In the Light of What We See

by Sarah Painter

  I struggled to get hold of my thoughts. He hadn’t mentioned Geraint, which meant he probably didn’t know about him. I looked at the man in the suit sitting on the visitor’s chair and tried to remember. I’d liked him enough to tell him about Pat and I had remembered enough about my essential personality to be pretty certain that I wasn’t very free with that kind of information. He knew that I had an aunt and he hadn’t mentioned a mum or a dad, so I guess he knew about them, too. I was trying to work out a puzzle but there were too many pieces missing and no picture on the box.

  When my physical therapy appointment rolled around, the physio turned out not to be a perky woman with a high ponytail, but a blond and irritatingly fit man. He looked like a Viking. The kind of person who gets their five-a-day and, after doing their gruelling daily exercise, plays rugby for fun. As I raised myself painfully to my feet, fighting the urge to pass out, I found his aura of glowing health insulting. His presence was a personal affront to every sick person in the room.

  The Viking’s name was Simon and I soon realised that his golden exterior, friendly smile and gentle northern accent were all a lie. He was a sadist. I didn’t notice at first as I was so delighted to have made it to a standing position without fainting. Wave after wave of dizziness rolled over me but I prevailed. I felt amazing. If I’d been steadier on my feet, I’d have punched the air. As it was I tried to sit back down on the bed.

  ‘Up, up, up,’ Simon said. ‘Again.’

  I didn’t know why he was speaking to me as if I were a child, but I gave him my best raised eyebrow and said, politely enough: ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’

  He laughed as if I’d made a joke and took hold of my hands. ‘Upsy-daisy.’

  Okay. Now I knew I would have to get better, so that I could kick him in the nuts.

  Before I really knew what was happening, I was shuffling towards the Viking, holding his hands as he walked backwards in front of me. Humiliating didn’t even begin to cover it.

  After a few steps I felt as if I was going to be sick. I wanted to tell him this, but my head was pounding so hard that I’d lost the power of speech.

  I think I must’ve blacked out because I had no memory of getting back into bed or of the Viking leaving. I came to for long enough to realise that I was alone and horizontal and then I went to sleep.

  After three days with him I had to grudgingly admit that I’d improved. He didn’t make me use a Zimmer frame, for which I was pathetically grateful, and I could shuffle down the ward and the adjoining corridor with him walking beside me, making chit-chat. That was the worst part: the conversation. I felt rusty and ill-equipped. All of my usual defences and linguistic ease had been stripped away by the accident and I felt pale and naked. It was as if I had too few layers between me and the outside world, and it terrified me.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said, realising that the Viking had been speaking for a while and had now stopped, probably expecting a suitable response.

  ‘Nothing. It’s okay.’ He was unbearably gentle in his speech. It slayed me. ‘You’re doing really well,’ he said. ‘We’ll go to the end today.’

  I was feeling stronger and steadier. I did feel lucky that I could walk, hadn’t needed to relearn it, but at the same time I felt rather fraudulent about my recovery, as if I’d just been pretending to be unconscious all those days. Despite the agonising pain in my head and back, I felt that I should be worse off, that I was somehow cheating by tottering down the hall with increased vitality. ‘This is a waste of your time, I expect,’ I said, surprising myself.

  ‘Not at all.’ He smiled at me. ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘You don’t look like a physio.’ I didn’t know why I was making small talk; I’d never been any good at it. In the next moment I realised the answer: I was lonely. Too many hours lying in bed alone, too few visiting hours with Mark and, even then, a nagging feeling of separation. Being severed from so many of my memories made me feel isolated and off-balance.

  The Viking hadn’t answered, which was fair enough. What could he say to a vacuous comment like that? He noticed that I was listing to one side and took my arm very gently.

  ‘I used to swim,’ the Viking said as we turned at the end of the corridor. The way he spoke let me know that he didn’t mean he got his ten-metre badge in the local baths.

  ‘I used to walk,’ I said, and tried to smile properly, like a normal human being.

  He rewarded me with a squeeze of my upper arm.

  I was feeling good about all of this progress, so it was something of a blow to realise that the young woman was back again. The one in the white apron, who didn’t look quite real.

  She smiled thinly, not showing any teeth. I ignored her. I wasn’t going to have anything to do with flights of my imagination. I was having quite enough difficulty as it was without adding hallucinations into the mix.

  ‘Are you okay, Mina?’ The Viking’s perfect face was creased into a question mark.

  I nodded. I was fine. I wasn’t seeing people who weren’t there. It wasn’t happening.

  I once read a book by one of those popular psychologist types that described all the different kinds of hallucinations people suffered from after brain injuries, strokes, going blind, that kind of thing. I had a feeling it was very comforting on the subject of seeing things that weren’t really there, so I decided I wasn’t going to panic and ask the Viking to have me admitted to the loony bin just yet.

  ‘Mina?’

  Besides, I’d been seeing birds that weren’t real for years and years, I wasn’t about to panic over a ghost-woman. I was just obviously the over-imaginative type. Highly strung. The Viking was still peering at me, concern etched on his face. I smiled in a determined fashion. ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘And everything hurts.’

  At once his frown smoothed away. This, his expression said, was entirely normal. Business as usual.

  ‘Just a little further.’

  ‘Has anybody ever punched you?’ I said, conversationally, as I limped back towards the bed.

  ‘Loads of times.’ His voice was cheerful and I couldn’t help smiling even as I collapsed back into bed. The woman was still there. She stayed even after Simon had walked away to find his next victim. ‘I’m going to sleep,’ I said out loud.

  ‘Good for you, love,’ Queenie said.

  The woman didn’t move or change expression. She had a kind face, though, and I didn’t feel scared. ‘Goodbye,’ I said, trying to sound firm, but not mean. The woman stared back and I watched her until my eyes got too heavy and I had to sleep.

  GRACE

  For the first few months of training, Grace was so utterly exhausted that the thought of doing anything in her off-duty other than lying on her bed was impossible. Her idea of a big treat was to wait for Evie to leave the room so that she could enjoy the release of a quiet weeping session. Gradually, though, she became accustomed to the hard work and the days took shape for her. There was a rhythm to the routine that was comforting and it lulled Grace into a kind of stupor.

  Eventually, it dawned on her that nurses were allowed to leave the hospital and, once she’d surfaced from the black waters of exhaustion, she felt a desperate urge to do so. There was precious little leave, one day a month, and then only if Sister or Matron didn’t decide to cancel it, but there was off-duty time. For a day nurse, this meant a couple of hours in the evening and a half-day every week. The others made the most of it, walking down into town in groups of two or three, arms linked and spirits high. They went to sit on the seafront or to paddle in the sea, and to the cafés in town for slap-up feasts and cream cakes. The more daring and energetic went to dances in the evening. Although Sister Bennett disapproved it wasn’t against the rules and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  Grace was sitting on her bed, rubbing her aching feet and watching Evie get ready. The shyness she’d felt in her first week had rubbed away, and now Grace handed Evie her brassiere and did up the snaps on the back of her dress.

  Th
ey had to be in the nurses’ accommodation by ten o’clock. It didn’t matter that they were living away from their parents, doing a job and earning a wage, those were the rules and if the house sister or the porter on the gate caught anyone breaking them, she would be up in front of Matron. ‘It’s like prison,’ Evie complained regularly. ‘We’re kept in a cage.’

  ‘It’s to protect us,’ Grace said, parroting what the house sister had said on her first day.

  ‘I don’t think you need protecting,’ Evie said, her voice turning nasty. ‘I’m sure your morals are in no danger. I bet you’ve never sinned in your life.’

  Grace didn’t say anything, just got undressed and climbed into bed. She pretended to read while Evie finished getting ready. When she left for her evening, a dance at the pavilion, she said, ‘Don’t wait up,’ her voice full of life and the promise of fun. Grace turned her face away and stared at the wall until she heard the door close.

  It was almost quarter to eleven when Evie climbed through the bedroom window. If Sister caught her, she’d be in Matron’s office before her feet even touched the ground. Grace had thought about closing the window tight, leaving Evie to wander the grounds until she got caught, but knew she wouldn’t do it. Evie was tactless and self-involved and she’d hurt Grace’s feelings, but she didn’t deserve that. Besides, they were like siblings, united against parents. Us and them. At least Grace assumed that’s how it was for siblings. She’d only ever read about them in books.

  The juniors, at any rate, looked out for one another as much as possible, one watching out for the senior nurses and the ward sister, while the others hid in the kitchen stuffing down leftover cake from the tea round or slices of bread and marge when they’d been sent too late to the dinner hall and there’d been nothing left except some steamed currant pudding, which was solid when fresh, but pretty much unchewable after it had been left on the side for three hours.

  Grace pretended to be asleep. She heard the soft sound of Evie’s feet on the floor, the whisper-quiet movements as she undressed quickly and got into bed. Evie never took her make-up off when she came in this late and she wore black eyeliner. In the morning she’d look more like a patient than a nurse until she’d been to the bathroom to wash it off.

  Grace kept still and waited for Evie’s breathing to become deep and regular. She was holding her own breath – she couldn’t relax until Evie was safely asleep. After a moment, the small snuffles of Evie’s breathing became more ragged. Grace strained, listening. After another moment she realised that Evie was crying.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Grace whispered.

  She heard the click of Evie’s throat as she swallowed. Then, ‘Not really.’

  ‘Did something happen?’

  There was another pause and, just when Grace had decided that Evie wasn’t going to answer, she said: ‘A bit homesick. Silly, really. I didn’t like it much when I was there.’

  Her voice was stronger, more like daytime Evie. Lipstick Evie.

  Grace felt the silence between them expand and soften until it was a bubble that held them both. She wriggled over to the very edge of her bed and reached out across the strip of floor between them. Her fingers couldn’t reach Evie and she was about to say something instead. Something comforting, she hoped, when she felt the tip of Evie’s fingers touch her own.

  The next day, Evie acted as though nothing had happened. When Grace said, ‘Are you all right?’ Evie tilted her head back and said, ‘Of course, darling,’ in a cold tone.

  At breakfast Evie didn’t sit with Grace, as she usually did, and when Grace bagged ten minutes of off-duty in the smoking room, Evie stood up from the prized position by the radiator, passed her half-finished cigarette to the nearest nurse and left.

  By the end of her shift, Grace had decided to leave Evie to it. Whatever mood she’d got herself into, Grace was sure she’d come out of it again in her own sweet time. Evie wasn’t the sort to stay down for long.

  For all her flouting of the rules and her glamorous ways, Evie was a born nurse. Grace envied her easy manner with the patients. While Grace crept around, waiting to be found out at any moment, for a patient to scream ‘imposter’ at her with stiffly pointed finger, Evie wore the demeanour of an old hand. It didn’t matter that she was just twenty years old, the same age as Grace; she spoke to the patients as if she’d been a nurse since before they were born. The old dears and the grandfathers, the young soldiers and the children, were all treated with the same authoritative, slightly cross manner. And they all adored her for it.

  ‘What do you mean, you need a bottle?’ she’d say, marching past the end of a bed. ‘It’s not time and I’ve got better things to do.’ Evie wasn’t cruel. She’d fetch the bottle for the man in question to relieve himself or she’d plump pillows or pass a handkerchief or whatever was required, but always with a sharp word, and an air of harassed efficiency.

  The adults were respectful and apologetic to her face, but joshed with one another behind her back in clearly affectionate tones. ‘Oh, no,’ Grace heard one man say, ‘we’ve got Jones, again. Mind you, don’t need any nursing today or we’ll all be for it.’

  The children found her hilarious. The sterner her face became, the harsher her tone, the more they giggled or gazed adoringly at her frowning face. ‘Tommy Wilkins, have you been scratching your spots again? If you take these mittens off I’ll stick them on with glue. Don’t turn those big blue eyes on me, it won’t do you a bit of good.’ She’d turn and walk away, leaving Tommy Wilkins convulsing with laughter.

  They called her ‘Patch’, which Evie pretended not to realise was short for ‘Cross Patch’, and when Grace was on the children’s ward with her, the constant refrain was ‘Patch do it’ or, from the politer children, a plaintive ‘Patch, please’.

  Off duty, Evie was a riot. While the rest of the girls were drooping from exhaustion she seemed to tap a never-ending source of energy. She was out more often than she was in and she regaled them all with tales of adoring men and stolen kisses and showed off the gifts she was given – soft leather gloves, silk stockings, a cashmere scarf in buttery yellow.

  Evie knew all the latest songs and dances, too. She would perform in the common room, projecting fearlessly in a voice that wasn’t always exactly in tune, and striking outrageous poses. She would put a hand on her hip and throw coy glances over one shoulder. They were exaggerated and ridiculous, but they gave Grace a funny feeling in her stomach.

  Sister Bennett walked at a bracing clip down the ward and began bellowing at Grace while still ten feet away, as was her style. ‘There’s been an accident at the factory and we’re to get ready for casualties. They said we’re to take at least six. We’ll need to shift some patients into this ward to make room downstairs.’

  Grace wanted to explain that she was about to go off-duty, but she knew that it wouldn’t do any good. You were only grudgingly allowed to take your off-duty. It was a privilege, if you could be spared, not a right. Still, Grace was dead on her feet and didn’t know how she was going to stay awake for another hour, let alone a whole night.

  When the casualties came in, the men went to another ward and Grace’s got seven women. One had bruises and a broken arm and was complaining that a brick had come flying at her.

  ‘Did the building fall down?’ Grace asked as she helped the patient into a more comfortable position.

  Sister Bennett gave her a withering look. ‘Focus on your job, Nurse. This is no time for idle gossip.’

  Grace didn’t think asking about the accident that had brought the casualties into her care was ‘idle’ but she wasn’t about to contradict the sister. Besides, her superior had already stepped away to the other end of the ward and disappeared behind screens, no doubt to do something highly medical and efficient.

  Grace looked away from her patient, feeling overwhelmed and uncertain before the number of people clamouring for attention. The excitement had woken up all of the existing patients and there were various requests for inf
ormation, medication and, from the gastrics, cries for milky drinks.

  One of the women from the factory was moaning loudly, almost rhythmically. Another, not so badly hurt, was asking anyone who’d listen to ‘keep her quiet, for gawd’s sake’. Grace didn’t know who she was supposed to attend to first and everyone was so busy.

  Sister Bennett, arms full of bandages, slowed down long enough to say, ‘It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch,’ and that bit of attention and advice was just enough to unstick whatever glue had been in her gears. She followed the sister to the bed of a young woman, not much more than a girl. Half of her face was pale but pretty, and the other half an angry red mess. The shock of it brought the raw taste of vomit into Grace’s throat and she turned away to take a deep breath.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Sister Bennett wheeled around and whispered harshly into Grace’s ear, ‘Don’t you bloody dare.’

  The shock of hearing the sister swear was enough to snap her out of the sudden nausea. Grace swallowed down the sick and turned back to the patient. Sister Bennett was right. It didn’t matter how she felt. She had to be Nurse Kemp. Not Grace. Not even human.

  ‘You’re all right,’ Sister Bennett was saying briskly, as if the girl was complaining of a splinter in her hand. The girl’s good eye had rolled upwards, tears leaking from one corner. Her mouth was open, dragged wide on the good side as if she was screaming, although not a sound came out. It was eerie and horrifying, but Grace concentrated on her training. She needed gauze for the burns. Morphia for the pain.

  ‘Fetch hot water bottles,’ Sister Bennett said and Grace did as she was told.

  ‘Shock is the first biggest danger,’ said the sister, packing the hot water bottles around the girl. ‘We’ve got to bring her body temperature back up . . . and please don’t say it!’ She held her hand up. ‘Not a word about blinking ironic, I don’t want to hear it.’

  As they worked, the morphia seemed to be taking effect and when the girl’s remaining eyelid was closed and her chest was rising and falling steadily, they moved on to the next casualty. It wasn’t until later that Grace let the horror wash over her. The girl was a corpse-in-waiting. If the shock didn’t take her, then infection would. The burns were too extensive for her to survive.