Page 10 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘All mussed-up hair and pale as a ghost, and this weird kind of not-smile.’
True, I suppose. But I wouldn’t actually mind looking like Helena Bonham-Carter, so I’ll take it.
There’s a commotion at the doors. A bed being delivered, another patient, a full house in Bay C. Two of the healthcare assistants move the empty bed out of the way in the space opposite me. A logjam is forming at the door of the bay; Nicki hovering with a commode for Barbara, several of Amina’s family just arrived in for visiting. The porter pushing the new patient’s bed rolls his eyes. ‘Give us some space?’ A different porter to my rainbow hipster one. Amina’s sons move back, apologising, all polite and sweet and toweringly tall.
Kat, the new patient from the night before, is fast asleep with her back turned to us, as if she is trying to shut out the world.
This new patient is probably mid-sixties, a close-cropped bob of greying hair fighting a battle with garish yellow dye, pursed up mouth, and frown lines slashing her face into ragged slices. A nasal cannula sits lopsidedly in her nostrils.
‘I don’t want to go here,’ she says to the porter and the nurse wheeling her bed into place. The effort of speaking sends her into a convulsion of hacking coughs and I wince. Do I sound like that?
The porter and the nurse ignore her and chat among themselves. How are her wedding plans, he is asking. Good, she says. Except her fiancé hasn’t sorted the caterer and promised her he would. Men, hey! Yeah, useless creatures, the porter says.
‘Excuse me,’ the new woman says. ‘I know your conversation is…cough– vital –cough, but I actually said I don’t want to go here.’
Her accent is a jarring mix of try-hard King’s English and earthy west country twang.
The nurse just smiles. ‘Right, Violet, let’s get you sorted and checked in then, shall we? Be back in a min to do you.’
Violet’s pasty face turns shades of red vivid against the slight blue tinge of her lips, her several chins wobbling along with her outrage. ‘I want my own room.’
Jake clears his throat. ‘Boomer.’
Most people over forty are boomers to Jake.
His lips twist in a sly little grin. ‘Bet her middle name’s Karen.’
Jodie splutters in the corner.
I sigh. I cannot find the energy to berate him about his careless use of the name Karen as a misogynistic slur for a certain type of middle-aged woman. I’ve done the spiel once too often – how do you think it makes all the lovely people feel who happen to be called Karen? What about Aunt Karen? Case in point, he always says, and smirks louder at me.
He stares at me now with one eyebrow raised, as if to question my poor parenting in its lack of challenge to his unwarranted attack on the personality of someone he does not know. I close my eyes.
The nurse blithely ignores Violet’s plaintive and increasingly loud demands, shoving the bed brake down with her foot and bustling out of the ward, bantering with the porter. Her husband-to-be apparently forgot to ring the vicar like he promised he would. Men!
Nicki delivers Barbara’s commode, pulls the curtains round her space and grabs the observations trolley from the corner by Jodie’s bed. She strolls over to the new patient, winking at Jodie. ‘Hello there, Mrs Oddens. Violet, right? Is it Vi? Just going to get your sats done, flower.’
Violet’s narrow mouth puckers itself even further in. ‘It’sOh-dens. And no, you may not call me Vi. Violet is my name. And I’m not a flower, thank you.’
Jake mouthsOhhhdensat me and I try not to grin.
Nicki laughs. Nicki always seems to laugh easily, a flower herself, open to sunshine and dragging it into the ward for the rest of us.
‘Don’t you dare make fun of me,’ Violet says. Nicki winks back at Jodie who is on the edge of her bed, drinking it all in with her direct blue gaze.
‘I want my own room,’ Violet says.
‘This is the NHS, not the Hilton,’ Nicki says, and I smile to myself.
Violet narrows her pale eyes, grabs Nicki’s arm and gives a non-too-subtle sideways nod towards Amina. ‘I don’t want to be next toher.’
Everything about Violet is a scream of brashness, from her faded and smudged blue eyeshadow through to her loud floral polyester nightie and bright pink fluffy slippers. Jodie catches my eye and I lower my gaze, but not before seeing the mischievous grin playing around her lips. This one is going to be interesting, I think. She’s like a real-life Hyacinth Bucket, all bluster and faux-posh accent, and now adding bigotry to the mix.
‘Boomer,’ Jake says again. His voice is as smirky as a voice could be if it was a smirk. He leans over towards Jodie. ‘Plus she has Lego hair.’
Jodie cackles.
Amina says nothing but her face tells the truth of a long litany of similar comments poured over her through years. I want to go to her, to say we’re not all like that, but my energy is drained like water wrung from a cloth.
