When he was first admitted, two months ago, it was mahogany, like my hair; I remember one of the nurses – Carol maybe – saying we could be brother and sister. Perhaps it was that comment that made me start talking to him like this. Or maybe it was because he’s been here so long and weeks go by without anyone coming to visit, or maybe it’s just because Frank’s such a good listener.
My instinct is that Frank’s more conscious than his brain scans and test results show, but instinct doesn’t count for anything on 9B; everything must be proven by a machine or a graph before anything changes. When Frank was first admitted, talking to him was like talking to an empty box – he was off somewhere; I don’t know where – but now when I sit with him, I can feel his presence. I know he’s listening. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he comforted me just before Christmas on the anniversary of my first miscarriage. I told him about the first as I cleaned his tracheotomy; I think it surprised us both. Then I told him about the seven that followed. I even told him about the ones David doesn’t know about, my body snuffing out tiny life as efficient and silent as a candle in a jar. I felt better after talking to Frank. I suppose it helps that he can’t move, that I don’t have to watch the familiar struggle to hide the pity I see on most peoples’ faces. I stroke Frank’s downy hair, soft as breath on the back of my hand. This New Year marks the end of trying and the beginning of trying to accept we won’t have our own family. I promised David; I agreed eight years of trying is all we can take. It’s over.
I bite my bottom lip. I mustn’t get into a habit of talking to Frank about myself too much – it’s not fair on him – so I pull my hand back and look away from Frank. The nurses working over Christmas have wound some purple tinsel around the frame of Frank’s bed, by his feet. I know their intention was good but now it looks a bit silly.
I get up from the chair, grateful for something to do. I pick the Sellotape off the bed frame and unwind the tinsel. I imagine Frank thinking, Thank god for that, and I smile and say, ‘You’re welcome, Frank’, as I drop it in his bin.
Apart from the purple tinsel and a plastic Santa and sleigh with reindeer that look like they’re hiding forked tongues, 9B has got off quite lightly this year. The only other decorations around Frank are a couple of Christmas cards stuck to the side of his bedside table. I leave them for now.
I hear voices at the end of the ward: the other day-shift nurses arriving. I’ve got rounds in five minutes so I say goodbye to Frank and walk down the wide corridor that makes up Ward 9B at St Catherine’s Hospital, or ‘Kate’s’ as everyone calls it. We’re part of the ‘Nines’: the three critical-care wards at Kate’s. 9B is a small High Dependency Unit with four operational bed spaces. All our patients here teeter on their own personal tightrope between life and death. Us nurses share patient care but since he was admitted in November, I always put myself forward to nurse Frank.
My white trainers squeak against the tacky dark green plastic floor as I walk back towards the entrance of the ward, the sound as familiar to me as a kettle boiling. Today, everything seems the same but Christmas has subtly altered the ward somehow; there’s a sense of possibility this morning. There are some new members of staff, fresh diaries and the carpet in the nurses’ room has been cleaned. The smell’s the same though, the air like another presence in the hospital, a humid puff of overly boiled potatoes and hand antiseptic. Visitors find it stifling, but when you work here you get used to it.
I’m on my way to join in the post-holiday chatter that bubbles out of the nurses’ room like foam when Sharma, one of the ward consultants, walks stiffly out of his office, ready for rounds. He looks much older than his forty-seven years, as if Christmas has aged him. He’s even more precise and starched than normal, as though Santa Claus brought him a steamer, a ruler and spray fixer. His small moustache, like his hair, is jet black, shiny and symmetrical. His shoulders are right angles and the three pens in his breast pocket – black, blue and red – rest ready for action. It’s unsettling. How can anyone like him work in a world of piss and vomit? I always feel a little anxious doing rounds with him, as though I’m dirtying him by proxy, talking about bedsores and bowel movements.
In the nurses’ room, I hear Mary chatting to the new junior nurse, Lizzie. Lizzie starts laughing at something Mary’s said. Both of them were working over Christmas. Mary can be an acquired taste, so I’m pleased it sounds like they got on.
I pick up the ward-notes folder from the reception table. Sharma likes to do rounds with the most senior nurse on duty instead of with each patient’s nurse; I suspect it’s to avoid talking to too many of us. As ward manager, I’ve been called up today. I turn towards Sharma.
‘Hello, Mr Sharma. How was your holiday?’
‘Bonum. Thank you. Shall we proceed?’ Sharma sprinkles his speech with Latin, which incenses Mary – ‘The pompous arse. Who does he think he is? Julius Caesar?’ – but it just makes me laugh.
There are only three patients on 9B at present. Just after Christmas, Caleb in bed two caught a nasty infection after his cancer-ridden spleen was cut away. He was ready to go, as they say; even though he was as weak as a lamb, he still found the strength to try and pull out the IV that pumped the antibiotics into his arm. His wife Hope wrote us a thank-you card after he died; it’s still pinned up behind reception. Winter is usually a busy time here, with pneumonia for the old and more accidents from slippery roads and revelry for the young; odds are Caleb’s bed will be filled by the end of the day.
Rounds start with bed 1: a cardio patient called George Peters, recovering from a recent bout of pneumonia. Sharma moves on to Ellen Hargreaves in bed four, an eighty-nine-year-old with multiple organ failure, dementia and cancer, before lastly coming to Frank Ashcroft. Sharma finds Frank the most vexing patient on the ward. Not because of his symptoms but because of his prolonged presence. Frank has been on 9B for too long in Sharma’s opinion; most other patients stay for a few weeks, maximum, Frank’s been here two months already. On our way to Frank’s bed, we pass Lizzie who waves, grins and blushes at me. She’s already making up Caleb’s old bed, bed two opposite Frank, sticking ‘I’m sterilised’ stickers onto everything that has been made ready by the healthcare assistant.
‘No tinsel for Mr Ashcroft, I see,’ Sharma says as we stand at the foot of Frank’s bed. His voice still contains some notes from Hyderabad. Accents can’t be bleached.
‘Oh, no, I already took it down actually.’
‘Can you see to it that all the other stuff is removed as well?’ he asks as he looks down at Frank’s notes.
I bite my bottom lip as he talks.
‘Righto, Frank Ashcroft, fifty, our brain stem stroke. Coma for a month and now probably PVS since some involuntary eye movement was observed. EEG showed extensive damage with some upper and lower pon activity. He’s been on a ventilator since he arrived, is that correct?’