the spirit of acopia

‘Cecily. Cecily. Look. You need to pinch your nose - here. Just here.’
‘I can’t! I can’t! You do it!’
‘Come on, Cecily. There’s no reason why you can’t. Just pinch your nose here, go on.’
‘Make it stop!’
‘Pinch, pinch. That’s it.’
‘Make it stop!’
‘How long’s your nose been bleeding?’
‘An hour.’
‘And this is the third time today?’
‘Make it stop!’
‘Cecily. If we can’t get it to stop by pinching, we’ll have to take you to hospital.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘No-one likes to go to hospital, but sometimes there’s nothing else for it. If we can’t stop the bleeding by pinching, we have to take you to hospital.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘I don’t understand, Cecily. Why did you call the ambulance if you didn’t want to go to hospital?’
‘Make it stop!’
‘You have to come, Cecily. We can’t leave you here like this.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘There are nurses and doctors at the hospital – special doctors, with special … nose equipment. They’re good with noses. It’s what they do. They know exactly how to make it stop. All we can do here is pinch it and see if it stops of its own accord. If not – well, you just have to go to hospital.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘There’s nothing else for it, Cecily.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘Don’t drink that, Cecily. That’s a cup of bloody water.’
‘I’m not going up the hospital.’
‘Come on.’
‘No.’

Five am.

A thin blue light lays against the French windows, flowing up around the dark elements of the garden, bringing it into focus. Cecily sits by the window, her image doubled up in the glass. On her high backed chair, in her blood splotched terry towelling bathrobe, clutching the handle of her dirty aluminium walking stick and surrounded by a scattering of bloodied tissue blooms, she sits on her throne, firm and immoveable, a hologram of the Spirit of Acopia caught in the glass, Divine Angel of Anxiety, Blessed Mother of the Hopeless, the Confused, the Blindly Afraid.

‘Cecily. Come on. What are you going to do if we leave you here?’

She looks at me for a moment, running the tip of her tongue backwards and forwards across the blood stains on her lips.

‘Call an ambulance?’ she says.