Page 106 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Okay, okay.’ I read the copy out loud and we laugh at the exaggeration and embellishments in the story. Perhaps it was Sarah Lawley’s poetic license, or more likely Jodie’s morphine-addled imagination. Apparently I defended us against Dodgy Caravan Dude (who, it turns out, is named Gary Cockford), by seizing his knife and holding it against his throat, and Amina high-kicked him with her stiletto heel, “‘like this awesome ninja chick,’ Jodie Hancox, 31, says.” (‘She got my age wrong,’ Jodie mumbles.) Most of it is true enough to the tale, though, and as I read it I think about how much it sounds like a made-up story, something beyond the bounds of reality. Hospital patients wouldn’t go and do something stupid like that, would they?
But there is no judgment in the article. Instead the journalist has written us as heroic, as selfless and self-sacrificial, as kind and courageous women who just wanted to give an elderly lady her dying wish. And there is something true in that, of course, but I know that my motivations, at least, are a little less black-and-white, that there is nuance to this tale that doesn’t quite come out in this report. I know that I wanted to be somewhere different, that I wanted to please other people and to say yes, but also knowthat because I did, I discovered some new things that will help me say yes a whole lot less in the future.
‘I did want to help Barbara,’ Kat says, her brow all crinkled up as she reads the report again. ‘But I’m not this great humble hero they’re making out. I kind of like being needed, I guess. I wanted to be part of this thing, to be the person everyone looks to for help. I… I don’t always feel like I am enough, I suppose.’
I stare at Kat, beautiful, confident, self-assured Kat, and think about how people might be swimming along so smoothly on the surface when underneath there is a whole maelstrom of emotions and sadness and anger and helplessness threatening to pull them under at any time. I think about how we are so quick to judge people from first impressions, how we have no clue about what is really going on in their lives, how people so often wear a mask, how they say they are fine when they are not. I think about Violet and her behaviour when she first arrived in Bay C, how her words were so soaked in bile, and how they must have sprung from the fear squirming deep inside her and the pain that so gripped every part of her body, from years of rejection that squeezed her into a desert of bitterness and pulled her husband into it with her. How her motivation for this outing was not only born out of the super-human selflessness Sarah Lawley so hoped to invest us all with; how she wanted to explore this new sense of belonging, something she’d caught glimpses of in the past two weeks in a world she was usually so hostile to and so was hostile back. And Amina wanted to come because she wanted to prove she was a human who existed, to dance into the freedom of being seen, and because she wanted to help Violet, the very person who had so disdained and spurned her. Perhaps Amina’s motivation was the best of us all.
I look at Jodie and think about her happy-go-lucky temperament and how it covered over the grim truth of her life with Kane. And then there’s me, with my eager-to-please mannerand how I so kick myself inside when I do not stand up against injustice or oppression or abuse. I wonder what the world would look like if we were all more honest with one another, if we all admitted our tangled motivations and messed-up emotions, if we helped one another a little more by allowing our own vulnerabilities to stand out and proud.
‘I get it,’ I say to Kat.
I look down at the article again, reading to the end. There is a quote from Lady Caroline about how immeasurably grateful she is to us for returning her dear cat, Byron, and how delighted she is to donate to the hospital on our behalf. The whole piece reads like a sappy girl-power chick-lit novel, all friendship-in-adversity and women who beat the odds, tenacious, feisty women who are even stronger together. There’s a photo of the hospital as well, and one of our bay from the outside I didn’t know she had taken. We are all lying in our beds, looking fast asleep and not very strong at all.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Jodie says, and she is grinning from ear to ear.
Jake says, ‘I can’t even.’
Chapter 30
Ilie awake late into the night, unable to sleep, jittery with agitation about all that has happened and the possibility of going home tomorrow. If I count up my days my last IV wouldn’t be officially until tomorrow evening, but I think my consultant will waive that one in the face of my excellent vitals and return to something like health. My cannula is on the edge again, the drug searing through my vein, but I didn’t mention it when the nurse came at midnight to push my IV through. Not another one. Please. Not for just one day.
It’s quiet on the ward, apart from the screech of Alice’s machine which is like background noise now. I wonder how I will sleep at home, in the dead silence of a room without machines. Every so often it squeals and one of the healthcare assistants will come in and gently admonish her for pulling it off. ‘I know you don’t like it, lovely. It’s a horrible great thing, isn’t it. But you need to leave it on.’ Alice weeps and the healthcare assistant sits with her and holds her hand.
I ask the nurse for one of my prescribed sleeping pills when the hours tick away and sleep doesn’t come and I lie stiff with weariness. When she brings it I succumb quickly to its velvetdepths, its waters closing over my head and dragging me into sunlight-drenched lands.
In the early hours I jolt awake and wonder if it is morning. The window behind me is a square of dark grey, though, with no signs of dawn breaking up its gloom, and still the snow comes, cascading through the darkness and glittering in the reflection of Alice’s overhead light, still on above her bed. I yawn and wonder if I really am awake or if the sleeping pill has sent me into some kind of lucid dream as I become aware of hushed voices from Jodie’s cubicle. She has the curtains closed around her, and I wonder if she is on her phone, if she is making up with Kane. I hope not. Not after she has come so far. But then I remember that she doesn’t even have her phone, that Kane took it with him.
Another voice floats through the curtain. Kat’s calm, soft tones, a low whisper of gentle tenderness. Kat’s voice is soothing, floating me away from the weariness of the ward and lulling me back into the arms of my drug-heavy sleep, whispered and gentle and somehow assuring. Is she praying? I think she is praying. I didn’t think Jodie was into that stuff.
I am falling, tumbling over and over, tottering on the edge of oblivion, sliding down into Kat’s unheard words which tug me deep into waterfalls, drifting into the kind of sleep that you can’t easily climb out of, the kind that pins you to the bed and holds you there.
A sudden jolt into consciousness. An impression of something from my dream still weaving through my mind, shouts and crashes and the whirring of machinery. I swallow; my mouth is dry, and reach over for my water, blinking and staring around. My curtains are closed around me, enclosing me in a blue cave with weak light spilling under from Jodie’s cubicle. I can hear people moving about, whispering. I think it’s coming from Barbara’s direction but there’s movement next to me too. Jodie is probably getting up togo for her fag, she often does in the early hours, stealing out of the ward like an inept burglar, a look of mischievous rebellion stamped on her face. I hear footsteps leaving her bed and smile. It’s all part of the familiarity, the pattern that makes this place my temporary home, the absurdity yet assurance of it all. I close my eyes and begin to slide away.
I don’t think Kat is with her anymore. No voices there now, only from the cubicle in the far corner. Muttered voices, worried tones, beepbeepbeep of machines. Beepbeepbeep, calling me into sleep.
Machines in Barbara’s cubicle.
Barbara.
They are moving around, stealthy footsteps, squeaking shoes on the polished floor, to and fro and in and out. Whispers and scuffles, a muted commotion of movement.
What are they doing?
Dread settles in my stomach like a jagged stone, cutting through my sluggish languor.
What have we done?
???
I am tugged awake by the morning light and a sense of doom.
My curtains are still pulled tightly around my cubicle but there is movement outside. The squeal of wheels, the gruff voice of a porter, Ernesto whispering to him. I want to look out of my curtain but don’t want to all at the same time.
It’s our fault. I know that Barbara had a full, long life, I know that we granted her wish and made her shine, but we tired her out too much, we left her outside in the frozen world too long. I am plunged back into the narrative I so recently began to climb out of:It’s my fault. I am responsible. I should have said no. It’s all my fault.
Kat is crying softly from behind the curtain next to me. I swallow over the great lump in my throat and shift myself to the edge of my bed. ‘Kat?’ I whisper, as if speaking any louder would shatter some kind of sacred aura hovering over the bay. ‘Kat?’
She sniffs and then she is up, poking her head through the curtain and then tugging it back so that our cubicles become one, closed against the rest of the bay. Her face is red and tear streaked.
