The Great Gods were intently examining some X-ray plates and the students were gaping at them with a great show of interest. The silver-haired professor shot a question at one bespectacled young man who reddened and seemed lost for words. For a moment there was complete silence. The entire ward was suspended in deathly quiet. Granny Mitchell moved slightly and a great ripple of flatulence tore from beneath her blankets to go belting round the ward like a military tattoo. The old lady opened her eyes, muttered a weary, ‘Beg pardon,’ and went immediately back to sleep.
Well, that did it! I squirmed and screeched with mirth. Mary shrieked and clutched her stomach. The Great Gods tore their eyes from the X-ray plates to look forbiddingly in our direction. A slow flush crept over Sister McQuarry’s neck and she whispered to a little student nurse who broke from the group and scurried towards us. The trolley containing the ward’s case histories was parked at the foot of a bed. The little nurse caught her foot on a castor and down she sprawled, skirt to the waist to reveal brief yellow knickers and rows of suspenders.
The students all looked long and hard at what was obviously a rare sight in the middle of a working day. Delight fought with sympathy in their expressions. One or two made a discreet rush forward. The Gods were making a great show with the X-ray plates but took sneaky looks at the yellow knickers and the suspenders. The professor with the horn-rimmed glasses seemed particularly confused by the sight, his eyes swivelling rapidly between the network of bones on the plate and the rather shapely little legs on the floor.
Through my laughter I saw with dismay that the nurse had a hole on the heel of her stocking in a spot normally covered by a shoe. But the shoe had come half-way off, the hole gaped like a crater on the moon. I felt really sorry for the nurse but the sight did nothing to sober myself or the hysterical Mary. We shrieked louder, Sister McQuarry’s face sparkled with rage, the little nurse went running off in tears, and Granny Mitchell woke herself with an extra loud foghorn of a snore.
I knew Sister McQuarry would never forgive either Mary or me but I didn’t care. In a way I was glad to be getting back at her for all the snide remarks she had doled out to me. After all, what could she really do to me for laughing before the Gods? I couldn’t be put into any more of a prison than the one I was already in. She couldn’t hit me. She could glare and make tight-lipped sounds of disapproval but these I had already endured without any lasting damage.
When the Gods finally came to my bed it took all my control not to laugh in their faces, but this was now a nervous reaction.
‘This young lady seems in fine fettle,’ commented the beetling-browed professor, throwing me a grimace that was meant to be a smile. ‘How do you feel … er …’ He consulted my chart. ‘Christine? Better – eh?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ I said the unfailing words quickly, then something dared me to add, ‘But I’d like to get up. I’m sore lying in bed all the time.’
I held my breath at my audacity.
‘Hmm.’ He frowned, then went into a huddle with the other medics. The students stood aimlessly, obviously discomfited by Mary’s occasional snigger.
Sister McQuarry received whispered instructions and the screens were whipped round my bed. One by one the students lined up to prod my belly, marvel at the little holes in my limbs where calcium came out like toothpaste, and generally look me over. It was awful lying there, everything exposed, cold fingers squeezing with ineffectual gentleness or poking avidly till I felt my bladder contents would erupt and my spleen rupture at any moment. Sister McQuarry was enjoying my discomfiture with a tight-lipped satisfaction. The students were put through the usual third degree but it was a very brief affair. Whether the laughter of two little girls and Granny’s indifference to protocol had knocked concentration out I’ll never know, but my gown was placed carelessly over my skinny little body and the looks on the Gods’ faces suggested my case held no more interest for them at the moment. Sister McQuarry looked disappointed but whipped the screens away from my bed. Everyone was drifting away, not a word was said to me. Then, like an afterthought, Doctor Masters looked back and said briefly, ‘You can get up tomorrow, Christine. We’ll see about getting those legs of yours moving.’
I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t answer. I had lain for almost two months in bed; now suddenly I was to be allowed up and I wondered vaguely if Sister McQuarry had said anything to the doctors about Mam’s talk with her.
Mary was being told she was to get home and she was bouncing on her bed with joy. Her news made mine miserably insignificant, and my first feelings of happiness dispersed rapidly.
Without Mary the days were long and dreary but Annie, the young ward maid, brightened my daytime hours. Every morning she breezed into the ward, the click-clack of her polisher keeping time with her merry humming. If anyone needed a bedpan and no nurse was available, Annie flew into the slounge calling gaily, ‘Right! Bums ahoy and mum’s the word!’
With help I could now sit up and every morning before breakfast Annie got behind my bed to haul me upright. I had discovered on getting up that the strength in my legs had almost gone. It was impossible for me to get out of bed by myself, but Annie swung my legs round and while I swayed dizzily on the edge of the bed she put on my slippers and enclosed my little body in a big hospital dressing gown. My legs wobbled like jelly but Annie supported me on the way to the toilet and walked me about the ward. Unable to straighten my legs, I felt like a disabled banana as Annie half-dragged, half-carried me on these expeditions.
Because of the rarity of my trouble I had several little trips to other parts of the building so that Doctor Masters could show me off to various colleagues. For long hours I lay on hard couches in little ante-rooms while the doctors came and went. Sometimes I think they forgot all about me because on one occasion a guilt-ridden nurse came to my rescue at nearly midnight to take me back to my ward. I grew resigned to the waiting but with nothing to read, nothing to do, I was forced to control the wild activity my body had once known and channel it instead into my fertile mind, locking each character, each situation away to be sorted out later at leisure, because I had decided that one day I was going to be a writer, one so utterly brilliant the world would know about me. My notebook was my brain. I couldn’t very well sit with pencil and paper while doctors pressed cold hands against my belly. How could I lie writing in detached splendour while my limbs were folded about like bits of spaghetti and I was asked to touch my nose with my eyes shut or push my feet against a doctor’s hands to see how much strength remained in them?
One day Doctor Masters asked me if I would go to a students’ conference which was to be held in one of the big Glasgow teaching hospitals. ‘You’re a special case, Christine,’ he beamed flatteringly. ‘You don’t have to go but just think how much help you’ll be to students who have to study so many subjects to become doctors. You’ll be a challenge to them.’
Having experienced the amazing theories put forth by dozens of students on my case, I didn’t share the doctor’s optimism, but I fell for the flattery bit. I felt grown-up, important, and looked forward to the big day with all the zest of someone going on a big outing. I had been in hospital five months and never been further than the physiotherapy department, so I was quietly excited at the prospect of a trip in the ambulance. When the trolley came to take me from the ward I felt special. Pretending I was going home, I shouted my farewells to everyone. During the journey I caught glimpses of trees and chimneytops from the small clear slits of the ambulance windows. I felt I was looking at another planet, a world I had grown away from in the confined sphere of hospital.
Breathlessly I waited for the ambulance to stop so that I might experience the wonderful feel of air on my face. For one brief, glorious minute the wind caressed my face and ruffled my hair. The August sky was blue above the hospital towers, the smell of life was all around me. While the ambulance attendants joked with me and I smiled, deep inside I cried for freedom.
I was indoors all too soon, t
hrough corridors to a large hall with beds all round the walls. A curtained-off cubicle swallowed me up and I was left to stare at a large jar on the bedside locker. I picked it up to examine it, trying to make some sense of the technical jargon written on the label, and very soon I realized I was staring at beautifully preserved bits of my leg floating around in a clear fluid. I gaped with morbid interest, my mind going back to the Glasgow Art Galleries and my careless perusal of preserved viscera.
The curtains fluttered and a doctor came in, quite a human grin lighting his face. ‘I see you’ve found yourself!’ he said, taking the jar and putting it back on the locker. ‘Interesting … eh?’
I smiled stupidly, my usual awe engulfing me. The doctors were so clinically clean in their white coats with stethoscopes hanging from the pockets. I was still to learn that behind every white coat lurked a human being with the same hopes, the same fears as everyone else. All morning the students popped in to tap my limbs with little hammers and ask me questions. I felt at ease with these young men who had not yet acquired the finesse and distant manner of their seniors.
After lunch the qualified doctors asked the students questions. Faces reddened, voices faltered. Many of the young men took refuge behind my glass jar and its gory contents, heads nodding, fingers pointing at the label with what appeared to be unerring understanding. Several Great Gods were present. They were holding my X-ray plates to the light and I stared at them along with the students, amazed at what was inside my skin. The Great Gods mumbled, pointing out various structures to the students who nodded knowingly. One young man had his nicotine-stained fingers crossed behind his back and I smiled, wondering if, like me, he thought that each stick-like bone looked the same.
When the day was over the Gods thanked me, one stretched his lips into a surprisingly warm smile, another patted my head absently, a junior God winked, then they moved off in a tight group murmuring in medics’ language and I knew the limelight was over. It was time to go back to my own hospital.
Kirsty was a regular visitor. She brought paper bags filled with home-made potato crisps. She must have spent patient hours slicing potatoes into wafer-thin particles to cook in the chip pan, but she always came faithfully armed with greasy bags filled with the tit-bit. I think if it hadn’t been for Kirsty’s crisps I wouldn’t have stayed alive because I ate very little hospital fare.
Kirsty was a working girl now and to my eleven-year-old mind she looked grown-up, with an air of mystery when she spoke of dances and parties where boys had been present.
‘I wish I could go to a party,’ I told her one day as I delved into the bag she had brought. ‘It must be lovely … mind you, I’d rather be out in the fresh air to smell the grass and the flowers in the park.’
Tears sprang to Kirsty’s eyes. ‘There’s no flowers now, Chris,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s winter and cold outside. Maybe you’ll be home for Christmas. It’s only four weeks now …’
‘Is it?’ I said bleakly. ‘I lose track of time in here. All the days are the same, Kirsty. It always feels the same too … never cold or warm like outside. Have I really missed a whole summer? I wonder if there was a lot of catties in the park this year. I wish I had some in here to keep me company.’
Kirsty shuddered. ‘Don’t talk about creepies, Chris. I always hated the way you used to keep them under your pillow.’ She giggled. ‘Still, it was a scream that day you told me they all came marching out of the cludge.’
‘I know! D’you remember the look on old Toilet Paper’s face?’ I moved restlessly. ‘Och, I wish I was home to play some tricks on her again … the only thing is … I might not be able to walk up and down stairs … I won’t be able to torment the Toilet Paper Lady again!’
The full realization struck me and I stared aghast at Kirsty.
‘You will, you will!’ she said passionately. ‘The doctors told Mam you were a lot better. She’s going to ask them if you can get home for Christmas. I’m going to buy you a nice jumper to come home in.’
‘I’d rather have a white mouse,’ I said dismally.
‘Puffer would kill it,’ said Kirsty happily. ‘You’re better with something to wear.’
The bell went and she rose to go, bending down and dropping a kiss on my cheek in a really grown-up manner. I watched till she was out of sight then with a sigh I put the crisps into my locker, my appetite suddenly gone.
I didn’t get home for Christmas. The ward sparkled with tinsel and fairy lights. I remembered a tiny tree that smelt of green pinewoods, decorated with squinty stars, and I put my head under the blankets and wept.
A week before Christmas the old lady next to me was moved and an empty bed placed next to mine.
‘A new patient’s coming in, Christine,’ the staff nurse explained. ‘She’s only a few years older than you and we thought you would like someone young beside you. You can spend Christmas together.’
‘Oh,’ I said without interest.
The nurse paused. ‘She’s also very ill, Christine. You’re such a cheeky wee thing, we thought you could maybe brighten her days.’
The enormity of such a responsibility did nothing to cheer my heavy heart. I sighed and wished I was away from illness, pain, and death.
A trolley came into the ward but I could see nothing under the huddle of blankets. The usual bustle of settling in a new patient followed, then the curtains were pulled back and I looked to see Iona’s lovely, pale face nestling against the pillows.
‘Iona!’ I gasped.
‘Chris!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I’ve thought a lot about you.’
She looked very ill, with a transparency about her skin that showed the delicate network of veins on her temples. She was also very weak, barely able to lift her head from the pillows. I knew instinctively that quite soon she was going to die. The shadow of death was on her face.
‘I’ve thought about you too,’ I whispered.
‘Can you walk still?’ she asked eagerly.
‘Only a little, my legs won’t hold me up. I won’t get home for Christmas.’
‘That’s great, Chris,’ she said then laughed. ‘That sounds selfish but it only means I’m glad you’ll be here to keep me company. Will you tell me some stories, the kind you tell your brothers and sisters at Christmas?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll tell you stories, Iona, lovely stories about Christmas angels and magic stars … but you might not like them … you’re about the same age as my sister, Kirsty, and she’s a bit grown up for my stories.’
‘I’ll like them, Chris,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, I’m glad I got into the big ward! They wanted to put me into one of the side rooms but I don’t want to be alone when I die.’
She said the words so frankly they took away the apprehensions that were building up inside myself. On seeing how ill she looked, I’d felt that the responsibility of being companion to a dying girl was too great. Now I felt honoured, grateful to God for letting me know a girl like Iona.
‘Aren’t you … afraid?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘More sorry, really. I love so many people and when I go they’ll be sad and I don’t want that. I love the world too, things like the wind and the sun. Do you think about things like that?’
My breath caught in a tear but I nodded. ‘I love them. I wish sometimes I could get up and run out of here into the air … just to smell it! I don’t know how you can’t be afraid though. I’d be terrified.’
To my shame I burst into tears and dived under the blankets.
‘Don’t cry, Chris,’ said Iona anxiously. ‘I don’t want anyone to cry because then I will be afraid. Don’t cry again … promise?’
‘Okay,’ I said shakily, knowing in days to come I would cry inside myself a thousand times for a girl called Iona who was young and lovely and not afraid to die.
Iona’s condition grew steadily worse. I sat by her bed every night, combing her thick auburn hair and telling her my tales of castles with turrets that reached to the sky to touch the stars, of fairies tha
t came alive on Christmas trees, of angels with silver wings that came to visit loved ones on the night of Christmas.
Sometimes Iona fell asleep before my stories were finished but on the night before the Eve of Christmas she said cheerily, ‘I’m going to be one of your Christmas angels, Chris. I’ll watch over you … I promise … do you believe me?’
A strange urgency had crept into her tones. I felt afraid and too inexperienced to cope with a dying girl seeking reassurances about a world that existed after life.
‘You do believe me, Chris?’ she said again, and a slight hint of anger sharpened her voice.
The ward was hushed, the tinsel and decorations sparkled. At the top of the ward the deep green needles of the tree were splashed with the rainbow colours of the fairy lights. Outside the hospital the night sky glittered with a million stars, but one star twinkled brighter, so big it dominated the black sky. I looked at it and thought of home where all the preparations for the festive season would be in full swing. I thought of Mam who’d had ’flu and hadn’t been able to visit me for nearly a fortnight but was coming to see me tomorrow. I thought of myself, a born tomboy now losing the power of legs that had once carried me on effortless wings. All the strength of me was now locked inside, an unleashed wild spirit curling and churning till I thought I could scream with frustration. I had wondered why God picked me out of millions of children to be the receiver of a rare disease which no one knew how to treat. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about my feelings but inside I was angry with God for letting such a thing happen. Now I looked at the star and Mam’s voice came to me, talking about God in her childlike way. Life hadn’t been very kind to Mam, yet she never questioned God’s existence. A young girl called Iona was going to be robbed of her life, yet her belief in God was strong though now her time was drawing near she was seeking reassurance that her life wasn’t going to be spent in vain. It was up to me to give her the help she needed.
‘I believe you, Iona,’ I said brightly. ‘In fact … I know you’re going to become an angel, and you won’t just have silver wings, yours will be gold because you believe so much in God.’
Blue Above the Chimneys Page 10