Page 21 of The Flowers of Bay C
Jodie looks over to Amina, as if inviting her to take her turn in this great revelation of our diagnoses and terms of stay. ‘What about you? Amina?’
Amina is silent, her face deep in a book.
‘What’s with her?’
‘She’s probably just feeling ill,’ Kat says, and Jodie shrugs.
Amina lays the book down. ‘I don’t have such good English.’
‘It sounds good to me,’ Kat says.
‘I do not really always understand. Sorry.’
Kat smiles at her. ‘You don’t have to be sorry. We were just wondering how you are doing.’
Amina stares at Kat, and then at me and Jodie, eyes widened, hands curling and uncurling in her lap. ‘I… thank you. I am doing well. But the doctor, he says I will be in here more days. I want to go home to my family.’ And just like that, where the light was in her eyes the tears begin to gather, shimmering and then spilling out. She brushes them away. ‘Sorry. I have felt so ill.’
Violet tuts loudly. ‘Well, don’t we all want to go home? None of us are exactly loving this.’
Nobody replies, but I watch as a shade of anger crosses Kat’s eyes.
‘Where’s that boy of yours?’ Violet says to me. ‘I need him to take me down to the shop and outside for a little cigarette.’
I find myself smirking exactly how that boy of mine does, at the sheer entitlement of her. Jodie catches my eye, and I wheeze out a cackle, and then I holdmy ribs, grimacing.
‘He’s hardly going to be here at this time of day, Vi,’ Jodie says. ‘He’s not your personal porter, you know.’
Violet fixes her with a look that might kill a lesser person.
Amina grunts as she rotates her body round and stumbles out of her bed, her face grey with the effort. She’s wrapped in a blue silk dressing gown, a loose floral turquoise scarf covering her hair. She shuffles towards the toilet in her jewelled flip-flops. A nurse I vaguely recognise comes into the ward, pushing the white medication cart ahead of her and smiling at Amina on the way, telling her to take it easy. She looks kind, grinning widely around at us all, dark eyes full of sparkle. ‘Hello, ladies! I’m Sister Joy. I’ve got your nice lunchtime tablets.’
‘There is that man in our toilet now, again.’ Amina is back, eyes troubled, spreading her hands wide.
Jodie blows out her cheeks. ‘Not again.’
I hadn’t noticed, but I haven’t made it as far as the toilet yet.
Sister Joy looks up from the chart she is studying. ‘Again? That man is so naughty. He has his own toilet.’ Her soft Caribbean lilt becomes more pronounced in her rising tones of disapproval. ‘I will sort him out, this man in your toilet.’
This man in our toilet lurches out, flinging the door wide with a loud creak. He is wobbly on his feet, sparse white hair all askew, sprouting in odd places over his mostly bald head, blue striped pyjamas loose around his lanky frame. ‘Harold,’ Sister Joy says, rolling the r for seconds loaded with censure, ‘come on. You have your own men’s toilet. You cannot take the ladies’ one. Poor Amina, she is waiting.’
Amina looks down at her feet, blushing.
‘I don’t like the men’s toilet,’ Harold says.
Sister Joy lays her chart down and marches over to him, a finger held forth in admonition. ‘Don’t be naughty. You use your own. Why do you not use yourown?’
‘It is too dirty and the men pee on the seat,’ Harold says sulkily, like a teenager being asked to tidy up his room.
‘Well, you pee on our seat,’ Jodie says.
Harold shakes his head. ‘I do not.’
‘Yes you do. Amina, look now, has he peed on the seat?’
But Amina is back on her bed, clutching her book, face hidden away.
‘I don’t. And I will keep going to this toilet. It’s my right to go to this toilet. I have paid my taxes all my life.’ He waves his arms around in great outrage.
