Page 8 of The Flowers of Bay C
I shrug.
‘Bacteria, fungi and mycobacteria, all three conspire to do more damage to your lungs.’
‘I know.’ I do know. They are my friends. I have made them a nice, warm home to hang out in over the years, and they are reluctant to leave. Just when we think one has been successfullyevicted, it pops up again, laughing in my face. Marcus would say I don’t try hard enough to kick them out the door.
‘We’ll do our best with these IVs. They’re the big boys. We should review your anti-fungals, too.’ He taps his pen against his mouth and gazes at me. I don’t want him to gaze at me. He has more important patients to see. Patients who are dying.
‘You are brave,’ he says unexpectedly, and I dig my nails into my palms. He doesn’t know how I get under my duvet and pinch myself at night, to try to make myself cry, because the tears are there in my throat and they push at me until I think I will burst into pieces. He doesn’t know I scream at the sky and at God or whoever is up there. He doesn’t know that I am really a coward.
‘Your infection markers are very high, still, and we are not happy with your oxygen saturations or your temperature. We’ll repeat the x-ray later to see if we need to put in a chest drain after all.’
Not a chest drain. Please not a chest drain.
‘Is your cannula okay?’
I hold out my hand. They put it in the wrong place; it’ll be blown within hours. Dried blood crusts around the site and it stings deep.
‘I’ll ask the nurse to do you a new one,’ he says.
???
At lunch time, a catering supervisor I don’t recognise slams a tray down on my table. ‘Dinner,’ she says, walking away.
‘Wait.’ My voice is a weak croak. ‘Sorry. I’m vegetarian. Sorry.’
She gawks at me as if I am an alien from another planet. ‘It’s fish,’ she says, slowly, as if I am hard of thinking.
‘Sorry. It does say, up there.’ I point to the board on the wall behind my bed. VEGGIE scrawled in great black shouty letters. Itcould as easily say PICKY or DIFFICULT. That’s what Marcus thought about my food habits, anyway.
She stares at the word as if it is written in a foreign language. ‘But it’s fish.’
I sigh. ‘Fish is not vegetarian.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘All the other vegetarians eat fish. No one else ever complains.’
I have been veggie for much of my life. I think I know what constitutes vegetarian. But I don’t. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugs and walks away, and I’m left filled with self-rancour and nausea at the offending fish on the plate I will not touch.
‘I’ll have it,’ Jodie says, up from her bed and hanging over my table. ‘I’m hungry and this dinner is far too small. I’ll eat anything, me. Well, apart from hospital food.’ She laughs, her whole belly shaking like a jelly.
Amina says, ‘Can I have the food?’ On her table is a tray with pork chops and overcooked, mushy broccoli. ‘I must not eat this pig.’
Jodie raises her eyebrows at me.
‘You have a problem with this?’ Amina says.
Jodie shakes her head. ‘Nah. Just… I think you should get to make your own choices, that’s all.’
Amina says nothing. Jodie shrugs, takes the fish to Amina and the plate of pork back to her own bed.
I wasn’t hungry anyway. The nausea still churns through my stomach like a washing-machine on its spin cycle.
Barbara doesn’t have the mask on today. Nicki is sitting with her, spoon-feeding her yoghurt and chatting away. ‘You’re doing well today, lovely, aren’t you? We’ll have you home in no time! The doctor’s pleased with you, isn’t he?’
Barbara dribbles yoghurt down her chin. Nicki scoops it up, spooning it back in. ‘Come on, flower, you need to get your strength back, don’t you?’
Barbara pushes the spoon away. ‘Did you see the mouse?’
