Watermark

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  ‘Sandra, look, it’s Valmai,’ he says, as though Valmai has somehow become important, a necessary cog in the Seaside Sanctuary wheel.

  ‘Valmai,’ Sandra says, tapping her arm repetitively. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Lovely day,’ Valmai says, though with slightly less conviction. It’s the second time she’s said it today. The third time, actually. She said it earlier, as she always does, to Rob. Rob reminds her a bit of her son. Looks-wise, that is. She has given up trying to reason with Peter. He hasn’t visited his father once. He tells Valmai that he refuses to be part of the decision. If he visited he would be an accomplice.

  • • •

  Rob changes the dressing on Maggie’s PICC line. She’s staring at the clock counting down the minutes to her next dose. She’s edgy, shrugging her shoulders, jiggling her legs under the waffle-weave blanket. She presses her buzzer even though he has his hand on her arm. ‘Buzz for service,’ she says.

  ‘What’s up, Maggie?’

  ‘I’ve wet myself.’ She looks up at him as though she expects a pat on the head.

  ‘Well, that’s a good look.’ He draws the curtain, eases her up out of bed. Gets an incontinence pad and a new gown out of the drawer. She strips off her sodden robe. Rob averts his eyes. The ammonia smell overpowers her rank breath. He takes an involuntary step back.

  It’s then that Maggie lashes out. ‘You just don’t understand. You just don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like, do ya?’

  ‘What what’s like?’

  ‘The pain. You don’t know what pain is like. You don’t feel things, do ya?’

  ‘Well, I’ve had chronic back pain, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘You’re useless. That’s not pain. In here. In here.’ Maggie thumps at her funnel chest with her fists.

  ‘A fat woman fell on me,’ Rob continues, trying to ignore her, trying to stop the ache from filtering in. He hears Baz’s wheezy laugh through the curtain.

  ‘He had it comin’,’ Baz sings. He knows the words to nearly every musical. Chicago is one of his favourites. Over the past few months Rob has become used to Baz’s wavering states of mind. He seems to alternate between a listless acceptance of the people who are trying to keep him alive and something close to euphoria when he knows that they are failing.

  ‘Morbidly obese,’ Rob continues. ‘She was trying to get out of bed and she stumbled. She grabbed at me and I did what I thought was the right thing: I tried to catch her.’

  ‘He only had himself to blaaaame,’ Baz croons.

  ‘Nice work, Baz, you’ve missed your calling,’ Rob calls out. ‘Workers Comp, physio. I still get a niggling pinch.’

  ‘Oh my bleeding frickin heart,’ Maggie says.

  He looks at her square on. ‘I should’ve let her fall.’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be right. Heartless. Why’d ya want to be a nurse anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know, Maggie. I ask myself that a lot. It’s what I got into.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re not cut out for it. I’ll tell you that for nothing. Here.’ She slaps at her heart with her open palm. ‘It’s gotta get you in here.’

  • • •

  Valmai follows Sandra into George’s room. He’s sitting at a desk copying down notes from an old textbook. He’s wearing the chambray shirt she bought him from the upmarket menswear shop in town. He’s had a haircut, and she can see the strip of white skin on his neck where they’ve shaved up past his hairline. They do things like that at the Sanctuary. Cut hair. Give pedicures. Slip serviettes into collars so the residents look even more useless. All part of the service. Sandra had wanted a private meeting, but Valmai was adamant: whatever Sandra had to say, she could say in front of George.

  ‘Here he is,’ Sandra says.

  Valmai wonders why she says it. Does Sandra think she’s demented as well? That she can’t see her own husband?

  ‘George, look who’s arrived,’ Sandra says.

  Valmai can feel the rising heat of a flush coming on. She wonders if it’s possible to have a menopausal relapse. She hasn’t had hot flushes for years. ‘Hello George, dear,’ she says. It sounds unnatural. Stilted. She wishes Sandra would go away.

  George swivels around in his chair. That’s another thing they’ve done for him: decked out his room so it looks like a proper office. He’s got a bookcase. A musculoskeletal system chart on the wall. A calendar with quotes of the day.

  ‘Hey kiddo,’ he says with a wide, detached smile. ‘We missed you Tuesday. Had to get a temp in.’ He eases himself out of his chair and walks over to Sandra. He presses down on her shoulders. ‘I can see a change,’ he says. ‘You’re straighter. That’s good.’

  ‘Have you been working on Sandra?’ Valmai asks.

  George peers at his wife over Sandra’s shoulder as though he’s playing peek-a-boo. ‘We should book her in for next week,’ George says. ‘I’ll strap your shoulders for you, Sandra. Um, now where was I? Yes, keep the strapping on for three days. It’ll feel weird at first, but it’ll be just as good as if I was walking behind you pulling your shoulders back all day.’

  ‘Thanks, George. I feel a lot better,’ Sandra says. ‘You know, I can turn my head now when I check my blind spot and I don’t feel that pinch. I haven’t been able to do that for years.’

  Valmai closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. She strongly considers the possibility that she’s the one who’s insane.

  ‘So, George is treating you?’ She asks the question in a slightly different way. Good thing he wasn’t a gynaecologist, she thinks.

  ‘Oh, he’s done wonders, Valmai.’

  When George hears this, hears her name, he pulls his head back a bit and squints as though he’s trying to read very small writing in poor light.

  ‘Valmai, George. It’s me, Valmai. Millie enjoyed her walk this morning. The boardwalk path. I would have taken her through the bush track, but it’s overgrown again. Lantana. Council workers haven’t changed.’ The house, the breezy, laidback coastal community, had been George’s choice. Walking distance to the beach. Tennis court up the road. A decent regional hospital for when they got, in his words, doddery.

  ‘Mmm,’ says George. ‘That’s the go, then.’

  It strikes Valmai that he’s bored. That he’s responding to her in the way he used to react to his patients when they rambled on about things of no consequence. He’s being polite. ‘Monday I made your favourite, George. Lamb Ragout. It used to drive me crazy when you added things before I dished up. A waste for one, really. Millie got the leftovers. And last night; you know, last night I tried something different. Fajitas.’

  ‘Oh, don’t try anything new for him. It’s all hogwash.’ George smiles as if she’s finally said something worthwhile. ‘It’d be nice if it wasn’t, but it is.’

  Valmai wonders if George is referring to himself in the third person. ‘Fajitas.’ She says it again. She feels woozy. She steadies herself, presses both hands on the back of the visitor lounge.

  ‘No, kiddo, do it for yourself.’ George ambles back to his chair and swivels around in it. ‘Don’t do it for Jesus.’

  • • •

  At midday, Alyssa bustles straggling family members out of the ward. ‘Rest time,’ she calls out, clapping her hands for effect. ‘Want me to get you a coffee?’ she asks Rob. ‘Chips from the Staffeteria?’

  ‘Nah, I’m good,’ he says, watching her leave. She’s trotting back and forth, herding up the visitors as though she’s a cattle dog. The whole sexy-nurse thing is a misguided fallacy. Even Bella couldn’t make the uniform look decent. He wonders what she’s up to right now. She’s probably being mauled by her dopey boyfriend. He’ll knock her up again. Send Miranda into another downward spiral. Rob scans the room. Maggie is doped up and dozing like a tot. Arthur’s out to it, head tilted back, mouth open wide enough to catch flies. Janice has a leave pass. She’s being wheeled around the hospital by her husband. He’s probably taken her to the Pink Lady to stock up on supplies
. Rob wonders if he’s actually trying to kill her. He’s always finding empty lolly bags in her drawer.

  He sits down next to Baz and groans.

  ‘You should go and eat. I’m right.’

  ‘Alyssa’ll be back at half-past on the dot. I’ve got to make up for this morning.’

  Baz blows his fringe out of his eyes. ‘You don’t, you know. You don’t have to do anything. You could run out of here now.’ His voice peters out then comes back again. ‘Just take off and it wouldn’t matter. It might for a few days. They might talk about you for a bit. But then … you know, don’t get me wrong, you’re an asset to the profession. You could be the poster boy for one of those feel-good public-service campaigns.’

  ‘Thanks for the rap, Baz.’

  ‘No probs. Hey, can you do something for me?’

  ‘Sure. I can take you out for a bit when Alyssa gets back. The wardie’ll bring up another chair. Janice and her hubby have absconded to Lolly Land with the other one.’

  ‘Nuh, it’s okay. You know, I value our little sojourns around this shit hole. You’re the only nurse who ever takes me anywhere. But, well, there’s really nothing left around here for me to see.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Baz is right. They can go up and down a few more ramps, out into the gardens full of faded bark chip and cigarette butts. Skirt around the car park for a bit. Not really much of an excursion.

  ‘Rob?’ Baz’s face is bloated; his eyes are half-closed. ‘Rob, if you want to do something. Can you … I want you to give me a cut-throat.’

  ‘Say again?’ Rob wonders if he’s heard right. Is this Baz’s last-ditch euthanasia request?

  ‘Bottom drawer. Japanese blade. I ordered it off the Net. The carers brought it in with my mail. I just … I want you to get rid of my beard. Rob?’

  Rob pats down Baz’s sheet. ‘Jeez, Baz, I don’t know … I’ve never … I mean I can give you a regular shave.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’d do it myself, but, you know. I’ll talk you through it. I’ve studied it on YouTube. It looks really straightforward.’

  ‘Great. YouTube. And what if I slip? That’s gonna be a nice incident report. Nurse Necks Quadriplegic.’

  Baz laughs and then he raises his eyebrows and keeps staring until Rob nods. In the drawer Rob finds a wooden case with the cut-throat (ivory-coloured binding, smooth steel edge, Japanese script on the blade) and a bristle brush. He fills the glass on Baz’s bedside table with hot water, puts a slab of hospital-issued soap in the bottom and swishes and daubs until it’s foamy. He draws circles around Baz’s chipmunk cheeks, down his throat, flicks the brush under his nose. Baz’s mouth twitches and grins and Rob’s hand trembles more than it did during his first botched injection attempt as a new grad.

  ‘You’ve got to hold the skin taut, Rob. You’ll get a smooth line.’ Rob presses his fingers into the skin near Baz’s temple. He works down the cheek, rinses the whiskers into the cup. Baz’s skin is as smooth as a high-tide pebble. There’s something therapeutic about gliding the blade down his face, tapping off the stubbled foam. He starts to work up the neck and then Baz swallows and he nicks him. Baz winces and screws up his eyes.

  ‘Shit. Christ, Baz.’ Rob presses his thumb against the graze, reaches into the drawer for a gauze pad.

  Baz giggles like a kid. ‘It’s okay. Just even me up, whatever you do.’

  Rob pulls Baz’s skin tight again, curves the blade around his chin. Douses it with water. Angles it again. Chips away. Baz relaxes into it and closes his eyes. Rob thinks that the ward is calmer than it’s ever been. There’s the broken drilling noise of a ventilator, Arthur’s mucousy wheeze and the murmur of Maggie’s television. The slow-shuffling kitchen staff scraping half-eaten crud into bins. Shaven, Baz looks younger. His skin is flawless. Rob soaks a towel in hot water and folds it around Baz’s face. He pumps some sorbolene cream into his palms.

  ‘There’s sensations I remember,’ Baz says. ‘Hot-footing in up the beach, squeaking through the sand. That pins-and-needles feeling of getting snagged on seaweed. Mum dousing me with aloe vera and the feel of the breeze from the pedestal fan moving across my chest.’

  Rob smooths the sorbolene cream over Baz’s face and down his neck. He walks over to Janice’s bedside table and brings back a mirror, slanting it above the bed. Baz turns his face left and right.

  ‘Suave, hey?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, suave.’

  The rims of Baz’s eyes are red. Rob pretends not to notice. He busies himself. Rinses out the bowl. Swishes foam down the sink. Pulls out the clump of whiskers blocking the plughole.

  ‘We used to have this pebblecrete driveway. The car would slip on it when it was wet. Mum and I went shopping and she had to park out on the street. It was pouring. She grabbed all the grocery bags and looped them onto her arms. I was taking forever to get out of the car.’

  Rob wipes down the blade, slots it back in its box.

  ‘When I finally did, she slammed the door behind me and then she ran up the side of the driveway, on the embankment. I was screaming, but she didn’t turn around. I guess she thought I was carrying on because of the rain. She’d slammed my thumb in the door.’

  ‘Jeez. Nice one.’

  ‘She didn’t come out to check if I was okay till she’d unpacked all the groceries. You should’ve seen my nail. If I close my eyes, even now, I can still feel the throbbing. Mum wrapping my thumb in ice. My body soaked from the rain. Her body next to me. Gripping my hand with hers.’

  Rob thinks of his own child. How he and Miranda spent the night in the ward with their baby bundled up between them. Dozing in and out of the nightmare.

  ‘And she was crying over that. Crying that I was hurt. That pain is so much clearer to me than the accident. She made it a good sort of pain, if that makes any sense.’

  Rob recalls Baz’s patient notes. Reading up on his history. The scaffold stopped his fall. He was basically found hanging.

  ‘The girls at the Fandango tell me that some of the blokes come in and pay for a cuddle. Married, some of them. They just want the sensation of being touched by a woman who wants to touch them.’

  Rob smiles. ‘Yeah, I get that. But don’t put it in the classifieds. The Fandango. Full Service. Discreet premises. Busty blondes. Cuddles. I don’t know. I don’t know if that works.’

  ‘I guess you think I’m a coward,’ Baz says. ‘Giving up.’

  Rob wants to tell him to drop the case. For once he’s thankful for all the bureaucratic bullshit. ‘I think you’re brave,’ he says.

  ‘So, you know? I told them I’d tell you.’

  ‘Know?’ His gut lurches.

  ‘You know they’ve okayed it. For my birthday.’

  ‘Your birthday.’ The infantile repetition is all he can manage.

  ‘Next Tuesday.’

  There’s a sickly smell of metho in the air that Rob’s only just noticed. He thinks he might throw up. ‘Tuesday. I’m not rostered on.’

  Baz nods. ‘It’s okay. I’ll be dosed up anyway. Family’ll be here. What’s left of them. I’m sure they’ll have me on the good stuff.’

  Rob puts his hands on the bed rail and it rattles. He leans down and presses his nose on Baz’s nose the way Maoris do. He stays like that.

  Across the room, a buzzer sounds.

  ‘Oi.’

  He turns to face Maggie, her sad creased face, her groggy eyes.

  ‘Ya queer, are ya?’ Maggie yells.

  ‘Yes, Maggie. I’m just an insipid gay male nurse.’

  Baz snorts back a laugh and then he starts to sob. Rob thinks about how hard it must be to cry when you can’t bury your face in your fists.

  ‘You in tomorrow, Rob?’ he asks, his voice gravelly.

  Rob blinks. Grabs a towel. Wipes it over Baz’s face. Nods.

  • • •

  A woman in a banded bohemian robe eases through the gap in the door and then closes it behind her. She has tendrils of hair that fall, like helix ribbons, out of a messy bun, and lines
that plunge into the deep hollows below her cheeks. A slash of mauve lipstick spreads beyond the outline of her lips. Valmai takes in the woman’s black two-piece swimsuit under the floating rainbow design of her cover-up. Cover-up is the wrong word. Quite a lot of the woman is on show – the fleshy folds of her skin, the cobblestone pattern on her chest. Valmai thinks she’s seen her in the grounds of the Sanctuary. Sandra leaps out at the woman as though she’s defending herself from being attacked. She holds the woman’s hand and pats her down like scone dough, quick and light as if she’s trying to keep the air in.

  George, oblivious, rubs his eyes with his sleeve as though he’s had a tough day. He stretches back in his chair and checks his wristwatch. His suede shoes are under his desk, lined up in front of his feet.

  ‘This is probably not a good time, Deidre,’ Sandra says. ‘George is busy. Busy with family.’ Valmai thinks that Sandra is including herself in the family equation. That she and Valmai are part of a cast of long-lost relatives. That there’s a whole herd of them in there. Aunts. Children. Second cousins once-removed.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Valmai says, ever the appeaser.

  ‘Deidre,’ George says, turning around from his desk.

  Perhaps she’s another one of his patients. Valmai intends to write a letter of complaint to Dr Bunt. It’s patronising letting George go on with this chiropractic nonsense. Deferring to his whims. She looks at George, but he’s looking past her, grinning at Deidre. Deidre is smiling back, fluttering her arms in the voluminous fabric. The two of them are smiling at each other, holding their gaze. Smiling as though there’s no-one else in the room. Deidre swishes towards George in her cotton ensemble, her rippled thighs undulating. She moves as though she’s moving through water, wading in the dappled shallows of a secluded bay. Valmai can hear the faint sound of her name being called. She feels wobbly. She recalls the vertiginous sway of bodies pressed against hers on the funicular to Hohensalzburg Fortress. She thinks it is Sandra’s voice calling out to her, but she’s not sure. She observes Deidre’s rolling frame as it reaches George’s desk. Deidre hoists herself up on the table as though she’s clambering into a dinghy. She seems aberrantly mobile for her size. She shuffles her ample bottom into the space between George’s calendar and his notepad. Her legs, the texture of blancmange, don’t taper. Cankles, George used to call legs like that. Straight down from calf to ankle. He was always repulsed by obese women. ‘Another one’s beached,’ he’d say as if he were whale spotting.