Page 30 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘I want to go to the sea,’ she says, piercing into me with her watery gaze. ‘Just one more time.’
‘I know you do, Barbara.’
Her IV drip machine squeals at me through the uneasy silence. Occlusion in the line. I press her call button and drag myself up off her bed. ‘The nurse will come and sort it out,’ I say to her.
‘The sea,’ she says.
I try to smile at her but can feel my mouth distorting, my face sagging into some kind of leer. ‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it.’
‘I lost my mouse.’
I make a soothing noise.
She grips my arm. ‘I lost my mouse, and I want you to take me to the seaside.’
I squirm and back away a little. I don’t know what to say. I wish Jodie was here. Jodie is good at this stuff, she would joke and chat with Barbara and defuse the moment. Nicki would too, she would warm the place up with her chatter and her quips and her Lovelies and her Flowers. But I have little to say. ‘I wish I could help you.’ I watch as her face falls.
‘Well, you can. You can get me to the seaside, can’t you? You can drive?’ Her rheumy blue gaze is insistent, weary, haunting.
‘I… yes, but… maybe you can go when you are better?’ Inside I’m thinking, she’s not getting better, and she never has visitors, doesn’t have family, she’s never going to go to the seaside again. ‘Sorry,’ I murmur.
‘Tell us about the sea, my lovely.’ Jodie is back, slinking into the ward unseen. I breathe out slowly. ‘Tell us where you’d like to go.’
Barbara beams a wide grin. ‘I want to go to Sand Bay,’ she says. ‘Where the sand stretches for miles. I want to sit on the beach. I want to eat ice-cream and watch the surf lap at the sand. I want to feel it on my feet.’
‘Sounds like heaven,’ Jodie says. ‘We should go tomorrow.’
Barbara laughs, a great wheezy rasp followed by a frenzy of hacking. She sparkles up at Jodie. ‘You’re a wicked one.’
‘Bit on the chilly side for ice-cream, though.’
‘So, what’s up here, then?’ It’s the stressy healthcare assistant, reaching over to silence Barbara’s buzzer and checking her IV line. ‘I’ll just get the nurse to sort this out for you.’
The machine screeches at us.Beep beep beep I am blocked sort me out. It accuses me for my impotence, my inability to help an old lady with what is evidently the most important thing in the world to her.
‘Back to bed, ladies. You shouldn’t be over here, you know that. Sister Harris’ll be in here and won’t be happy.’
Barbara grabs Jodie’s hand as she turns away. ‘But you do mean it, don’t you? You promise?’
Jodie stops, mouth opening then closing, flicking her eyes to me and then back to Barbara.
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘You should not make promises you cannot keep.’ Amina is standing in the middle of the ward in her long silk dressing-gown, frowning. I’m taken aback by the anger written across her face. ‘It is not fair on her.’
Jodie shrugs. ‘Who says I can’t keepit?’
Amina’s eyes darken as she grabs Jodie’s arm, beckoning her away from Barbara. ‘Don’t be such a fool. You cannot take her to the sea.’
Barbara is oblivious, drinking cold tea from a sippy cup with no handles, her hands shaking as she tries to keep purchase on it.
‘Well, what if I can?’
Amina’s eyebrows knit together more tightly. ‘You think you know best about everything.’
‘Woah!’ Jodie steps back. ‘What gives you the right to say that?’
‘You think you know all about my marriage, all about my family. You think I am not strong, that I am, what do you say, jailed in by my husband because we did not fall in love like in one of your movies.’
