Chapter 18 #2
Barbara shakes her head. ‘Said I was a bit high, my temperature, earlier. That nurse was on about those night staff forgetting to mention it in handover, said who could she trust to do their job round here? Said it’s fine now, but they want to just keep an eye for another few hours.
Was funny, doctor said it’d been steady for days and then this sudden rise early this morning.
Might be going later, they said, but not ’til tonight, or tomorrow.
Probably Monday, though, love, you know how it is on weekend time. ’
Jodie grins round at me and Kat, a big grin loaded with triumph and I-told-you-so.
Kat heaves a great big sigh, and it reminds me of the sighs I would give when Jake was little and got away with something he shouldn’t have done in the first place.
Slightly irritated yet a little bit amused, a little bit okay with what he had done.
Perhaps that’s what it is with Jodie; she doesn’t do rules, she doesn’t follow orders, unless it’s Kane giving them.
She does what she thinks she needs to do to help someone out.
And she gets away with it, because she is Jodie.
‘I didn’t want to go anyway,’ Barbara says, smiling up at Jodie. ‘Prefer you lot in here to those near-dead lot in there.’
I catch Kat’s eye.
‘You lot make me laugh, you do.’
‘You make us laugh, too, Barbara,’ Jodie says gently. ‘We’re gonna take you for a little walk later, okay? Little bit of fresh air for you.’
Barbara’s eyes light up. ‘You taking me to the sea at last?’
Jodie winks over at me. ‘Don’t be daft. You know we can’t do that. We’re taking you for a little wander somewhere nice.’
Barbara clasps her hands together. ‘Ooh, lovely.’
Sister Joy is listening in. ‘We’ll just have to keep an eye on her temperature to check you can do that.’
Jodie smiles. ‘I’ve got a feeling her temperature is gonna be fine.’
???
It’s quiet when the doctors have left, like it usually is on a weekend, though there is an unending stream of different healthcare professionals attending to Alice.
A pharmacist, phlebotomist, physiotherapist and radiologist are all here at different points through the morning with their various bits of equipment.
‘Poor thing,’ Kat says, eyeing Alice’s curtained-off cubicle.
Jodie says, ‘I wonder if she needs a trip to the seaside?’
We all laugh, even Violet. ‘Are you coming then, Vi?’ Jodie says to her with a sly wink over at Kat.
Violet bristles. ‘My name is not Vi, and you know that, young lady.’
‘So? You coming with us?’
‘Coming where?’ Nicki breezes in with the tea trolley rattling like a sack of old bones in front of her. ‘You all going for a little outing, are you?’
I look at Jodie. Has Nicki rumbled us?
Jodie plays it cool. ‘Just to the garden, like usual. Just trying to get Violet here to join in, she was a bit of a grumpy cow yesterday, weren’t you Vi?’
Violet narrows her eyes.
‘Well, she was out there for her smoke earlier, weren’t you flower?’ Nicki says, heaping sugar into Kat’s tea. ‘She’s fine out there, aren’t you?’
Violet shrugs. ‘I suppose.’
‘So?’ Jodie says.
Violet sniffs.
Nicki laughs. ‘You lot and your little walks. Still can’t get rid of you, though, can we? You’ll all be gone next week and then what’ll we do round here?’
‘You’ll have more time to do your job,’ Kat says.
‘Too right, flower. Too right.’
???
By lunchtime I am sick with nerves. Everyone seems prepared, ready to do this thing.
Barbara’s temperature has stayed steady and Sister Joy has pronounced her ‘fit for a little walk’.
Jodie has been on the phone to Kane, speaking in low hisses then assuring us that all is well and he will be here at two-thirty sharp with a chair for Barbara.
We’ll be back for three-thirty, or at the latest three-forty-five, she says.
Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes on the beach, twenty minutes back.
Back for visiting at four. Easy as that.
Does everyone have warm clothes? Kane is bringing her coat in, she says, but she’s just wearing her pyjamas under that.
She’s dressed in them now, all ready, out of her undignified hospital gown.
She’s wearing a tatty Justin Bieber T-shirt and her pink leopard print fleece pyjama bottoms. I say yes, Jake brought me some clothes in, and Kat says Nate was rubbish and forgot her proper coat so she’ll have to wear her dressing gown.
Violet stares at Jodie. ‘You’ll be too cold with just those and a coat.’
‘Nah. Hot-blooded, me.’
Violet shakes her head and turns around, rummaging in her bedside cupboard. ‘Here.’ She holds something dark and fluffy up to Jodie. ‘You can borrow this, put it on over that tiny little T-shirt.’
‘What are you, my mother?’
‘You want it or not?’
Jodie grabs it from her. ‘Let’s have a look.’ She shakes it out and then cackles loudly. ‘Oh my actual days, Violet, where do you wear this?’ She holds it against her, a big fleece jumper with a badly rendered laminate picture of a wolf howling at the moon. ‘This wolf looks like a crazed psycho.’
Violet humphs. ‘Well, actually, I got it on holiday. Brian has a matching one, too.’
Jodie snorts. ‘Where’d you go on holiday to get that?’
Violet sniffs. ‘Skegness.’
‘Lol,’ Jodie says.
‘You want it or not?’
Jodie slips it over her head. The sleeves are too long and it almost reaches her knees, but it looks warm. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Thank you, Violet,’ Violet says.
‘Thank you, Vi,’ Jodie replies.
‘What about Barbara?’ I say, taking her in with her thin cotton nightdress and maroon fluffy slippers.
‘We’ll wrap her in that huge great dressing gown and then a load of blankets, like we do in the Peace Garden,’ Jodie says. ‘Stop stressing, Penny. She’ll be fine.’
Lunch arrives and I am so churned up I can’t eat it, but I’m not really sure I’d want to eat it much anyway.
It’s a vegetarian lasagne, Nicki says, but the lasagne sheets are like sloppy gloop and the vegetables overboiled pulp glued together with the pasta.
It’s like someone in the industrial kitchen at wherever it is this hospital gets its meals these days has thought to themselves, ahh, I know what to do with all those bits of broccoli we boiled to death and never used, let’s stick them between a few lasagne sheets and put it in the microwave and call it vegetarian lasagne. That’ll do those fussy veggies.
I push it away and drum my fingers on my lap.
‘Will you stop that?’ Kat says, shovelling up her meat-of-doubtful-origin stew. ‘You’re getting me all riled up now.’
‘It’s only a bit of fresh air, Penny,’ Jodie says.
‘You got your coat and everything, Violet?’ I say.
Violet sits with arms folded, mouth a thin slash. ‘If Amina isn’t going, nor am I. I… I never got to say goodbye to her. We should find her first.’
I stare at her and I want to rail at her, to pour out a rant about how she treated Amina and didn’t deserve to say goodbye. But I wonder if, deep down, she knows that.
‘I don’t know how we can,’ I say. ‘Unless Nicki can look, or Sister Joy, but they’re rushing round everywhere with that new lady today so I don’t want to disturb them.’
‘Well, I won’t go, then,’ Violet says.
‘Whatever,’ Jodie mutters under her breath.
‘An hour and a half to go,’ Kat says.
I feel sick.