Chapter 13
Dr Chowdhury has arranged a CT scan for me.
‘I’m a little worried about the damage to your lungs from all these recent infections,’ he says.
His medical students are with him today, all big, scared eyes and tensed up brows, watching his every move.
‘And with this latest pneumonia, and all your little friends down there.’ He chuckles, and his students stare at him as if they haven’t got any idea what he is talking about.
‘I had one a couple of years ago,’ I say.
‘I know. I have it here. I want to compare it, to see how we’re doing with treating you.’
‘Oh. Okay. Thank you.’
‘They should be here for you shortly.’
I know what ‘shortly’ means in hospital. It means hours, or perhaps days. But today the porter is here within half an hour, whistling and grinning and greeting Ernesto with a wink. It’s my rainbow hipster friend.
‘You still here?’ he says to me, whizzing a chair over to my bed and helping me into it. I wrap myself in my dressing gown and he drapes a blanket over my knees. ‘Bit cold out there in the halls today.’
In the radiography department it is busy, cluttered with patients in wheelchairs and on beds, and outpatients dressed in great big coats with the cold of the day imprinted on their cheeks. ‘Won’t be long,’ a nurse says to me, and I prepare for the long wait, pleased I remembered to grab my phone.
Messenger is clogged with a hundred messages all clamouring for my attention.
Jen is there, asking me if I feel like another visit.
I say yes, please, and wonder if she will come.
Karen asks me if I feel better and when am I coming home.
My online book group are discussing The Midnight Library and they all have long opinions that scroll for miles.
Jake’s class parents’ WhatsApp group are discussing the upcoming mock GCSEs, asking how long each other’s kids revise each night, how to balance their screen time, how to keep them active.
My own parenting is shipped out, left to my parents who didn’t like parenting me very much.
They don’t care much about Jake’s screen time and certainly don’t police his revision.
Another parenting fail, then. I shut down WhatsApp and scroll through a subreddit about parenting teenagers. Not a great idea.
An hour later I’m in the scanning room with my hospital gown on, loosely tied at the back. ‘I’m just going to inject a little bit of dye,’ the radiographer says. ‘It’s to help the doctor read the contrast in your lungs. You may feel like you need to go to the toilet, but don’t worry.’
I’m not worried about that, but I am worried about the scanner, the oversized polo mint they send me hurtling into.
It wraps itself around my body and seals over my head, as though I am enclosed in a coffin and I can’t get out, even though the practical part of my brain knows it’s not that bad.
The scanner powers up around me and lights whizz through their rotations, slowly at first. ‘Breathe in,’ the automated voice commands me, ‘hold your breath.’ I can’t, not for long, not for long enough, come on please let me breathe out.
Don’t worry, the radiographer says, her disembodied voice echoing through the tube, just hold it as long as you can.
That’s not long at all.
Whizz, whizz, revolutions of blazing brightness, over and over like rainbows pelting by at the speed of light, the low buzz of the scanner snaking through my bones.
I am shaking, cold with fear and weariness.
‘Nearly done,’ the voice says after too long.
I can’t hold out. My hands are rigid beside me on the trolley, quivering with the effort to avoid smashing out at the walls entombing me. My skin prickles with sweat.
‘Okay. All done.’
My journey out of the scanner feels as though it takes a thousand times longer than the one in.
‘We’ll send the scan to your doctor,’ the radiographer says kindly. ‘You look like you could do with a bit of sleep. Well done, I know it’s not always easy.’
‘Thank you. Sorry,’ I say.
‘What for?’
‘Just, um… being a bit useless in there.’
‘You’re not useless.’ Her eyes are lit in a weary smile. ‘You’re just ill.’
???
After lunch Jodie announces that she is going to take Barbara to the Peace Garden for a practice run, and that we are all coming with her.
That’s me, Amina and Kat, at least. Violet is deathly pale, though less still than she was yesterday, propped up slightly on her bed.
Her greying, brassy hair lies in damp stringy ribbons on her sweat-soaked brow.
‘I want to come,’ she says. ‘I need a cigarette.’
Jodie shakes her head. ‘No, you don’t.’
Sister Joy strolls into the bay, scanning one of the charts. ‘You all here still?’ Her smile is as warm as her name. ‘Can’t get rid of you lot, can we?’
Jodie is standing by Barbara’s bed. ‘I thought we’d take Barbara in the garden, like we talked about yesterday? The sun’s out for a change. And she’s all chipper today, aren’t you Barbara?’
Barbara is sitting in her chair, fiddling with her dressing gown belt. She does have a little more colour in her cheeks, and her eyes are bright. ‘I want to go in the garden,’ she says.
I’m glad it’s Sister Joy here today, not Sister Harris. I’m not sure she’d stand for any garden trip shenanigans.
‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ Joy says. ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll fetch a chair for her. Are you going too, Penny? Do you want a chair?’
‘Yes. I mean, yes, I’m going, but I can manage with a walker. Dan wants me to walk more, so…’
Joy bustles out of the ward, leaving the chart stranded on Amina’s bed.
‘I’m coming too,’ Kat says. ‘Could do with some air.’
‘Amina?’ Jodie says.
Amina looks up from her phone. She looks a little grey round the edges today, as if she has a black and white Instagram filter applied to her face. She shakes her head. ‘No. Not today. But thank you very much for asking me. Another day, though, please.’
Amina is always so polite.
Sister Joy trundles back into the bay pushing a blue hospital wheelchair with one hand and pulling a walking frame with the other.
‘There we go. She’ll love this. We’ll get her all wrapped up warm, she’ll love a little sunshine on her face, she’s been stuck in that corner for so long, God bless her.
Don’t keep her out long, though, will you?
It’s chilly out there.’ She sees Kat sliding her slippers and dressing gown on.
‘Oh, you’re going too?’ Her face crinkles in consternation.
‘Just keep warm and don’t stay out long.
It’ll build you up a bit, ready for home in a few days, won’t it?
’ She turns and looks at me. ‘When is it for you, Penny?’
‘Should be next Monday or Tuesday, all being well.’
‘Me too,’ Kat says. ‘The doctor said I’m doing well.’
‘Well, good. Now, don’t go getting yourselves cold.
I don’t have to tell you that—’ she gestures at Jodie with disapproving eyes, ‘—you’re always out there anyway, all weathers, with your smoking.
Her, too.’ She casts her eyes over at Violet, a shadow crossing her face.
‘She’s a little better today, but she’s staying right here.
Now. Do you want one of the healthcare assistants to help you? ’
‘Just to get Barbara in her chair, and get her oxygen all sorted,’ Jodie says, wheeling the chair over to Barbara who sits up like a Year One child in assembly, all ramrod straight and eager. Pick me! Pick me!
‘I’ll just fetch some oxygen,’ Joy says, going out of the ward.
Jodie beckons to Kat. ‘Come on. We can get her in between us.’
‘I can get in myself, young lady,’ Barbara says with unexpected clarity.
‘Oh! Well, okay then, let me just take your arm, though.’
Barbara shrugs Jodie’s arm off and eases herself out of her bedside chair and into the waiting wheelchair with a face set in grim determination, a series of grunts and a spattering of somewhat ripe language. Jodie takes her arm again as she stumbles, and this time she allows it.
‘Bit cold, this chair,’ she says. ‘Could do with some nice padding.’
Kat laughs. ‘It could that.’
Her oxygen tube is still attached to the vial on the wall, stretched out taut over the gap. Joy bustles in with a cylinder and an oh of surprise. ‘That was quick! You’re a sprightly one, young lady, aren’t you?’
Barbara giggles.
Joy hooks her drip over the drip stand on the back of the wheelchair and connects up her oxygen.
We get her all tucked in with her warm fleecy dressing-gown, slippers and two blankets tucked round her from her neck down to her feet. ‘I feel like one of them mummies,’ she says.
‘Right,’ Sister Joy says, stepping on the brake and whirling round with the chair to face the doors. ‘You’ve all had your lunchtime meds and IVs, haven’t you?’
We all have.
‘Have a nice little trip out, then, ladies.’
Jodie’s eyes are merry as she whispers in my ear, ‘Little does she know.’
Joy pauses. ‘It’s nice, how you all look out for each other. Don’t see that very often.’
I cling hard to the walker as we make our slow way out of the bay and out of the ward, a ponderous procession, all dressing-gowned up.
If we do go along with Jodie’s preposterous plan, we’ll need coats and proper shoes, not dressing gowns and slippers.
I’ll have to ask Jake to bring some clothes in for me.
Socks. I’ll definitely need socks, now I’m free of the stockings of doom.
‘You okay?’ Kat says, turning to me as I loiter at the back, behind her and Jodie who is pushing Barbara’s chair.
‘Mmm. Just a bit slow, sorry.’
‘You’re always apologising, you know.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
Kat laughs.
Heat rushes to my face and I fumble for words. ‘Oh, sorry… um, I mean, yeah, that’s true.’
‘You don’t have to be so sorry all the time.’ Her blue eyes are intense with meaning and something like power. ‘You can be more at ease with yourself.’
I shrug. I don’t know what to say to this confident, tattooed vicar who seems to carry the wisdom of the world and a whole load of compassion besides.
Whenever she talks to me I get a lump in my throat, as if the tears I haven’t shed for many years might be pushing somewhere close to my eyes, as if her presence unlocks something secret in my wildest places, something I’m not sure I want to visit.
We push through the doors into the coolness of the corridor, soothing after the artificial heat of the ward.
It stretches out before us, long and rambling, reaching far and away into more departments and wards and theatres and the intensive care unit.
It’s a hub of activity, medical staff rushing to and fro, admin staff striding down the hallway with clipboards and buff files laden with endless pages, patients shuffling along with drip stands, and early visitors waiting outside wards to be allowed in.
The Peace Garden is quiet, though, no one else braving the cold, despite the weak sunshine pushing through the November sky.
I lean on my walker and turn my face to the sun, closing my eyes and allowing its fragile rays to stroke my face.
Jodie parks Barbara by the bench and lights up.
She sees me watching her and throws her palms up, cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth.
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m not coming near you.
’ She wanders over to the other side of the garden where a path snakes through the fallow flowerbeds and stands staring into space, puffing away.
Kat and I sit down on the tatty old bench and it creaks in dismay.
‘You okay, Barbara?’ Kat says, turning to Barbara and tucking an edge of blanket underneath her shoulder. She reminds me of Jake as a baby, all swaddled in his pram, cocooned from the nasty world out there.
She smiles and the glow of it lights her faded eyes.
For seconds I get a glimpse of who she once was, the Barbara who married Bill and loved him for sixty years.
The glint of light in her eyes has an edge of mischief but an edge of something else, as well, a darker edge, an edge that tells of sadness and weariness.
I wonder what her life has been like. I wonder if she’s always been ill, like me and Jodie. I wonder who she really is.
‘I know my mouse is somewhere near,’ she says.
Kat and I exchange a look.
‘Are you warm enough?’ Kat says.
‘Ooh, girl, I’m toasty. Don’t worry about me!’
We sit in companionable silence, watching the clouds race across the sun and the bare branches of the fruit trees waving in the chill breeze. I shiver and wrap my dressing-gown tighter.
Jodie finishes her cigarette and wanders over. ‘She’s loving this, isn’t she,’ she says, nodding to Barbara, who has her face upturned to the afternoon sky, a smile playing round her cracked lips.
‘She is,’ Kat says. ‘But we shouldn’t keep her out too long.’
Barbara shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. Stop fussing, woman. I like it out here.’
Kat smiles. ‘I’m glad.’
‘Used to sit out in the garden with my Bill. He liked to grow vegetables, he did. Didn’t always turn out so well, mind.
You should’ve seen some of his carrots. They were all bendy, they were, and I says to him, expect me to peel those things?
And he says yes, I expect you will, because you can do anything with food.
And he was right, too.’ Her face clouds over and she picks at a corner of her blanket. ‘He was my rock.’
No one says anything, but Kat tucks the blanket back around Barbara’s arm, and keeps her own hand on top of it.
‘Listen,’ Barbara says, after a few moments have passed. ‘You hear that bird?’
I strain to hear. I can’t hear much, but there is a muted shrill of birdsong, a ghost of summer mornings, reminding us of nature’s glory even in winter. ‘I hear it,’ I say.
Barbara leans her head back on the chair, smiling.
Jodie is grinning away. ‘What’s tickling you?’ Kat says.
Jodie gesticulates at Barbara. ‘It’s just, she’s doing well, isn’t she? If she’s like this we can do it, can’t we?’
‘Do what?’ Barbara says.
Kat shakes her head at Jodie.
‘Y’know, Barbara. I mean, we can keep bringing you for some fresh air.’
‘You will take me to the sea, though, won’t you?’ Barbara says, unaware of the hope whispering through the air and through our weary minds.
Maybe Jodie is right. Maybe we could do this thing.