Chapter 30
I lie awake late into the night, unable to sleep, jittery with agitation about all that has happened and the possibility of going home tomorrow.
If I count up my days my last IV wouldn’t be officially until tomorrow evening, but I think my consultant will waive that one in the face of my excellent vitals and return to something like health.
My cannula is on the edge again, the drug searing through my vein, but I didn’t mention it when the nurse came at midnight to push my IV through.
Not another one. Please. Not for just one day.
It’s quiet on the ward, apart from the screech of Alice’s machine which is like background noise now.
I wonder how I will sleep at home, in the dead silence of a room without machines.
Every so often it squeals and one of the healthcare assistants will come in and gently admonish her for pulling it off.
‘I know you don’t like it, lovely. It’s a horrible great thing, isn’t it.
But you need to leave it on.’ Alice weeps and the healthcare assistant sits with her and holds her hand.
I ask the nurse for one of my prescribed sleeping pills when the hours tick away and sleep doesn’t come and I lie stiff with weariness. When she brings it I succumb quickly to its velvet depths, its waters closing over my head and dragging me into sunlight-drenched lands.
In the early hours I jolt awake and wonder if it is morning.
The window behind me is a square of dark grey, though, with no signs of dawn breaking up its gloom, and still the snow comes, cascading through the darkness and glittering in the reflection of Alice’s overhead light, still on above her bed.
I yawn and wonder if I really am awake or if the sleeping pill has sent me into some kind of lucid dream as I become aware of hushed voices from Jodie’s cubicle.
She has the curtains closed around her, and I wonder if she is on her phone, if she is making up with Kane.
I hope not. Not after she has come so far.
But then I remember that she doesn’t even have her phone, that Kane took it with him.
Another voice floats through the curtain.
Kat’s calm, soft tones, a low whisper of gentle tenderness.
Kat’s voice is soothing, floating me away from the weariness of the ward and lulling me back into the arms of my drug-heavy sleep, whispered and gentle and somehow assuring.
Is she praying? I think she is praying. I didn’t think Jodie was into that stuff.
I am falling, tumbling over and over, tottering on the edge of oblivion, sliding down into Kat’s unheard words which tug me deep into waterfalls, drifting into the kind of sleep that you can’t easily climb out of, the kind that pins you to the bed and holds you there.
A sudden jolt into consciousness. An impression of something from my dream still weaving through my mind, shouts and crashes and the whirring of machinery.
I swallow; my mouth is dry, and reach over for my water, blinking and staring around.
My curtains are closed around me, enclosing me in a blue cave with weak light spilling under from Jodie’s cubicle.
I can hear people moving about, whispering.
I think it’s coming from Barbara’s direction but there’s movement next to me too.
Jodie is probably getting up to go for her fag, she often does in the early hours, stealing out of the ward like an inept burglar, a look of mischievous rebellion stamped on her face.
I hear footsteps leaving her bed and smile.
It’s all part of the familiarity, the pattern that makes this place my temporary home, the absurdity yet assurance of it all.
I close my eyes and begin to slide away.
I don’t think Kat is with her anymore. No voices there now, only from the cubicle in the far corner. Muttered voices, worried tones, beepbeepbeep of machines. Beepbeepbeep, calling me into sleep.
Machines in Barbara’s cubicle.
Barbara.
They are moving around, stealthy footsteps, squeaking shoes on the polished floor, to and fro and in and out. Whispers and scuffles, a muted commotion of movement.
What are they doing?
Dread settles in my stomach like a jagged stone, cutting through my sluggish languor.
What have we done?
???
I am tugged awake by the morning light and a sense of doom.
My curtains are still pulled tightly around my cubicle but there is movement outside. The squeal of wheels, the gruff voice of a porter, Ernesto whispering to him. I want to look out of my curtain but don’t want to all at the same time.
It’s our fault. I know that Barbara had a full, long life, I know that we granted her wish and made her shine, but we tired her out too much, we left her outside in the frozen world too long.
I am plunged back into the narrative I so recently began to climb out of: It’s my fault.
I am responsible. I should have said no. It’s all my fault.
Kat is crying softly from behind the curtain next to me. I swallow over the great lump in my throat and shift myself to the edge of my bed. ‘Kat?’ I whisper, as if speaking any louder would shatter some kind of sacred aura hovering over the bay. ‘Kat?’
She sniffs and then she is up, poking her head through the curtain and then tugging it back so that our cubicles become one, closed against the rest of the bay. Her face is red and tear streaked.
‘It’s Barbara, isn’t it,’ I say dully, a pit of dread in my stomach threatening to pull me right inside of it.
She gazes at me and then shakes her head.
‘Barbara isn’t dead?’
‘No.’ Her voice is raspy and weary.
I allow the wave of relief to wash over me before I look again at Kat’s ravaged face.
‘But she is… she’s okay?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Then what…?’
Kat flops back down onto her bed and draws her knees up to her chin.
‘What is it?’
She looks at me and her eyes are dark with pain.
‘It’s Jodie.’