Page 17 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Are you well, dear?’ Violet’s husband says.
‘Could be better. That woman screamed all night.’ She points at Barbara, who is oblivious, slumped low in her chair with her head thrown back and mouth open in a slight snore. She looks tiny, lost like a small child in a huge beanbag.
Mr Oddens’ mouth is an oh of outrage. ‘They should give you your own room, out of this awful place.’ He lowers his voice. ‘With people likethat.’ He’s looking at Barbara still, but I know who he’s really talking about. Thankfully Amina is screened behind the curtain pulled between them, deep in happy conversation with her family.
‘I know. I said that to them when they brought me in here. But they took no notice.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
Jodie sniggers and mouths something at Jake.
Kane walks in with his phone in his hand, nods to Jake and me, glances at Kat and her husband and then does a double take, another furtive glance. ‘See we’ve got the reverend in here.’
‘Yeah, and he’s hot.’ Jodie simpers up at him, searching his face, waiting for him to laugh.
He flops on the chair and picks up her hand. Rubs it gently. ‘Say again?’
Somehow, he manages to load soft words with a ton of menace.
Jodie stops. Gulps. ‘Um… I mean, he’s hot, it’s hot in here, isn’t it?’
It’s always unbearably hot on the wards. But Kane is not taken in, and his response takes me hurtling back into a time I don’t want to revisit.
He doesn’t say anything. He just sits, with his hand flat over Jodie’s hand, staring into her eyes.
I shiver.
???
Kane doesn’t stay long today, but his presence casts a shadow over the ward, like an arctic wind creeping in and cooling the atmosphere. Jodie is quiet for a while after he leaves, silent even when Kat’s and Violet’s husbands leave. Jake is still here, playingTetris on his phone, flouting visiting hours. ‘I don’t want to go back to Nan’s, Mum.’
I don’t ask him why they haven’t come to visit me.
‘So,’ Violet says to Kat. ‘You’re a vicar’s wife, then?’ Her tone is loaded with incredulity and derision all at the same time.
Kat shakes her head. ‘Actually,I’ma vicar. And so is my husband. He’s called Nate.’
Violet’s mind is blown. You can see it in the whites of her fingertips clasping the neck of her polyester dressing gown tightly around her. ‘You’rea vicar?’
‘Yup.’
Violet sniffs. ‘Well. That’s new.’
Kat catches me listening in and winks. I avert my gaze, thinking about the faith I had as a child that faded over years of pain, something echoing in the far reaches of me.
Jodie peels herself off her bed and collects up her smoking equipment. She eyes Violet then turns to Jake. ‘Wonder if her husband has the Dressing Gown of Doom as well as her.’
Jake giggles. ‘Probably.’
Jodie turns to Kat as she leaves the bay. ‘Didn’t know you was a Bible bashing type. Don’t get that myself, but each to their own.’
Kat just smiles a weary smile and leans her head back on her pillow, closing her eyes.
Chapter 6
‘You can start getting out of bed a bit, now, Penny,’ Dr Chowdhury says to me the next morning. ‘Your oxygen’s up and your infection markers slightly down. Some encouraging progress for you.’
I smile and then wince. I might look better clinically, but the pain in me hasn’t read the memo yet. Getting out of bed and walking across the ward, even to the bathroom, seems an impossible dream, something from a faraway land I once lived in, a time when nurses didn’t have to come with their bedpans and commodes, summoned by my red call button, when I need a wee.
