Chapter 18
Everything is going wrong. It’s like this place knows we are trying to bend the rules and it’s pressing back at us, conspiring against us in every way.
Our evening IV round is so late I’ve given up on trying to stay awake, and when the nurse comes at one o’clock in the morning I wake with a jump and can’t get my heartbeat to slow.
‘Shhh, now,’ she says, deftly inserting the syringe into my IV port. ‘Go back to sleep.’
The lights are still on in the ward, blazing out in time with the beeps of various IV drips, a turbulence of sound across our bay and through the doors to the other respiratory bays.
I give up on sleep and binge watch Casualty, catching up on three episodes I’ve missed.
Nothing like watching hospital dramas in hospital.
All the patients always seem so well, somehow, so alive with colour and spark, wandering around the hospital without stopping for breath or stumbling because their legs have turned to liquid.
The medical staff go straight to the patients when they’re called and give them their medication when they need it.
It’s a sanitised version of the real thing.
I fall asleep at some point in the middle of my third Casualty.
I almost sleep through my early morning observations, only slightly waking when Ernesto wraps my arm in the blood pressure cuff and it squeezes hard, expanding the loose flesh on each side of it until I feel like my skin will burst into lots of tiny wrinkly pieces.
I sleep completely through my early IV, waking up to find the tube still attached, the empty bag dangling from the TV unit above my head.
I unscrew the IV from the port and clip off my line, suddenly needing a wee.
That’s when I notice there’s something different about the ward.
Someone different.
A nurse and two healthcare assistants are buzzing round Amina’s bed.
Only it’s not Amina’s bed, not anymore. Amina isn’t there.
Instead there’s an elderly, very sickly looking woman, face smothered by a large CPAP mask, sparse white hair hanging in ratty tendrils round her face.
Her chest moves up and down too quickly, her hands opening and closing like a newborn baby’s.
Her face, almost lost beneath the mask, is translucent, like a thin layer of cellophane over shrivelled flesh, eyelids fluttering and mouth agape as if trying to force air to be there when it is not.
Jodie is sitting on the end of her bed, eyes wide, watching the staff sorting out the woman’s oxygen line and drip and catheter.
‘Where’s Amina?’ I whisper to her. My heart is a stone in my stomach. Amina was doing well yesterday, she was all ready to go home tomorrow, she was fine.
Jodie shakes her head. ‘Dunno. I just woke up and she was gone.’
Sister Joy comes into the ward with a pen in one hand and a clipboard of notes in the other, scanning through the top page. My first thought is that it’s a good thing she is on shift today, rather than Sister Harris, but then I remember. Barbara is going to the home and Amina has gone.
‘Where’s Amina?’ Jodie shouts over to Sister Joy, who hangs the file on the end of the new patient’s bed and turns to face us.
‘She’s been moved.’
‘Is she okay?’
Sister Joy nods. ‘She’s fine. But we’re full, you see. We needed the space for a sicker patient. Amina is in another ward to finish her treatment before she goes home.’
‘But we didn’t get to say goodbye,’ Jodie says.
Joy gazes at her. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to see Amina before she goes.’
‘But where is she?’
Sister Joy shrugs. ‘Not sure. The night staff sorted her out. Listen, I need to sort this lady out, so I’ll have a look for you later. Okay?’
Jodie nods mutely. We both know she won’t have time to do something like that, even though she’s one of the kindest.
Sister Joy turns away and Jodie clasps her hands together. ‘Oh, wait, before you go, um… do you know when Barbara is going today?’
Sister Joy puts her hands on her hips. ‘I am not psychic. They will come when they come. The doctor will see her first, could be any time after that. You know how it is. But I think it’s planned for this morning, before lunch at least.’ She turns back to the new patient and picks up her chart again, skimming along the lines with her pen.
Jodie casts her glance down to her hands and picks at her fingernails, a slight quiver rolling round her mouth.
Kat is still asleep next to me, and Violet must be outside.
I stare out of the window. It’s a clear day, watery winter sun breaking through the clouds, patches of blue sky and great tall sails of white cloud splashed across the canvas, fighting each other for space.
I can almost breathe in the crispness of the air, the mellow taste of autumn conceding to winter; smoke and mulchy leaves, a woody kind of taste in my mouth.
I suddenly want to be outside, to do what we said we would do, to taste the air and the salt and the sea breeze.
But how can we, with Barbara going and Amina gone?
Jodie nibbles at her nails, staring at the wall as if it might open and reveal a Grand Plan for us, but it is as blank as my mind, as pale as Jodie’s saddened eyes.
After breakfast, we brood in silence. Even Violet is quiet this morning, having huffed and puffed at the inconvenience of having a new neighbour without even being consulted about it.
You moaned about your last neighbour, Sister Joy said, and Violet said that at least she knew where she was with her, and where was she anyway, and why didn’t she even say goodbye?
No one is in the mood for our usual morning chatter, where we set the world to rights over watery porridge and cold floppy toast.
Jodie gets out of bed and teeters over to Barbara’s bed in a hospital gown tied loosely at the back, showing most of her rear to the world.
Thankfully she does have some baggy greyed knickers on, all too evident now as she bends over the end of Barbara’s bed.
They look like they once had a unicorn pattern.
What is she doing, I wonder disinterestedly, what is she up to now?
I dig my phone out and scroll through Facebook.
It’s about time I replied to some of these messages, people who really seem to care, who want to know if I’m okay, when I’m coming home, how I am feeling.
I look up as Jodie climbs back on her bed, a tiny smile frisking around her lips. I narrow my eyes at her. ‘What’s so amusing?’
She shakes her head and puts her finger on her lips.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
I shrug, turning back to my phone. There’s a message here from Karen:
So sorry hun that I haven’t got to come and see you. It’s been crazy this end, you know what it’s like, with the girls and everything, I’ve not had a min. But I’ll come and see you when you get out, I promise. Love you sis. Xxx
A couple of doctors are arriving with their teams, smaller teams today, only a skeleton staff on a weekend day for the sickest patients, walking briskly into the bay, a group of them immediately breaking off and shutting themselves in with the new patient.
Alice, I hear them calling her, and think about my friend Jen whose daughter is named Alice.
How Jake and her were fast friends as toddlers and small children, but grew apart as the years morphed them into awkwardness around each other and Alice wanted to hang out with the cooler kids.
Jodie is grinning full on now, glancing over at Barbara and then at the staff congregating in the middle of the bay, consulting together.
‘What’s with you?’ I say.
Kat has her eye on her, too. ‘Did you do something?’
Jodie raises her eyebrows. ‘What d’you mean?’
One of the doctors makes her way towards Barbara, greeting her and plucking her chart from the end of her bed.
‘Did you do something to her chart?’ I say, following Jodie’s line of sight.
Jodie giggles. ‘Maybe.’
‘Jodie!’ Kat and I both say together, appalled.
Jodie is unabashed.
‘You could get into big trouble for that!’ Kat says. ‘And so could the staff. You have to tell them. Now, look!’
Jodie sits in smug silence.
‘Jodie!’ I say again. ‘Just tell the doctor now. You can’t do that!’
But Jodie sits there like a queen in state, chin high in the air, her face all wreathed in self-satisfaction. She brings her hands together in a prayer pose and says ‘Yes, Sensei,’ in a ridiculous growly voice. ‘I’ll tell ’em later, boss. I promise. When we’re back.’
I glance at Kat, whose face is all rumpled up. Probably thinking, like me, that she should say something if Jodie won’t.
None of the doctors are here to see me, or Kat, or Violet, or Jodie today.
Only the new lady and Barbara, I assume to quickly sign her off.
But the doctor with Barbara is speaking to a nurse in low concerned tones, snatches of her words floating over to us as we strain forward to hear.
We can’t hear enough, though, not with the machine screeching through the bay.
It’s only when the doctor moves away we see Barbara, sitting up in bed looking strangely peaceful, tiny frail hands gathered together in her lap.
Jodie’s over there quickly, bending down to her level.
‘All well with you?’ she says, an edge of anticipation to her voice.
I sit on the end of my bed, leaning forward to hear more clearly.
‘Well, I was, you know, darling? Thought I was for it today, into that home, they said. Said it’d be nice in there, all quiet and such, back with my things. But I know why they’re sending me back there, I’m not stupid.’
‘So are you not going?’ Jodie says. ‘To the home, today, I mean?’