by Emma Glass
‘Hello?’
Shoes clack on the tread, tapping up the steps. Steps fall slowly. The fingertips barely touch the wood, the blackness is a long dress trailing.
‘Hello?’ I call again. The footsteps stop. The black fabric swishes with the sudden cease of movement. I run up the steps, keeping my eyes fixed upwards. The footsteps fall again, faster this time, but not as fast as mine. I rush, my sides brushing the banister, my hip hits the turn in the wood and sends a shooting pain across my pelvis. I yelp and it echoes and I listen to the bouncing sound bumping over the footsteps and then there are just my footsteps, the others have stopped. I hang over the banister and look up and there’s no one there. No trace of the fingertips, no fluttering black fabric. But there was someone there. I bite my lip and say fuck out loud. I want to see her. I want to know who she is. I breathe deeply and climb the last few steps to the lab. I look up one last time and I see her.
She is flying.
She is falling.
Her face is contorted, terror flows out of her mouth, a spewing scream, it splashes up the walls as she falls, her face passes mine and I see the whites of her eyes shot through with red bursting blood vessels and tears streaming from pits of sleeplessness. Her skin is grey and flaking, her face is eroding. Her long black dress blows up and out like steam-engine smoke. I am frozen to the spot and I draw in breath and shut my eyes waiting for the sound of her smashing on to the floor. I hold my breath for what feels like forever but the sound never comes.
The Moment I Didn’t Want to Share With You
Out on the other side, out of night, rays of the rising sun draw the new day. The morning warms my chilled bones. My head is full of fog, my mouth is fuzzy. I desperately want to brush my teeth my tongue is dry and sticking I have that sicky feeling. I keep my head up, concentrate. Try to stay awake. Desperation drags me across the city. I meet the sleepiness of others but I will not be tempted by them. They are gluttons, they have had their fill of full night’s sleep. How dare they dare to dream extra dreams in front of me? They are the enemy and I am in their territory. They close their eyes and nod their heads as the train carriage rocks through dark tunnels. They yawn. I look away and hold my head up with both hands.
I am so close now. I might just make it. So close to home, to bed. I picture myself peeling back the sheets.
So close. And there you are. You are walking towards me. You look shrunken and crumpled. You are walking quickly and, as you approach me, I think for a moment that you might not stop. And you don’t stop, you keep walking past me, you pretend you don’t see me, you don’t look at me but I look at you, your tired eyes, red, like you’ve been crying. You keep going, but I am stuck, stopped, choked. I watch you walking with your head down, big bag slung over your shoulder. Going somewhere. Going to stay somewhere, with someone, who?
You didn’t stop.
I want to cry out.
Don’t unravel. Not here, not in the street.
In the bedroom, in the dark, I button up my pyjamas and climb into bed. I bury my face in the pillow and spend some time untying the knots in my chest, I release these damn tears, they flow into the pillow and I weep myself to sleep.
I Thought I Would Be a Day Sleeper
This time we are bone dry. We are standing on the balcony of a concrete high-rise. There is a sheet of thick glass behind us, a wall that comes to our waists in front of us, there is no moon in the night sky, no relief of a breeze, there is nowhere to go but over the wall and down. The view of the city is brutal. Buildings rise out of blackness, terrible grey gravestones of the godless, bleeding open mouths of watery shining windows. Empty windows. No signs of life. We are here. The woman is standing next to me. She is still. Her heart is still. And mine is too. And mine is too. Her hair is pulled away from her pale face. She stares straight ahead. Her dress is long and black, heavy skirts cover her feet. She might not have feet.
She floats.
I turn to her to speak, but my mouth is sewn shut. I am toothless and gummy, tongue dry and curled up, stuck to the roof of my mouth. I try to stretch my arms out to her but I have no arms. Limbless. A disconnected brainstem. A stump.
Veins track across her temple, twisting grey vines over her face, they grow from her, writhing in the air, weaving a child’s game of cat’s cradle between us. Veins wind around my shapeless face and then we are connected. We are tethered. We share the same headache. We share the same wake.
We stand in stillness. We stand in agony.
She knows that I cannot bear to stand any longer. She floats towards the wall. Before she throws herself off, she turns to look at me. Her eye sockets are empty, there are two huge gaping black holes and, as she falls over the wall, I fall into the black burning holes. I hear the crack as she hits the concrete, the street splits, my head splits, pain rakes open my brain. We are both scattered, splattered on the ground.
I Can’t Find a Light on Anywhere
I wake up in another day, or is it the same? I look at the clock and see I have only been asleep for a few hours. I cram my eyes shut and try, try, try to sleep again but my mind resists. My exhausted body aches, my head thumps, my fingers settle on a lump that has grown through the night, I should get some ice but my body can’t move, won’t move. I settle on the cold side of the pillow for soothing.
I still see the face, the black holes and the mouth gaping open, withered lips but not from age. The woman in my dream was young, but rotten. She was lying at the bottom of the lake in the same strange billowing black dress. She was standing on the Tube platform, she was praying in the chapel, she was sitting in the chair, she fell from the top of the stairwell. I remember her. I feel her. But I don’t know who she is. I am cold and shaking, I pull the quilt tightly around my body.
I am scared.
It is strange to dream. So I don’t. I drift, I shudder, I drift, I shudder, I drift I shudder I do this for hours until I am shuddering shuddering, the walls shake, I am not fully awake, the phone is ringing ringing in sleep in real life, blood rises when I rise, walk, sleepwalking. Waking.
‘Hello, Laura?’
Speaking.
‘It’s Oliver from the hospital residences service. We’ve got a room available, it’s just been vacated. Can you come and see it today? If you don’t want it, someone else will. Can you come at six?’
I feel like I’ll never sleep again. I take the phone back into bed with me. I burrow under the blankets and call my mother. I talk to her in the darkness with the blankets over my head. I cry a little. I stay under the blankets until my breath has fogged the air and turns my skin wet and wrinkly. I emerge. I breathe. I listen whilst my mother tells me it’ll be okay. She tells me you are a complete shit. I laugh and she laughs. I nod when she says it’s probably for the best. She tells me I need a break and that I should come home after my night shifts and she’s right and I will, I have three days off. Just one more night. I tell her I will see her tomorrow and hang up the phone.
Do You Feel as Lonely as I Do
Oliver’s smile is wide but not warm. I’m late and he’s waiting to go home. He’s polite and holds the door open for me. I peer into the dark room, he reaches behind me and flicks the switch on the wall. The single bulb flickers and slowly illuminates my new home. I step into the small space which smells like bleach. It’s clean, at least. The blinds are drawn over the square window. The single bed is pushed against the wall in the corner, there is a desk and a chair facing the window, a wardrobe, a washstand with a gleaming white basin jutting upwards, square-shaped like a new tooth just pushed through. At least it is clean. I look down at the carpet which is brown and sort of crispy.
I shrug at Oliver. He nods and takes me through to the kitchen.
‘You’ll be sharing with three others, two nurses and a doctor. The girl that was here before you had no complaints, she said they were all clean, quiet, friendly enough.’
‘Sure.’
The kitchen is big, with a dining table and four chairs. The wi
ndows look out on to the main road and a row of grand, expensive houses opposite. I open a cupboard near the stove, it’s a mistake, infinity of Tupperware rains down, lidless, mismatched, spaghetti-stained, the smell of spices scrubbed with soap. I begin to scoop them up as Oliver stands watching me. He doesn’t tut but he looks at his watch.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘The room is great, can I move in on Friday?’
I straighten up with a stack of containers. He scribbles something down.
‘Sure,’ he says, ‘will you come by the office on Friday morning? We’ll set up your payments and give you the keys. I’ve got to go now, are you okay to show yourself out?’ He’s already moving down the corridor as I call out my thanks and the door closes and I’m left picking up the mess I made.
There are crusts of oil and dust, grains of rice and a frozen now unfrozen pea, clinging to the corners of the cupboards on the floor. The floor is linoleum, cheap and spongy, but easy to clean. I hear a door opening, footsteps in the corridor. I stand up and I’m surprised to see Jennifer standing in the doorway, wrapped in a white bathrobe, hair-towel turban and pink slippers shaped like unicorns. She is tiny and childlike, a fluffy cloud of comfort, she beams at me, freshness and rest in her face.
‘Are you moving in? Brilliant!’ She shuffles over to me and hugs me. I’m conscious that I smell stale, look shitty.
‘I just came to see the room, I get the keys on Friday,’ I muffle into her shoulder.
‘Great! I’m so happy to be sharing with someone I actually like!’ She puts her hand over her mouth and whispers, ‘These guys are all right but no one ever wants to go for a drink after work or do anything fun. We live in the best city in the world and it’s like no one wants to see it, or experience it, they’re all just here to work.’ She rolls her eyes.
I could do with some fun, I could blow off some steam.
She goes over to the fridge and starts rummaging.
‘Have you eaten yet? You want something to eat?’
‘Are you sure? I was going to get something at work,’ I say.
She pulls out a huge container and lifts the lid and my stomach squeezes at the delicious smell of cold chicken curry. She pours it into a saucepan and heats it on the stove. She takes out a jar of mango pickle from the fridge, twists the cap, scoops out a teaspoonful and jams it in her mouth.
‘Sorry, I love this stuff. When you really get to know me you’ll realise I am actually pretty disgusting!’ She laughs and taps the teaspoon on her teeth. ‘Nothing quite like curry for breakfast.’
She tells me she’s exhausted and I tell her she looks so fresh, how jealous I am that she looks so good and that the nights are killing me.
‘Matron has been taking a lot of stick recently for how bad the shifts have been. But she’s stuck, what can she do? Tonight is an extra shift for me, I’m helping her out because there’s no one there to take charge.’
I nod and tell her that I don’t mind the random shifts but it’s hard at the moment because I’m not sleeping.
‘I feel like I’m losing my mind, Jen. I’m seeing things – messed-up things – not just in my sleep but on the ward.’
She’s at the sink washing up, she turns to look at me and says, ‘But we all see things on the ward. Especially after a death. I’m forever jumping at shadows, I always see ghosts. Think I see ghosts but they’re not really there. Tired eyes and dark corners, sleeping silence, it doesn’t take much. We’re all wound up, you’re not going crazy. We’re all just a bit stressed and sad after Danny. Dr Lucas is holding a debrief tomorrow morning, we should hang around for it after handover. It will help.’
But I was seeing things before Danny died.
These visions are in me, they are my veins, they are my heartstrings. They stitch me together, running black stitches. There is blackness in my peripheral vision. She’s here now, standing behind me, she cloaks me in her sadness. I put my head down on the table. The domestic sounds of splashing water in the sink, the light clatter of cutlery soothes me, I drift off. Fingers caress the back of my neck, cool fingers, wrinkled from washing dishes. But when I wake, Jennifer is at the counter eating a chocolate biscuit and the fingers still touch and my flesh creeps. I rub the back of my neck, scratching the spectral itch.
‘One more shift to go, you can do it. This time tomorrow, you’ll be on the train home to your family. Your mother needs to give you a good feed.’
‘My mother is great, but not the best cook, we eat plainly at home.’
She snorts with laughter when I tell her I tried my first olive when I was twenty-one and laughs with a rolling belly when I tell her my mother thought avocado was a tasteful colour for a bathroom suite. We laugh together.
We walk into work smiling and chatting. Jennifer tells me about her slight crush on Amir and I remind her of his wife who works in the intensive care unit and she blushes, red roses bloom, her cheeks balloon out, shining red-lit beacons. I look at her and I am so grateful for her easiness, her kindness. I feel okay for now with a friend close by.
It’s Not So Easy Saying Goodbye
Tracy is at the nurses’ station when we get to the ward. She looks so small bundled in a big coat. Her lips tremble when she sees us, we both put our arms around her and hold her together.
‘Thank you for everything you did for me and Danny. I’ve brought you chocolates. Make sure Rudy doesn’t eat them all.’ She is crying softly. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now, without my baby.’
Jennifer looks at me over the top of Tracy’s head. Her eyes are full of tears. So I say, ‘You’re not without him, Tracy, he’s still a part of you. You’re still his mum.’
She nods and sinks into us.
But these are not the words I want to say. I want to tell her that I loved Danny too, that I see his little body in the cot in the empty room. That the alarm goes off and I think she is there calling me. That I would have given my heart, my lungs, my blood if it meant he could be saved.
Jennifer lets go first and wipes her eyes. I let go.
‘Will I see you again?’ asks Tracy, her eyes wide and pleading. She holds on to my arm.
No is the answer but I don’t say anything. Jennifer jumps in and says, ‘You’ll see me and Dr Lucas and maybe Wilf. We’ll be coming to the funeral and we can say goodbye properly then.’
She nods and sniffs and smiles. ‘I’d better go, my mum and dad are waiting for me in the car.’
‘Goodbye, take care of yourself,’ we say.
She leaves. The door swings shut behind her but through the long pane of glass I can see her walking slowly down the corridor. She leaves with empty arms.
It’s as Easy as Falling Asleep
The night flies. We fly with it. We are kept busy by all the crying babies. Jennifer is a blur of dark blue I barely see. I try to avoid Wilf but he is stuck with us, seeing the sickest patients and scribbling prescriptions. I don’t know what to say to him, I am embarrassed.
I hide in the treatment room, tangling myself up in long lines of antibiotics and fluids. He comes in to give me a drug chart and laughs when he sees the knot I am in. He helps me untangle the lines and then takes my gloved hand and twirls me. I can’t help but laugh at his awkward sweetness. And at the right moment, Amir comes in and loads up a tray of medications. Wilf disappears as I help Amir with the drugs. I check his and he checks mine, we correct each other’s mistakes.
Florence is awake and vomiting, sleeping and vomiting. Her mother rings the nurse call bell like churches on Sunday morning. When I go to Florence’s room, her mother hugs me.
‘I’m glad we have you tonight, Laura, it has been an awful day.’
I’m sad to hear it, but glad to be wanted. She has stored up her anxieties of the day and gifts them to me, unwraps them for me, lays them across my shoulders and then lays down in the bed with her daughter, stroking her little bald head. She tells me in whispers that thankfully it’s just a mild infection, but Dr Lucas isn’t taking any chances and the ant
ibiotics are helping already, the sickness is just a side effect. I nod, but I’m not so sure. I check Florence’s temperature and make a mental note to check it again in half an hour. I’ll ask Wilf to review her, just to be sure. Before I leave the room, her mother asks me to pray with her, she has grabbed my hand, so I say of course and close my eyes tightly. I am on the verge of tears but I’m not sure why.
No time for tears. No time for tea. Time to see my Buddy.
He has been settled and sleeping until now. Now he is stirring and starving. I sit in the chair, balancing baby in one arm as I spread the blanket across my lap. I unclip the name badge and fob watch from my breast and tuck them in the pocket so that he can nestle against me. I am terrified that his skin will get scratched or marked by the metal of the watch, or a corner of the plastic badge. I bring him into my lap and wrap the blanket around him. Pink blotches creep over his cheeks and in the creases of his mouth as he starts to cry, the cry starts as a little crackle in the back of his throat. I try to catch the cry and take it from him as I grab the bottle of formula from the table in reach, I flick a few drops of milk on my arm to test the temperature and bring the teat to his lips. When his mouth opens wide to scream, I press the teat gently on his tongue, he licks blindly, head jerking wildly until he finds the fold, his mouth closes and he sucks greedily. The blotches recede, his skin smooths out, eyes open, all fluttering lashes and wide wet pupils. Peace and pleasure radiate from his little face. I stroke his velvet cheek. His chubby fist grasps my hand as I hold the weight of the bottle. He sucks hard, bubbles whizz to the top of the milk and pop against the plastic. I slowly pull the bottle away from his lips, he grips the teat with his gums, then yields as I tilt him up on to my knee. He gasps as I bring his body upright, I tuck my hand under his chin and he burps with ease. He settles back for seconds.