Page 59 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Do you want me to take you tomorrow, or what?’ Kane says, his voice all loaded with threat. He’s hard to take seriously, though, all manspread out in white nylon.
‘Well, not really,’ Kat says, ‘but it’s not like we have a choice of chauffeurs, is it?’
Jodie strokes his arm. ‘We do, babe. I promise. They’re just joking around. Right?’ She gazes at us with imploring wide eyes.
I remember doing that, too, and so I say, ‘Yes. We do. Thank you, Kane.’
Chapter 18
Everything is going wrong. It’s like this place knows we are trying to bend the rules and it’s pressing back at us, conspiring against us in every way. Our evening IV round is so late I’ve given up on trying to stay awake, and when the nurse comes at one o’clock in the morning I wake with a jump and can’t get my heartbeat to slow. ‘Shhh, now,’ she says, deftly inserting the syringe into my IV port. ‘Go back to sleep.’
The lights are still on in the ward, blazing out in time with the beeps of various IV drips, a turbulence of sound across our bay and through the doors to the other respiratory bays. I give up on sleep and binge watchCasualty,catching up on three episodes I’ve missed. Nothing like watching hospital dramas in hospital. All the patients always seem so well, somehow, so alive with colour and spark, wandering around the hospital without stopping for breath or stumbling because their legs have turned to liquid. The medical staff go straight to the patients when they’re called and give them their medication when they need it. It’s a sanitised version of the real thing.
I fall asleep at some point in the middle of my thirdCasualty.
I almost sleep through my early morning observations, only slightly waking when Ernesto wraps my arm in the blood pressurecuff and it squeezes hard, expanding the loose flesh on each side of it until I feel like my skin will burst into lots of tiny wrinkly pieces. I sleep completely through my early IV, waking up to find the tube still attached, the empty bag dangling from the TV unit above my head. I unscrew the IV from the port and clip off my line, suddenly needing a wee.
That’s when I notice there’s something different about the ward.
Someone different.
A nurse and two healthcare assistants are buzzing round Amina’s bed. Only it’s not Amina’s bed, not anymore. Amina isn’t there. Instead there’s an elderly, very sickly looking woman, face smothered by a large CPAP mask, sparse white hair hanging in ratty tendrils round her face. Her chest moves up and down too quickly, her hands opening and closing like a newborn baby’s. Her face, almost lost beneath the mask, is translucent, like a thin layer of cellophane over shrivelled flesh, eyelids fluttering and mouth agape as if trying to force air to be there when it is not.
Jodie is sitting on the end of her bed, eyes wide, watching the staff sorting out the woman’s oxygen line and drip and catheter.
‘Where’s Amina?’ I whisper to her. My heart is a stone in my stomach. Amina was doing well yesterday, she was all ready to go home tomorrow, she was fine.
Jodie shakes her head. ‘Dunno. I just woke up and she was gone.’
Sister Joy comes into the ward with a pen in one hand and a clipboard of notes in the other, scanning through the top page. My first thought is that it’s a good thing she is on shift today, rather than Sister Harris, but then I remember. Barbara is going to the home and Amina has gone.
‘Where’s Amina?’ Jodie shouts over to Sister Joy, who hangs the file on the end of the new patient’s bed and turns to face us.
‘She’s been moved.’
‘Is she okay?’
Sister Joy nods. ‘She’s fine. But we’re full, you see. We needed the space for a sicker patient. Amina is in another ward to finish her treatment before she goes home.’
‘But we didn’t get to say goodbye,’ Jodie says.
Joy gazes at her. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to see Amina before she goes.’
‘But where is she?’
Sister Joy shrugs. ‘Not sure. The night staff sorted her out. Listen, I need to sort this lady out, so I’ll have a look for you later. Okay?’
Jodie nods mutely. We both know she won’t have time to do something like that, even though she’s one of the kindest.
Sister Joy turns away and Jodie clasps her hands together. ‘Oh, wait, before you go, um… do you know when Barbara is going today?’
Sister Joy puts her hands on her hips. ‘I am not psychic. They will come when they come. The doctor will see her first, could be any time after that. You know how it is. But I think it’s planned for this morning, before lunch at least.’ She turns back to the new patient and picks up her chart again, skimming along the lines with her pen.
Jodie casts her glance down to her hands and picks at her fingernails, a slight quiver rolling round her mouth.
Kat is still asleep next to me, and Violet must be outside. I stare out of the window. It’s a clear day, watery winter sun breaking through the clouds, patches of blue sky and great tall sails of white cloud splashed across the canvas, fighting each other for space. I can almost breathe in the crispness of the air, the mellow taste of autumn conceding to winter; smoke and mulchy leaves, a woody kind of taste in my mouth. I suddenly want to be outside, to dowhat we said we would do, to taste the air and the salt and the sea breeze.
But how can we, with Barbara going and Amina gone?
