Finally, Mona butted in, her matronly elbows sliding in next to mine. ‘I’m sure we can arrange that, Miss Hancock.’
‘Of course, I don’t mind paying extra.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘Great.’ A tinkle. Item two. ‘Woollen blankets. I’m getting them sent over from Foxford. Lovely little mill in rural Ireland. Used to be run by nuns, you should look it up – fascinating story. They should be with you in the next couple of days. My father has a soft spot for the natural feeling of hand-loomed wool. There should be one folded at the foot of his bed at all times. I cannot emphasize this enough.’
‘Our regulation duck feather duvets …’ I began. Mona’s clog pressed on to my toes, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to interrupt my sentence.
‘No problem at all, Miss Hancock,’ said Mona. She glared at me – my mother’s glare. Mona has never met my mother but she manages to convey her so exactly that I’m not sure if it’s my mother’s glare I am thinking about when I think about my mother’s glare, or Mona’s. She was letting me know that I was about to cross a line. I stepped back and waited next to the switchboard as they reached the bottom of the list. Then I dialled the code for the porter’s pager on the interphone. Donal arrived glistening with sweat, comb in pocket, iPod earbuds tightly screwed in, and I looked away so that I didn’t have to see the frown on Miss Hancock’s face.
The luggage came first. Four enormous trunks from the same brown-and-gold set. Monogrammed; but of course. The old man was wheeled in last. He looked at first like a bad cut of meat, muscular, livid and corrupted. His outsized forearms, grotesquely tanned, barely fitted into his chair. He held himself up with intimidating composure, given his age, like a Greek statue on its disintegrating plinth, legs crumbling under folded fleece. His thin white hair, at least, was consistent, plastered back over his skull. Shirtsleeves rolled up. Miss Hancock stood next to him and looked down.
‘Yes, Daddy? It is nice, isn’t it? You’re going to have a really relaxing time here. It’s the best in London.’ She pecked him on the cheek.
The old man gazed back with milky eyes. He didn’t look quite alive, which sent a shiver down my spine. I reminded myself to feel bad for him, dropped off like a suitcase at the airport. Mouth ajar, abandoned in the middle of a pile of expensive junk. With all that money, you could get staff to look after him round the clock in his own home, save having to move him at such an old age. You wouldn’t even have to pretend you cared. One’s own bed, own four walls, own trinkets and memories, are actual things that help an old person sleep better at night. One fewer soul for us to look after. I cannot recommend enough that you look after your father at home. But I didn’t say anything, because the truth of the matter is, without people like her, we’d all be out of our jobs. It is better here, after all, with people who are paid to care – and such good pay that it is easy to count your blessings and start to believe it is more than simply a job. A vocation for empathy. I couldn’t say I was feeling at my most empathetic right then. Miss Hancock stared at me, the incompetent nurse. Thankfully, Mona slipped out of the Bowl and took the wheelchair by the handles. She pushed Mr Hancock up the disabled ramp, parking him between the potted palm and the reconditioned Victorian lift.
‘Well, I really have to run now!’ said Miss Hancock, ‘I’m just so awfully busy today. Thank you everyone. I’ll call in a bit later to check everything is going smoothly.’
A tinkle, as she swivelled on her heels.
‘Bye, Daddy!’ She made for the sliding doors, swinging her car keys on her little finger. She halted with a jerk. ‘One last thing. The cotton ones are in the second smallest trunk.’ Confused, I glanced at Mona, by the lift, but she returned a blank stare. ‘The pads, for Christ’s sake! Do I have to spell it out for you? Incontinence pads, I believe you call them!’
The doors swished shut behind her. Suddenly everything was quiet. Mr Hancock hadn’t spoken a word. My throat closed up. Despite all that money, he just looked like another poor old man. Mona turned the chair around and slid in behind him to pull it into the lift. I forced myself to look down at him. The old man locked his pale eyes on mine. Slowly, he ran his tongue across his top lip, so slowly I thought I must’ve imagined it.
I can hear Mr Hancock’s voice as I walk towards room 214; faintly, not because his voice is faint, given his age, but because I am still far away. I am taking my time. If something happened to him now, I could say I had been on my way. But nothing is happening. He is just having a singalong. Timmy comes out of room 205 wheeling the broom trolley. He rolls his eyes at me, he’s doing it again, then scuttles off towards the lift. Timmy is twenty-three and the star of Christmas karaoke.
‘Isn’t he adorable?’ said Melissa after his performance of Cher’s ‘Believe’, with that peculiar balance of affection and condescension towards the less fortunate that comes from old money. Well, charming Timmy has no time to deal with Mr Hancock’s terrible performance. I don’t blame him. I don’t want to deal with it either. I wait for him to disappear into the lift. I pause at the door marked 214 with my hand on the knob. I suck a big breath in and breathe out through my mouth. My nose feels sticky, plugged up. My face hurts. My poor head. This must be my punishment for getting distracted.
Dusty Springfield. ‘Wishin’ and Hopin”. Mr Hancock’s favourite song. Before each verse you can hear the phlegm collecting at the bottom of his throat. I push the door open. The singing stops.
Mr Hancock is lying in his bed at an angle. He’s wearing a white vest with thin straps, so that his large limp muscles are exposed. One of his arms is hooked on to the headboard; the other, stretched out, is punctured by the IV drip, its twitching blue vein pulsing through his jaundiced tan. When did they put him back on liquids? Has he been getting worse? I’ve lost track. I don’t care. He looks unconscious, but I know better than that. One of his knees is bent, the other relaxed along the side of the bed, like an underwear model. A memory from Saturday night congeals in my head: Stuart Brandon Pierce stubs out my cigarette on a brick out back, taps my glass. ‘Drink up, that’s a good girl,’ he says. His dumbstruck face as he looks up at me from the toilet floor. I shake my head to get rid of it. A yellow pool has collected between Mr Hancock’s legs. There’s piss on the bed sheet. It’s filthy.
He snaps his head upright and opens his eyes. He stares at me and puckers his reptile lips. I notice he isn’t wearing his lower dentures and so his upper teeth look too large, too many.
‘Right, Mr Hancock!’ I clap my hands and the sound sends a sharp pain through my right eye socket. ‘You called.’
He is looking at me. His mouth and neck are barely moving. The voice exits his throat like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Did you show him that you cared? Is that how the song goes? Did you show him that you cared, Ruth? Did he just say my name? He can’t have. My head feels like it’s about to explode. Did I do the things he liked to do?
‘What happened here, Mr Hancock?’ I say. I opt for the caring, babying tone that can snap our most difficult patients out of their mood. I don’t feel very caring. I feel like throwing up. I decide to keep things straightforward. ‘I think we need to get your bedding changed, don’t we?’ I make towards the window, towards where his wheelchair is parked. I roll the chair next to his bed and slip the brakes on with my foot. He starts singing again, delivering each line with precision, a nauseating balance between sugar and decay. ‘We love Dusty Springfield, don’t we, Mr Hancock? But how about we get you nice and clean now—’
He slams a hand on the bedside table. A stack of paper cups falls to the floor and jiggles to a standstill on the turquoise lino. For a moment, nothing happens and I don’t know what to do. I’m paralysed, a rabbit in the headlights. Did you show him that you cared just for him? Everything is so still for a moment, paused in the room. I hate him. We stare each other down. His head snaps towards me, his half-empty mouth wide open and hissing. I hear his neck clicking as he inches closer, nape rolling against the metal of the hea
dboard. I withdraw. My elbow hits the IV stand and it pulls away from the bed, rolling towards the wall. The plastic tube tenses up.
‘Mr Hancock,’ I say. ‘I’m going to change your bedding now.’
His head is hanging to one side of the headboard, like a doll’s. He is unresponsive. He often slips in and out of consciousness but it’s hard to tell exactly when. It’s one of the official reasons why he requires constant medical surveillance. And also, might I add, one of the reasons why you should never trust him.
My elbow hurts.
I repeat myself. I am sure he is listening.
‘Mr Hancock, I’m going to put you in your wheelchair now. So I can change your bedding.’
There is no reply. After a few seconds it seems safe enough for me to begin protocol. I am keeping it practical. I find the box of latex gloves in the cabinet. I pull out a pair and slip them on. I remove the top bed sheet from the foot of the bed and shove that fucking blanket to the side. We get them sent over from rural Ireland. What a fucking nuisance. And look at what good your cotton pads have done. The urine is beginning to dry and I have to peel the top sheet off his calves. It offers a faint resistance but I keep at it, pulling firmly until the organic glue of piss and sweat comes loose and separates from his legs. There is no reaction. I ball the bed sheet up and toss it on the floor at the foot of the bed.
‘Mr Hancock?’ I say. He is unresponsive. His eyes are empty and fixed. How long, I wonder, until they will positively, permanently look like this? It’s hard to tell, but he is pretty old. I rebuke myself. You don’t wish death upon someone, anyone, no matter how horrible they might be. You just don’t do that. What kind of sick nurse are you? Guilt pushes me closer to him, to his face, to take a closer look. I can hear his steady breathing scratching at his throat. His mouth gives off the odour of uncooked bread, breeding yeast. It makes me retch. I straighten my back and look down at him.
‘Mr Hancock? I’m lifting you up now,’ I say.
I follow the procedure I was taught in nursing school. I slide one of my arms under his legs, the other under his back. I lift his legs and shift them to the side, until they dangle off the edge. He is silent and compliant like a bag of old rags, and I can feel a trickle of empathy flowing back into me, warming me like a hot alcoholic drink. This is my job and I am good at it. My head hurts but I have got this. Mona will forgive me for being so late and everything that happened on Saturday will be forgotten. I will never go to another party again. I didn’t expect it to happen this way – having sex with someone else, after all these years. And I guess, objectively, it could’ve been worse. You certainly couldn’t fault the man for his looks. As Miss Phyllis would say, ‘What a looker!’ So why do I feel so fucking strange about it? Why can’t I stop thinking about Alanna? I lift Mr Hancock’s torso with my other arm. Then I push on the back of his shoulders to sling his arms around my neck, careful not to dislodge the IV drip sunk into the thickest vein. I hold him steadily around the waist.
‘Come on then, Mr Hancock.’
And then he lashes out. His arms grip my neck. He squeezes. Like a hug, the kind of hug that you’re forced to bow into. Then tighter. Too tight. I want to push him – away from my body – but that would be bad nursing practice. I could break one of his ribs. It would take so little to break one. If only I could shove him. I hate you. I try to pull my head back, but it’s locked in his hold. I breathe in the expensive musk fragrance that we are paid to dab behind his ears. The yeasty smell that spills from his mouth, the hidden, rotting flesh of his throat. I submit to the hug. If I stay still perhaps he’ll release me. He doesn’t. I feel my cheeks heating up. It’s hard to breathe against his leathery neck. I struggle for air against his shoulder, struggle gently, so as not to harm him, my eyes shut in concentration. The world narrows as I begin to run out of air. Incongruously, a National Geographic documentary appears in my mind. A python is suffocating a small dog then swallowing it whole, its little paws useless, spinning like paddles. Then the self-defence tutorials I watch late at night when I’m drunk in my flat. The girls that scream their war cry. They raise their arms, their legs. A little girl’s silver polka-dot tights. Alanna’s garter sliding up her thigh. Alanna has over a thousand Facebook friends. A friend in need is a friend indeed. Alanna in large round sunglasses, pirouetting down the stairwell at St Peter’s in Rome, and I am watching her, from where I have fallen, where I am lying on my back on the bottom step, my face tilted up to the sun, blood flowing on the white marble stairs, geranium-red. Plié, tendu, pas de bourrée. It’s not you, it’s me, will you ever forgive me? Do you ever listen to a single word I say? Stuart Brandon Pierce slaps my arse over and over: ‘That’s a good girl, that’s a good girl, that’s a good girl.’ Neil’s hand on my throat.
Mr Hancock doesn’t budge. I’m light-headed. My vision blackens. I cannot breathe. My hands can’t find a grip on his hairless shoulder. I choke. He has tucked himself into my shoulder and he turns his head until his lips are on my neck. I can feel the smooth edge of his upper denture rubbing against my skin, the plastic teeth on real human tissue. The dentist pushing wax to the back of my throat. My knees on the bathroom floor, nylon ripping. I shiver. I choke. I’m choking.
‘Ruthie Ruthie Ruthie.’ His dry lips graze my neck, old skin on new skin. ‘Wishing and hoping … Thinking all the time, but no faith in yourself. Have you?’ In his headlock, I am perfectly still. I think he is going to eat me. He whispers into my ear. ‘I wouldn’t fuck a girl like you these days, let alone when I was your age.’ The meat of his torso pushes into my open mouth.
I jerk back and the tap of his IV drip hits the floor. The stand rolls away and crashes against the tiled wall. Blood spurts out of his arm like the needle pulled the whole vein along with it. He flops back on to the bed. His head hits the headboard and his arms go limp. Did he really have me in a headlock a moment ago? I am perfectly still standing next to the bed. He is unconscious. His discoloured eyes are staring at the ceiling. I turn to look away from him. My clog squeaks in a puddle of saline solution.
It takes an effort to walk and not run, and I make it. I compose myself. I straighten my smock. The tap of his IV drip hitting the floor. Take the lift. Ting, stand, ting. Walk not run the three steps down to the Bowl. Mona is back behind the desk. She looks up sternly, then her expression changes.
‘Are you OK, Ruth?’
‘I’m breaking for lunch now,’ I say. It is ten in the morning. I am panting.
She stares at me through the glass pane.
‘It’s my elbow,’ I say. ‘I’ve hurt my elbow.’
Mona doesn’t say anything. I am nearly out of the door when I turn to take a look through the thick glass of reception. All the lights on the switchboard are off.
BLEACH
Ruth
Now
6:30 p.m.! It’s Monday! It is customary for the staff of the care home to hold a small function when we lose a long-term patient. Sudden deaths aren’t usual, more often there is plenty of time to make the essential preparations. Most of them die at home. At the eleventh hour, conscientious relatives will finally consider reintroducing a patient to their original household. Unfortunately, death in old age is as much of a gamble as it is throughout life. We keep our patients monitored where we can – anything short of wiretapping their rooms – to keep the family informed. We can’t record the images in their room; privacy comes first in private structures like ours. So sometimes we miss the exact moment of their passing. It’s nobody’s fault.
We’d started the morning round early, just before nine. There were only two of us so we had had to take on a whole floor each. No, this is not our usual practice. Our girl Alanna, yeah, the little blonde one – you see – is getting married soon. This weekend was her hen-do. Oh yes, we go back. We were in school together. I’m going to be her best girl at the wedding. Thank you very much. We’re all looking forward to it.
Mr Hancock’s room is the very last room at the end of the corridor, so I star
ted my rounds there. After we straighten up their rooms we leave them to rest until lunchtime. Mr Hancock often took his lunch in his room. He didn’t cope well with the noise levels of the sitting room – to put it mildly. Let’s just say he was a rather solitary type. Timmy didn’t find him until one o’clock when he went up with the tray. I’d just come back from my lunch break. He gave this high-pitched scream, like a lady who’s seen a mouse or something, so we thought he was joking. Then we heard the metal tray hitting the floor and the emergency light went off on the switchboard. Mona and I hurried upstairs. Timmy was stood outside the door of room 214, very confused. When we pushed the door open, we understood why. There was blood and Timmy has haematophobia. A small fresh wound will throw him into a moderate panic. And this was a lot of blood. Mona went to fetch him a cup of water. Mr Hancock was lying on his bed, at a slant. His right arm must’ve got caught in the bars of the headboard, trapping the plastic tube of his IV drip, which had then jerked out of the vein. That’s where the blood had come from. It must have been why his body was at such a strange angle, hard to piece it together, really, old people bruise at anything, even the adhesive pads of a necessary ECG will sometimes leave behind small circular bruises on their torso, sometimes in patterns similar to spread-out fingertips. It wasn’t pretty, but dead old people are hardly ever pretty. It’s a good thing we’re used to it: death midwifery is to hospice care what regular midwifery is to obstetrics. It’s very much part and parcel of our line of work. We’re professionals.
We called the surgery down the road and asked to borrow their emergency doctor. This wouldn’t take a minute, we promised. It was the usual procedure but still. The doctor was in a huff when he arrived, obviously inconvenienced. He mumbled, ‘Couldn’t have picked a worse time,’ then apologized, complaining of merciless cuts to public services. We tried our best to explain to the doctor that the old man had died while unsupervised, but he didn’t seem keen to listen. ‘Well, he definitely is,’ he said. It was obvious he was in a hurry. His face was expressionless. He scrawled on his pad, ‘cardiac arrest’, ‘ischemic hypoxia’ – spasms not uncommon as an attack reaches its climax – and went back to his twenty-three five-minute appointments. Mr Hancock must’ve struggled as his heart stopped and it’s not unlikely he had a fair bit of strength left in him. In his youth he had had a passion for bodybuilding. That’s how his arm ended up in such an odd position. It looked worse than it was because of the blood, Mona and I concurred, because of the strange angle. And really it was only a bit of blood. Just a shame Timmy was the one to find him, because of his phobia. Time of death: approximately 10:30 a.m.
Shelf Life Page 19