Page 34 of The Flowers of Bay C
He leads me to a cross trainer, the machine I avoid, mocking me every time I walk into the gym with its unreachable heights. I shake my head. ‘I don’t think… I mean, I’ve been working on the bike. I’m doing okay, actually.’
I feel proud of myself, I want to say. I’m persevering and it’s paying off.
He waves his hand over at the bikes, dismissing them with a twist of the lips. ‘Nah. This’ll build you up more. Look.’ He climbs on and starts it up, and in seconds he’s a blur of movement, arms and legs whirring in a rhythmic dance, all energy and bulging muscles.
‘Now you.’
‘I can’t—’
‘That’s no attitude to take, is it? I know you can do it. I have faith in you.’ He’s not even broken a sweat. He stares at me, his brow all crunched.
I don’t understand why he has faith in me. He doesn’t know me.
‘I can only do that because I’ve worked so hard at it.’ He spreads his hands, gesturing at his body, all toned and fit and glowing with health, and grins. ‘You could, too. And I want to help.’
But why would someone like him want to help someone like me?
‘You’re a little slow,’ he says, as I brave the cross trainer, forcing my legs to co-operate and my chest to stop crushing so hard.
I nod furiously. ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry.’
He lays his hand on my arm and I shiver. ‘It’s okay. I have some ideas. Shall we go for a coffee? Get something down on paper? A plan?’
And that’s how it started.
I was caught up in his optimism and charm, in his certainty that he was the answer to my troubles. He was like a breath of fresh air after living in the shadow of my successful sister – he was going to reshape me, mould me into a new and better version of myself, a version my parents would, at last, be proud of. How did I get so lucky?
???
There’s a traffic jam at the entrance to the bay after breakfast. The little man from the Hospital Friends is pushing his trolley laden with newspapers, magazines and chocolate into the ward while Nicki is pushing a commode laden with something else out of it, and Sister Harris is trying to get through with the meds cart. Ernesto hovers behind her with the obs trolley.
‘Anyone for papers today?’ the Friends man calls.
‘Got any beer?’ Jodie says, and the man giggles and waggles his finger at her.
None of us want anything. I’d quite like a newspaper but he only has theMailand theSun, noGuardians, so I don’t bother. He looks deflated, so I buy a Mars bar and he bounces over to me like a grateful puppy.
Sister Harris is sharp today, any soft edges filed away by stress or exhaustion or just life. She is impatient with the Friends man, pushing through and sighing heavily, telling Ernesto to get a move on because the observations are late. She’s coming round with the morning drugs and heparin injections. ‘Little pinch of stomach please?’ she says to me and I lift my pyjama top up. ‘Ooh, you’re all the colours of the rainbow here, aren’t you.’
I look down at my stomach, a map of blotches of varying colours, the daily blood thinning injection taking its obvious toll. She pinches some loose stomach flesh and plunges the thin needle in. ‘Sharp scratch.’ The drug is a fiery dart. This one really is a sharp scratch. ‘There you go. All done. Ernesto! Get those obs done!’
The staff are a bit scared of Sister Harris. I haven’t seen any of the other nurses here only addressed by their title and surname, but Sister Harris looks like she’d bite your head off if you called her Diane, even though it’s printed on her name tag. I can tell they’rein awe. They’re like a class of eight-year-olds, all tedious righteousness, scampering around and falling over one another in their eagerness to be the one to get some rare praise from their teacher today. Ernesto almost bows to her as he rushes towards Kat with the obs trolley. With Sister Harris the praise rarely comes, but they’re still hungry for it; I see it in Ernesto’s eyes, right now.
The doctors are scared of her, too, and defer to her like a soppy golden retriever backing away from next door’s imperious Persian cat as she wanders through their rounds, her voice a sharp cut through the waffle and the apologies. She is fiercely protective of her patients, stopping by our beds when she has no time to, asking if all is well and if there is anything we want to talk about with her. Most of us nod and say we are fine, but Jodie likes to embroil her in long conversations about the food and that grumpy nurse on the night shift who cannulated her wrong and exploded her vein and then told her off for not staying still. Today is different, though. Jodie beckons her over, speaking in more lowered tones than usual, hands flying everywhere, her face a jagged crevice of outrage. She keeps pointing to Barbara and I strain towards her bed, catching snatches here and there.
‘I’m not making that up.’ She looks towards me. ‘Hey, Penny, I’m not making that up, am I? I don’t do that. I don’t lie. You heard them, yeah? Those care workers in the night.’
I nod. ‘Well, yes.’ I look down at my hands and pick at the loose, red-raw skin. Why didn’t I mention it to Sister Harris? Why did I leave it to Jodie, content to pretend it never happened?
‘They were literally being that rough with her, telling her to shut up, ’cause she was crying and going on about her mouse. And they was laughing at her too. Telling her she’d made such a mess when she shat herself. I had to say something so I was over there giving them a piece of my mind.’
‘I think they assumed we were all asleep,’ I say.
Sister Harris sits down heavily on Jodie’s chair. ‘Do you know who it was?’
Jodie nods. ‘It was that grumpy one, you know, the one who chews gum all the time and shouts like a banshee. Think she’s called Julie. And the other one, I don’t know, think she was agency ’cause she had a different colour uniform.’
‘Hmm.’
