by Matthew Crow
“Hiya, darling, you find us all right out in the west wing?” Jackie said when Mum and I made our way inside. The ward was at the farthest edge of the hospital, practically in a different postcode. I’d had to sit down once on the way in because I was feeling shaky and out of breath. Mum refused my request for a wheelchair. She was always more stick than carrot.
Jackie probably had some fancy job title but she was essentially head of the nursing team. She said everyone on the ward answered to her, and that if I stuck with her she’d see me right. Everyone there treated you like a paying guest and made sure to use your name at least twice in any conversation. They didn’t remember it because they liked you. It was conveniently printed out on a laminated sheet at the foot of the bed.
“Traffic was a nightmare but we got here in the end,” Mum said. She was normally much sharper than that. It seemed small talk was the first thing to suffer under stress.
“Nothing worse. Do you want something to eat, flower? Lunch isn’t for a while yet but I could scavenge you some toast?” Jackie asked me.
I said I did not, and started unpacking on the bed that we had been shown to on arrival.
“Well, I’ll let you get settled in and be along shortly to see how you’re getting on,” she said, and left us to it.
Another thing that grated on me was that the atmosphere on the ward seemed worryingly informal. Everyone, except for the occasional doctor, introduced themself by their first name. I did not appreciate this touch. It was the same at school. In Senior Year apparently you got to call teachers by their first names. This thought had already caused me some anguish. Sue is not someone who once caught me looking at the rude bits of Sons and Lovers and sent me out for not paying attention to the lesson; Mrs. Bancroft is. The whole situation in the unit made me uneasy and caused me to question the legitimacy of my carers’ credentials. Marc had muscles and a tattoo that poked out beneath one sleeve of his tunic. I assumed he was given his job as part of some sort of rehabilitation scheme. He was interested in football and dance music and kept trying to talk to me about girls. I suspect he was what they call a reformed character. I guessed that all sorts of unpleasantness lurked in his backstory.
Amy was not, actually, called Amy. Her real name was Thai and too difficult to pronounce for most people there. I told her that whenever I went to a foreign country I made an effort to learn the language, but “Amy” seemed shy and then a bit cross when I kept asking her for her real name, so I eventually dropped the subject. I made it my mission to find out, though. It did not seem fair that her heritage should have to be erased to suit the idiot patrons of the National Health Service.
At first there were only three of us on the unit. I lay on one side of the room, in my bed, with a curtain that could be pulled at my discretion but which they suggested I kept open. I often ignored this advice. I craved solitude so that I could contemplate and stuff. Next to me was an empty cot waiting ominously to be filled. Across the room there were two other beds. Kelly occupied the one closest to the window that didn’t open. Next to her lay Paul.
He spoke sometimes but not all that often. I knew his sort. I was quite good at reading people, being one of life’s natural observers. Chris came in handy for filling in the bigger gaps in my knowledge—for example, the fact that Lindsey Buckingham was the boy in Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks the girl—but at a grassroots level I am perfectly capable of analyzing both individual characters and, in turn, whole subsections of society.
E.g. if we were all in The Breakfast Club, Paul would have been the Emilio Estevez character. He was sporty and good-looking in an obvious way. He had loads of friends and, despite a noticeable lack of visitors, was keen to remind us of this fact.
He behaved the way all boys like him behave around the sort of people they wouldn’t usually associate with. He was pleasant and talked sometimes, but stayed forever at arm’s length lest I get the wrong idea and wander up to him in a sporting goods store one day while he was in town with his crew, destroying his whole life in the process.
But I knew all about boys like Paul. He had to be nice to me at the moment because he had to be surrounded by people. This was because boys like him were, essentially, pasta. Everyone thought they loved him because they had never been forced to experience the true blandness of him on his own. Paul was surface all the way to the bone.
Kelly was equally cookie cutter, even if she didn’t sit as comfortably into my Breakfast Club analogy. Socially she was from the same tribe as Paul. They didn’t go to the same school, but they might as well have. She wore makeup even though she spent all of her time in bed, did not intend to further her education, and spent most of her time before she was in the unit in supermarket parking lots with boys who drove loud cars.
It was a triumph of geography that she and Paul never shared a pregnancy scare.
For a while it was just us three. We’d chat, at times. But the Venn diagram of our interests seldom overlapped, so by and large I was without allies. One morning, not long after I’d arrived, I tried putting my Breakfast Club analogy to them. I explained the theory of mise-en-scène, which I’d read about a Media Studies textbook. The theory is that everything in the frame is significant. So you can pause a film and see the red in the background as a sign of bad things to come, or the cigarette hanging from the woman’s lips as a suggestion of a wild, careless streak in her character.
I began to explain that the mise-en-scène of this unit was quite apt to the dynamics of our relationship. Only as I was moving fluidly on to my second point, Paul pretended to fall asleep. I carried on anyway, and assumed he was taking it all in with his eyes shut. But then Kelly rolled her eyes and told me to shut up and stop being gay (she could be quite coarse).
Then Paul more than gave himself away as a faker by snorting a laugh before giving Kelly a quick glance and closing his eyes again while he fiddled with the volume on his iPod.
It was at this point that I decided not only was their sense of superiority inflated, but I was to face my long and arduous journey alone. I recorded this conclusion in my Diary of Observations.
Mum stayed as long as she could on the first day. She kept rearranging the photographs and books I had lined up in perfect symmetry on the bedside table, and I told her I wished she’d stop. There was method to their arrangement. The books I wanted people to think I read I had placed on top of the pile. The books I was supposed to read were lodged directly beneath, in an effort to shame me into attempting them. The books I would actually read I had placed at the bottom to try to curb the likelihood of my picking them up first.
“Would they not be better off in the drawer? Just taken out one at a time?” Mum kept asking.
I said not as I tried to work out the controls for my bed.
“Oh, God, I think it’s broken!” I yelled as I pressed the wrong button and the whole structure started vibrating beneath me, rippling like an air mattress in a swimming pool.
“Give it here,” Mum said, pressing a button that made my legs start to levitate slowly.
Across the room I could see Kelly and Paul trying not to laugh just as Mum found the right switch and the bed began to crank back into its correct alignment.
“Idiot,” Mum said, putting the control back in its holster. Soon after both Kelly’s and Paul’s family came to visit and I could tell Mum was paying attention to what they were saying, trying to gauge just how bad things might get, or perhaps even scoring herself against their ability to cope.
They all said hello as they came in and Mum was especially polite. I wasn’t in the mood to entertain, so I started pulling my blanket up over my legs, hoping they would take the hint that I was unwell and needed a peaceful environment. It was still afternoon, not nearly dark, but there was only one seat, so it made sense to let Mum have that and for me to get acquainted with my temporary nest for the next few weeks.
At one point Kelly’s mot
her smiled across at us and Mum gave her a nod.
“I’m sure I used to know her,” she whispered to me. Kelly’s mum pulled the curtain around her daughter’s bed and began whispering, and then it sounded like someone was crying. I saw Mum shudder and then carry on like nothing had happened.
“I’ll put your sports drink in the bottom drawer, and Grandma sent some grapes along but I left them in the house because they were on the turn. I packed you some multivitamins instead.”
“It’s all right, you can go,” I said. “I know you’ll be back tomorrow, but you will have to leave me here eventually.”
Mum went quiet and her head drooped.
“I know,” she said finally, bending down and kissing my forehead. “Do you want me to leave you to get settled in, make friends with your little roommates?”
“I’ll probably just read,” I said. Then saw her shake her head and added, “But I will try.”
“You’re a good lad,” she said, giving me a hug, “a good, brave lad.”
She kissed me again and reminded me that her phone would be on all night, and that if I needed anything I was to call her straightaway.
She said she’d be back tomorrow, and told me to take care. Then she was gone. I saw her walk slowly out of the ward, nodding to Paul’s family as she passed them. The windows looking onto the ward were frosted and had a thin metal mesh. As Mum turned to walk away behind them I saw her blur and fade into a ghost of her own shape. Then I saw her stop in her tracks, and Jackie must have seen her too, because the next thing I saw was her giving Mum a hug and leading her out toward the nurses’ station.
CHAPTER FIVE
Amber arrived on the fourth day, and from then on everything changed for me.
Paul had been sick for two nights in a row. It was like a conspiracy. Throughout the day he would just sit quietly, wincing whenever he moved and the tube he’d had inserted in his nose snagged on his nostril. Then at night it sounded like a pack of rabid dogs had taken up residence in his bed. Marc kept coming in to help him, but all night I could hear retching and the sound of liquids being sloshed about. Every once in a while it would seem like he’d settled. Then, just as I could feel myself nodding back to sleep, it would start again.
“You’re all right. Be strong, lad,” I could hear Marc whisper as Paul groaned some more.
“Sleep is vital to recovery,” I told Mum. “If I can’t sleep, then the whole thing is pointless. Can’t I get a private room? I think I’d handle this much better on my own.”
“Nice to see your old spirit’s intact,” Grandma said, chewing on one of the grapes she had brought for me, which she had monopolized and didn’t seem to be in the mood to share.
“Fiona sent you this,” Chris said, pulling out a men’s magazine. She’d taped a photograph of herself, giving two thumbs up, onto the model’s face. “She says she’ll come and visit you as soon as she’s back from her shoot in Milan.”
“I think she could be a model,” I said.
“You don’t say?”
Mum took the magazine and tucked it into the farthest corner of the drawer.
“Some things never change . . . sadly,” she said, and poured herself a glass of sports drink. I cleared my throat and nodded toward the level in the bottle.
“Bloody hell, Francis, I’ll buy you a crate of the stuff if you want. Anyway it hasn’t been touched since I was last here.”
That was not the point.
“Oh,” she said, pulling something from her bag, “this came from school.”
It was a card with two dozen names and get well messages scrawled inside. On the front was a picture of a teddy bear with a bandage on its head.
“Cute, eh? Is that from your little friends?” Grandma asked, taking the card and inspecting the photograph on the front.
“Ooh,” she said, handing it back to Mum. “They left the price on.”
“Do you want me to put it up?” Mum asked.
“No,” I said. The picture was crass and juvenile, and would have been at odds with the impressive array of literature I had on display. It would ruin my reputation as the ward’s sophisticate.
“Fine. I’ll put it in the drawer with the porno and the iPod. How you getting on, you know?”
Mum whispered something in my ear, nodding to the beds across from us where Paul and Kelly were pretending not to listen.
I shrugged.
“Okay, I suppose. I think I’m misunderstood, though, like van Gogh was.”
Grandma made a joke about not cutting off my ear, which did not get much of a response.
“You’re looking okay on it,” Mum said, stroking my face, “brave lad. House isn’t the same without you. I keep cooking for two, so at least your brother’s doing all right off it.”
“Have you remembered to record all of my programs?” I asked.
There was a TV on a giant, bendy metal arm that you could pull down and watch while lying down, but I was scared to use the remote as it was the same one as for the bed, and as a result had taken to reading.
“Yes, love, I got your list,” Mum said with a hint of sarcasm.
“The rec room’s pretty fancy,” Chris added. “I had a look around while Mum was having a chat with Jackie. We can go down later on if you’re feeling up to it. Reckon I could swipe some of those free hot chocolate packets if nothing else.”
From outside there was more noise than usual as a bustling of feet and voices came down the corridor.
“. . . there are an abundance of herbal remedies, too. I have a friend who deals in Chinese medicine. . . .” I heard a woman’s voice saying as she slowly came into view.
“Bloody hell, it’s a walking, talking scarecrow,” Mum said, and Grandma tried not to laugh.
The new arrival did look a bit odd. She had graying hair that seemed to do as it pleased, and flat, sensible shoes that looked like they had survived at least one major war. Her clothes were all rags and materials that flapped and folded around one another in a hundred different colors. On her thin wrist there were what looked like a dozen bracelets, each carrying a different type of stone. “Well,” she said, as Jackie led them onto the ward, “I’m glad to see those big windows . . . such beautiful natural light. How fortifying.”
“Maybe so. The sills are a nightmare to clean, though,” Jackie said, leading her toward the bed next to mine.
Two girls followed in their wake. One was younger, and dressed like the woman. The other was around my age, wearing a plain T-shirt and nondescript jeans, with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looked like she was dressed for a fight. “You’ll be . . .” Jackie started to say, but was cut short by the eldest girl.
“. . . in the bed with my name on it. I’m there,” she said, hopping up onto the mattress.
“I’ll let you get settled in then,” Jackie said, leaving us all in peace.
“Well, isn’t this charming?” the mother said to the ponytailed girl, who seemed wholly uninterested. Then the woman turned to us. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Colette . . . Colette Spratt.”
“Julie,” Mum said. She went to shake Colette’s hand but she ducked the handshake and pulled Mum into a tight hug. I thought Chris was going to pass out from trying not to laugh.
“Isn’t this just charming . . . they’ve gone all out,” Colette enthused.
The eldest girl dragged her dirty backpack onto the bed and kicked off her Converse before folding her legs beneath her. She turned to us and stared right at me, like she was taking aim.
“I’m Amber,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Francis.”
“Francis,” she said, as if examining the word with her tongue. “That’s a . . . gentle name.”
“You don’t know the half of it, love,” Grandma snorted, and I started wishing Mum had left her at home.
; “Shall we close the curtain?” Mum asked no one in particular.
Amber sat cross-legged on her bed and started pulling out all manner of curiosities from her backpack: postcards and photographs, CDs and old books. Nothing was new, everything cracked or faded and looking like it came with a history.
“You can,” she said, answering Mum for us, “but it’ll be a waste of everyone’s time. We’ll still be able to hear everything you say. Point well made, though.”
“She’s got your number,” Chris said, and Mum glared daggers at him.
“Quite right. We may as well become acquainted,” Colette said. “Seeing as we’ll be bunking down together.”
Amber upturned her backpack and the rest of the contents scattered messily onto the covers, followed by a fine mist of black dust, which coated the white sheets.
She picked out a giant Toblerone and unwrapped the foil, pointing the stick at Mum.
“Triangle of Switzerland’s finest?”
Mum raised one hand and shook her head.
“Francis?” Amber asked.
I said yes and she brought the bar over to me.
“Look at us breaking bread together. . . . I like your snazzy sweater,” she said to Chris.
“I’ve got one just like it,” I said, then felt stupid.
Amber nodded, looking unconvinced.
“Cheers,” Chris said.
“If you ever wanted to buy me an windbreaker, my size is medium. Just saying.”
“Neck of a giraffe, that one!” Grandma said to Colette, who smiled and began picking her way through Amber’s deluge.