Leave Your Sleep

by R. B. Russell

  ‘He’s a complete idiot,’ Hattie was saying of one of her colleagues.

  ‘That’s a little harsh,’ Terrance said. Scott knew who she was talking about. He had met the man once and agreed with her; he was just glad that he didn’t have to work alongside either the idiot or Hattie.

  When Kate returned, clutching a bag so small that it could only have contained her cigarettes and a lighter, Scott made himself ask if it was raining outside and she simply nodded and looked down at her first course, which had just arrived. All that he could fall back on was amateur psychology; timid little Kate was the sister of opinionated Hattie, who was holding court for old friends. Who wouldn’t be intimidated under the shadow of such a sister? Hattie had charisma and the habit of verbally terrorising people. He hadn’t noticed this at first, of course. He had only seen the good-looking, professional woman whose knowledge and understanding of current affairs and politics were impressive. Her sister would not be able to compete.

  The main courses arrived and Scott devoted himself to his unappetising vegetarian lasagne with determination. He hadn’t eaten breakfast and he was happy to work his way through the uninspired plateful while Terrance supplied Hattie with questions that she answered amusingly and eruditely for the enjoyment of all six of them. He noticed that Kate barely touched her salad, but Hattie ate her seafood with an alarming efficiency considering how much she was talking.

  Something changed for Scott that evening. Any desire that he had once felt for Hattie disappeared. She annoyed him, perhaps unreasonably, and he delighted in finding fault with her. Perhaps it was simply the result of the brush-off she had given him a couple of weeks before, but it had been coming for a while. He was slightly uncomfortable that his complete disillusionment coincided with his interest in her quiet sister, who once again got up from the table when everyone had finished. She said quietly that she needed another cigarette.

  ‘I’m so glad you gave up that filthy habit,’ Hattie smiled at Scott.

  Just to annoy her he found himself replying:

  ‘It’s unreasonable to make assumptions about me.’

  ‘You’ve not lapsed?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he lied, and stood up. ‘I might have to go and ask your sister for a cigarette.’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ was Hattie’s immediate response.

  Standing there he could see everyone looking from him to her. He could feel his face and neck becoming red again, knowing that this minor medical condition made him look odd; guilty even. He also knew that he had to assert himself for once.

  ‘You’re not my mother,’ he replied as patronisingly as he could, and then walked out, listening for the conversation to resume at the table. It did, after a few moments, but for once he could not hear Hattie’s voice. His remark had been carefully calculated; he knew how sensitive she was that she was seven or eight years older than all of her friends.

  Scott found Kate by the front door. Spring had officially turned to summer but the temperature was well below average and she was shivering in the cold, a newly-lit cigarette already in her hand.

  ‘I told Hattie I was coming out for one of those,’ he explained, and she held out her packet. ‘But I’m not sure that I want one after all. I’m meant to have given up.’

  She said nothing, and he continued: ‘Hattie told me not to come out, but I don’t much like being ordered around.’

  It was Kate’s cue to agree that her sister was a little too bossy, but still she did not speak.

  ‘Hattie is almost enough to make me take smoking up again,’ he continued, desperately wondering if it was possible to provoke Kate into talking.

  Eventually she said, quietly: ‘Wanting to upset somebody isn’t a very good reason to start smoking.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed.

  ‘Do you live locally?’ he tried again. ‘Hattie said you used to be somewhere down south, but you moved up here a few weeks ago.’

  She nodded and said: ‘It’s more convenient for Hattie.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  She frowned, then added: ‘Not in any selfish way. I don’t suppose it really matters where I am.’

  ‘Okay. You’re able to be flexible…?’

  ‘It just isn’t important.’

  ‘Alright.’ He was attempting to suggest that he understood. As Hattie had said, it was none of his business. By the time he and Kate returned to the table together he had decided that she was too much like hard work.

  ‘So you’ve cracked, then?’ asked Terrance. ‘You’re back on the old cigarettes?’

  Scott ignored the glare from Hattie:

  ‘No, Kate persuaded me that it was a silly thing to do.’

  ‘Good on you, Kate,’ Terrance said boisterously, and she smiled, embarrassed, without looking up.

  At that moment the waitress appeared with a board upon which a selection of desserts were chalked up and they ordered in turn. When the woman had gone Scott was able to tell a story about an old friend known to everybody except Hattie and Kate. He finished just as the desserts were served, and he started his while Terrance began to tell a further story about the same friend. Hattie carefully asked an innocuous and pertinent question. Before Terrance could pick the story back up she adroitly moved the conversation in a direction that suited her. Scott did not allow his dislike of the woman to obscure his admiration for the clever conversational manoeuvre. Once she had resumed talking he stopped listening. Scott could not stop himself from turning his attention back to Kate. He had idly considered earlier that she might be anorexic. However, she was eating her large piece of chocolate cake with obvious relish.

  By the end of the meal Scott was resolved to forget about both women. When the party broke up he walked back towards his office with Terrance while the others went in the direction of the town centre.

  ‘Kate was quiet,’ said Terrance.

  ‘Have you ever met her before?’

  ‘No. I realised there was a sibling, somewhere down near Lincoln. But this is the first time Hattie’s produced her for our inspection. Quite the opposite to her, eh? Not much conversation…but with Hattie as a sister…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  It was almost a week later, a Friday, that Scott saw Kate again. It was his lunch hour and he had a few errands to run before returning to the office. As he was leaving the ironmongers on King Street he could see her on the other side of the road coming out of the newsagents with another, older woman. Without thinking he crossed the road to say hello. She didn’t see him until he was a few feet away.

  ‘Hi, Kate,’ he greeted her, and the young woman’s immediate reaction appeared to be fear. She looked to her friend for support and he instinctively backed away. Nevertheless he said:

  ‘Do you remember me from the restaurant last weekend? I’m Scott.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said timidly. ‘You thought you might want to start smoking again, but you didn’t.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She looked up at her friend and explained, very seriously: ‘He was going to smoke just to annoy my sister.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ the friend replied with a laugh, and then smiled at Scott. ‘I’ve met Kate’s sister too. She’s a little…forceful.’

  ‘You get used to her,’ he answered, not knowing exactly why he was defending her.

  ‘It was a nice meal, wasn’t it?’ he added lamely, and then remembered his indifferent lasagne. ‘The dessert was especially good. You had chocolate cake.’

  ‘Kate likes sweet things,’ said her friend, and Kate pulled a large bar of Fruit and Nut from out of her coat pocket.

  ‘I come out for cigarettes and sweets,’ she said.

  ‘She can buy them in the hospital,’ her friend explained. ‘But it’s best that she comes out and gets some fresh air. Otherwise you’d just be stuck on the ward every day, wouldn’t you? Watching telly and reading old magazines? You should come and visit Kate. Otherwise she only sees her sister and the other patients.’

/>   ‘If I do visit, I assume that chocolates are a better idea than flowers?’

  ‘Definitely,’ she said simply.

  ‘And cigarettes are probably frowned on?’

  ‘There’s a room where we can smoke,’ said Kate, and again she shot a worried glance up at her friend.

  ‘There’s a no smoking policy in the hospital and the grounds,’ the woman said. ‘But, yes, there’s a room available…’

  ‘That sounds very irregular,’ Scott said.

  ‘It is,’ she. ‘Officially it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have an illegal gambling den as well?’ he joked, and saw immediately that he was wrong to do so. Kate simply looked confused, while her friend frowned.

  ‘Come and see,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, do,’ agreed her friend. ‘Visitors are welcome. Ward Fourteen; follow the signs. Any time, but not between ten and twelve in the morning. That’s protected time for the patients.’

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed, wondering quite how the arrangement had come about.

  ‘When?’ asked Kate.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When’s convenient for you?’ asked her friend.

  ‘Um, would half-five tomorrow afternoon be okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the older woman, ‘Consider yourself booked in.’

  Scott didn’t feel that he had any choice but to go along the following day to visit Kate; he had been invited, after all, but he still did not know how he had managed to find himself under the obligation. He assumed that he wouldn’t be sitting at Kate’s bedside; he didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she seemed to be able to leave the hospital. He assumed she must spend time there because she was on dialysis, or needed some other regular, specialist care. He was convinced that her friend was a nurse rather than another patient, but he hadn’t considered for one moment that he would find Ward Fourteen to be a psychiatric ward.

  It said so above the door. When he arrived, as arranged, he stood outside, debating whether or not he should go in after all. It suddenly seemed horribly intrusive when he didn’t even know Kate properly. At length he decided that he had made a promise and had no choice, but when he tried to open the door it appeared to be locked. He looked around and saw an intercom and a discreet message saying that he should press the button to gain admittance. While he was reading it a doctor appeared behind him

  ‘Have you buzzed-through?’ she asked.

  ‘I was about to.’ He could feel the blood suddenly unnecessarily hot in his cheeks.

  ‘Who’re you visiting?’

  ‘Kate,’ he replied. Hoping she had the same surname as Hattie he added: ‘Wilkins.’

  ‘Come with me and we’ll find her.’

  The doctor opened the double doors with a swipe card and Scott followed her through. They were in an anodyne, pastel-coloured corridor with bright prints of flowers framed on the walls. Twenty yards away was a reception desk where two further corridors branched off left and right, but there were no obvious beds or anything that looked like medical equipment. Scott was asked to sign his name in a folder and to write down whom he was visiting, and the time he had arrived.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the doctor, and she walked off to where Scott could hear the sound of a loud television from a room at the end of the corridor on the right. A minute or so later Kate appeared in the distance, smiled faintly when she recognised him, and started to walk in his direction.

  He didn’t know if he should wait for her to reach him or to go down the corridor and meet her half way. If he attempted the latter he knew he would have walked well over half the distance, intrusively deep into the ward, because she was moving so slowly. He decided that he ought to stay where he was, by the reception desk.

  ‘Hello,’ she said when she was finally just a few feet away. ‘It’s Scott, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. I’ve some cigarettes for you, the kind you were smoking before. And a bar of dairy milk chocolate.’

  She took the gifts without thanking him and said they should go and talk in her room. He started to follow her down the other corridor, but after only a few feet a nurse appeared and called out:

  ‘No visitors in your room Kate. And if you’re going to smoke…’

  Kate turned around: ‘Silly me,’ she said, and started to walk back down towards the television room. Scott obediently followed, and noticed, as they passed the television room, that a couple of people appeared to be watching The Dam Busters. He and Kate continued on to the last room of all, the smoking room. It reeked of stale tobacco and was cold. One old man was sitting there with the remains of a roll-up between his yellowed fingers.

  ‘The nurses keep coming in and opening the windows,’ she said, ‘which is why it’s so chilly. The room’s not meant to be here,’ she added, ‘so don’t tell anyone.’

  Scott agreed to keep it a secret and they sat in comfortable but rather tatty-looking chairs facing each other under the window.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, taking a half-opened packet of cigarettes out of her small bag and lighting up. She put the packet back into her bag and was just able to force in the new one as well. Only then did she think to offer him a cigarette, which he declined.

  Scott had found the rank smell in the room unpleasant when they had entered it. Suddenly, however, the smell of fresh smoke from her cigarette pulled at him almost physically. It was as much as he could do not to succumb, but she had zipped up her little bag.

  After a couple of further pulls on her cigarette she said:

  ‘I’ve been worse, I know. But if I was well, then I suppose that I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable.’

  ‘Is it? I don’t think any of it’s reasonable. Me being here at all isn’t reasonable. I’m sick of this place already and I’ve only been in this hospital a few weeks.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re doing their best to get you better, and to get you out as soon as possible.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. Well, maybe they are, but it doesn’t always feel like it.’

  She pulled in more smoke greedily and looked him straight in the eye: ‘I’m sick and tired of the ward, but I’m allowed out if I’m with someone who’s considered “responsible”.’

  ‘Like your sister last weekend?’

  ‘They’ll let me go out any time, but it has to be arranged in advance. Perhaps I could go out with you one day?’

  ‘Where would we go?’

  ‘I don’t know; just walking up and down the High Street would be better than staying in here. We’ll go tomorrow,’ she decided. ‘I’ll arrange it now.’

  Kate got up and left. There was not much to look at in the room so he stared out the window at the car park. He wished he’d suggested to Kate that later next week would be a better time to go out of the hospital with her, but at least they would be off the ward. The place unnerved him because it didn’t seem like a hospital ward, although it was obviously institutional. It was almost too normal.

  After five minutes he thought about going to look for Kate but decided to wait. The old man got up and left and a young, very nervous man with acne came in and lit up. Scott wondered if Kate was ever coming back, whether she’d forgotten he was still there, when a nurse came in.

  ‘Hello, you’re Scott? And you’re a friend of Kate’s?’

  ‘Yes, well, a friend of her sister, really.’

  ‘Kate says you’re happy to take her out for an hour tomorrow? You’re just going up and down the High Street, doing a little shopping?’

  ‘Yes, well, if that’s what she wants?’

  ‘If you come at, say, half past two, she’ll have had her lunch.’

  ‘Okay, but is there anything I should know, or do?’

  ‘No,’ she frowned, not understanding what he was alluding to. ‘There won’t be much open on a Sunday, but you can always go for coffee in the supermarket café? Just try not to be late getting here. A trip
out like this means a lot to Kate.’

  ‘Is she coming back now?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She said you had to leave. She’s gone back to her room.’

  Scott asked himself how he had got into such a situation. He had already made other plans for the Sunday afternoon that had to be cancelled. He didn’t want to cause trouble or upset Kate, but he supposed that his other plans were really rather unimportant. The alternative was hardly onerous, and he didn’t really mind seeing Kate again. The idea of walking up and down the High Street just sounded a little dull. He tried to be positive; he was genuinely curious about her, and anyway, she was expecting him. No doubt agreements had been made with medical staff and it would have been rude to do anything else.

  He arrived outside the ward five minutes early and pressed the buzzer. A disembodied voice asked who he was and he gave his name and said he was there for Kate. The door clicked open and he went inside.

  To his immediate horror he could see Hattie standing at the reception desk. The moment he saw her he thought of her as a looming presence; even from a distance she was channelling anger in his direction. It was a long walk down the short corridor and he felt the unaccustomed sensation of the colour draining from his face.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded while he was still some distance away.

  ‘Miss Wilkins,’ the doctor admonished Hattie calmly but authoritatively. ‘We’ll discuss this in a private room, please.’

  ‘If there’s a problem I can just leave,’ he offered, his pace having slowed to a stop still several feet away from the group. He suddenly noticed Kate standing behind Hattie.

  ‘We’ll talk in a moment,’ the doctor said patiently and professionally, and showed them all into a large room with far too many armchairs for their immediate purposes.

  ‘Kate doesn’t even know this man,’ insisted Hattie. ‘I’ve no idea what he thinks he’s doing coming to see her, try to take her off the ward, taking advantage…’

  ‘Now,’ said the doctor, silencing Hattie, and turning her attention to Scott. ‘Can I ask, how well do you know Kate? You see, she’s quite a vulnerable young woman and we have a duty of care.’