Oh Dear Silvia

by Dawn French

  The whole display is hilarious, and Willow is lapping up the encouragement and laughter of her mum and Winnie.

  ‘And so don’t ever have a penguin come to tea. Penguins, attention! Penguins, goodnight!’

  Cassie and Winnie whoop and clap.

  ‘Well done darling, well done!’

  ‘Yes! Very good lickle cutie! You so clevva!’

  Cassie gathers Willow up in her arms, and hugs her tight. She is aware that Willow’s eyes are darting over towards the bed and its curious occupant. Cassie agonized over whether to bring Willow into this strange environment, she wondered if it would disturb her, but in the end she reckoned that the possibility, however slight, that Willow’s presence might help Silvia to surface was just too significant to ignore.

  Cassie also decided that she would break the cycle of rejection, and lead by example. She would be the bigger person and do the right thing, rather than let the toxic infection of hurt spread any further. Willow might have uncomfortable memories of this experience, but at least she would have been here. She wouldn’t, in the future, be able to level any blame at Cassie for denying her the chance to at least see her grandmother, or ‘The Lady’, as she knows her.

  Cassie finds it hard to explain the peculiar relationship to Willow, it’s so unlike her close bond with her other grandmother, Ben’s mum. Willow wouldn’t really understand that this log of a person is a grandmother, she has had nothing to do with her, so didn’t know her before she became a log. Maybe, ironically, that is a plus in a way. At least Willow doesn’t have to feel a massive sense of loss or anxiety, which she would surely feel if the two of them had a proper connection.

  If she knew Silvia. Properly knew her.

  ‘Come on puddin’, why don’t you use your colours and make The Lady a lovely picture for her wall?’

  ‘Dat would be so cool Willow, mi haffi get back to work now, but I be in later an’ see what you done, yes?’

  Winnie winks at Cassie, this is special treatment because children aren’t usually allowed on this ward, but Winnie has told Cassie she will make an exception in her case, and allow Willow in when she is on duty today. Winnie feels strongly that the hospital rules regarding children in the ITU are archaic and cruel, and that this is the most crucial time when visitors should be allowed free access to their critically ill loved ones. They may never have another chance. Sometimes, medicine and all the tightly controlled rules surrounding it should take second place to people.

  Today is one of those days. Winnie wants the people to take precedence over bureaucracy and regulation. Besides which, she owes Ed and his family massively, so she is happy to bend the rules. Winnie leaves Cassie and Willow alone with Silvia. The three generations in one room.

  It’s personal and it’s important.

  Cassie puts Willow down and goes about making a little art corner for her with all the paraphernalia she insists on bringing in her ‘art bag’. She has crayons and felt-tip pens and paper and colouring-in books and table mats stolen from T.G.I. Friday’s with puzzles and patterns to colour. Cassie lowers her mother’s over-the-bed swing table right down to Willow’s height, and sets it all out for her.

  Willow is curious.

  ‘Why is The Lady making that noise?’

  ‘Well, at the moment The Lady can’t quite do her own breathing because she is very poorly, so that machine there is doing her breathing for her, and that’s the noise you can hear. That’s all.’

  ‘I do breathing on my own, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes honey, you do. And very well. You are an excellent breather, I think.’

  ‘Yes. I am. And I’m not poorly.’

  ‘No, you are very healthy.’

  ‘Yes, because of fruit. And oranges.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did The Lady forgot to eat her oranges?’

  ‘No, she fell down and hurt her head.’

  ‘Oh. And now she’s having a little sleep.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Will she wake up soon?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so.’

  ‘Does The Lady like cheeses?’

  ‘Um, I think so, yes. Why, darling?’

  ‘Cheeses will help her …’

  Willow starts to draw intently in her pad of paper.

  ‘Right. How will cheeses help The Lady, Willow?’

  ‘Cheese always helps people, maybe gets her better, so she wakes up?’

  ‘Hmm. I’ve never heard of that, but maybe …’

  Willow laughs at her mother.

  ‘Yes Mummy, you have heard of it. You’re just being silly … cheeses makes everyone better if he likes because he’s made of God.’

  ‘Oh I see. Yes, I am silly, because I usually call him Jesus …’

  ‘You’re funny Mummy. Look, I am drawing my family … there’s Grandma, and Daddy and Granddad Eddie and you. Now I’m drawing me …’

  ‘Oh, I love that picture, and I’m sure The Lady will too.’

  Cassie goes closer to her mother and looks at her face. It seems changed, oddly clammy and not quite Silvia’s normal ruddy colour, in fact she could swear she sees a subtle hint of a blue hue about Silvia’s skin. Then she looks closer and thinks she can’t. The machines seem to be making all the usual noises, the breathing is exactly as it has been these last few days, and she looks comfortable on her side. Cassie takes a deep breath, and walks to the window. She looks up at the sky and notes that big rain clouds are rolling in.

  ‘Ooo, I think there might be some rain later, Woo Woo. We won’t have to water your tomato today. It will get plenty to drink from the sky.’

  Cassie gazes at everything outside: the quad, the sunshine-starved grass, the wooden bench where a gaunt man in a threadbare dressing gown sits puffing away furiously at a thin cigarette, the precise reason he’s in here. He is the very epitome of a sad sight and Cassie’s heart hurts just to look at him.

  That’s the trouble with hospitals. They are full of desperate sick people. It’s hard enough to safeguard your reserves of courage to deal with your own particular infirm, never mind dealing with the sights, sounds and smells of other people’s. Cassie is an exceptionally sympathetic person to boot, and it’s a challenge not to empathize too much when you are surrounded by misery and fear, like you are always in a hospital like this. She could sob right now at the woeful sight of that thin man and his thin cigarette, imbuing him with all her pained imaginings, his poor timid wife who only ventures out when supported by this formerly strapping capable man. Admittedly, they mainly went out only to get fags but nevertheless she will no doubt be rendered housebound by this dreadful circumstance.

  And what about their son in Dubai who will have to make the difficult decision about whether his father is sick enough for him to take time off his important lucrative job to come and see him one last painful time before he dies?

  And then there will be the harridan of an unkind greedy daughter who will boss the frail mother into selling the house and giving her everything. The sickly dad has always been a buffer between his daughter and the vulnerable mother. He has protected her until now, when he himself is too pitifully weak …

  All the time Cassie has been engrossed in speculation, busily living and suffering other people’s lives for them, little Willow has been singing quietly, a random made-up song about rain and tomatoes and God, who made both, whilst she toils away at her important picture.

  ‘It’s finished, Mummy!’

  This jolts Cassie out of her fertile imagination where she could happily remain all day, in a limbo of no responsibility. However, back in the real present, she relishes the responsibility of motherhood, it’s so easy for her to want to be there for Willow, look at her now, holding up the fruits of her toil. Cassie walks to her and takes the picture to have a good look.

  She has drawn the outline of a house, and inside is a row of people. Cassie recognizes them all immediately: Ben with his customary beanie hat on, his mother, Willow’s gran, Grand
dad Eddie with a wheelbarrow, then Cassie herself with a mass of red hair in felt tip, holding hands with Willow who is always a mini version of Cassie with the same hair but wearing her red duffel coat and green frog wellies. Outside the house, to the side, is a massive tree, most probably a beech.

  ‘It’s to show The Lady who my family is, and the trees and the cat.’

  ‘What cat, darling? We don’t have a cat, do we?’

  ‘Yes, we do. Jess. That’s my cat.’

  ‘Jess? Do you mean Postman Pat’s cat? The black and white one?’

  ‘Yes, that’s my cat too.’

  ‘I see. So, where is Jess on the picture?’

  ‘Not on the picture. Over there …’

  With which, Willow points at Silvia.

  Cassie looks. Willow has drawn extensively on Silvia’s face with black permanent marker. Since Winnie turned Silvia on her side, her face is now dangerously, irresistibly accessible to a creative four year old. As Cassie comes closer, the full extent of Willow’s ingenuity is revealed. She has drawn big black whiskers on Silvia’s cheeks, made her nose entirely black, dotted between her nose and upper lip, and in a very un-catlike way she has inexplicably made two big round red rosy circles on her cheeks.

  Cassie raises her hands to her face in shock, and gasps. How could this have happened without her noticing? Cassie is transfixed by the sight, her eyes are wide open and she is silent, slowly drinking it in.

  ‘The Lady be’s Jess the cat, then she can come in our family with my mummy and daddy and Granddad Eddie and Grandma. The cat will do sleeping all the time, like The Lady, see?’

  ‘Yes darling, I see. Yes. Mmmm.’

  ‘I think The Lady likes to be a cat because she didn’t say not to … did she, Mummy?’

  ‘No Willow, that’s true.’

  Cassie can contain her shock no longer. It has tipped from the initial gut lurch into incredulity, swiftly followed by uncontrollable giggles. She is helpless to do anything about it, the hilarity of the moment consumes her. Everything about the situation is so wrong in lots of ways, yet seeing her mother painted like this is somehow so right. It’s right because she deserves it, and it’s right because a little innocent grandchild should be able to paint the face of their grandmother without it being any kind of problem whatsoever.

  Maybe not with permanent marker, but still …

  ‘Oh, Willow. I do love you …’

  Cassie is almost convulsing with laughing so much and Willow is happy to join in. It could be that she had done something wrong but Mummy is so happy that it must be OK so she feels free to chortle along with Mummy.

  The two of them hoot away.

  ‘Oh my blimmin God, Willow, it’s … genius. Ha Ha!’

  Willow starts to jump up and down with glee at just how happy Mummy is. She claps her hands excitedly, and grins as wide as a Cheshire cat.

  This is the very moment that Winnie comes in, along with the young doctor who has something she needs to tell Cassie.

  Cassie absolutely knows she shouldn’t be laughing at this key moment, but the running tap of her giggles is jammed full on, and however hard she tries, she doesn’t seem able to stem it. The absurdity of it all, Willow shrieking, the sight of her cat-faced mother and the gravity of the moment all conspire to collapse her into a doubled-up fit of the tittering shakes. Cassie attempts to at least alter the volume but all efforts are pointless. The seriousness of the doctor and Winnie’s palpable shock at the daubs on Silvia’s face add to it. The pressure to keep a straight face is enormous. She can’t. Her eyes water with the effort of it, and she coughs to try and regain some composure. Her body is so tightly held in, so tense against the giggles as she attempts to get her breath, the humour in her is brimful and ready to explode.

  So much so, that just as she gets a handle on the guffawing and starts to quieten down, a tiny but undeniably audible little high-pitched fart escapes from her.

  Willow hears it.

  Everyone hears it.

  ‘MUMMY! You done a poppity!’

  ‘Oh God, sorry. Ha! Ha! Ha!’

  And now Cassie is off again, snorting and slapping her leg to try and control the gales of laughter.

  Amid all this bluster, Winnie gently coaxes Willow to follow her out to the nurses’ station, claiming that she wants to show her picture to the other nurses. Willow skips along beside her, holding her hand, happily prepared to exhibit her work publicly. Winnie quietly shuts the door.

  The doctor and Cassie are left alone in Suite 5, and to the accompanying backing track of Cassie’s struggle to stop laughing, the doctor quietly explains that, as a next of kin, she must inform Cassie that Silvia has contracted a nasty infection.

  Cassie can hardly take it in.

  ‘Blah blah opportunistic pathogens, blah blah blah weak immune system, blah blah nosocomial pneumonia, blah blah test blood and urine, blah blah …’

  Cassie notes that the young doctor is not much older than her, maybe five years or so, no more. She notices the small anchor on a gold chain around her neck and wonders what it signifies, or who gave it to her? She is fascinated by a mole on the cheek of the doctor and how it moves when she speaks. She is distracted by anything other than what the doctor is saying. She doesn’t want to hear that at all …

  ‘… blah blah being treated with antibiotics, Ceftazidime, blah blah give increased oxygen, blah blah not great, blah tell family, blah blah …’

  Cassie is aware of the doctor’s hand on her arm.

  ‘You OK with all this?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Cassie. ‘Fine. Yes. Fine.’

  As Cassie speaks, a female visitor of another patient passes the window and glances in. Cassie wonders what the woman thinks of what she is seeing. Is she filling in all the details just as Cassie would if she peeped at this scene?

  Is she thinking ‘Oh look. There’s a poor daughter being told the devastating news that her loving mum is about to die’?

  Is that what she’s thinking?

  Is that what’s happening?

  Thirty-Two

  Ed

  Friday 8am

  Ed is on his phone.

  ‘Well, yes, OK, I see. Hmmn. Yes. I’m afraid I can’t be there just yet, I’m at the hospital, my ex-wife is … very ill,’ he whispers. ‘Very ill, if you get me, I have to be here. Well, I suppose I might be able to get up there around lunchtime all being well. OK. Of course. Just … can you … just please be careful around the roots of any saplings, any of the younger trees … yes … of course. Yes. OK. Thank you. Sorry, what’s your name again? … Right. Thank you. Bye.’

  He clicks the red button on his phone to cut off the caller. He remains looking at the phone in his hand for some minutes whilst he processes the information. It’s a bit weird, he’s not experienced a phone call like that before, especially not under these circumstances. When Cassie called him yesterday afternoon to tell him what the doctor said about just how sick Silvia suddenly had become, he might have been forgiven for thinking that was the most crucial piece of information he would be given in this twenty-four hours.

  He was wrong.

  Ed decided not to rush immediately to the hospital. He was due to see Winnie in the evening, and he very much wanted to do that. He definitely wanted to see Winnie more than Silvia. He felt a pang of guilt about it, but Cassie had explained that nothing was likely to happen immediately, besides which he believed Winnie would be able to shed some light on the situation for him.

  He came to the hospital at midnight instead, and slept in the sadistically uncomfortable chair by Silvia’s bed, lulled by the wheezing of the ventilator. He could hear her breathing become increasingly gurgly as the long night wore on. Various night-duty nurse spectres wafted in quietly at measured intervals to top up her intravenous line with antibiotics and sedatives and diuretic drugs. They whispered to him as they did it, as if not to wake her. If only they could wake her, he thought. Perhaps they were whispering in order not to wake him, but he was only drifti
ng in and out of shallow sleep. A mere waft of air would have woken him. How he would have welcomed a waft of fresh air. Why is the room kept so sealed and hot? This air is now so over-used, there is precious little oxygen in it.

  To distract himself from how stagnant and unnatural this environment is, Ed has held on to Silvia’s solid disc of wood he gave her on her birthday just a couple of days ago, it anchors him to all he cherishes. To the natural, normal world outside here. He is acutely aware that he may not be returning to that world for a little while, and that, maybe, when he does, it will be after Silvia is dead, because Silvia is … bloody hell … it’s true … Silvia is actually dying.

  He looks at her pallid face. He knows it’s true. No doubt.

  But actually, he remembers he has just promised the police he will try to get back up to the wood when he can, so maybe this won’t quite be his last visit. He suddenly realizes that he hopes not. Against all the odds, he finds he wouldn’t mind visiting her in here forever, if it means she is still alive.

  He feels compelled to keep talking to her, telling her all his stuff, so he does.

  ‘Bloody hell, Silv, that was a copper on the phone, sorry to take that call in front of you in here, I know you’d find that unfeasibly rude. Anyway, turns out they want to dig up a patch at Foy Wood. Some bloke’s dog has sniffed something up near the big old queen beech. It’s probably a dead dog or something, or a placenta. Some of those dreadlock girls from the campsite love all that, their offering to The Green Man or somesuch loony stuff.

  ‘It’s apparently in the oldest part of the wood – you know it well Silv – but ironically that’s close to where I have planted a whole new set of saplings in the hope that the big old nurses will shelter them a bit, so I hope they don’t go and dig too close to them, they’ve only been in there for a year or so, they’re still taking hold. Still, not much I can do. I’ll bob up there later to see what’s happening. Hope they don’t cause too much chaos …’