Page 108 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘She said that?’
‘She said she’d never known anyone like us five. That we gave her back her dignity after Kane took it away. She was struggling to speak and I said to her, I said Jodie, please don’t talk, please just rest, but she said no, she had to tell me. She said she knew she was dying, she knew she didn’t have too long, all the operations she’d had on her heart hadn’t done enough, there were structural abnormalities that wouldn’t be fixed. Said that she wanted to do one last thing, with Barbara, one last thing for the good of someone. Then she was gasping and the doctor was in there saying no more talking, shush now, and then…’
I take Kat’s hands in mine and squeeze.
‘Then I did my thing. And sat with her a while. She held onto my hand. They tried, Penny. They tried to revive her but it wouldn’t work. I had to leave, to come back here, to listen to it all. How did you not hear?’
‘Sleeping pills.’
‘Oh.’
There’s a bustle in the bay as two of the healthcare assistants start pulling all the curtains back. Sister Harris is there, her face set in a mask of brisk emptiness, yet I can see the cracks at the sides, around her eyes. Violet is sitting up in her bed, blinking back tears, and Barbara is lying back in hers, eyes closed.
Jodie’s cubicle is empty.
???
Later, Doctor Chowdhury stands at the end of my bed, his arms hanging awkwardly by his side. ‘Now, Penny, I’ve learned about what you’ve all been up to.’ His eyes flicker over to Jodie’s space. ‘You were very close. I am sorry.’
I can’t find any words, so I nod. The shock in me, at first broiling through me like a wave of heat, has hardened into a rock in the pit of my belly. Later, I will cry more.
‘It wasn’t your fault, you know.’
I breathe in deeply and exhale. ‘But… but if we hadn’t been out in the cold… Jodie got cold. She got tired. I could see it on her. She was a bit blue. If we had only stayed—’
Doctor Chowdhury raises his palm. ‘You must stop this. This was not the reason. Jodie died because of a long-term issue. Her doctors were surprised she had got to this age, it was thought that she would not survive childhood. You must not think this way.Instead, you must think about the joy that it brought to her at the end.’
I pick at a loose flap of skin on my thumb and then I wrench it away and hope that the sting of it will burn hotter than the shock and the grief.
And then I think about her face, all lit up with mayhem and mischief, all afire with glowing joy and newly minted liberation. Pale with cold and disease, yet somehow warm with life. She was like the autumn leaves, resplendent in their finery in their final days, blazing with colour as they hurtled to the ground and into their winter of death. She was all the shades of gold, all the splashes of vibrancy.
And then she died.
‘Now. Let’s look at you.’ He takes up the clipboard with my notes and ruffles through the pages. ‘Hmm.’
‘I’m doing well. I’m so much better.’
‘Your vitals are good. It seems your little trip did you good. All that fresh air.’ He sweeps his hand around the bay. ‘Did you all good.’
‘So I can go home today?’
He folds his arms and ponders me, then looks back at my chart and mouths numbers as he counts up days and doses. ‘No. No, I think just to be safe I’d prefer you to stay in one more night, for your final IV late tonight. Then we’ll get you discharged and home as soon as we can in the morning.’
My gut plummets. I want to go home. I want to go and wrap myself in my blanket and my cushions and Jake’s arms.
Jake. Jake will be so sad. Jodie has become important to him, in such a short time; I could see through all their banter, their game of insults, that there was a light between them.
There was a light between us all.
???
The Friends man is back again, after lunch, when Violet, Kat and I are sitting around Barbara’s bed holding hands and saying nothing at all.
‘I had to come up here soon as I started my rounds,’ the Friends man says, almost gasping with glee. As he takes us in, his face falls and he steps back towards his trolley. ‘Are you okay?’
Kat shakes her head.
‘Jodie passed away,’ Violet says.
