by Cathy Kelly
She made it to the hospital shortly after twelve, having stopped briefly at a shop in town to buy a new dressing gown – there’d been no clean dressing gown at home, so buying a new one seemed the best option – and some antiseptic wipes. She’d also picked up some magazines and a little arrangement of white roses that wouldn’t need a vase so would require no looking for one in a busy hospital. And she hadn’t been able to resist an engagement card for Katy and Michael: a silly one of two adorable cartoon mice.
As she was making her way out of the store, she noticed her mother’s favourite lily-of-the-valley perfume on display. Smelling the tester made her feel tearful, conjuring memories of the once-vital woman now helpless in a hospital bed. How had her mother aged so much without her noticing? She bought a flaçon of the perfume to take in with her, hoping its familiar fragrance would revive the Mum she’d known.
It was outside visiting hours but she figured she’d be allowed in on the basis that she needed to see her mother’s doctor.
‘What was the name of the doctor you spoke to yesterday?’ she asked Susie on the phone once she’d parked.
Susie, outside the telecom office, was sneaking a bummed cigarette to try to destress herself and wasn’t in the mood for a call from her younger sister.
‘I don’t remember,’ she snapped. It was cold and she pulled her coat around her.
Leila counted to five. ‘That’s fine,’ she lied. ‘I’ll find out who it was when I get in there. Susie …’ She hesitated. ‘Have you been to Mum’s lately? I mean, did you notice it was getting a bit messy?’
‘The house was a tip when I picked the dog up last night,’ Susie said shortly. ‘She’d crapped all over the hall and I had to clean it up.’
Leila shuddered. The hall was parquet flooring, with endless crevices. Thank goodness she’d found those old running shoes.
‘She crapped all over my kitchen last night too, as well as howling like mad for about two hours before she went to sleep. If I could afford it, I’d put her into kennels. God knows what state the place will be in when I get home after she’s been shut up all day.’
‘The thing is, it’s not like Mum to have the house dirty, is it?’ Leila went on. ‘How long has this been going on?’
Susie exploded. ‘It’s not my job to police our mother,’ she snapped. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Leila, there are two of us. But just because I live nearby, I’m the one who gets lumbered with everything while you swan in a couple of times a year, hug everyone, and then swan off again to your fabulous job. I’m supposed to deal with it all, but I’m a single mother as well as a daughter, and I have a job. It may not be as glamorous as yours, but I can’t afford to lose it.’
‘Susie, all I’m saying is that you should have told me something was wrong,’ Leila said, careful to keep any hint of recrimination out of her voice. ‘This isn’t normal. Mum’s always been so tidy, there’s got to be a reason for her letting everything slide. The upstairs is a complete mess – her bed is covered in dog hairs, the sheets look as if they haven’t been changed in weeks and … well, it’s dirty.’
‘You’re here now,’ snapped Susie, ‘you fix it.’ And she hung up.
The hospital was a hive of activity, nurses walking around in soft-soled shoes and the scent of strong disinfectant in the air.
Leila had to navigate her way from one ward to another to find her mother because she’d been moved overnight. Stopping to rub sanitiser gel into her hands, she hurried through the double doors and there, sitting up in bed but still looking fragile and bruised, was Dolores Martin.
Even though she had seen her only last night, Leila felt tears sting her eyes. Her mother looked so beaten and old, and yet she wasn’t old. Old was … well, old wasn’t her mother. Old was more than Dolores Martin’s sixty-three years.
‘Mum,’ was all she managed to say before she burst into tears.
Somehow she managed to unload all her packages on to the floor beside her mother’s bed before leaning in to hug her gently, careful of her injuries.
‘Oh lovey, how nice to see you,’ said Dolores, looking half happy, half on the verge of tears. ‘One of the nurses said you’d been in last night and rung again this morning.’
‘I didn’t want to come in early and wake you if you were sleeping,’ Leila said, pulling up a chair.
Awake and in daylight, her mother looked a little better, but the bruises on her face had bloomed into sinister-looking purple things.
‘How do you feel?’
Dolores grimaced. ‘Sore and stupid. All these years I’ve never had an accident, and now this. I’m a bit banjaxed. Once you do anything to your hip, you’re finished,’ she added, a tremor in her voice.
‘You’re not banjaxed,’ said Leila, who’d been warned by the nurse that her mother was very emotional as a result of the shock. ‘People can injure their hips at any age. We’re going to get you right as rain, Mum. You’ll be back walking Pixie before you know it.’
Her mother’s face clouded over. ‘How is Pixie? I know Susie has her, but she’s too busy to look after a dog and—’
‘Nonsense, Susie loves Pixie.’
‘She might do, but it’s a responsibility, and Susie’s stretched enough as it is.’
‘Susie won’t mind,’ said Leila, not sounding at all convinced.
‘Can’t you take her? You love dogs,’ her mother pleaded. ‘I’ll be in here for a while and then, well, I’ll have to go to a nursing home, won’t I, to recover, and Susie has enough to do without having to walk my dog.’ Her bottom lip was trembling and the tears began rolling down her cheeks.
‘Now then, Dolores,’ said a slightly stern voice, ‘you’re not getting upset, are you, pet? We don’t need that.’
Leila turned to see a mature woman in nurse’s uniform at the foot of her mother’s bed. ‘Time to check your blood pressure. Is this your other daughter?’
‘I’m Leila. I was hoping I could stick around until the doctor does his rounds so I can hear what he has to say about Mum’s injuries.’
‘You’ve missed them for today,’ said the nurse. ‘Come back tomorrow before ten, that’s when they do their rounds.’
‘But couldn’t I phone someone …?’
‘Doctors don’t give out numbers. They’d be on the phone all day. Do you want to wait outside while I’m with your mother?’
For fifteen minutes Leila paced the corridor, looking for doctor-ish people to pounce on. This was ridiculous. She wanted information about her mother’s condition – surely that wasn’t too much to ask?
Eventually she peeked back in to see the curtains had been opened again around her mother’s bed. Mum was lying back with her eyes closed.
Feeling a lump in her throat, Leila tried to fend off the tears by busying herself. Her mother’s clothes from the day of the accident – well, what remained of them – were in a bag in her locker, and Leila took them out before arranging all the things she’d brought.
That took about ten minutes.
Perhaps if she sat here long enough a doctor would come by?
In a bed across the way, an older woman was visiting a very elderly lady who wore a jaunty silvery wig on her tiny birdlike head and a sweep of glittery lilac eyeshadow on each eyelid.
‘There’s a nice coffee bar downstairs,’ the tiny lady with the wig whispered across at Leila.
‘Thank you,’ said Leila, getting up. She was cheered by seeing the other patient. Look at her: she had to be at least ninety, and even though she was in hospital, she was smiling, well enough to bother with her wig and her make-up. She was still going.
Age was just a number, Leila told herself as she waited in line for her coffee. Her mother needed to be reminded of that fact.
With coffee and a newspaper, she sat beside her mother and watched her sleep for another three hours. Occasionally Dolores woke up and smiled sleepily at her before dropping off again.
Leila found herself touching her mother’s wrist from time to ti
me to reassure herself that she had a pulse.
‘Is all this sleeping normal?’ she asked another passing nurse.
‘It’s probably the pain meds,’ the nurse said.
‘She wouldn’t die, would she?’ Leila asked fearfully, all thoughts of age being a number now gone.
‘No, love,’ said the nurse kindly. ‘She’s doing well. I expect she’ll be brighter tomorrow, on less medication as the time wears on. So she’ll be more alert.’
‘OK,’ said Leila.
The nurse looked at the board at the end of the bed. ‘Selina is looking after her today. Stop at the nurses’ station to talk to her.’
Selina was a wise orthopaedic nurse who’d seen more broken and fractured hips than she’d had hot dinners.
‘Your mother’s going to be fine,’ she said briskly. ‘Dr Noonan says surgery went well, although her haemoglobin’s low, that’s why she’s a bit pale. She might need a transfusion, we’ll see after today’s bloods. But she should be on her feet later, and if all goes well she’ll be out in a week. Will you be around to take care of her, or will it be a nursing home?’
Leila blinked. She certainly had enough information now. ‘I work in Dublin,’ she stammered.
‘Nursing home then,’ Selina said. ‘You look exhausted. Why don’t you go on home and have a rest? We have your contact details, don’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Leila. ‘I gave them last night.’
‘Fine. We’ll phone if there’s any change.’
Leila stared at her. Selina made it all sound easy.
Leave and don’t worry. All will be fine.
No mention of guilt and anxiety or that worry over what else was wrong with her mother.
‘Thanks,’ said Leila.
She washed her hands with some more of the sanitiser and felt it burn into the new cut from her earlier housework. Rubber gloves would be a good plan, she thought absently as she left the hospital.
She reached her car and wished there was someone to phone to tell them how bad she felt. She couldn’t call Katy in her happy affiancéd glow. No point ringing Susie and getting the head bitten off her.
These were the moments when she missed having Tynan in her life, when she needed someone to say, Don’t worry, it will be all right. Even if it wasn’t going to be.
She was back in her mother’s house with a bag of groceries when her phone rang: Devlin, back in the office. He hadn’t replied to any of her earlier emails, which must mean something had gone wrong. Her mind racing through the possibilities, she answered.
‘Devlin,’ she said, ‘what’s up?’
‘Hello, Leila. Nothing’s up, I just wanted to check in and see how your mother’s doing.’
For a moment Leila was at a loss for words at this un-Devlin-like behaviour. He sounded solicitous. She wished she could sob down the phone about how awful it all was, but that was out of the question.
‘She’s not bad. In pain, obviously, but there’s nothing seriously wrong.’
The dirt of the kitchen came to her mind but it was all too impossible to explain, and besides, Eamonn Devlin was hardly the person with whom to discuss it. Why had she even thought of confiding in him? She must be going totally mad.
‘I’ll be back at work as soon as I can,’ she said quickly, ‘so don’t worry.’
‘That’s not what I phoned for.’
If Leila didn’t know better, she’d have said he sounded hurt. But that would be entirely out of character. Devlin didn’t do hurt.
‘Of course not,’ she said easily. ‘You’re very kind to phone. She’s fine—’
‘And how are you?’
This time she was at a loss for words. Devlin was asking how she was. He’d never done that, not even when Tynan had left. At the time, he’d stared at her a bit as if trying to work out what to say, but he’d never said anything.
Then the realisation struck her: he needed to talk to her about something important and he was trying to do it in a roundabout way. The subtext of this conversation was undoubtedly abandon your sick mother and get into the office.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied briskly. ‘How about I come up on Thursday and work Friday too? Mum will be in hospital for another few days. I can come back down here at the weekend.’
‘There’s no need,’ he said.
‘No, really,’ Leila insisted. ‘See you Thursday – and thanks for asking about Mum. You’re very sweet, bye.’
Sweet, thought Eamonn Devlin as he slammed down the phone in his office.
She thinks I’m sweet.
He glared at his phone and wished he could throw it across the room, but the last time he’d done that, he’d made a hairline crack in the plate-glass window which had cost a small fortune to fix.
He felt like firing everyone, or at least shouting at them all, but you couldn’t do that sort of thing any more, as Leila had explained during a recent working lunch when he’d confided in her about a member of staff who was driving him mad due to total inefficiency.
‘I want to shout at him every time he comes into my office and tells me about his latest disaster,’ Devlin had said, relief coursing through him at finally being able to get this off his chest.
Leila never flinched when he said things like this: he could tell her anything about work and she’d take it on the chin.
‘Shouting will not make Jimmy any faster at what he does, and he might well take you to a tribunal for bullying,’ she’d said in exasperation, even though she knew Devlin was aware of all this. ‘And you can’t fire him.’
‘I know I can’t fire him,’ Devlin had growled. ‘I wouldn’t, you know that. He’s a good man, even if he is crap at his job, and his wife is pregnant. Statutory redundancy would be no good to him.’
Leila had grinned and said she’d known he was a softie underneath it all.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Devlin had muttered.
There were no problems at Eclipse, nothing going wrong, and Ilona was handling Leila’s job quite well in her absence. But she wasn’t Leila. It wasn’t just that Leila was brilliant at her job, it was … Well, he liked having her around. Nothing wrong with that, was there?
Dolores Martin lay in her hospital bed and sleepily watched the pale evening sun on the wall opposite. She’d woken at five and had been lying there since, not in pain, just watching everything carry on around her. Strange, but she liked it here, liked the peace of it all and the sense that she was safe and being cared for. The nurses were kind, even if they were busy a lot of the time. She felt far too tired to read but knew that if she changed her mind she had the magazines Leila had left for her.
One of the other women nearby hated hospitals in general and St Anne’s Ward in particular, and said so loudly as often as she could.
She was, Dolores ascertained, another person with a hip injury. Although she looked to be much older than Dolores, she had a mane of dark hair – dyed, surely? For the past hour she’d been complaining loudly about her dinner: ‘It’s a disgrace, I’m telling you! The food is diabolical. How can a person get better on this muck? I rang my bell ten minutes ago but has anyone come to see me? No, I might be dying on the floor but nobody comes. When my son hears about this …’
If Dolores had felt stronger, she might have told the woman to be quiet. Clearly she wasn’t dying on the floor, and even if the apple pie and custard wasn’t the best she’d ever tasted, it was sweet and comforting. But the other woman was so loud and angry, and Dolores couldn’t bear the thought of confrontation.
Instead she whispered to the nurses: ‘You’re so lovely to us, pay no attention to that horrible woman in bed six. You’re angels. I don’t know how you do it all.’
And she didn’t know how they managed: checking vital signs, writing up charts, giving people their tablets, always with a gentle word for the patients.
‘How are we doing now, Dolores? A bit brighter?’ said a lovely Indian nurse who was like an exquisite little doll and seemed to speed through her work with the
swiftness of a bird. ‘You’ve got some colour in your cheeks. You’ll be right as rain in no time. Don’t you worry, my dear. You’ll be back home with that lovely daughter soon.’
The thought of going home frightened Dolores. She didn’t want to leave this haven. Here, there were people around, taking care of her. At home, there would only be her, and she couldn’t go back to that. She’d gone downhill so fast and she hadn’t been able to tell anyone. Not the girls, that was for sure. They’d been through enough, growing up with their father an invalid. She wasn’t going to be a burden to them. Not under any circumstances. Susie was struggling with her life and Dolores felt huge guilt at not being able to help her and little Jack more, while Leila – Leila was obviously still broken-hearted over that rat Tynan. No, whatever happened, Dolores wouldn’t call on them for help: they needed to live their own lives.
Seven
There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved. GEORGE SAND
Joe’s aunt Maura lived in the sort of house Vonnie had always dreamed of owning. It sat on the outskirts of the town in an acre of wooded land with a farm to its rear. In the summer, sheep gazed with mild interest through the fence, while Maura and Tom’s two rescued whippets blinked back as they lazed in the sun.
The house itself was small, two-storey, and lured you in with its wisteria-clad porch and the bow windows that looked like sleepy eyes smiling out at you.
Since Maura had retired, she’d had more time to spend pottering around the garden and walking along the beach with Tom and the two dogs. Today, though, Tom was hard at work in his shed, judging by the droning noise of the lathe that Vonnie could hear as she stopped the car.
‘He’s making me a new bedside table,’ Maura said, standing at the open front door and smiling at Vonnie as she walked up the path.
‘I thought he made you one last year? The oak one with all the shelves.’
Vonnie leaned in for a hug. She was taller than Maura but still felt the comfort of a child with a beloved adult when they embraced. She wasn’t sure what she’d have done when she first moved to Ireland if it hadn’t been for Maura and Tom.