Page 50 of The Flowers of Bay C
Kat puffs out her cheeks. ‘Will you stop apologising, woman?’
I try to smile. ‘I’ll try.’
‘I’m sorry about your disease,’ she says, squeezing my hands. ‘That’s rubbish.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But you’ll be out of here soon? Back home with Jake?’
I lift my shoulders.
‘And before that,’ Kat says, suddenly grinning, ‘we have a special trip to go on, don’t we?’
Sister Harris wanders into the ward, rubbing sanitiser into her hands and surveying the patients, bushy eyebrows raised. ‘Well, well, well. Not you lot again!’
Jodie laughs. ‘Can’t get rid of us that easy, Sister.’
‘Hmm. Very rare, actually, to have the same patients in a bay for so long. It’s usually like Piccadilly, all comings and goings all hours of the day and night.’ She looks at Kat. ‘You cast a spell, or said a prayer, or whatever you do?’
Kat smiles enigmatically.
‘Still, you’ll all be off home before we know it, won’t you? We don’t want you lot clogging up these beds longer than you need to.’ She grins round at us, warm brown eyes sparkling, and then plucks Barbara’s chart from the end of her bed.
‘What?’ Barbara says, straining forward to hear. Her hair is standing straight up, a thin white shock of it, as if she’s stuck a finger in an electric socket. ‘Did you say I can go home?’
‘Not quite yet, Barbara my love,’ Sister Harris says, scouring the notes. ‘Few days, though. You’re doing all right, aren’t you?’
I’m not sure she is, really. I heard her doctor discussing her with one of the nurses yesterday, talking about discharging her back to her care home. It wouldn’t be long, the doctor said, that would be the best place for her to go more comfortably and quietly, among her familiar things with familiar people. Jodie heard her, too, and said that we should get planning, because this was going to be the only chance Barbara got. What if we missed the opportunity, and they came to take Barbara away, and she never saw the outside world again?
Nicki comes back into the bay with Kelly in her wake. ‘Heard you took her for a little fresh air yesterday,’ she says to Jodie, nodding her head at Barbara. ‘Did her the world of good, that did. Such a kind thing to do. You going to take her again today? She’s kept on about it ever since, she has.’
Jodie grins. ‘That’s the plan. And tomorrow. Every day.’
Sister Harris doesn’t look convinced.
‘You make it sound like you’re all here to stay for good.’ Nicki winks at Sister Harris. ‘You only want to stay for the five-star service, I know.’
Kat laughs. ‘You’re right there. And the gourmet cuisine.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, not me,’ Violet says, screwing up her nose. ‘The food in here is disgusting. And they let men wander in here in the dead of night and get into our beds. And even after all that they still won’t give me my own room. What’s the world coming to?’
Jodie hisses something under her breath. I think it’s probably something Jake would say.
Amina clears her throat. ‘Will you stop moaning, woman. You are lucky to have this health care, in this country. You should be grateful, not all this whinging all the time.’
We stare at her.
And then Jodie laughs. ‘Too right, Amina. Too right.’
Violet crosses her arms, rolls her eyes and sniffs loudly.
But she doesn’t say anything.
Chapter 15
It’s morning and the early shift is doing the changeover. They stop at the foot of each bed in the bay, catching up the new shift on each patient. They talk about us but not to us, as if we are not really there. ‘Penny Fielding, in with pneumonia. She’s on day eleven of fourteen days tobramycin and ceftazidime and responding well. Just needing three hourly obs now, keep an eye on her blood pressure please as it’s been a bit low. She’s off the oxygen now and looking to go home early next week. Oh, and she needs a new cannula in, can you do that one Laura?’
