Page 19 of The Flowers of Bay C
It’s a freezing January day and I am sitting in my car, shivering and wondering what on earth I am going to do. I am at the centre for my work capability assessment for my Employment and Support Allowance claim but there are no disabled parking bays. There are no parking bays at all. It’s on a main road and the driver behind me is revving his engine and flashing his lights.
By the time I’ve found a space and dragged myself up the road to the centre I am in pieces. Inside the centre it is no better; it’s on the first floor, I’m told, and no, sorry, there’s no lift, there are the stairs dear, you can manage those can’t you? I wonder why an assessment centre for ESA doesn’t have a lift, but I say nothing, like usual.
The assessor tells me she is a healthcare professional but doesn’t tell me which kind. She watches as I stumble through the door, but makes no move to help, just waves to a chair and sits reading something on her computer screen, perhaps my claim form. Her brow furrows, her mouth moving as she scrolls down the page.
‘My mum had bronchitis,’ she says, looking up at me. ‘Was nasty at the time, but didn’t do any lasting damage. She’s a hard worker, she is, never takes a day off for anything.’ She raises her eyebrows at me as if this random anecdote will somehow propel me out of my sickness, out of her way and straight back into work.
‘Not bronchitis,’ I mutter, enunciating the name of my disease slowly.
Her left eyebrow is cocked so high I think it might set there forever, a bushy question mark stamped on her face. ‘Oh. Never heard of that one, I must say.’ She says it in a voice that belies a great scepticism about whether this thing actually exists or if I am just making it up.
It sets the tone for the whole thing, with me trying to explain how it affects my life and her face set in a kind of incredulous disdain. But I look fine, she says, I’m dressed and clean. I don’t tell her about the tunnel of blackness I’m heading into, or the scent of sickness that weaves through my nostrils and wraps my body in its evil potion.
‘Can you cook for yourself?’ she asks, fingers poised in the air over her keyboard.
‘Well,yes, but only sometimes. I mean, I can cook, like I mean I know how to and all of that, I am bringing up a child on my own, after all. But some days… a lot of days really, I can’t actually cook at all.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean I feel so ill that I can’t get out of bed, or off the sofa, and even lifting a pan is painful.’
‘Oh.’ She purses her lips and I know I am messing this up. I know that I am not explaining it as well as I need to be, I know here and now this woman thinks I am some kind of lazy skiver who just slouches on my sofa all day.
‘But you can lift a pan – physically?’
‘Well, yes, but it doesn’t mean I can actually do the cooking with it. I get so breathless, I have a lot of pain, it makes me bend double, it makes my head hurt… I often have infections. Here.’ I pull out my repeat prescription to show her my long and complicated list of medication, but know she must have already seen that. It’s on my form and it’s on the letters of support from my GP, my consultant, my physiotherapist, my respiratory team. But I wonder if she’s really seen it. If she has really understood it.
‘Hmm.’ She waves it away. ‘And do you do your own shopping?’
I know that if I say I do she will say that I am well enough to work because I can get round a supermarket. ‘I do it online. I can’t carry shopping or walk for long.’
‘And how did you get here today?’
‘I drove.’
‘Oh! So, you walked a bit of a way, then?’ She looks up at me, the bushy question mark bristling with suspicion.
What am I doing here? Why don’t they believe me? I think back to all the advice I’ve been given: tell the assessor how your condition affects you, including on your worst days. Tell themwhat you are not able to do, because they are set on finding out what you can do to get you into work.
I can read the assessor’s thoughts on her face and later on I know I will see them writ large in the decision maker’s letter. Sorry to inform you…
And then the mandatory reconsideration. And then the tribunal, where the panel look on horrified at the poor decision-making and award me my support group Employment and Support Allowance.
Rinse and repeat.
???
‘I don’t have a job,’ I say to Dan now, staring at the soulless blue curtain behind his head. I am too exhausted to spin justifications this morning.
‘Oh,’ he says.
Oh. That’s about right. Oh. A woman of my age, a woman who should be earning her living, a single mum too – why not play into all the stereotypes while I’m at it?
‘Loads of jobs you could do, intelligent woman like you.’
Loads of bosses who wouldn’t want a weak, unreliable flake like me.
‘What did you used to do?’
