Page 3 of The Flowers of Bay C
He doesn’t turn the lights off on his way.
I don’t want to be here. I want to be home in my bed with Jake safe in the next room. Will I see my boy again?
‘You woke me up.’
I peer through the half-closed curtains to my left where a blonde woman in aFrozennightshirt is propped up in her bed, her stare a thousand daggers.
She shrugs at me and then shifts her body around, shoves her feet into huge fluffy bunny slippers on the floor by her bed. Grabs a ratty pink dressing gown from the plastic chair next to her bed. ‘Going for a fag.’ She staggers out of the bay, trailing an oxygen cylinder.
The world presses in and angry clouds shudder through half-waking dreams. There’s noise in the dreams, but it’s blurry at the edges. I don’t know where I am.
Something is biting my arm in two.
‘Miss Fielding. Penny. Sorry, flower, I’m just taking your blood pressure. Relax, now.’
I blink and glance at the clock on the wall above the door. Four o’clock. Did I sleep? The main lights are still on. A healthcare assistant in a light green dress looms into my vision. ‘Oh dear,’ she says, releasing the cuff. She grabs my finger and places it in a pulse oximeter. ‘Eighty-eight.’ Her brow knits as she flips through my chart.
I try to form a word. ‘M…’
She lifts my wrist, placing a gloved finger on my pulse point. ‘You what, flower?’
My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. ‘Morphine… please.’
Marcus would’ve scorned me for that. Drugs are weakness, he’d say.
‘Sorry, petal, you’ll have to wait for the nurse. She’ll be round later with your IVs. Try and get some sleep. Just turn your head, lovely, just got to do your temperature. Oh. Thirty-nine point eight. Right, well, try and rest.’
Frozen woman is back in the bed next to mine, mouth open wide, pneumatic snores spilling out and reverberating through the bay. She looks lost there, like I feel, falling into a void. I am tumbling over myself, and somewhere down there I know it is quiet and I want more of it.
Weak sunlight straggles through the windows, and I remember I left the washing outside. Jake won’t notice; he has a great knack for ignoring those things. It’ll flap around out there for the next two weeks, lonely and cold and waiting.
‘Shh, now, flower.’ It’s the healthcare assistant from before. I know her, I think, from more stays in here. I recognise her spiky red hair and wide-open smile. ‘Just doing your obs again. Try to sleep.’
A nurse comes up behind her, drip-bag in hand. ‘S’cuse me, Nicki. She needs hydrating.’
‘Just give me a sec.’
She shows the oximeter to the nurse, who raises her eyebrows.
The nurse hooks the bag up to my drip-stand and connects it to my cannula. ‘There you go, Penny. That’ll help.’
I wonder what will happen if I allow myself to sink deep into the enticing murk, to drown. It is black as night and maybe it will hide me away forever. No one will miss me, not very much. Jake’s old enough to cope by himself more now, and that scares me.
Then, suddenly, I feel it: his hand in mine when he was small. He knew I’d always keep him safe, even when my body let me down.
Whatever’s dragging me down can’t win, because he has to be okay.
He still needs me, so I’m not allowed to go.
Chapter 2
You are so inspirational, Penny, they say to me. So brave. They don’t know how they’d cope if they were me. You’re strong, people say to me, and then I have to pretend to be strong, and that makes me weaker still.
We laugh about it on the Facebook group. We call ourselves The Braves and admit to one another we don’t really feel brave at all. We have a thread for those in the Five Star Hotel. Whose turn is it this time, we wonder, to be pampered all day and all night, to sample the extensive menu. Some of us visit the hotel more regularly than others. Some push right to the front of the queue and get to indulge in its comfort far too much. Like me. Grabby, that’s what I am, taking up more than my fair share.
We have a thread for those who don’t make it out, as well.
It doesn’t feel like a hotel this morning. The ward sister is on her medication round and Nicki is in the ward with the breakfast trolley; what-can-I-do-you-for-today-flower? Must be on a double shift. I like her, with her big warm smile she casts around so freely. She’s the kind of nurse patients always hope for: tender and funny all wrapped up together. She grins at me. ‘Back again, then, Penny?’ I nod, because I haven’t got any words in me this morning. ‘You look pale, flower. Can I do you some porridge? Bit of sugar?’
