Monthly Archives: August 2024

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Slow

The water seems kinder today or maybe I’m just more aware of it that’s all. I wash my arms with consciousness as though cleansing myself from within. It helps.

I wonder about the woman in the black dress . It looked black though its print was of tiny bright flowers, red maybe orange. She passed me on day one, eyes pooling, brimming, hand to nose and mouth as she rushed out. I couldn’t hug her but the feeling pulsed up through me. It would have startled her anyway if I’d reached out, she had enough to deal with. She spilled over as I just about kept it in.

That was last week.

I wonder about her this morning. Is she having a shower, does she have time for a bath, is she thinking in the water like I am? Is she held in its amniotic fluid, giving her strength for another day.

Maybe she has a quick wash, doesn’t bother with make-up, or maybe she needs it as a shield against the world. 

Does she feel the tightness in her chest, her tummy flip as she sanitises her hands and pushes through the heavy doors? Has she forgotten she’s even got a body, is she churning in her head, like me. 

The water is kinder today, present, healing, it tells me to slow down as it drips off my skin. Little spheres of surface tension, swirling rainbows dance inside. I send them out to the woman in the black dress, I hope she’s still  holding up, like me.

I must try to remember I have a body.

I breathe out.

It’s day eleven, (maybe twelve.)

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Can I Help?

You know how this goes.

Flashing cursor. And there it is again as you pause. Just pause.

And people complain about technology, how it isolates you from the real world. Well, yes. Yes, You’d rather be sat in a coffee shop spilling out all over the place, emptying your thoughts and feelings to someone else and imagine if they took your hand, took your hand like the nurse did on the first night. Just imagine that. That real world physical contact. Imagine if they held you as you let out how it feels. 

Still, you’ve got here.

Here, tapping in the quiet morning, knowing that someone will read this, that you can send this out into the world. That somebody, somewhere will hear you, somehow. That they will hold you in this binary coffee shop in the palm of your hand.

You get an imaginary green tea (double cupped) and carry on.

It’s ok. 

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Changes

Now there’s a tree watching over the bed, birds scrabbling for food, people darting in and out the Costas just off to the right and if they looked up from their latte they’d see me in the window looking out.

I didn’t like yesterday’s room though, felt too far tucked away, almost a sense of punishment, of neglect.  Broken thinking on my part, of course. Tiredness doesn’t help.

Of course the care was on point and Senior Sister Gemma enfolded me with her reassuring London tones, her voice and her words and her ways. She called me darlin’ and we joked about the room upgrade. She should have been pulling pints but she was pushing beds instead and I was grateful .

And when the upgrade came, when trees were administered, when the relief of natural light came into view, I relaxed (a little.)

A ward with a window over green and the bole of the tree stands guard, steady, constant, dependable bark that’s been there a hundred years watching people change.

I feel like I’ve been there a hundred years but it’s only day seven or is it eight?

Maybe that’s why the previous room took me down, floored me with an echo of late pregnancy, of no privacy, of people poking and me hanging on. Propped up, out of time with a job to do, concerned faces, waiting, willing. Praying. 

I think that’s it, the silent magnolia walls, the speckled ceiling, just a little too high for my liking and a view, (if you can call it that,) over the scrag end of the buildings. 

Still, that’s not now. 

I’d better get up, I’ve got a job to do. I hope Gemma’s on today. I like her long black pony tail. When she walks, it swings like a metronome on her back, keeping me steady with her rhythm.

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Limbo

Is it day six or seven, I’m not sure? Not that it matters. Time has rolled in on itself. There aren’t hours, there are interruptions, people doing things, bringing things, taking, giving, adding observations to their charts. There’s no natural light, everything’s in suspension.

I walk the corridor in my mind, through the big old doors, nod to the receptionist, past the childrens’ drawings of a lion. The lion smiles, you know, the way they do? Secure in their strength, protected by a massive mane of gold. I think he waves a paw at me, not sure. And up the slight incline almost like a ramp boarding a ship to somewhere else, a sense of entering a different world.

The artwork on either side demands attention but I rush past, abstractions blur, birds and flowers shrug at me. They don’t care, they’ll be there on the way out, suspended in gouache, captured moments that mean the world to someone. 

My feet keep walking, step after step, soles squeak on their lino, sometimes heels click, depending on which shoes I’m wearing. It doesn’t matter either way so long as I keep going. Past the towering stacks of SHEETS and BLANKETS covered in thin plastic. They’re organised in here. I’m back in the machine, cogs turn, people sometimes smile, sometimes avoid your eye. Everyone churning, focused. 

I walk the corridor in my mind. It’s 06:08.  I’ll walk it for real again soon. I’ll say hello to Leo as I go past, Maybe I’ll imagine that I’m a lion too. 

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The Lady from Upstairs

Do you know how much I hate the relative’s room? I know hate is a strong word, maybe I resent it, is that better? Of course, I’m so grateful for it too, its functional furniture, its token flowers on the windowsill as if to say don’t worry, things will bloom again.

Do you know how much I feel for The Lady from Upstairs? She visits us twice a day, in her clouds of dementia, has a little walk with the nurse who tells her she can’t go any further. That’s the men’s ward, she repeats but The Lady from Upstairs doesn’t care, she protests, she says hello regardless and we wave back until she turns around to go again. She’s on repeat – as am I.

It makes me sad, it makes me grateful, it rams home our essential life affirming interconnectedness and all I want to do is bundle her up in my arms and hug her until all the things she struggles with will seep away, until she’s a young lithe girl again, giddy, in fresh love and her mind is as crystal clear as her young eyes. 

I turn away, I look towards the bed I sit by. I want to do the same for all the patients. I want to make us all ok, but I can’t. 

And on the way in for the nth time this week, up the endless polished corridors, I passed the brand new parents, the father clutching a warm thing to his chest, he murmurs ‘it’s ok young one,’ as as I go past, although I know he’s not talking to me. And as I reach the place where I turn off, where I brace yet again, an elderly man pushes his wife in a wheelchair, and I feel the invisible threads between us all. The elderly woman and baby swap places, meld into each other and I can’t tell where either begin or end.

This morning I took time out in the relative’s room, I looked out past the sprig of freesias to the claustrophobic slabs of brick. I know this place. I’ve got form.

I throw my damp tissues into the bin and head back to the ward. The Lady from Upstairs will be back to see us soon. I hope she feels happy in her world, somehow, in some way.

Why is everything so blue in here? I guess it’s designed to bring calm but it doesn’t really work. I don’t like blue concertina curtains. They unnerve me.

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For Now (Underland #6)

At the moment all she could think of was how much she’d laughed. Laughed, in a way she’d forgotten, startled by it, like she never realised her body could feel that way.

And for now, that’s all she could bring to this place.

For now.

It’s crowded in here, so many women and girls, kaleidoscopic iterations of herself. She could barely move for their jostling. But wasn’t that the point.

Back then at least, she could barely move.

She sat quiet amongst the women. It was a familiar way to be.

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True North

If I could say anything to her, I’d tell her to still wear the Mary-Jane’s, they suited her. Their implied sweetness that belied her strength. In any case she’d never believe the steps she’d take beyond the pub in Wooten Wawen even if I told her.

And yes, the bells jingled on her skirt, noting how their sound hangs in the air, looping around, even now and what is it about the black and white Indian cotton that always comes to mind? Is it the waft against her legs, is it the foreshadowing of the woman in the making? Yes probably.

And if I could take her hand and tell her to choose a different skirt, one with less sense of contrast, would she? I doubt it. Did she buy that skirt and wear it because she had to, because she would think about it now, now when the black and white contrasts had become her life?

She would always choose that skirt and in an August car park it would billow out in the scented summer night. Billow out, like the curve of a balloon in a hot Summer sky. But then, you knew that didn’t you?

If I could say anything to her, I’d say don’t worry. Just wear the shoes, you’ll be alright. Believe me. And she does.

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Buffers

It’s something about the sight of her son running down the hallway in their new home while his t-shirt, bright white, reflects the young curves of his face. And all the train tracks he will lay are taking shape in his mind, in all the spaces where he’ll grow and play as though the brightness of his t-shirt, of the day itself, will never fade and even if it did, they would survive.

It’s something about the possibilities of the layouts that he’ll make, finding links as he crawls around. And she’ll do the voices as she sits with him, as he scuffs his knees and laughs at the trains.

And outside now it’s something about the relentless sunlight on the spears of bamboo that need chopping down, the places where time wouldn’t stop. And every leaf waves at her like the rippled pages of a memory book, photos flipping past her face, brushing her cheeks from when the garden was primed for adventures and her son beamed as he burst through the door. 

The hallway. Four o’clock. And he gave it a ‘ten thumbs up.’

It’s something about the chaos of packing boxes and the vibrant verve of a new start. That. His face. The loud tearing of gaffer tape and starting out again.

She learned to be good at that.

It’s something about her.