Page 5 of The Flowers of Bay C
The doctor comes in trailing his entourage of registrars and students. He’s my favourite consultant, Doctor Chowdhury, who sees me in clinic and tells me to go easy on myself but remember to do more exercise, and I always nod and smile, like I’m going to turn over a new leaf first thing in the morning and start couch to 5K, like I will suddenly snap out of all this and feel able to take on the world.
‘Penny Fielding! In here again?’ He spreads his hands and smiles at me. ‘We see far too much of you. No offence.’
I pick at the loose skin around my fingernails and wish I wasn’t wearing this nightshirt. Karen bought it for me for Christmas once. Let’s get you out of all that black, she said. Bit of sparkle, that’s what you need. It was the only one I could find when the ambulance came for me.
Some place inside me I want sparkles, but I don’t want to sparkle at anyone else in case they see me.
He’s serious, all of a sudden, scanning the x-ray and blood results. ‘Hmm. Have you done us a sample yet?’
‘Sent one in, few days ago.’
‘Okay. We’ll need another now you’re in, too.’
He picks up my hand, scrutinises my fingernails with his brow furrowed, his face all shifting in great vivid worry-lines like Van Gogh’s self-portrait. ‘More signs of clubbing than before.’
I look at my nails, at the white blotches, the unnatural curve, the tale told of long-term lung disease.
‘Your infection markers are up, high white blood cell count. You’ll be in for fourteen days, at least.’
I slump even more than I was slumped already.
‘I’m a bit concerned about your x-ray here. It’s showing too much fluid. Here, see, you have fairly severe pleural effusions. Wecould do a chest drain, but we could try a pleural tap first – a procedure where we insert a needle into your pleural cavity to see if we can drain enough out for you.’
Not that, again. Last time they tried that one they decided it was a good idea to make me a practice dummy for a junior doctor who couldn’t get the needle – the biggest, thickest, longest needle ever – into the right place, and I yowled like a cat in the night.
‘You’ll do it?’ I implore him with my eyes, which are most definitely the furthest from enticing as eyes can get right now; reddened, veiny and raw.
‘Someone will be round.’
Oh good.
I sleep in snatches, between nebulisers and pills and IV drips, Jodie’s strident voice loud into her mobile, shouted conversations between staff, the screeching of machines, the constant shrilling of the phone out by the nurse’s station. The cycle of meds, observations, drinks and food passes me by in my daze. The tap gets done and the phlebotomist takes five vials of blood. I refuse the bed change and refuse a wash, refuse another cup of tea (the first still sits, untouched and tepid, on my table) and the toast Nicki keeps offering me. Just leave me alone. Just give me more morphine and leave me floating in my ocean of far away.
It’s only Jake who wakes me from my stupor, loafing into the ward with his earbuds in and his phone stuck out in front of him. He scans the beds, settles his gaze on me and then grunts, raising his chin at me slightly, and if I’m making generous assumptions this might be interpreted as something like, ‘Hey, Mum, I miss you and hope you’re feeling better.’
‘Did you walk here?’
‘Bike.’
Jake is not easy to have a conversation with at the best of times. He is my darling boy, but he is fifteen and doesn’t yet know howto use multisyllabic words, or entire sentences. And his ability to use any words at all varies with his mood, which in itself varies as much as the English weather.
He removes his earbuds, at least, and slouches onto the bed. Nicki will give him a ticking off for that if she sees him. He sweeps his long fringe from his eyes and glances around the bay at the other patients. Barbara is fast asleep in the corner, pinned under her mask, and Jodie is not here. Amina is surrounded by four great tall lads who are all talking at once in soft but animated voices, and a smaller older man sitting on the blue plastic chair by her side, holding her hand. He looks about ten years older than her. They are ignoring the boys and staring at one another as if they have been starved.
‘You okay?’ Jake says at last, having summoned up a great amount of energy to bring these arduous words forth from great depths.
I nod. Then shake my head, because it’s no use lying to Jake. It’s only ever been me and him, and so he knows if I am okay or not.
He narrows his eyes at me. ‘You’re not.’ I stare up at him, at the darkness slicing into his smooth forehead. He still has a baby face in so many ways, round at the edges and yet just sharpening that tiny little bit as adolescence morphs him out of childhood and into the stinking, grumpy unknown.
‘No,’ I say. ‘But I… I’ll be all right.’
My fingers are crossed under my blanket.
He gazes at me. Looks at my oxygen mask, my chest rising and falling too quickly, my face that I know will be pasty and flushed all at the same time, my hair all mussed up and unbrushed. I hate it when my hair is messy but don’t have the energy to do anything about it. And I don’t want to put that on Jake.
‘You be in here two weeks again?’
I nod.
