The person who brought our clipboard (a nurse? a consultant?) takes it back, wipes it clean, and takes us away.
And now I am still sitting, waiting by his bed, which may or may not be appropriate, as he is not in the bed, and never was in it, so it may not be the right object at which to direct my waiting. The bed is in a cubicle whose walls are made of curtains decorated with pictures of teddy bears that sit at right angles to each other, never parallel to the horizontal. They remind us that the people in the ward are children, though these children do and say nothing childlike. The seat I am sitting on is a long narrow couch. It is decorated with pictures of dinosaurs also at right angles. This seat makes me small again. My feet don’t reach the ground. I cannot sit back against its back: my thighs are not long enough, because the couch is also a bed. Its smell is the same smell as new clothes shops: synthetic, sweet as a nut. There’s something of the body about it, but only just: the body removed, perhaps.
The ward is hot, and there is always sound. Somebody’s baby is wired up to beep. There is always light. The people who wait are all women. The nurses are women. So is the receptionist, the cleaners, and some of the doctors. I saw a man once but he left. You left me at the door on the ground floor, holding me by the elbow, that most reluctant handle. Did I not expect you to stay, or did I not want you to? Or was it that I wanted but knew it would not work. You left gladly enough, or, not gladly, but perhaps without feeling anything at all. You did not see the ward. You could not imagine all this. Text, you said. Text.
The women with babies have one-way conversations. They do not speak to each other, but then neither do I. One of them makes a screaming noise but softly, then laughs, then repeats a scream caught in the back of her throat, dragged across her tonsils. It is directed at her baby and the noise is a noise of love. She presses a button on a remote and, behind her, someone on the TV appears and says something that crackles. Is she listening with pleasure? It sounds like a crossed wire. It doesn’t sound like fun.
What will compensate me for this wait, which is so much longer than the wait expected?
Will it be clotheschocolatebooks?
I could buy, say, a silk dress jacket blouse for the summer. I could look online to see if any garment meets my thought: that would occupy my mind, would it?
A nurse comes.
She tells me Charlotte will update me.
I do not know who Charlotte is. I do not ask. I could stop watching the bed in which there is nothing, and go, once again, to the information desk across the hall, where the woman wearing an apron with puppies has no information.
If Charlotte comes she will tell me.
If she tells me there will be no more words.
There will be no more words soon.
Get ready for it.
No more words ever now.
No more ever.
I don’t dare to ask anymore.
I wait. I watch the bed.
The baby wakes. It cries. It beeps.
I hope she’s OK.
I hope we’re OK. I hope we’re all OK.
OK?
But Charlotte being not here to give the reply it goes unvoiced perhaps will always which is sentimental so I guard myself against it by labeling it as such when the toddler in the bed beside sits up and vomits blood into a cardboard bowl he has been holding on his knee for this purpose which makes me start to sweat. It makes my body start to part. In a moment I know it will no longer be with me. Sensible of it to want to get away. Good luck to you mate, I can hardly blame you. If Charlotte comes with her words comes to tell me it all went wrong how would my body know it? How long before the parts of my body realized, independently, that something was wrong and arrived, severally, at panic? Panic is a still thing. I have felt it before: each limb nerve organ coming into extreme alert unrelated to any other, ready for action, but who knows what action, as there is no action that could help here. Each part of my body knows, individually, what action it will take, but none of them are telling. I sit in the middle of them. I have no control. They seem to be ready to run in all directions. But without their cooperation I cannot run, cannot scream, so I sit still and I look quite meek. I know what this feels like. I have felt it before. I am waiting to feel it again.
To occupy my mind I could think wouldn’t you through time backwards to milk cereal first school-wear awww plasticine cookies wooden blocks whatever slippery tales someone dreamt up so feelings can be applied to the objects we passed between us but that would be wrong it hasn’t been all sweetness no has it not the hitting biting swearing complaining and the downright lying all of which happens to more or less everyone if we’re to be honest especially if there’s something going wrong and not all on one side oh no not by any means. No if I’m to construct a hypothesis let’s have one utterly other. I’ll play a game or tell myself a story, which will kill a few minutes at any rate. Games are math things, stories are not, or maybe they are. The name of my game (or my story) is, “What would I do?” If someone came for us, for instance, at night when I am in the house with the children but otherwise alone. This is not logical. There’s no reason, from this person’s perspective, why he shouldn’t arrive in broad daylight when we are equally alone. And there is no reason that, if he arrived at night when we were not alone, well-equipped for murder as my fantasies allow him, we would have a significantly better chance of survival.
He makes a noise downstairs, this person. What would he be doing in the kitchen? There’s nothing to steal there. He should be searching for laptops. He should be in the living room checking out the widescreen TV. With what does he make his noises? With the tools in the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinet. He wants them to break things open, he wants them to hurt us. There is nothing in my bedroom I can identify as any means of defense. There’s nothing from which to construct a story about how I might defend myself. I rattle around in drawers for it, but still I cannot find it. I need the story to escape from one disaster into another, neither of which I can imagine. But why did he come without tools, without a weapon? Perhaps he is not the burglar I’ve planned for but a junkie, a drunk, a psycho. I am more comfortable with a drunk or a psycho: his passion, when I counterattack, will answer mine.
What should I do then? First off let’s take no action: not to alert him by switching on the light, by breathing. Not to alert him to his role by picking up something that could be used as a weapon. Not to alert him by being. The less I breathe, the more any audible breathing must be his: the less I move, the less any noise of movement must be mine. The less I make myself, the more he is, the more what I am becomes him. The more I allow him to come into being, the fewer defenses I have, the fewer defenses I desire. I wait. And I am getting impatient. Does this person find me, and my children, insufficient prey? That I, or my possessions, or my children, are not desired by this person is more or less unimaginable. I am trying to imagine it, but failing. He will desire me, still, when no one else does. Is he a comfort to me then? Perhaps there will be a time when he will not come anymore but I don’t believe it. If he is not in the kitchen it may be necessary to search for him room by room. If he is not in the house there is still the garden, the shed. If none of these there is the street, the town, the rest of the world. Wherever he is, he remains a certain distance from me, and all his movements and intentions are relative to me and always will be until he comes for me. I don’t know when he will come and whether, when he finally arrives, I shall be surprised that he is real after all. There is a phone by my bed but I will not use it. No police will cheat me of this encounter.