Swim Until You Can't See Land (16 page)

It’s spooky enough wandering about an inhabited hospital.

I jump as a man turns the corner at the far end of the corridor. He’s pushing an empty wheelchair.

‘Can I help? You look lost,’ he says.

‘Intensive Care?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the man whispers. ‘Follow me. I’ll show you where it is. You’re a bit out of the way.’

I follow him back the way I’ve just come. The wheelchair squeaks against the linoleum floor and the man’s flat white shoes flap, flap, flap, flap as he walks.

I follow him along corridors, left, right, right, left.

He doesn’t ask me anything else, who I am, who I’m visiting. Turns and smiles every so often. I guess he’s seen people like me before. All hopeful with their carnations, their bunches of grapes. Before they end up eating the grapes themselves, put the wilted flowers in the bin, home to order more for the funeral.

He leads me into the lift, pushes a button, smiles at my reflection in the mirrored wall. The silence makes me uncomfortable in such an enclosed space, and I worry I’m going to burst out laughing. I clench my teeth together, focus on the red arrow counting us up the floors.

1
h

2
h

3
 
h

We leave the lift, the blue signs become more frequent now. I peer in open doors we pass, nurses drinking tea, patients propped up in beds, visitors in waiting rooms reading leaflets and old magazines.

‘Not far now.’

He could be taking me anywhere. For all I know he could be some psycho leading me to my doom.

‘Here we are then,’ he says, and nods towards a set of double doors. ‘Just in there.’

He’s off, the wheelchair squeaking and his shoes flap, flap, flapping. Is he just paid to wander the corridors and pick up lost souls?

There was a man who worked here like that, but he died thirty years ago…

I shake my head, I’m an idiot, ghosts on the brain at the moment.

I push the double doors, there’s a reception desk directly behind them.

‘Can I help you?’ A nurse looks up from the desk, face lit by the computer screen in front of her.

‘I phoned earlier, about Marièle Downie.’

‘She’s just through here,’ she says, coming out from behind the desk, ‘in room three. We’ve kept her in one of the single rooms for now, but if there’s any improvement we’ll move her to the High Dependency ward.’

I nod.

‘I’m glad you’ve come in, she’s not had any visitors yet and it makes such a difference.’

I follow her to room three. She stops at the door, turns to face me.

‘Now, I must warn you, it will look a bit scary. She’s hooked up to a lot of wires and machines.’

‘Is she okay? I mean, will she be okay?’

‘Well, we can’t really say for sure. She’s unconscious, although she has stabilised. We’re keeping her sedated and monitoring her…’

I tune out as the nurse keeps talking. Unconscious, sedated, monitoring, she’s telling me all this personal stuff about a woman I don’t even know.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

‘I know it can all be a bit overwhelming. Now you’ll need to wash your hands when you go in and when you leave. If you use this hand wash here.’

I push the dispenser, rub the clear liquid into my hands. It smells of melon, leaves my hands feeling cold and shiny.

‘Oh and what’s in your bag. No flowers?’

I shake my head, open the bag for her to see.

‘Okay, that’s fine. If you turn your mobile phone off too, please.’

I do as I’m told.

‘Take your time, I’ll just be along here if you need me,’ she says and leaves me to it.

I stand outside the door. This was a bad idea. I’m scared to go in. Of what I’ll see, how I’ll react. I want to leave, but the nurse can see me from where she’s sitting, I feel her watching me. I have to go in or she’ll come and check on me, speak to me in that whispered voice, put on that sympathetic face.

I push down on the door handle. Dive in. Room three.

She’s lying there, head propped up on a hospital pillow, tucked under tight, white sheets. A mask over her nose and mouth, a tube in her arm, another coming out from under the bed sheets at her midriff. Fluid-filled rubber bags hang from metal stands, another from the side of the bed, monitors all around her. The hum and suck of the machines.

A line of parallel stitches in her chin.

Neat.

I don’t know what’s worse, being unconscious and hooked up to all this, or being that old woman I passed in the wheelchair.

I shut the door behind me, lean against it, afraid to go any closer. I don’t know what I expected. For her to sit up and wave me in, offer me the seat next to her bed?

She looks so small.

I take a step towards her, it smells funny in here. Clean, but not in a nice, fresh way. The blinds are closed, so I cross to the window, open them slightly. She needs a bit of light. Has nobody in here ever read
What Katy Did?
You don’t get better hiding away in the dark.

I sit in the chair next to the bed, put the grapes, Revels and Lucozade on the bedside cabinet next to her.

I feel like an idiot for bringing all this with me.

Intensive Care.

She’s in Intensive Care.

Grapes and Lucozade are hardly a miracle cure.

One hand lies free of the sheets, a drip plugged into the back of it. Skin bruised where the valve sticks out of her, wrinkled, purple and yellow.

Now that I’m close up, I can hear the in, out, in, out, in, out of her breathing. I don’t think it’s her doing it though. It’s too rhythmic to be real.

(the breathing I aspired to when I swam, under control, in time with my stroke)

I clench my jaw, I’m going to cry.

Seeing her like this, and me, a total stranger, her first visitor. Not one card on her bedside cabinet.

(get well soon, Hannah, we miss you in the pool, can’t wait to have you back at training, stay strong, you’ll be back in the pool in no time…)

The back door key, rusting and unused inside the flower pot.

All my sneaking around her house, scared someone would see me, when nobody but me and Shirley even know she’s in here. If she’d collapsed at home, she might be lying there now. One of those poor old souls, only found when the neighbours start to complain about a funny smell.

What does she have to wake up for?

There must be something.

Someone.

Is she in a coma?

Shit, I’m so dumb. What did the nurse say again? Sedated, unconscious. She didn’t say the actual word.

Coma, coma, coma.

I walk to the end of the bed, pick up the clipboard hanging there. The writing’s a scribble, hard to read, plus I feel like I’m spying on her. I put it back down. She’s not well, that’s all I need to know.

From this angle she looks long and shrunken, like she’s been stretched out.

I sit down next to the bed again. Open the Lucozade, it hisses, fizzes to the top of the bottle, spills onto the bedside cabinet. Shit, this place is meant to be spotless and here I am making a mess. I wipe the Lucozade up with a tissue, pour myself a glass, my fingers sticky. Should I wash my hands again?

The Lucozade’s sweet, bubbles against my tongue, takes me back to my childhood. Being off school, sick, lying on the sofa under a duvet. Dad would always bring me a bottle of Lucozade once I started to feel a bit better. Lucozade still tastes like recovery to me.

It’s not like when I was five and I had the mumps

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ I dig her purse out of my pocket, hold it up, even though she’s totally out of it.

(Lottery ticket? No, I don’t remember seeing that)

I open the drawer of the bedside cabinet. Her bag’s lying there, her watch, her false teeth, a compact, a silver chain with a cross.

I slip the purse into her bag, pick up the necklace, let the weight of the cross sink into my hand, feel the slink of the chain as it follows, spilling into my palm like sugar. I do it over and over and over and over.

‘Can you hear me? Are you in there somewhere?’

‘Course you are, that’s a stupid thing to say. I mean, are you on the surface, or are you lost somewhere, deep, deep down?’

‘I like your fish, I gave him some food.’

‘I’m sorry you collapsed in the shop. That was a crappy thing to happen.’

‘I’m Hannah, by the way.’

‘It was bad timing, collapsing like that.’

Should I tell her?

(is anyone listening in?)

What if she can hear me, and the lottery win jumps her back to life? Like Grandpa Joe and the golden ticket. She’ll spring out of bed and we’ll dance round the room together.

(then she shares the money with me)

£
100
,
000
.

Or maybe the shock will do her in? She’s already weak, I might kill her.

(no need to share)

Or most likely, she can’t hear me and I’m still the only one who knows she’s won.

(it could be you)

It’s pretty lousy, someone up there having a laugh. She must believe in God, she wears a silver cross. Is her God really that cruel? That unfair?

I lean in towards her, reach out to touch her hand, change my mind.

‘Marièle, can you hear me?’

I’m whispering, why am I whispering?

‘I’ve got something to tell you. You’ve won the Lottery. That ticket you bought before you collapsed, you had five numbers and the bonus ball. You’ve won.’

(we’ve won, I’ve won)

‘So you need to wake up, because I don’t know what to do with it if you don’t wake up.’

(and I’m left with a winning Lottery ticket)

I watch her face for a flicker of a reaction.

Nothing.

Her eyes remain shut, no twitch in her eyelids, no murmur from her mouth, whisper from her lips. Her hand stays still, the bruise shadowy and purple.

‘Where you been?’ Dad shouts from the living room when I get in.

‘What are you doing home?’

‘I live here, don’t I? I got us a Chinese,’ he says, getting up from the sofa. ‘It’s in the oven keeping warm.’

‘You should have just had yours,’ I reply.

‘Can’t I spend time with my own bloody daughter?’

‘Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’

I sit down, check off dates in my head.

Have I forgotten something?

Mum’s birthday?

Gran’s birthday?

My birthday?

It’s not his wedding anniversary either, although he wouldn’t be here for that anyway. He usually spends that day in the pub getting completely wrecked. As he does on the anniversary of Gran’s death.

(and most Saturday nights)

As yet I’m the only girl in Dad’s life not to leave him, so there’s no fixed date for that.

‘I got you a chow mein, that okay?’ He says, bringing the plates through. ‘It’s pork.’

‘Yeah, great,’ I reply. ‘That smells good. I’m starving.’

I take the plate off him, tip out the contents of the foil container, a sticky syrup of noodles and pork.

‘Prawn crackers too,’ he says, dumping them on the coffee table, greasy translucent stains on the brown, paper bag. He disappears again, comes back with two lager stubbies.

‘You want?’ he asks, holding one up.

‘Yeah, why not,’ I reply.

(make up for my teenage years)

I could do with a drink tonight, after seeing that old woman. I’m not really that keen on lager, never acquired a taste for it, but I can force it down.

Make Dad happy.

Watching you on the
TV
tonight, I was so proud of you

Dad prises the stubbies open, sets one down in front of me. I help myself to a prawn cracker, feel it stick and prickle on the end of my tongue.

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘Bloody hell, does a man need a reason to buy dinner for his only daughter?’

‘No. Course not.’

‘I just thought we deserved it, overtime burning a hole in my pocket. Besides…’

I stop eating.

‘Besides, what?’

‘Ach, well, I saw the results of the Europeans, thought you might need a wee pick-me-up?’

‘How did he get on?’

‘Gold, another
PB
.’

I imagine the photo in tomorrow’s paper. Jason. Up on the medal rostrum, or in the pool at the end of the race, fist pumping the air.

I twirl my fork round the noodles. Spear a bit of pork, a water chestnut, shove it all in my mouth. Crunch down on it, swallow the tears.