We let ourselves in with a key from the safe.
‘Hello? Ambulance.’
‘Up here, love.’
A steep, narrow staircase with an awkward tuck at the
top. Let’s hope she doesn’t have to be carried out.
On the landing, a sofa piled up with clothes, boxes, stuff.
The door to the bedroom standing open.
‘Hello?’
Donna is stuck half in and half out of bed. It looks like
she went to swing her legs out and got them tangled in the pile of junk that’s
piled precariously to her left. This whole section of the room is a disaster, a
lethal, human-sized version of Mousetrap, cunningly improvised out of domestic
items: the pile of books that will topple on to the carrier bag of fruit that
will roll a heap of apples onto the upended chair that will tip back and tug
the lead of the kettle that will teeter on the edge just long enough for the
water to come to a roiling boil then dump its contents all over the bed.
There’s just so much of it. Once it goes it’ll really go.
Donna will be swept away downstairs on a mini-tsunami of Jammie Dodgers,
Household magazines, inco pads, make-up freebies, shoe horns, grab-sticks,
remote controls, Catherine Cookson novels, a signed photo of Jim Reeves... her
withered legs kicking in the air, her hearing-aids squealing.
‘Here we go.’
Donna’s no weight at all. The hardest part by far is the
disentangling of her legs. We move what we can, then extract her slowly and
carefully. Once she’s clear, putting her back to bed is no more effort than
fluffing a pillow.
We check her over and everything seems fine. She was
only discharged from hospital a couple of days ago, though, and it doesn’t seem
as if any of the proposed changes to her house and care package have been put
in place. It’s going to take some ringing around to sort the whole thing out
and keep her out of hospital.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I ask her, whilst Rae
starts in on the numbers in the care folder. ‘How do you take it?’
‘As it comes. But you can make it up here, you know,’
she says, gesturing blithely to the Wailing Wall of Junk to her left. ‘It’s all
to hand.’
‘Well to be
honest, Donna, we’re not too happy with the way it’s balanced up there. You
could have given yourself a nasty burn. You were lucky not to have the whole
lot down on you just now.’
‘I’m used to it.’
‘Still. I’d rather make the tea downstairs.’
‘If you say so,’ she says, patting the sheets either
side of her and squeezing her eyes shut contentedly. ‘I’m just so grateful to
be back in bed.’
‘Let’s have a good old think about your set-up here.’
‘Right-oh.’
Downstairs the little galley kitchen is clean and bare.
There’s a line of yellow and black hazard tape on the floor running a couple of
inches in front of every cupboard and appliance front. A new clothes horse
still in its plastic wrap. A couple of boxes of dressings and emollient creams.
Plenty of room.
Whilst I wait for the kettle to boil I watch the
sparrows squabbling in the bramble
thicket that’s taken over the little back garden. Then I make three cups of tea
and carry them up.
Rae is sitting on the bed waiting for a call-back.
I hand out the teas and join them.
‘Who’d have thought it?’ says Donna, cradling her cup.
‘Thought what?’
‘All those years ago,
when I joined the WRAF. There was a whole line of us. A whole long line – of seventeen
year olds, all messing about outside the nurse’s office waiting for our
inoculation jabs. I was so excited – about everything. It was all ahead of me, my
life. And now look!’ She raises her mug. ‘Here I am, an old woman with a cup of
tea. Who’d have thought it!’
7 comments:
Who'd have thought it? I am fifty-five and a great-grandma by marriage. I still feel thirty-five and yet stamina is flagging and it takes a lot longer to heal up from everything...
I understand where Donna is coming from so well.
As always, Spence, excellent writing; thank you.
Time is but mercury in our fingers Spence.
I realise that home help,or social workers,or whichever department it is that deals with people post hospital discharge are busy,but it would have been nice to have somebody turn up and make sure Donna's living standards are acceptable.Although her family could also do similar.
Either that or have Stuart Hall do commentary as she moves from room to room.
Thanks Lynda
The casual passage of time really does make you catch your breath sometimes. I was working with someone the other day and I realised I was actually old enough to be their father. How did that happen?!
But hey - what can you do? In the immortal words of Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco: Fuggedaboutit!
Jacks - Ah, Time! The diminishing meatball Sub of our lives.
You're right - it wouldn't have taken much to get Donna's house ready for her discharge. Another sign (as if we needed it) of the stress the system's under.
Still - we sorted her out okay.
:)
You are good people, Spence.
Thanks tpals, but really who could possibly walk in that place and not want to do something about it(esp. if there's a cup of tea involved)?! :)
WRAF was one of those special services Spence - sic transit gloria mundi...sad...
All the best
Cheers Cogi
Yep - my aunt was in the WRAF, so I've always imagined it must've been a pretty lively kind of service...
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