by Rosie Harris
Bill arrived promptly the next morning. It was a bright sunny day but extremely cold. He looked very nervous and seemed to be shaking. He took a deep breath as he came into the warmth of the house, rubbing his hands together and exclaiming how cold it was outside.
After a mild autumn, winter had suddenly arrived and, instead of going into the colder weather gradually, it was a case of sudden biting cold that set old bones and joints aching.
Mary offered him a cup of coffee but he declined.
Their taxi arrived promptly and, after assuring the driver that it was the King Edward’s Hospital in Windsor that they wanted, silence reigned more or less throughout the journey. As they sped along the relief road and Windsor Castle came into view, Mary commented on how lovely it looked with the Round Tower sparkling in the sunlight. Bill merely grunted his agreement. Mary looked at him sharply but he avoided her eyes. She felt at a loss of what to say. A few minutes later they were in Windsor, turning down Gosling Way and heading for the hospital.
‘Have you brought your appointment letter?’ she asked as they approached the reception desk.
Bill fumbled in an inside pocket of his jacket and pulled it out. Mary took the letter from him and passed it across to the girl. She checked it against an entry on her computer, asked him to confirm his date of birth, address and telephone number, and then handed it back telling them to take a seat. There were about thirty other people sitting waiting and Bill pursed his lips in concern.
‘We’ll be here all day,’ he muttered.
‘Not all the people waiting here are for the same clinic,’ Mary whispered back.
Ten minutes later, Bill’s name was called and he was taken into a curtained off cubicle. When he came out he looked slightly dazed.
‘They checked what I could read of the letters on a chart and I didn’t do too well,’ he frowned. ‘The first couple of lines were all right, but after that, although I could see that there were letters written there, I couldn’t make out what they were. Not even using the pinhole device which they said would help to make them clearer. I guessed at a couple of them but I’m not sure if I was right or not. The nurse then measured the pressure in my eyes and said that was all right. Then she put in drops, which stung like a bee. They said to go along to the next room and sit on one of the yellow chairs.’
‘Well, come on then, that’s what we have to do,’ Mary told him. She stood up gathered up their belongings and accompanied him to the AMD section of the next waiting room. Almost immediately Bill’s name was called and he was taken into a small room and seated in front of a machine to have the back of his eye photographed.
‘The optician did all this,’ he told the girl who was operating the camera device.
‘We like to have our own record,’ she told him. ‘Now put your chin on that little ledge and watch the screen. You see the green cross, well focus on that and ignore the red line. Now have a blink and then keep your eye open and keep still. There will be a bright flash.’
‘That almost blinded me,’ Bill gasped.
‘Now we do the other eye,’ the operator told him. ‘Same again, chin on the ledge, watch the green cross and ignore the red line and don’t blink.’
Again there was a bright flash and Bill shook his head after it.
‘Is that me done?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Yes, now you can go back outside to the yellow chairs and the consultant will see you as soon as she has studied these pictures,’ she told him with a smile.
Again there was a wait and this time it seemed to be longer and Bill began fidgeting uneasily.
‘Not long now,’ Mary told him.
Five minutes later his name was called again and this time he went into a consulting room. Mary expected him to be back out in a few minutes but there seemed to be a considerable delay. Mary sat there thinking back to the numerous times she had accompanied Sam to this hospital for treatment. He had been diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degeneration, or AMD as they called it, almost five years before he died.
At first his visits had been monthly, sometimes for injections of Lucentis, at others as a check-up to make sure that there was no further bleeding behind the eye. It had become so routine that in the end they took it as a matter of course.
Bill felt nervous as he went into the consulting room. The consultant, a youngish woman with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses looked serious as she studied something on her computer.
She indicated a special chair adjacent to a movable worktop holding some sort of magnifying equipment and indicated that he was to sit in it. Then she slid the device so that it was in line with his face and told him to rest his chin on the special ledge and look straight into the screen. She studied both his eyes, then peered at them through a very bright light that she held in her hand and finally marked a cross on his forehead over his right eye.
‘You have slight bleeding in both eyes,’ she told him, ‘but the right one is more advanced so we will treat that one today.’ As she moved the equipment to one side a nurse appeared and put drops into his right eye. They stung so much that it brought tears to his eyes and she handed him a tissue to wipe the moisture from his face.
A couple of minutes later, he was taken through from the consulting room to a small but well equipped surgery where he was asked to lie on a narrow bed. The nurse advanced towards him and put more drops into his right eye. This was to anaesthetise it, she told him.
He knew he was trembling as he lay there, feeling vulnerable and wondering what was going to happen next.
He only had to wait a few minutes before the consultant who had seen him came bustling in and was helped into an enveloping green robe and a cap to cover her hair. A net cap also covered her head and a large piece of sterile green cloth had been placed over her face. The consultant took her place behind his head and placed a green cloth over his face. Bill began to shiver as he felt her cut a slit into the green cloth immediately over his right eye. It was so close that he was afraid she would dig the scissors into his eye.
‘Relax,’ she said in a low firm voice. ‘You will feel a slight pressure, that is all, nothing to worry about.’
He waited holding his breath, afraid to move. As she had said, he felt the pressure on his eyeball followed by a tiny prick. Then his eye was swamped with swirling red and green, like oil on a puddle when the sun shines on it. The next moment the green cloth was whipped off and he lay there blinking for a couple of seconds before he was helped to his feet. The consultant had already gone. A nurse helped him off the bed and onto his feet.
‘Do you have someone with you?’ she asked.
‘Yes, a friend,’ he told her. Bill was still white-faced and shaking with the nurse still holding his arm as she helped him back into the waiting area.
‘Before you leave, sit here for ten minutes until you are feeling better,’ she said as she guided him into a chair. ‘Are you together?’ the nurse asked as Mary immediately moved to the chair next to him.
‘Yes, I’ll take care of him.’
‘Ten minutes then, until he feels steady,’ the nurse repeated.
‘As soon as you feel ready to leave we’ll go along to the canteen and have a coffee or a cup of tea,’ Mary told him as she pressed his arm reassuringly.
‘What about getting home?’ he asked.
‘I’ll ring for a taxi while we’re having a drink,’ Mary told him. ‘It will take ten minutes or so for them to get here.’
‘It’s a good job you insisted that we take a taxi. I certainly wouldn’t be able to drive home; everything is misty and distorted. One good thing though is that it doesn’t hurt.’
‘Well it may do once the anaesthetic wears off,’ Mary warned him. ‘The best thing to do is go home and go to bed for an hour or two. Then, when you wake up, apart from perhaps some cloudiness for another few hours, you will feel all right.’
‘Bed?’
‘Well, if you don’t want to go to bed then have a snooze in your armchair. It is t
he best thing to do believe me. It’s what Sam always did.’
‘Mmm … well let’s see how I feel when I reach home. Shall we go and have that cup of tea now?’
‘I feel better for that,’ Bill smiled as he drained his cup. ‘My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak.’
‘You don’t feel shaky anymore?’
‘No, I’m as right as rain.’
‘Right then, I’ll ring for a taxi and we’ll make our way back to the waiting area by the entrance, so that we can see when it pulls up.’
‘You mean you can see,’ Bill smiled. ‘Everything is still very cloudy to me. I don’t know how I would have managed if you hadn’t come with me,’ he said squeezing her hand gratefully.
As they emerged from the hospital to the taxi, Mary heard Bill’s sharp intake of breath and his hand went involuntarily to his face to shield his eyes from the bright winter sunshine. Mary waited until they were both strapped in and the taxi was moving before she extracted a pair of dark glasses from her handbag and handed them to Bill.
‘Here, put these on, then the sun won’t hurt your eyes.’
He took them from her and began fumbling to take off his normal glasses.
‘It might stop them hurting but I won’t be able to see a thing, not even with my good eye, without my glasses.’
‘Keep your glasses on. These are supposed to go over them. Try.’
Bill did as she instructed. ‘That’s better!’ he exclaimed when he had fixed them into place. ‘You’ve no idea how that sun hurt my eyes.’
‘No, but I know how it used to affect Sam. That’s why I brought those dark glasses along with me.’
Mary saw Bill home and, for the very first time, went into his house with him.
‘You go and sit in your most comfortable chair and I’ll make you a drink,’ she offered.
He didn’t argue. She went into his kitchen, surprised at how Spartan it was and how tidy it was. Everything seemed to be in its allotted place. She filled the kettle and switched it on and while it was boiling she reached down for three cups: one each for them for their tea and one to make soup in before she left. She had brought a packet of soup with her and she felt that would sustain him and even help him to sleep for an hour or so, after she went home.
Then, by the time he woke up the uncomfortable feeling as the anaesthetic wore off would have passed. He had also been given a creamy ointment to put into his eye to soothe it. By the next day he would not only be feeling fine but also he would be able to see fairly clearly.
EIGHT
The phone was ringing when Mary returned home. Leaving her keys still in the door, she rushed to answer it.
‘Mother? Are you all right?’
‘Hello Richard. Yes, of course I’m all right. Why are you sounding so worried?’
‘Someone told Lucia that they had seen you at King Edward’s Hospital in Windsor today.’
‘Yes, I was there but not for me. I went there with my friend, Bill Thompson. He has developed AMD, you know, the sight problem like your father had and he was there for treatment.’
‘Well, I’m glad that was all it was. We were quite worried about you.’
‘There’s no need to be. I’m as fit as a fiddle. How is little George?’
‘He’s all right,’ Richard said dismissively. ‘Getting back to what you said, about what you had been doing and why you were at the hospital, don’t you think you are a bit old to be playing nursemaid to an old man? Hasn’t he got a daughter or daughter-in-law or someone who could go with him?’
‘No, he hasn’t.’ Mary’s tone was cold and clipped.
It surprised Richard; it was almost as if she had squared her shoulders defiantly, warning him that she wasn’t prepared to argue or even discuss the matter. He hadn’t intended to upset her, merely to warn her not to take too much onto her shoulders. He knew from her reaction, though, that she considered he had overstepped the mark and so he decided the best thing was to retreat.
‘I’d better ring off now or I’ll be marked as absent when they call the school register,’ he said with a dry laugh. ‘Bye for now.’
‘Why oh why can’t people mind their own business?’ she muttered as she slammed down her own receiver. As she went back to take her keys out of the front door, Mary wondered who had seen her. As far she could recollect she hadn’t seen anybody that she knew. Why did people have to gossip and spread tittle-tattle? she thought crossly. Still, she had made it quite clear to Richard that she wasn’t prepared to talk about it, apart from telling him that Bill had AMD.
She understood his concern about her looking after Bill and comparing it with when Sam had AMD, but that was altogether different. Then she had been responsible not only for escorting him to hospital but putting drops in his eye. He had hated it and had made quite a fuss. Once or twice when she had had to go out, she had asked Richard to do it and from what she remembered he and his father had nearly come to blows. Sam had complained that Richard was clumsy and heavy handed, and Richard had turned round and told him to do it himself then.
‘Other people have to do it for themselves,’ he had argued. ‘Mum spoils you and panders to you.’
Sam knew he was right but he resented Richard being the one to tell him so. Their quarrel had been heated and full of accusations and anger. Afterwards, neither of them would apologise to the other. Sam had accused Richard of being arrogant and immature. Richard had accused his father of being a selfish old bore. After that she had tried her best to always be on hand to put the drops in Sam’s eyes and no more was said about the matter.
She was quite sure that Bill would be able to put the drops in himself. He was so much more self-sufficient than Sam had ever been. She supposed it was because of his army training; there was no one they could fall back on, whatever needed doing they had to get on and do it. She thought that Richard’s call would be the end of the matter but she quickly found that it wasn’t.
Megan was on the case the moment Richard reached home that evening and told her about what had transpired when he’d phoned his mother as she had ordered him to do.
‘I hope you discouraged her and warned her not to start dancing attendance on him, like she did on your father,’ she said sharply.
‘I tried to do so but she didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Really!’ Megan’s tone was caustic. ‘I knew right from the beginning that this Bill Thompson was going to be trouble,’ she went on in an angry voice. ‘He’s a clever old devil! He’s latched on to your mother and wormed his way in, making sure she trusts him and feels sorry for him. Taking her to the pictures indeed! All he is doing that for is so that he gets a good cooked meal at least once a week. In next to no time it will be a cooked meal every day.’
‘I don’t think she would want to go to the pictures every day,’ Richard joked.
Megan gave him a withering look. Her green eyes were like daggers and there wasn’t even the ghost of a smile on her face.
‘You don’t have to be so obtuse, Richard. You know quite well what I’m trying to imply and now look where it’s leading. She spent years nursing your father because of his eye trouble. In the end, he was practically blind and he couldn’t read or see to even sign his name. Is she going to go through all that again?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richard said mildly. ‘As I said, she doesn’t appear to want to talk about it.’
‘Well we are going to talk about it whether she likes doing so or not. I’m going round to see her. She must be warned about the danger of doing things like that. The next thing is he’ll be taking to his bed and expecting your mother to look after him full time.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Richard argued. ‘He’s having treatment because he is losing his sight. He’s not ill; you don’t take to your bed with AMD.’
‘If I remember rightly your father spent a great deal of his time in bed,’ Megan said acidly.
‘Yes, that’s true, but he had other things wrong with him as well.’
‘Well I did point out to mother that she was rather too old to be acting as a nurse,’ Richard responded lamely.
‘Yes, and I bet she laughed at you.’
‘No, she didn’t do that but as I’ve already told you she did make it quite clear that it was none of my business and refused to discuss it.’
Megan said no more but there was a strained atmosphere between her and Richard for the rest of the evening.
Next morning, Megan wasted no time in confronting Mary. Although she had an appointment in London, she made it her business to go and call on Mary first.
‘I’ve heard that you’ve been taking this Bill chap to the hospital. Do you think that’s wise?’ she demanded in an aggressive voice the moment Mary opened the door to her. ‘You look absolutely worn out!’ she added as she studied her mother-in-law’s appearance.
Mary felt at a disadvantage as she saw how perfectly made up Megan was, her hair immaculate as if newly set and her sharply fashionable outfit. Megan was elegant from the tip of her high-heeled shoes, to the glittering earrings that matched perfectly; and with the silver and diamante necklet at the neck of her emerald green dress, she looked bandbox glamorous. Mary mentally compared them with the shabby skirt and blouse that she was wearing. Normally she kept these for doing her chores in. She had simply combed her hair so that it was tidy but not styled in any way and she wasn’t even wearing any lipstick.
‘Wise? I don’t know about being wise, it’s simply something one does for friends,’ she defended.
‘For family, perhaps, but not for complete strangers, not unless you are hired as a carer or as a nurse and expected to take him to hospital as part of your duties.’
‘Wouldn’t you do it for your friends?’ Mary asked mildly.
‘No, of course not! None of them would expect it,’ Megan said dismissively.
‘So they wouldn’t do it for you either,’ Mary commented dryly.