Page 13 of The Flowers of Bay C
I can hardly say no, can I, not with them hanging on his words like excited puppies, squished into my cubicle. Not when I don’t know how to say no, even when I just want to sleep. Barbara called all night for the nurse, crying about the rats and the mouse, and Violet was angry. ‘Will someone please shut that woman up?’ Kat wept in her bed and asked for morphine that didn’t come. My own pain was worse through the early hours, the burden of it pressing me into the bed like a brutal version of sleep paralysis.
I nod at Dr Chowdhury, and he yanks the curtains round their rails, shutting us off from the ward, enclosing us in a blue cave. Too small.
He turns to the students. ‘I’d like you to ask Miss Fielding some questions. Diagnose her. Tell me what is wrong with her.’
What is wrong with me.If only they could actually diagnose all of the wrongs-with-me.
Dr Chowdhury smiles at me. ‘Penny. If you wouldn’t mind, please don’t reveal your condition. Just try to answer their questions and see if they can get it.’
I nod again, sit myself up more, wish I’d got myself dressed and washed and respectable. Wish I’d brushed my hair, brushed my teeth, brushed the ravages of the night off me. They must be thinking about how awful I look. Their eyes tell the tale of their judgment or maybe their incomprehension of me, out of their privilege of health and youth and beauty. Can’t this woman make a bit of an effort?
‘Are you in pain?’ A boy who looks about fourteen years old stares at me, blue eyes bright and intense, an echo of ginger fuzz shading his chin and top lip.
I don’t wish to dignify that with an answer so I just nod. I’m like that dog in the advert. Nod, nod, nod. I’ll nod myself right over and fall flat on my face.
A girl with a hijab and dark, intelligent eyes opens her iPad and opens her mouth. Takes a deep breath. Closes it. Opens it again. ‘So, what brought you into hospital?’
An ambulance, I so want to say, feeling a smile playing at my mouth. But I will be good. I will scatter enough clues and yet not too many. This is a familiar scenario, an oft repeated tableau, hey guys, here’s an intelligent and articulate and fairly young person with a rare disease. Perfect for those trainees to cut their teeth on. Go on, ask her, she’ll say yes, she’s compliant, she’s nice.
‘I had chest pain and more sputum than usual. And just general aches in my body, temperature, low sats.’
They gaze at me as if I’m an attraction at the zoo. I can just imagine the cogs turning in their heads. She knows the lingo, they're thinking. She’s not new to this. She’s probably a chronic case.
Hijab girl says, ‘And what colour is your sputum?’ The others stand there like fishes out of water, like they have no voices of their own.
‘Dark green. Some brown. Streaks of blood.’
They tap furiously at their tablets, as if taking down highly important notes in a lecture.
‘And would you say you were breathless?’ the boy with the fuzz says.
Well look at me now, I want to say. Look at my oxygen tube and the colour of my skin. Nice and blue. What do you think?
‘Yes,’ I say.
They shift uncomfortably, taking tiny glances at one another as if to encourage someone to pick up the baton. A tiny girl with huge glasses and vivid red lipstick swallows and steps forward slightly, eyes on Dr Chowdhury. ‘Is she asthmatic?’
Dr Chowdhury stands with arms crossed and expression inscrutable. ‘Don’t direct your questions at me. Penny is a person.’
The girl shakes her head as colour floods her cheeks. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Dr Chowdhury. Um… Pen… Miss Fielding, do you suffer from asthma?’
‘No,’ I say. She nods fiercely then steps back into the shadows as if her work is done.
The girl with the hijab takes up the challenge. She’s the confident one here, the one who’s going to go far. ‘What medication are you on?’ she says, her finger hovering over her iPad.
I take a breath and it stabs me hard. ‘Do you want the whole list?’ She nods. ‘It might take a while.’
‘That’s okay.’ She smiles at me.
I begin to count on my fingers. ‘Well… carbocisteine.’
A young man who hasn’t said anything yet says, ‘Could you spell that, please?’
I sigh.
At the end of my list most of them don’t look any the wiser. Fuzz-boy’s face is crinkled in a deep frown and glasses girl stands with her finger on her mouth, staring into space. Spelling boy looks like he wishes he was taking no space up at all, like he is an awkward add on. Only hijab girl is clued in.
‘Do you have cystic fibrosis?’
