Chapter 12
‘Miss Fielding?’
Someone is tugging at my arm, gently but insistently. ‘Miss Fielding, I just need to take you for a bronchoscopy.’
Oh no. Not that. Dr Chowdhury mentioned it yesterday, or was it the day before? The days bleed together in here, hours go by without you realising, then drag by until you want to grab them and concertina them all together so they go quicker.
I don’t like bronchoscopies. We’ll sedate you, they always say, but the sedation is never enough to mask the cold scope shoved down my throat, choking me, the suction through parts that sting with the pain of it.
It’ll help us see what’s going on down there, he says, and clear you out a bit more in the process, get rid of that deep seated stuff that refuses to budge with even the most violent percussion Dan has to offer.
That’s great, I say, as if I can’t wait, as if it’s a trip to the cinema.
As the porter wheels me out of the ward, I notice Violet lying still in her bed, an oxygen mask pressed over her face, which is devoid of its usual blotches of high colour.
‘She is very poorly,’ Amina says. ‘She was very sick in the night and could not breathe.’
I must have slept through it all.
Amina looks worried, her brows pinched as she watches Violet’s chest rising and falling too quickly. ‘She seemed so much better, yesterday. She was – how you say it – sprightly? She was saying she could go home soon.’
‘She has COPD,’ Kat puts in, and I immediately feel guilty that I don’t even know that, that I’d never bothered to ask. ‘She had Covid really badly too, last year, she nearly died and it made her COPD worse.’
‘Oh no,’ I say, staring at her, lying there in her polyester nightie, a blue waffle blanket tucked in around her, eyelids quivering, arms still at her sides, all exposed and pale and floppy.
‘We need to go.’ The porter pushes my chair out of the bay into the cool breeze of the corridor, and I brace myself for what is ahead.
???
My throat aches.
I’m taking a sip of some insipid hospital tea when Dan strolls in with a chart in one hand, pushing a walker with another. ‘Right, Penny! Hope you’re feeling energetic. We’re going to get you walking up the stairs today.’
I swallow and my throat is too small and I gag. ‘Just had… bronchoscopy.’
‘Ah, nice. You must be feeling nice and clear.’
‘Nice and sleepy.’ The sedation still hits me in waves.
It seems stronger than usual because I barely remember it, only the feeling of the cool scope hitting my throat, the feeling someone was trying to drown me, the desperate need to cough, to get it out of me, but then nothing.
I woke up back here in my bed tasting something metallic. There’s blood on my lips.
‘Ah no, cariad. It’s hours since you had it. Let’s get you up.’
‘You sound like thingy,’ I say blurrily.
‘Thingy?’
‘From Gavin and Stacey.’
He laughs. ‘You ready?’
No.
I teeter behind the walker, gripping on for dear life, fighting through the fog.
‘Good girl!’ Dan says, as if I’m a schoolgirl who’s just got all her spellings right.
I glance at Violet again on my way out, but she’s barely moved from her prone position, and her face seems whiter still.
I’ve not been very kind to her. What if… ?
The stairs stretch out before me, all concrete and frigid with cold, like the outside has nudged its way into the building and been made to feel too welcome. ‘Brrr,’ Dan says, hugging his arms round himself, ‘bit chilly in here, isn’t it?’
The stairwell is always cold, in summer and in winter, but just now the temperature feels too much, it feels like alien terrain impossible for me to traverse. The cold hits me in a stab of agony and I stumble.
‘Okay?’
I swallow and nod, clinging to the walker.
‘Righto. So, leave this here at the bottom and just hold on to the rail. Anytime you need to stop, then just tell me, we won’t go further than you can. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
He keeps hold of my arm as I pick up my foot and place it on the bottom step, grabbing hold of the cool metal rail. My leg shakes as I lift my other foot. One at a time. One foot on the step, drag other foot to the same step, rest a moment, next step. I can do this.
‘You’re doing well,’ Dan says, and I wonder where he gets his chipper patience from, that he can hang round cold stairwells with wobbly middle-aged women all day and never get frustrated.
It’s around the tenth step where the world starts to spin and my stomach churns as though I’m on Oblivion and going over the big drop. Not that I’ve had energy for Alton Towers for years.
‘Woah there.’ Dan grips hold of me as I sway, blood rushing to my head and pounding at my eyes.
‘I feel… faint…’
The world is black.
I’m collapsed on the stairs, Dan beside me, my head in my hands. ‘That’s it. Keep your head bent low. Give it a few seconds. Okay there?’
I breathe out. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be a daft bint. You have nothing to apologise for. I should probably have realised you still have sedative in your system.’
I breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.
‘Better?’
‘A bit.’
Dan waits with me in the frozen silence of the stairwell, the occasional door slamming above somewhere, clanging through the hollow air, raised voices echoing through from the corridor.
The institutional smell of lunch weaves around us, that particular hospital food smell, all boiled vegetables and overcooked meat.
My stomach lurches, and suddenly I need Jake and my home so bad I gasp.
When we get back to the ward I flop down on my bed, beaten. When will I ever have the strength to get out of here?
‘Never mind,’ Dan says. ‘Next time. You did really well, getting that far, you’ll be fine.’
‘Sorry I fainted on you.’
‘Will you stop apologising, woman?’
I lie back on my pillows and glance around the bay.
Amina is propped up reading a book, all serious eyes and rigid back.
Kat is asleep. Barbara is on her chair, staring at nowhere in particular, feet shod in her maroon slippers.
Jodie isn’t here. Violet’s curtains are closed and low voices emanate from her cubicle.
‘Violet, flower, let’s get you sat up for a bit of lunch, shall we?
You’re all clean and sorted now. It’s okay, lovely. It’s okay.’
I think Violet is sobbing.
???
Jake scrapes the chair noisily on the polished floor. ‘Oops, mum, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Hi, Jake.’
‘Nan asked me to tell you to get well soon,’ he says, clearly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat.
‘Did she?’
‘Yeah. She seemed to mean it.’
‘Right.’
‘And Grandad too. I mean, he didn’t say it or anything, but I can see it in his eyes, like, when I’m telling them how you are and all that.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Honestly, Mum. They do love you.’
‘Okay.’
I know they do, in their own way. We are our own little family, Jake and me, us against the world, but although my parents haven’t been easy, they’ve been there for me, taking care of Jake when I am in hospital, sending him presents for Christmas and birthdays, keeping up some semblance of happy families.
Jodie is back on her bed, scrolling through her phone. No sign of Kane this afternoon, thankfully. ‘You seen Violet?’ she says.
I look over at Violet’s bed. Except there’s no bed, just a gaping space where her bed should be.
I look at Jodie.
‘Don’t ask me. I was out for a fag and when I got back she’d gone.’
I swallow. ‘You don’t think…?’
‘Nah. Made of stern stuff, that one. She’d bite Death on the arse if he came visiting, tell him he was common as muck and to shove orf.’
Kat wanders over. ‘She’s just gone for an x-ray. She’s too poorly to sit up so they took her down in her bed.’
I exhale.
It’s funny. I don’t like Violet. Or at least I didn’t like Violet. But I want her to be okay. I need her to be okay.
‘I’ve been asking that nurse all afternoon for some morphine,’ Jodie says, flinching. ‘It’s like pulling teeth today, trying to get anyone to take any notice. I could be dying here, for all they know.’
‘Moan moan, whinge whinge,’ Jake says.
Jodie gives him a look.
Violet’s husband Brian walks into the ward, all rigid and stiff and drowning in his frown. ‘Where is she?’ he says to no one in particular.
Kat goes to him, whispers softly. He nods, his brow furrowing further, and sits on the edge of the chair in Violet’s bedspace, all abandoned and lost. His body is tense, wired as if he is going to snap any moment, his hands clasped together in his lap so tightly the whites of his knuckles are showing.
Kat drags a bucket chair up and sits with him, but they don’t talk.
She just sits, and he sits, and they wait together.
‘I hope she’s okay,’ I say to Jodie.
‘She will be. She has to be, because she’s got to come on this little trip.’
‘What trip?’ I say without thinking, then watch as Jodie’s face falls. ‘Oh. That trip.’
‘What trip?’ Jake says.
I shake my head at Jodie. ‘Nothing.’
Jake plugs his earphones in. I can hear the tinny music from here, and wonder how it doesn’t blast his skull apart.
‘You’re as bad as Kat.’ Jodie’s voice has a whiny tinge to it.
‘Kat?’
Jodie bends forward towards me, keeping an eye on Kat. ‘I told her about our plan.’
Our plan?
‘And she said it wasn’t a good idea.’
Well, it’s not, really.
‘But then I said, what if it’s Barbara’s only chance?
What if we are the only ones who can help a lonely old lady see the sea one last time?
And then she goes, well, maybe, but only if it’s all planned.
And I go yeah, it will be, and she says we should clear it with Sister Harris, and I go we’re not at school or in prison, we can do what we like. ’
I try to avoid her gaze.
‘You promised,’ Jodie says, all young and petulant.
Jake pokes his head between us. ‘What you two on about?’
‘Nothing,’ Jodie and I both say together.
Jake shrugs and goes back to his game.