by Claire Allan
‘You never get used to how cruel this disease can be, do you?’ Rachel asks.
‘You don’t,’ I say, thinking there’s a lot of cruelty in the world that we can never prepare for or get used to.
I read the rest of the notes and leave the office quickly. I need to be away from Rachel as soon as I can and for as long as I can.
I walk down the corridor to Mrs Doherty’s room, peaking in through the glass panel on the door to see she appears to be sleeping, so I gently press down on the handle and creep in, keen not to disturb her unnecessarily.
It’s only been a matter of weeks since I last saw her, when she came in for respite care, but the brutal toll of the past three weeks is evident just by looking at her. She’s lost a lot of weight and her skin has developed a crepe-like appearance, almost grey in colour, except for some particularly livid bruises on her hands and arms where IV lines have been sited. Her face is already hollowing out, her cheeks sunken into her face. There’s no doubt this poor woman is actively dying in front of my eyes.
Her hair, which she’d been delighted to hang on to through the worst of her treatment, lies plastered to the pillow and the top of her head. She’s always been so elegant that I feel for her, lying there free of her usual make-up, her usual blow-dry and set, and even the pearly white dentures that made her smile so bright and beautiful.
‘Oh, Dotty, you really have been through the wars,’ I whisper as I try to check her heart rate and blood pressure as gently as possible.
Her hands are cold and I hold them in my own, try to warm them up but making sure not to squeeze. She’s in enough pain without me adding to it. As I care for her I explain everything I’m doing softly as if she were awake and able to hear me. It’s important to remember that even when so very ill, a patient retains the right to dignity.
I see her wooden-handled, soft-bristled brush on her bedside locker and begin to brush her hair gently. I’m no hairdresser and how she’s lying makes it difficult to style it properly, but I think I make it more presentable. In her sleep, she smacks her lips slightly. Morphine’s known for its tendency to cause dry mouths in patients, so I dip an oral sponge swab in water and gently run it inside her mouth, where she sucks on it without waking.
I check when she’s last had a top-up of pain relief to give her a break from the pain and note the time when someone should check on her again. I hope I’ll be free to do it. I feel the need to be with her.
I tell her I’ll see her a little later and leave her sleeping. I head back to the nurse’s station, where I immediately send a text to my mother to tell her that I love her. We still hadn’t been on the best of terms when I’d left this morning and my guilt at that is multiplied now that I’ve seen Mrs Doherty.
As usual for my mother, she replies within minutes:
I love you too, Eliana. How are you? How are things with Martin?
I reply I’m fine; I don’t mention that I’ve not really spoken to Martin yet. I certainly don’t mention the latest missive from my mystery stalker. She asks if she can call me when Coronation Street is over.
I’m pulling an extra shift in work. I’m fine though. Needed a little headspace. Don’t worry.
It’s only a matter of seconds before the reply ‘of course I worry’ lands on my phone. Just seconds later, it rings.
‘Mum, you know I’m at work,’ I say as I pick up. ‘I can’t really talk.’
‘I’m not happy, Eliana,’ she says. ‘You should be resting, first of all, not jumping at extra shifts, and you should be at home trying to find out just what Martin is at. I know it’s hard. I know you love him, sweetheart, but you can’t run from it. You have to know where you stand, before this baby arrives.’
I rub my temples and sigh. I want to cry. But I can’t allow myself to start to fall apart now. I’d be afraid I’d never be able to put myself back together again.
‘Mum, I’m fine with the shift. I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think I could manage. I’ll talk to Martin when I get home. I just needed a little more space to try to get my head round it all. It’s a lot, you know.’
‘Don’t let yourself be taken for a mug, Eli,’ she says. ‘I love you too much to see you get hurt by him.’
‘I love you too, Mum,’ I say, and feel tears spring to my eyes – not just for my own situation, but also with love for my mother and with sorrow for poor Mrs Doherty alone in her room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Louise
No one was in the least bit surprised when I said I was moving away to start over again. No one tried to talk me out of it. No one, not even my parents, tried to dissuade me.
That hurt, I suppose. Then again, I imagine they were relieved to see me go at that stage. I might have been getting ready for a whole new life, but the truth was, the person they’d known and loved had gone a long time before.
A big part of her was buried in the ground in a plot at the City Cemetery.
They told me a new start would be good for me. That they thought it was ‘just what I needed’. That it would ‘do me good to get away from all the reminders’.
They didn’t know, of course, that when I went, I’d be saying goodbye to them forever. I always wondered if that would’ve bothered them.
Everything about this new start had to be fresh and clean and properly organised. I’d actually forgotten just how organised I could be.
I took to it all easily. All the planning – sorting out the logistics. New place to live. When to go. How to get there. How to appear to have gone but to still be here, just close enough. Where to stay when I was in that limbo of waiting for her to be born, but where no-one from my old life would find me.
The loneliness would get to me, I’d imagined.
So I’d had to be clever. I’d staved off my loneliness by allowing myself to watch them more. Always safely. Always from a distance. Always hidden from view. This quiet little mouse watched them lead their lives. I’d pretended that, in some way, I was part of it. Which I suppose I had been.
I sometimes wondered how he’d have reacted if I’d given him a choice. To come with me and raise his baby together, or stay with her knowing he’d never see his child again. Surely any decent man would choose his child over his wife. Blood over lust.
I told myself off for that. It would’ve been wrong. It would’ve been a sin.
The Sixth Commandment: Thou shall not commit adultery. Or would it? I wasn’t the one who was married, after all. But could I condone it? Would it make me more of a sinner as one who encouraged it?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Eli
The only thing worse than a busy night shift is a quiet night shift. The minutes feel like hours. I’d hoped that I’d be kept busy enough to be able to avoid bumping into Rachel, or so I didn’t have time to think about Rachel, or my husband, or Rachel and my husband. But the night is dragging and every minute feels like an hour.
Our patients are settled. A few family members sit quietly in their rooms, or on chairs in the communal area, blankets over them, trying to catch a little sleep but afraid to sleep too deeply only to be woken with bad news. We have accommodation on site for them, a couple of bedrooms, but we often find people are reluctant to stray too far from loved ones.
The lights are dimmed. The hospice is illuminated by lamp-lit offices and bedside lights. Nurses with pen torches carrying out their observations, speaking only in whispers to patients and other staff. The silence is broken only by the occasional opening and closing of a door, a beep of an infusion pump, a ticking clock in the staff room; one that we only seem to hear at night.
I long for a buzzer to sound, a rap on the door to call for my attention, a phone to ring. I need a distraction from the mess my life is in – a distraction from the tiredness, emotionally and physically, I’m feeling – or I fear I might just sink under it and not surface for a long time.
I get up and stretch and walk the deserted corridors. The hospice is situated far back from the main roa
d running into Derry from Donegal, looking out over the banks of the River Foyle. Staring out of the windows, I can see the lights of the houses across the river, moving cars, street lights, serving as a reminder that whatever goes on in this particular corner of the world, everything continues as it always does elsewhere.
But there’s also the blackness of the night and it’s hard to escape the darkness in the world, too. Standing at the window, I’m reminded that someone’s out there who’s determined to get under my skin, to scare me and threaten me. To destroy the life I have now. And I have no clue who that person is.
I shudder, wrap my cardigan a little tighter over my uniform, and set off back up the corridor. I’ll go and sit with Mrs Doherty. Keep her company. Check she has everything she needs. It’ll do me good to be there, distracted from my own worries.
A tired-looking junior nurse is only too happy to take a break when I arrive at Mrs Doherty’s bedside. I tell him to go and grab a quick nap, followed by a coffee. It takes a while to get used to night shifts.
‘How’s she been?’ I ask as he makes to leave.
‘A little more unsettled this last half-hour or so,’ he says. ‘Her breathing’s become more laboured, but it seems to have settled again. Do you think she’ll be able to hold on until her son arrives?’
I shrug. The truth is, I don’t know. Mrs Doherty could pass in a matter of hours or days. Death isn’t always as predictable as we all think. There are signs and stages we watch for, of course, but death doesn’t always shift through the gears as it should.
That Mrs Doherty had been talking earlier that day, that she was able to speak to her neighbour when she visited is a positive sign, but a change in breathing, the soft gargle I can hear at the back of her throat? Those are signs that her body’s giving up where her mind isn’t quite ready. She is a fighter, but even the toughest of fighters have to concede at least once in their lifetime.
‘Dotty,’ I say softly as I check her chart, ‘it’s Eli. I’m going to work in here for a wee bit tonight, if you don’t mind keeping me company.’
I gently brush her hair back from her face again, use a little lip salve to soothe her lips before I sit down and try to catch up on some of my paperwork by the soft light of her bedside lamp.
I try to stay focused on the journey Mrs Doherty’s on. To comfort and guide her. It’s true what they say that hearing is one of the last things to go. I can’t stand the thought of her listening to the ordinary world go about its business around her as if her life, and her contribution to it, doesn’t matter.
During her previous visits with us, Mrs Doherty and I had developed a great rapport. What I love most about her is that she’s a no-nonsense sort and one of the few people on this planet who I feel understands me and my mixed feelings towards my baby.
While others would tell me I’m blooming, she’d ask how I was coping finding something that made me feel less nauseous. She discussed what she used to use to help with the side effects of her chemo, I discussed what I did to try to lessen the hormonal surges.
‘I only did it the once,’ she told me. ‘Which was almost unheard of in my day. Every one of my friends was firing out babies like they were shelling peas. A baby in their belly, another on their hip and a tribe around their feet. I didn’t see the appeal in doing it more than once,’ she’d said with a smile. ‘Too much pressure on us women to love everything about motherhood. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son very much. I’d do anything for him, but motherhood never fulfilled me the way it did my friends.’
Her honesty had been refreshing. An antidote to my mother’s well-meaning but guilt-inducing take that there’s nothing in this world that could ever come close to the thrill of holding your own child and raising them. My mother would’ve had a houseful of children if she could have. ‘But things just didn’t work out that way. I’ll have to make up for it with a houseful of grandchildren instead, eh?’ she’d said with a wink.
So I chat to Mrs Doherty again. I tell her how the night sky is filled with stars. How a heavy frost is settling on the grass and tomorrow is bound to be another cold one. I tell her how I find the hospice so peaceful. And, sometime around 3 a.m., I find myself crying a little and telling her I wish she was here, properly here, to talk to me with some of her wit and wisdom. I tell her what a friend she’s been to me. How she could always make me laugh; because that was one of her greatest gifts, being able to make me laugh even when I was feeling sorry for myself.
I don’t realise the tiredness is getting the better of me as we talk. I know my eyes are growing a little heavier, and every now and again I get up to stretch, to ease the ache in my back and wake up a bit. But still, sitting at her bedside and holding her hand, I drift off at some stage.
I wake to her gasping, her body writhing in pain. I try to soothe her. Put an oxygen mask on her face to try to ease her breathing, but her face is contorting in agony. A horror mask of dying, which in the darkness of the room looks haunting. Her hands are fisting at the sheets, her eyes wide with fear.
Sleepily, my hands shaking, my heart thumping, I administer more meds. More sedative. More pain relief. I just want to help. That’s my job, to help. I just don’t want her to be scared. I don’t want the fear to overwhelm her.
I can do this. I’ve done it many times. But this time, something feels wrong.
She goes quiet. Is still. For the briefest of moments I feel relief, because the awful noise she’s been making has stopped, her body relaxed.
But then something changes. Her chest stills. Her eyes droop. Not quite closed but the light has gone out.
I know she’s gone. I know it instinctively. I start to shake. Have I done something wrong? I push down the panic as I start to work through my steps. The dose.
Jesus! The dose.
Hastily calculated.
Wrong.
Fatal.
I feel the room start to spin. I just about manage to hit the panic button before I have to sit down to stop myself from falling. I look to Mrs Doherty, her face like a bizarre mask, still not quite hers. Still wearing a gruesome expression of fear.
Was she scared of me? Did I kill her? Did she know I’d kill her? I’d been so distracted with my own life, so caught up in me and my imploding marriage and my pregnancy and my mother, had I not been concentrating? And I’d been asleep. Oh God …
Footsteps. I hear footsteps but they sound as if they’re getting further away rather than coming closer. The room spins more. The window. The darkness. Is there someone there? Laughing? I try to breathe as the darkness gets darker. I feel myself slipping away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Eli
Things are hazy. People are blurry shapes. Sounds. Questions. Hushed tones. We have to keep quiet. We have to whisper these conversations. Be aware of our other patients. We have to make sure no one hears. No one gets upset. No one loses faith in what we’re doing.
We.
But it’s me, you see. Not we. I’ve messed up. I can dress it up whatever way I want, but I’ve fucked up on an unforgivable scale. I try to block out the noise, try to run what’s happened through my head in slow motion. I’d been distracted. Tired.
Should I have buzzed for help sooner? That was protocol, after all – two people. Double-checking. But she was in so much pain. Her face twisted. But I was used to that, wasn’t I? I’d seen it before. It was my job to remain calm in these circumstances. To do my job. A job I knew inside and out.
I’d been calm. Hadn’t I? Too many thoughts and feelings. A kick in the ribs. A rattle of nausea. A regret for coming into work and not having a good night’s sleep. Wanting to turn back the clock. Not just an hour, but days, months even. Before everything started to go wrong. I want to go home.
The realisation that going home isn’t the answer either hits me – there’s too much to face there. There’s too much to face here. Everything’s falling apart.
I can’t breathe. In the hushed room, with hushed voices and furtive glances.
Rachel’s beside me – I’m not sure when she got here. She looks at me and I can’t meet her eye. I need her – or at least the person I thought she was – to reassure me, but I also need the person I fear she is to stay away. If she’s the ‘friend’ mentioned in the latest note, then surely they’ll have so much more to laugh about now. I’ve really messed it all up.
I’m ashamed and humiliated and so very sorry. Tears flow freely down my cheeks. I want to tell Mrs Doherty how sorry I am. I want her to hear me. I want her to believe me. I want her back.
I rock slightly back and forth. I look unhinged, I imagine, but I have no reputation left to protect at this stage anyway.
What have I done?
‘Eli.’ I hear Rachel’s voice come into focus. ‘Eli, breathe,’ she says. I feel her hand on my knee, become aware that she’s kneeling in front of me. ‘It’s okay. It’ll be okay.’
I look at her, blinking. How could she think it’s okay? How could any of it be okay?
‘It’s not,’ I mutter. ‘It’s not.’
‘There’s some tea here, sweet, for the shock,’ she says.
I can’t even think about drinking it. I know I’ll throw it back up. I’m aware one of our doctors is having a whispered conversation with our chairman. There’s head-shaking. Chin-rubbing. Did I hear someone mention the police? I want to put my hands over my ears to block it all out.
‘I’ll take you home. You’re too distraught right now. You have to think of the baby,’ Rachel says.
I want so much to run away, but not home, and I certainly don’t want her of all people to take me there. I’ll get no relief from this there.
I shake my head, still can’t meet her eyes. ‘I gave her too much,’ I say, panic rising. ‘She should still be here. Her son … she won’t see her son. I know better. I shouldn’t have …’
