When I have untwizzled the wax and slipped and clicked the lid back into place, she turns and looks at herself in the mirror.
She smiles, a small smile in the middle of my great big one.
It’s still possible to smile when you’re crying.
In the dark, unfamiliar pitch-black lips press themselves passionately to mine. Not like yours. Different to yours. They open, and my lips open, open together, drive deeper, a tongue pushes between m–
No. No. I can’t think of this.
‘Are you all right, lovey?’
Sheila, doorway.
Her voice is like — it’s like listening to the radio when I’m falling asleep.
Somehow clearer, more acute.
‘How are you bearing up?’ She’s speaking slowly too.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘good.’
‘Well, I’ll check in on you in a little while, see how you’re going on. You’ve got your button if you need me.’
I look at the button. There it is, snaking across my bed. Friendly.
‘I’ve got my button.’
‘OK, lovey.’
She’s not there any more.
Is this working? I think the morphine might be working.
It’s gentle. I feel gentle.
It’s like sitting in the back of the car, the voices and the radio around me, swirling and stirring me to sleep.
M
Muscles
‘OUR CONCERN IS over muscle wastage,’ the consultant mutters to your mum.
Plastic mask marks your face.
Bedbound, the ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.
A ventilator is not a part of the body. It absolutely is not.
Brainbranded.
We’ve been sitting with you for two days now. The ventilator breathes out, you breathe in; clicks; in, you breathe out.
‘We have to hope that she is going to be able to breathe unaided before long. The concern is that, with the ventilator doing all the work, the muscles she uses to breathe will become too weak to work on their own.’
No — no.
Bitter, evil memory.
That’s where poor Amber will be now. Her brain will branded with the memory of her mum, lying there in the bed. Like the blinding blink trails of a dark sun, repeating on her retina.
It took me over a year to blink away those final moments of you, even for a little while.
N
Nose
THAT CRAYOLA CRAYON in my first year of primary school.
That’s why I remember that.
After wearing it down to something the size of a pea, I stuck it up my nose, and was surprised to find it stayed there. I distinctly remember not being able to pincer it out with my thumb and forefinger. It just went further up.
I didn’t panic.
I sat there, looking at my rectangular cat drawing, a deep scrunch of my nose every few seconds. Even then I knew I should act as if nothing had happened. And there was no way I was going to go and ask for help. I basically selected another colour and carried on colouring, and sat with the pea-sized crayon up my nostril for half the afternoon.
Then the brainwave: I could try squeezing my nose from above the crayon, and it might come out like that.
Squeeze.
Pop.
Rattle.
I looked down, and there it was on the desk.
Maybe this moment of simple harmony between my thoughts and my actions — that is, the reflection upon and the execution of how to remove a crayon from myself without needing to go and ask a grown-up — was the absolute high point of mental achievement in my entire life.
Eyes open suddenly. Why?
Daylight. Daytime.
At the window, sliced through with strip-lit reflections, a man’s face is staring in.
Unkempt, unshaven.
The face of a man in a maroon jacket, some yellow detail on the top pocket—?
Then he’s gone.
Wh—?
I don’t know what if–
He was definitely–
Push the button. Push now. Push to the click.
My heart leaps to racing. Beat, beating, beating in me.
Footsteps in the corridor. Sheila.
‘Yes, lovey, are you all right?’
‘There—’ I jab my finger at the window.
‘What’s that?’
‘There — There. There was a face.’
She finally wanders her way over to the window and levers it open.
There was a face, definitely.
I wasn’t imagining it. Not a hallucination — if this was a hallucination, it was the most solid — no. Sheila’s — I know she is — she’s going to turn and tell me there’s no one there.
‘Oi!’ Her voice sounds washed out, projected over the lawn outside. She barks a few demands, and there he is again: the man, drifting in from the right. He’s explaining himself to her with a hint of dumb petulance.
Who the hell is it?
I can’t make him out.
He’s looking at Sheila like a scolded schoolboy. All I can hear is the placatory ascent and descent of the tones of his explanation. Tones that say he didn’t know he was doing a wrong thing, that it wasn’t his fault he was doing a wrong thing, that it was someone else’s fault and he was only following orders, and why was it a wrong thing anyway?
Sheila’s voice is calmer. But still matronly. I catch a few bits. Patients in here … very serious condition … how would you like it? Phrases that have their own signature tone.
The man beats a sheepish retreat, and Sheila fixes the window back shut.
‘Bloody useless, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘It’s the NRG clowns again. I’ve told them they have to come straight to reception, but they think they own the place now. Are you all right?’
‘Not really, no,’ I say, grasping for my oxygen mask.
‘Sorry about that,’ she says, coming to assist.
‘Anyone could get in. It could have been anyone.’
‘No, I know what you’re thinking,’ she says, ‘but it couldn’t have been anyone. They need a special pass to get past the gate, it’s all secure round here, OK? They’ve all been checked. He came in the wrong way, that’s all.’ She straightens her mouth and looks down at me. ‘Come on now, let’s get you back on the straight and narrow. You know how important that is.’
I close my eyes, take a few breaths.
‘I can’t do it. There’s too much. I need more help.’
An amplified crackle shocks my mind, and flings my attention to the two speakers bracketed by the ceiling of the Baurice Hartson Rest & Recuperation Room. They fire out a burst of vaguely Eastern soothe-music, and Karen is quick to drop the volume to an appropriately ethereal level.
‘A bit of something to evoke a more pleasing atmosphere.’ She smiles.
She has a nice smile. And a clipped little accent. Not completely English, although almost completely. She says esses instead of zeds. Odd shape to her ohs. It sounds sweet. Swedish, I presume, if this is a Swedish massage?
‘So if you could remove your pyjama jacket for me, what I’m going to do is massage your chest with this oil, which should help clear your airways and assist your breathing. Sheila tells me your breathing has been difficult?’
‘Yes,’ I say, beginning to unbutton my pyjama jacket.
‘Well, this ought to help to clear those lungs.’
Nod.