Park.
I berated myself then; why did I ever sign up?
Why did I ever think this would be different, that I would cope, that I would suddenly magically be well enough?
I resigned and watched as a look of relief crossed the headteacher’s face and disapproval blazed in Lucinda Williams’ eyes.
I am nice Penny who wants to please, and I am disappointing Penny who always lets you down.
I can be nice Penny in hospital, though, without the pressure of performance.
I’m the helpful patient, that kind and polite one who doesn’t shout at them or spit in their faces.
I don’t tell them that their laziness is a complete disgrace, like Violet did to a healthcare assistant in the night.
I can be different. I can make their job easier.
And then, maybe, they won’t notice me too much.
This morning I spot Dr Chowdhury making for my cubicle flanked by a group of what can only be medical students.
Incredibly young, fresh faces set with keen enthusiasm woven with edges of fear, clinging their iPads close to their chests and almost drooling in the wake of this renowned consultant who is deigning to allow them in his presence.
They squeeze together at the bottom of my bed and smile hopefully at me. Dr Chowdhury clears his throat and sweeps his hand towards them. ‘Good morning, Penny. These are some of my trainee doctors. Would you mind if they had a chat with you and examine you?’
I can hardly say no, can I, not with them hanging on his words like excited puppies, squished into my cubicle.
Not when I don’t know how to say no, even when I just want to sleep.
Barbara called all night for the nurse, crying about the rats and the mouse, and Violet was angry.
‘Will someone please shut that woman up?’ Kat wept in her bed and asked for morphine that didn’t come.
My own pain was worse through the early hours, the burden of it pressing me into the bed like a brutal version of sleep paralysis.
I nod at Dr Chowdhury, and he yanks the curtains round their rails, shutting us off from the ward, enclosing us in a blue cave. Too small.
He turns to the students. ‘I’d like you to ask Miss Fielding some questions. Diagnose her. Tell me what is wrong with her.’
What is wrong with me. If only they could actually diagnose all of the wrongs-with-me.
Dr Chowdhury smiles at me. ‘Penny. If you wouldn’t mind, please don’t reveal your condition. Just try to answer their questions and see if they can get it.’
I nod again, sit myself up more, wish I’d got myself dressed and washed and respectable.
Wish I’d brushed my hair, brushed my teeth, brushed the ravages of the night off me.
They must be thinking about how awful I look.
Their eyes tell the tale of their judgment or maybe their incomprehension of me, out of their privilege of health and youth and beauty.
Can’t this woman make a bit of an effort?
‘Are you in pain?’ A boy who looks about fourteen years old stares at me, blue eyes bright and intense, an echo of ginger fuzz shading his chin and top lip.
I don’t wish to dignify that with an answer so I just nod. I’m like that dog in the advert. Nod, nod, nod. I’ll nod myself right over and fall flat on my face.
A girl with a hijab and dark, intelligent eyes opens her iPad and opens her mouth. Takes a deep breath. Closes it. Opens it again. ‘So, what brought you into hospital?’
An ambulance, I so want to say, feeling a smile playing at my mouth.
But I will be good. I will scatter enough clues and yet not too many.
This is a familiar scenario, an oft repeated tableau, hey guys, here’s an intelligent and articulate and fairly young person with a rare disease.
Perfect for those trainees to cut their teeth on.
Go on, ask her, she’ll say yes, she’s compliant, she’s nice.
‘I had chest pain and more sputum than usual. And just general aches in my body, temperature, low sats.’
They gaze at me as if I’m an attraction at the zoo. I can just imagine the cogs turning in their heads. She knows the lingo, they're thinking. She’s not new to this. She’s probably a chronic case.
Hijab girl says, ‘And what colour is your sputum?’ The others stand there like fishes out of water, like they have no voices of their own.
‘Dark green. Some brown. Streaks of blood.’
They tap furiously at their tablets, as if taking down highly important notes in a lecture.
‘And would you say you were breathless?’ the boy with the fuzz says.
Well look at me now, I want to say. Look at my oxygen tube and the colour of my skin. Nice and blue. What do you think?
‘Yes,’ I say.
They shift uncomfortably, taking tiny glances at one another as if to encourage someone to pick up the baton. A tiny girl with huge glasses and vivid red lipstick swallows and steps forward slightly, eyes on Dr Chowdhury. ‘Is she asthmatic?’
Dr Chowdhury stands with arms crossed and expression inscrutable. ‘Don’t direct your questions at me. Penny is a person.’
The girl shakes her head as colour floods her cheeks. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Dr Chowdhury. Um… Pen… Miss Fielding, do you suffer from asthma?’
‘No,’ I say. She nods fiercely then steps back into the shadows as if her work is done.
The girl with the hijab takes up the challenge. She’s the confident one here, the one who’s going to go far. ‘What medication are you on?’ she says, her finger hovering over her iPad.
I take a breath and it stabs me hard. ‘Do you want the whole list?’ She nods. ‘It might take a while.’
‘That’s okay.’ She smiles at me.
I begin to count on my fingers. ‘Well… carbocisteine.’
A young man who hasn’t said anything yet says, ‘Could you spell that, please?’
I sigh.
At the end of my list most of them don’t look any the wiser.
Fuzz-boy’s face is crinkled in a deep frown and glasses girl stands with her finger on her mouth, staring into space.
Spelling boy looks like he wishes he was taking no space up at all, like he is an awkward add on. Only hijab girl is clued in.
‘Do you have cystic fibrosis?’
Dr Chowdhury smiles. ‘Continue,’ he says. ‘Close. Ask her about her history.’
She blushes. ‘Of course. Sorry. Uh… Miss Fielding, can you tell me about how you were as a child? Have you been ill for a while?’
‘Since I was a child. About five or six.’ I stop to take a breath and they’re there, hanging on, as if my words will rescue them. ‘I caught whooping cough, and well, since then really things got worse.’
Things got worse. It sounds so understated, so run-of-the-mill, not like something that has blighted my life since in ever-increasing ways.
‘Is it chronic bronchitis?’ the clued-in girl says.
None of them have got it. None of them ever get it.
The consultant fills them in on what’s really wrong with me, the rare disease very few have heard of, then lays into them in his gentle yet deadly style.
They should have introduced themselves to me, he says.
Should have greeted me, asked me how I was feeling, treated me like a human being.
They are meek and hangdog, staring at the floor, cheeks flamed with their humiliation.
Dr Chowdhury laughs at their confusion. ‘You’ll learn,’ he says, and I know they will, with him as their mentor.
Dr Chowdhury tells me the chest drain isn’t necessary after all, and relief washes over me. But I might need another manual drain tomorrow, depending on the fluid levels.
That’s fine, as long as he doesn’t ask one of his students to do it.
???
In afternoon visiting, Jake is here again and so are Amina’s sons, and her husband, too.
I look at him and wonder how two such tiny people produced four such great big hulks of sons.
One of them pulls the curtain, shutting off Violet, who tightens her mouth so much her lips might crack and shatter into tiny dried-out pieces.
Jodie greets Jake like he is a long-lost friend, and Jake makes fun of her slippers.
‘Did you kill some poor bunnies for those?’
‘Funny.’
‘Is that useless boyfriend coming in?’ Jake says, and I stare daggers at him.
Jodie seems unruffled, as she does by most things. ‘He should be. And I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll have a right laugh about that.’
I bet he won’t.
Jake is morose today with me, flicking at crumbs on my bed and huffing and sighing.
‘What’s up with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t lie, Jake. What is it?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Nothing. Just leave it.’
But I can’t leave it. You can never leave it, see, when you’re a mother and your child is in pain. You press and you push and sometimes you take it too far.
???