An Ordinary Working Man

by Gillian Ferry

  Chapter ten

  Sir George

  Sir George held out his hand, a brandy glass was slotted between his fingers and he gave a slight grunt of thanks. He’d decided to watch the early election results at his club, Nancy was out for dinner with some members of her W.I. group and he was very much afraid she might invite a few of her dreary friends home for drinks afterwards. Normally the salubrious settings were not disturbed with something as crass as a TV set, but tonight had been deemed a special occasion and the wing backed chairs arranged accordingly. Sir George looked around at his companions, he liked to try and guess which candidate belonged to who but everyone wore their best poker face, pretending only a passing interest in the proceedings. He supposed for some it was merely an election, for others it meant so much more. The picture changed to a stage, MPs at either side of an announcer, who gave a slight cough to ensure all eyes were focused upon him.

  “The result for Meadow East is as follows…” The announcer took a deep breath, drawing out his moment in the spotlight Sir George thought.

  “The Peoples Party 22,658...” A huge cheer erupted in the hall, not for the result, but for what the Republican Party supporters now knew, “…The Republican Party 49, 103.”

  The camera zoomed in on the winning candidate while Sir George struggled to remember his name. As it panned to the left to record the jubilant reaction of his supporters, he caught sight of Nigel in the crowd.

  “A good result, although quite expected of course,” a voice murmured.

  “Yes. “ Sir George nodded, his attention on Andrew. “Still it’s an interesting return, very interesting indeed.” He swirled his brandy as his brow furrowed in contemplation.

  Chapter eleven

  Eighteen months later – November 2009

  Sue

  Sue sobbed, clutched onto Margaret and cried as her heart broke. All the frustrations of the past eighteen months erupted from her body; the inability of her GP to give her a diagnosis for her pain and lack of mobility, the pointless hospital visits, occupational health, it had all led to this moment.

  “Sue, I’m sorry, I…” Margaret didn’t finish the sentence, what was there to say after all? The governing body of the school had decided, as there was no clear date for her return to her role as a classroom teacher, that they had been left with no choice but to terminate her contract. And Sue had known that would be the likely result of the meeting, her union representative had told her so, but when she’d actually heard those words, in that moment, it felt as if her world had crumbled around her. Parent representatives, whose children she’d taught had been unable to meet her gaze and the chairman had delivered the verdict through a voice laced with emotion. Now she stood in the corridor of the designated mutual ground, and she could not speak, her intention to be dignified in her response had been squeezed away by a tightening throat and a mouth that could form no words.

  She felt a hand on her arm, it was Graham, the union guy whose second name she’d never asked and who she’d only met on three very brief occasions. It seemed bizarre that a virtual stranger should witness her complete and utter melt down. Sue allowed herself to be guided away by him, perhaps he was worried the governors would be able to hear her cries or that they might leave the room and walk into her maelstrom. Either way she was soon climbing into his car for the short ride home, and all that was going through her head was that an hour earlier she’d still been a teacher and now she was not. She’d done everything the doctors had said, followed all their advice, yet she hadn’t improved. In her vulnerable state she allowed the self-doubt in, was all of this in her head? Health care professionals kept telling her they could find nothing to explain her symptoms, so surely it must be her fault? And now she’d lost her job and she couldn’t see a way to get better, to pull herself back up because she’d followed every instruction and she’d still lost out. So where did she go next, what did she do?

  Graham dropped her off outside the village where she lived. Tawnley had been built in 1850 for the workers of the local mine and as such had very narrow streets with tight corners, especially since the houses had all been extended in the seventies. Only the residents negotiated their way around with any level of confidence. The houses themselves were stone built terraced cottages; as such Sue had gone for wooden floors and sympathetic materials wherever possible when she’d moved in almost twenty years earlier. Of course she’d still been with Lottie’s dad then, and assumed she would be with Paul for ever more. Her only regret was that she couldn’t keep the relationship going for Lottie’s sake, but they’d both done okay in the end.

  Sue walked painfully along the narrow street toward home, stress making her useless body hurt all the more. Why the hell couldn’t she just get better? Every time she thought the pain to be easing she slowly increased the distance she would walk, convinced this time it would go completely and every sodding time she got so far and the pain and stiffness in her legs and back increased until she was stuck in the house three or four days before beginning all over again. And it wasn’t even as if she were walking very far, from someone who had held down an active job, a house and who swam and ran every other day, she was now aiming to get to the end of her street. It couldn’t be more than a hundred meters and yet that was how far her world had shrunk; she was imprisoned by the limitations of her health and she resented that so very much. All of this swirled in her head, latching onto her grief at losing her job, at losing her life but she didn’t care. Let everyone see her red eyes and flushed cheeks, today was not a day for maintaining any sort of appearance because in truth she simply couldn’t.

  She saw her parent’s car first and then as she pushed open the small wooden gate into her equally tiny garden, her front door opened and they both spilled out. Not naturally emotionally demonstrative, they both opened their arms and cuddled her in like a child, an action that only served to reinforce in Sue’s mind the calamity of the situation that had befallen her.

  “Come on, in you get,” her mother moved her into the house as she spoke, “your dad will put the kettle on.”

  Sue still couldn’t formulate a response, so she sat down and stared at the floor, and then because she knew she had to say something, anything about the meeting she’d returned from, she started crying once more. Her mother stood with her hand on her shoulder, but it was enough. No matter your age sometimes you just needed your parents and Mark and Rose Bailey had resumed their role as carers, as if it were an unbroken line from the days when she’d had lived at home. Having sold her car as she could no longer afford to run it, Dad had dusted off the hat of chief chauffeur, and her mam had taken over jobs around the house that she could no longer manage. Sue felt supported and loved, but she also felt it grossly unfair that they had resumed many of their parental responsibilities at a time when she should have been making things easier for them. They were both in their seventies, although neither looked it nor behaved like it, but their age was a fact and Sue felt guilty that the balance of care had swung around to favour her at the expense of her them.

  “Here you go.” Her dad held out a mug of tea, and she accepted it gratefully. “Once you get sorted, there is nothing to say you won’t get back into teaching.”

  “Yes,” her mother pounced onto her dad’s thread and added, “and I’m sure they would always have you back at school.”

  Sue nodded. “Yes, if I can actually get someone to listen, and find out what the problem is.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time you went private,” her dad suggested, “Instead of waiting around for this load of incompetents.” Her dad had become both disillusioned by and angry toward the Health service as a whole and, to be fair, so had Sue. She’d had three MRI scans to date and according to the neuro-surgeon, nothing conclusive had shown up. That report seemed to be the signal for a general shrugging of the shoulders on behalf of the NHS. She found Dr Grove was no longer interested in her physical wellbeing, focusing instead upon her psychological make-up. Sue had felt so restric
ted by her inability to walk any distance that she had twice used a wheel chair in order to go out shopping with her parents and Lottie. She hadn’t found it a distressing or humbling experience but had instead enjoyed the freedom it gave her to get around. It was merely a tool she had used to feel normal, yet when she had told her GP he’d accused her of seeing herself as a disabled person, catastrophizing her situation and setting a bad example for her daughter. Sue had left the practice in tears and never used a chair since, now she waited in coffee shops with a book while her friends and family reported back every few hours. The only plus point was that she had refused to visit Dr Grove ever again and had instead started to see Dr Murphy. Unfortunately Dr Grove’s course of treatment followed her. He had decided as nothing had shown up to explain her symptoms, and they had gone on for longer than six months, that she must have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, despite Sue’s bewildered response that she did not in fact have any fatigue at that point. She was due to visit the CFS clinic in a week’s time after which she hoped Dr Murphy would sit down with a fresh pair of eyes and start anew.

  “Yeah,” she agreed with her dad, “maybe it is time to explore going private, at least for some sort of one off consultation. I’ll wait until I’ve been to the CFS clinic next week.” Even to her own ears, now she’d manage to construct a sentence her voice sounded dead, resigned.

  “Well, drink your tea for now,” mam added.

  Sue nodded and drank, tea that magical elixir that makes everything okay.

  “If the bloody doctors knew what they were doing you might not have lost your job,” her dad grumbled as he headed back to the kitchen.

  “Well, you can’t change what’s happened Mark,” her mam, ever practical, called to his retreating back. And then time stilled, Sue sat with eyes that burned from shedding too many tears, a throat so full of emotion she marvelled any fluid could get through at all, and a head that pounded with tight, stress induced balls of pain. She listened to her mam, who was desperately trying to keep the conversation going, telling her about people she didn’t know whose offspring she didn’t really care about, but at least all she had to do was nod, sit and nod while a gapping black hole opened up in front of her.

  Rachel and Kay came straight down after school, the signal for more tears from everyone, and then Lottie arrived home in the evening. By that time Sue felt incapable of shedding any more, which was just as well because she did not want to fall apart in front of her Daughter.

  “It’ll be okay mam, you are walking better and stuff, I’m sure you’ll get back to work soon,” Lottie commiserated.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Sue conceded but her head was screaming, no I won’t. She knew her mobility and pain to be getting steadily worse, and at that moment all the guilt rose to the surface. “You do know that if I could be at work I would be, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do mam.”

  Sue nodded and headed to the kitchen to make more tea in order to stop herself from continuing to justify her existence to her daughter because at the heart of her she worried people saw her as a malingerer, as someone trying to play the system. Eighteen months later and the guilt was more tangible than ever.

  *****

  “Have you brought a urine sample?” the nurse asked.

  “No, I didn’t realise.” What Sue meant was she’d forgotten because as the nurse asked the question she remembered it had been on the letter she’d received from the chronic fatigue clinic.

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse smiled as she spoke, “we’ll just do your height, weight and blood pressure first and then we’ll sort it out from there.”

  Sue nodded and complied, she’d had no idea what to expect from her visit to the clinic, other than the confirmation of her own belief that she did not suffer from CFS. At that point, she hoped, everyone would move on instead of grasping the same straw. It seemed to her that as soon as Dr Grove had mentioned the diagnosis every other health care professional felt duty bound to agree.

  “Right, I’ll give you this, the toilets are just next door. Just give a yell when you’re done.” She handed Sue the small plastic container and smiled encouragingly.

  “Right, thank you,” Sue replied, confident that her bladder had already seized up at the thought. Why is it, she wondered, that peeing in a toilet anywhere other than your own, seemed to be fraught with difficulty? She sat down and tried to block out the noise of the nurses and other patients passing just on the other side of the door, and thought of rivers and waterfalls, no luck. And now because she’d been sat there for a while she started to fret that she should really hurry up, but the vice like grip on her urinary tract remained. Time to take action, she stood up and did a shuffle to the hand basin and turned on the tap, surely that would help? She closed her eyes, listened to the water and tried to relax, victory. It wasn’t much, but it was something and the nurse had said she only needed the tiniest amount. She hurried to get sorted and opened the door but she couldn’t see the nurse who’d greeted her, so now she was just a woman clutching a bottle of urine, standing in a corridor.

  Thankfully the nurse reappeared a moment later. “That’s great thank you, now if you’d like to follow me into this room.”

  Sue did as instructed, entering a bland room equipped with a bed, wash basin, and trolley of hospital equipment.

  “Okay,” the nurse said, “just shuffle onto the bed and we’ll do the ECG.”

  “Oh right,” Sue murmured in return, she was now feeling rather perplexed, she hadn’t known what to expect, but this definitely wasn’t it. “You have to do that as part of the chronic fatigue examination?” She thought it best to say something, just in case they had her mixed up with someone else.

  “Yes, Dr Michaels likes to have all the test results available to him when he speaks to you.”

  “Oh okay.”

  “So,” Nurse Jones continued, Sue having spotted her name tag, “I’ll pull the curtain round and lock the door on the way out and if you can just take everything off from the waist up.”

  “Oh, right, okay,” Sue replied again, trying not to look too stunned. The nurse did as she said and Sue pulled off her t-shirt and cringed, she had one of her tatty bras on, holes around each side. When would she ever learn that any trip to hospital required decent underwear, just in case? She hurriedly hung it up underneath her clothes and lay back on the bed, she felt ridiculous. She lay naked on the top, a pair of jeans and boots on the bottom half, strangely enough it was the shoes that bothered her the most. Maybe she should take them off? But the nurse might wonder why she’d done that, indecision ruled, should she or shouldn’t she? Fortunately her fretting was disturbed by the nurse who eased her embarrassment in ways only a hospital worker can, she even lifted a boob and put a sticky pad underneath with a manner so straight foreword she could have been asking Sue about the weather.

  From having an ECG Sue progressed along the conveyor belt to the x-ray department where her chest was duly snapped and then to blowing into a tube which measured her lung capacity. That done she’d finally made it to the gates of Oz and waited to see Dr Michaels, she didn’t have to sit for long.

  “Right Sue, good morning I’m Dr Michaels. You’ll be pleased to know all your test results are fine, so I’m just going to start off with a few questions.”

  Sue nodded, and Nurse Jones smiled reassuringly.

  “Can you tell me how many hours of the day you experience fatigue.”

  “I don’t,” Sue replied.

  “You don’t?” Dr Michaels’ expression had gone from thoughtful to bemused.

  “I don’t experience any fatigue, beyond the usually that is,” Sue clarified.

  “But if you have no fatigue, why are you here?”

  “Exactly, I’m sorry, I have really wasted your time, but I have been telling my doctor and anyone else I’ve seen that I do not have CFS because I’m not tired.” Sue’s stomach turned over, Dr Michaels’ expression had become very grave and she didn’t want him to think it was her fau
lt she was there.

  “Who is your doctor?” he asked, after a rather lengthy silence.

  “Dr Grove referred me.”

  “I see, well I’m sorry, your time has been wasted also Miss Bailey, referring you here was not an appropriate thing to do and I shall be writing to Dr Grove to tell him that.”

  “Thank you,” Sue replied, delighted at the prospect of someone putting her ex-GP in his place.

  When her dad picked her up outside the hospital he was equally pleased. “Well at least now your GP will be able to start looking for the real cause of your pain and help you get back to work.”

  “I know,” Sue sighed, it was just another hurdle they’d jumped in the system and she had no doubt they’d be many more.

  Chapter twelve

  A week later, huddled around a small table in a restaurant that was going for cosy and atmospheric but in reality was just over crowded, Sue regaled Rachel and Kay with the details of her visit to the Chronic Fatigue Clinic.

  “How many times have I told you, always wear good underwear on a trip to the hospital?” Rachel remarked. “My mam only went in for an ingrowing toenail and she had to strip off.”

  “I know, never again,” Sue replied, scooping up another load of garlicky dip on the end of her potato wedge.

  Kay, Rachel and herself had established the routine of going out for a meal once a week when they had all worked, realising if they didn’t make the effort then school would truly take over their entire lives. It had taken them well over a year to persuade Sue that it was okay to go out once in a while. Barr the occasional trip to a café with her parents and the many, many health appointments, during the first twelve months she’d been absent from work she’d hardly wanted to leave the house. The usual guilt at being seen out when you were off sick coupled with the fear of making her pain and mobility even worse had kept her inside. But for the sake of her sanity Sue had decided she needed to venture out occasionally. Having rested all day she’d tried to prepare for the additional pain of sitting in a restaurant on uncomfortable seating, she’d even bought a coccyx cushion but that didn’t stop her from shifting from side to side and then standing up for a bit before sitting back down in order to try, without success, to get comfortable.