Chapter 16
Later in the day the bay is full of visitors.
The hospital is buzzing with that Friday afternoon feel, patients being discharged before the weekend, doctors rushing round with their tablets and their bulging files.
Everything has to get wrapped up on a Friday, because things shut down over the weekend, some things anyway.
Patients still get admitted and diagnosed and treated.
But everything else gets pared down, especially for patients like us who are almost ready for home.
There’s less stress in the ward, less rushing from here to there with obs machines and drips and oxygen canisters.
Perhaps that’s all going on in the other bays, but here we are ready for the relative calm of the weekend.
Outside my window the sky is heavy, clouds like sheets all draped across the heavens in a hundred layers of white and grey.
Kat has five people around her bed, an older couple and two younger women, all leaning in and laughing uproariously, with Nate on the chair right next to her bed, holding her hand. ‘Oh, by the way, did you remember my coat?’ she says. ‘For tomorrow, I mean, for that little outing I told you about.’
Nate drags something out of a Tesco bag.
‘Nate!’ she says, rolling out the name and her eyes at the same time. ‘Seriously?’
‘What?’
‘It’s hardly my big winter coat, is it? Don’t think this is going to protect me from the November wind, do you? What are you like, bringing me a great boiling onesie for a hospital ward and a festival raincoat for a cold winter day?’
Nate scratches his head and casts his gaze over at the wall.
Kat grabs his hand. ‘You daft sod.’
He smiles like he knows a secret, and then picks up a corner of her dressing gown. ‘Can’t you go in this?’
‘I suppose.’
Jake has brought me some clothes in, but they’re not very suitable.
He’s managed to unearth my baggiest pair of leggings, the ones with the waist that’s almost gone, prone to falling down whenever I walk more than two steps, and an old grey jumper that doesn’t look like it’s been washed in a while.
They look like all my other clothes, tired and worn and greyed.
‘I didn’t know what to bring, Mum. I knew you’d want something warm, if you’re going outside. ’
I haven’t told Jake anything much about our plans. I’ve just told him we’re planning a little wander out of the hospital grounds and so would prefer some outdoor clothes.
‘I brought this as well.’ He reaches into his rucksack and pulls out my black parka, and I sag with relief. ‘And these, for your feet.’
Ballet flats. Tiny, thin ballet flats. ‘Jake, I said my ankle boots.’
‘Couldn’t find them.’
I sigh. ‘Socks?’
‘Here.’ He plucks out a pair of big red fluffy slipper socks. I’m not sure they’ll jam into the ballet flats, but they’ll keep my feet warm, I suppose.
‘What about my hat and gloves I asked you for?’
He brandishes a bulging Aldi bag at me.
‘What’s that?’
‘Well how was I supposed to know which hat and scarf or whatever you want?’
‘Jake, did you just tip the entire contents of our hat and gloves basket into this bag?’
He shoots his eyes off to the side and twists his mouth in a wry little grin.
‘Jake!’
‘Doesn’t matter, does it? You can get what you want and I’ll take the rest home.’ He shoves the bag on the floor under my chair, then gazes at me. ‘Listen, Mum, I… I made you something.’
‘What?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘There’s no need to look so surprised. I do occasionally do nice things, don’t I?’
‘Umm, yes…’
‘Wow.’ He scowls. ‘Well, this time I have, anyway.’
I grin at him. ‘What do you want? Money for a takeaway? New trainers?’
‘Muuum!’ He stares at me, more exasperated than amused.
‘Sorry. Just trying to be… I mean, just a little joke.’
He grunts.
‘So, show me then,’ I say. ‘What’ve you made?’
His cheeks flush with colour and he stands there, his backpack on the floor, twisting his hands together.
‘I just made you this.’ He bends and digs into the bag, then drops a large envelope onto my bed. I stare. Jake doesn’t make things. Jake doesn’t do things that are not on the computer or the phone or the football pitch. Jake doesn’t do things for me.
‘Well open it, then.’ He gazes at his bitten down fingernails. I pull a card out of the envelope, a piece of computer photo card folded in two. Turn it over and stare.
‘I know sunflowers are your favourite flower. And I know you can’t have flowers in hospital. And I know you think real cards are a bit boring and all that.’
I swallow, overcome.
‘I did it in GIMP.’
‘Um—’
‘Oh Mum, don’t look at me with those what are you into now eyes, like you think I’m into something creepy. It’s an open-source graphics program.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘And so here, I like free drew the petals using the paintbrush tool and then I gave them an alpha mask and kind of used this gradient to fill them, like orange to yellow, see here?’
‘I, um—’
‘It was actually this method I found on YouTube. And you see this centre bit, right, I just wanted it to be like unique or something, not like any old photo you can get off the internet, so I made the pattern myself then imported it as a bucket fill and, oh, you don’t need me to witter on about all this. ’
‘I do.’ And I know I do. I need to hear all this stuff I don’t understand the slightest edges of, and he needs to tell me. ‘I do, actually.’
He reddens. ‘Okay, so, I did that and then I did kind of this thing for the background, I know your favourite colour is purple so I got all these different purple textures, see here, I did them all as layers and then blended them together, and then I thought, well I thought it sort of looked okay, actually.’
‘It looks more than okay. It’s brilliant, Jake. I love it.’
His flush deepens. ‘Well, it’s not Banksy or anything like that. But it was kind of fun. Nan lets me go on the computer more than you do so… so this.’
Mum probably does that to spite me. She’s done it at every turn, at every parenting decision, taking the opposite tack deliberately and sneakily, undermining me in the most insidious of ways so I couldn’t challenge her, not with Jake so precious and me so alone.
I shove the thought away. That doesn’t matter right now.
‘I love you, Jake.’
‘I miss you.’
‘I miss you too.’
He leans towards me and circles me in his arms, carefully, like I’m made of china.
I draw him in and hug him close, his cheek against mine like when he was small and he would press his face against mine and tell me he loved me mummy.
I inhale the scent of him, chewing gum and stale curry and Lynx, and think about how I did this all alone.
Okay, he’s not perfect. He’s annoying and rude and sometimes arrogant.
He thinks the world exists for him alone at times and his room is like an antechamber to the underworld with plates and glasses culturing unusual species and clothes thrown in great piles together on the floor, dirty and clean all mixed up.
He is messy and insensitive and ungrateful.
But he made me a card with an amazing piece of computer artwork on it.
I wish his dad could see him now, the baby he abandoned because he wanted to live his life and I had spoiled that for him.
I wish he could have been the kind of dad who cuddled him as a tiny newborn smelling of baby oil, could have swung him in the air as a toddler and kicked a ball in the garden with him as a small boy with legs that never stayed still.
I wish he could see him now as the young man on the cusp of adulthood, changing every day, his voice deepening and his legs lengthening, my skinny gentle giant who made me a card with a sunflower on it that looks like all the colours of day and night together.
But his dad didn’t want to know. He’s the one who missed out.
He’s the one who left bruises that blossomed on the inside of my mind and my soul, as well as the other ones, the ones he hid so well. But I don’t want to think about those.
‘I thought it kind of looked like sunrise. Like the flowers are kind of the sun. Actually, that sounds lame.’ He shakes his head.
‘It doesn’t sound lame at all. I love it. It’s like the sunset with all the colours exploding in the sky and the sunflower is the dawn breaking through the night. I love it. You could do more of this stuff, you know. People would pay good money.’
Jake scowls. ‘Whatever.’ He fishes in his pocket and pulls out his phone, and in seconds he is lost to me, caught up in his online world.
His eyelashes lie on his cheeks like they did when he was a baby, all full and fanned out and dark and heartbreaking.
I remember holding him close through unsettled nights and days that seemed to last forever, no partner to come in and relieve the burden at the end of the day.
I held him tight through the years, through tantrums and bleeding knees and bad behaviour and school reports that weren’t always complimentary.
I held him tight when his first girlfriend dumped him because he wasn’t as cute as Alex James.
He was a cuddly baby, a huggy child, a boy who always needed touch to sustain him, even through those difficult pre-teen years.
He still needs me now, I realise, perhaps more than ever, in his uncouth, grunting, gentle and sweet way, he needs my love and my patience.
He needs me to be here and to not get even more sick.
I want to sink into the colours he created for me, to pretend that they are my colours after all, that I deserve them, or maybe even that I could be them.
I reach out my hand and stroke his face.
He glances up at me for a second and rolls his eyes; I’m surprised they are not worn out from the copious rolling he puts them through every hour of every day.
‘Muuum,’ he says again, but he doesn’t ask me to stop.
Instead he leans into my touch, his acne-puckered cheek rough against my hand, dark hair flopping forward.
I did this. I did this all alone. I recovered from abuse and I brought up this young man who made me a sunflower card.
‘I do love you, Mum.’
‘I love you too.’
‘Nan and Grandad love you too, you know, in their way. Grandad’s been on about coming in to see you.’
‘Has he?’
Jake nods, but his eyes reflect the doubt that burns in my own, and he looks down at his hands. He knows Dad could have come in to see me, any day, but he hasn’t. He never does.
I lean back into my pillows and watch Jake as he stabs at his phone, his thumbs working furiously as he battles some unknown monster.
Over in the opposite corner, Barbara is sitting up in her chair, wide awake.
She’s watching Jake with a gaze full of longing.
‘Let’s go and chat to Barbara,’ I say to him.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t complain, doesn’t make a murmur, just flings his phone down on the bed, drags two bucket chairs to her space and helps me over, holding onto my arm.
‘Hello, Barbara.’
She nods her head. ‘Yes. Hello, love. And you, lad.’
Jake nods. ‘’S’up.’
Barbara regards him with questioning eyebrows.
‘How are you?’ Jake says.
‘Oh, I’m very well, dear.’
I take in her face, ravaged like a map full of contour lines, watery, weary eyes blinking against the light of the ward. Not well, not really.
Now I’m here I don’t know what to say to her. I swallow. ‘You feeling better, then, Barbara?’
‘Pardon? Speak up, dear.’ She fiddles with her hearing aid and it shrieks in squeaky rebuke.
‘I just said, are you feeling a little better?’
‘Oh, yes, darling. Yes. But…’ She leans closer and beckons me in with a wizened, arthritic finger. ‘But that rat was here again. I saw it.’
This again.
‘The rat’s gone, Barbara.’
Jake smiles at her. ‘There’s no rats in here, no need to worry.’
‘The rat is after my mouse.’
‘It’s okay, Barbara.’ I try to channel Kat, to take her hand, but she snatches it away and hisses at me.
‘You don’t know. You can’t see it. But I can.’
It’s Jake that steps in for me. ‘I promise it’s gone,’ he says, looking into her eyes. She gazes back at him with a kind of wonder.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘The rat was in our house. Me and Bill’s. It got in the loft and we could hear it scrabbling at night, patter patter patter on the ceiling. I thought it was the ghost.’
‘The ghost?’ Jake says.
‘Oh, pay no mind of me. Just a silly old woman. But Bill, he says to me, that’s no ghost, that’s rats that is. And he was right. But now they won’t leave me alone, see. They chase my mouse all the time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake says.
Barbara flaps her hand at him. ‘Ooh, no doubt you’ll be thinking I’m just some daft old bag, saying a load of stupid things.
But I’m still all here. Most of me.’ She chuckles, and Jake smiles, and I do, too.
‘Bill always said I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on, he did.
Said I was scatty as anything but that he still loved me to the stars.
That’s what he always said.’ She gazes off to the side, eyes fixed on the wall but on something more inside her memories.
I think about what her life must have been like, with a man who loved her for sixty years.
I think about Kat with Nate and Amina with Bilal, men who are faithful and kind and loving, men who are nothing like Marcus or my own father who failed me a thousand times over in his disappointment and disapproval.
Maybe I don’t have to worry so much about Jake, if there are men like Bill and Nate and Bilal in the world; maybe Jake can be good and kind as well.
I gaze at him as he sits quietly with Barbara, his hand on her arm so gentle, and I can see him for who he is, finally, through the haze of stroppy teenager and grumbling adolescence, through the haze of what I always dreaded he might become because of who his father is.
He is nothing like Marcus, I see in a moment of raw clarity, joy jumping through my bones.
He is Jake, he is my boy who cares about me and about a lonely old woman who is worried about rats.
‘I’m going home tomorrow, they told me,’ Barbara says suddenly.
My stomach sinks like a stone. ‘Oh, did they? That’s…
I mean, that’s nice, to be going to a nice place.
’ I scramble desperately through my mind for words to say that will console somebody who is going to a place to die, and through my own raging disappointment.
‘What time… did they say when you’ll be going? ’
‘Oh, in the morning, I expect,’ Barbara says.
Our plans crash to the ground in a pile of dust. Barbara won’t get to see the sea after all, she won’t get to feel the sun on her face or the wind in her hair.
I take her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.