Page 100 of The Flowers of Bay C
Nicki turns back to Barbara. ‘We’ll need to take Byron,’ she says softly.
‘Snowy.’ Barbara folds him tighter to her chest, her arms as white as his fur, and turns her face away from Nicki’s gaze.
‘We’ll get him back to his owner, flower.’
Barbara sticks her bottom lip out and shakes her head, then nestles her face into Snowy’s, crooning words about him being safe with her, how he shouldn’t worry because he is her darling boy. Nicki tiptoes closer and tries to pluck Snowy from Barbara’s arms, but he bucks and hisses at her and she steps back, hands in the air. ‘You get him,’ she says to Sister Joy.
Joy keeps her arms folded tightly under her ample bosom. ‘Why can’t you?’ She turns to the other healthcare assistant who hovers at the door of the bay. ‘Or you?’
‘I don’t want to get scratched,’ she says.
Sister Joy narrows her eyes.
‘Okay. Okay. I’ll try.’ The healthcare assistant creeps over to Barbara and tentatively places her hand on the cat. He arches his back, spits, and bats a paw at her.
Nicki purses her lips. ‘We’re going to have to get hold of the owner. Quick.’
Barbara glows with a smug little smile.
‘Right, Barbara. Just give me your arm, so we can do your sats, just quickly.’ Nicki wraps the blood pressure cuff around Barbara’s arm and slides the oximeter onto her finger. ‘Flaming heck!’ She stands back, staring at the numbers on the monitor.
‘Whatis it?’ Sister Joy says, her face a mask of concern and not a little bit of anger.
My stomach writhes. If we’ve made her more ill…
‘She’s got higher oxygen levels than I’ve ever seen with her!’ Nicki says, showing Sister Joy the screen. ‘And her blood pressure – it’s right perfect.’
‘And her temperature?’ Sister Joy says, casting a look of disdain over at me and Kat.
Nicki slides the thermometer into Barbara’s ear and waits for the beep. She checks the display and raises her eyebrows. ‘Thirty-seve point five.’
‘Well,’ Sister Joy says.
‘She’s in better shape than she was this morning,’ Nicki says.
Kat whispers, ‘More by luck than good management.’
‘We went to the seaside,’ Barbara says. ‘And there was sand mountains on my feet and I sat by the sea and had a nip of brandy.’
Sister Joy makes an oh with her mouth. ‘You what?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ Jodie says dreamily. ‘Hot chocolate.’
‘I don’t know what you did,’ Nicki says, ‘but she’s fitter than a fiddle right now.’
Barbara is bubbling with life and joy, and I know, all of a sudden, that we did something good today, after all.
Jake is staring at me like I am an alien, but that is not unusual. ‘Are you going to fill me in?’ He glances over at Jodie. ‘She looks knackered.’
‘It’s like Barbara says,’ I say. ‘We went to the sea. And it went wrong, but it went right as well. I… I realised a few things.’
He shifts his eyes to the side, like he always does just before he senses I’m going to do a Talk at him.
‘Yeah?’
I gaze at him and think about how much he has missed out on in his life because he has a mum like me. All those times he missedparties. When he couldn’t do the football training he loved because I wasn’t reliable enough to take him three times a week. All those World Book Days when all the other parents made homemade costumes worthy of the local amateur dramatics society and I sent him in his Gryffindor robes for the third year in a row (it’s helpful when parents model a good work ethic to young children, the teacher said to me with a face full of disapproval). All those National Trust houses we didn’t visit together. Not that I much enjoyed National Trust houses when I was a teenager, dragged round by my parents in the hopes of instilling culture into me, and Jake doesn’t much like them now, on the occasional visit we manage, trailing around with a scowl on his face and ironic grunts of ‘Oh, it’s another fireplace. Oh, it’s another vase.’ That doesn’t make up for the fact that he should have had more National Trust houses in his life, though, that while every other family out there are #makingmemories on Instagram and Facebook I am wishing memories away under my duvet. Facebook is for old people, Jake always says, but even if that’s true I have never been enough for it.
‘I wish I’d given you more,’ I say.
