C: Chapters 5 &; 6

Chapter 5
Jon came and found me, which was both a relief and a surprise. We sat
down in my room, which I had been shown but barely been in yet, me
perched on the edge of the bed, not really feeling like I ought to be
there, and him on the one chair in the room.
"We need to go through some formalities," Jon said, looking ill at ease
with the sheaf of papers in his hand. There was a knock. Jon went to
open the door, unsuprised. I wasn't at the proprietorial stage
yet.

"This is the duty doctor," Jon explained, gesturing to a
twenty-something individual who managed to look scruffy despite wearing
a tweed jacket and tie. "He needs to admit you." He didn't have a
name.

Jon did all the what's your full name/postcode/name of your pet dog
stuff, only getting stuck on the next of kin bit.
"Who would you like us to call in an emergency?" He asked, trying a
different tack. I shrugged.
"Are you in contact with any relatives?"
"Not since I went into care." I could only remember my Mum. There were
lots of kind aunties and rich godfathers who used to populate my
imagination, shocked benefactors who would whisk me away as soon as
they found out about my mother's betrayal. I didn't think I should
mention them.
"In a relationship with anyone??I mean, since Matt," he faltered,
realising. I shook my head.
"Do you have any other support, a social worker, say?" They'd
discharged me a few years out of care. There'd been probation, too, for
a while, but not any more.

He gave up, unwillingly leaving the space blank. The duty doc asked me
about my health, whether I used alcohol, took illegal drugs. I told him
about the operation on my back and confessed to occasional use. He
asked me if I needed any medication. I said I used painkillers
sometimes, joking. But he scribbled something down on my chart anyway.
Maybe it said don't give this woman painkillers under any
circumstances. I don't think so, though. He told Jon to organise an
MSU, whatever that was, and a blood test.

"Is he my doctor?" I asked when he'd gone.
"No, he's just on duty tonight for all the wards," Jon said, "that's
why he looks so happy." Then he said he had to go off soon, but he'd
finish the paperwork tomorrow and talk to me more then. He left, but
then hovered in the corridor, looking for someone. After a moment I
followed him out, realising he couldn't leave me alone, and we went to
find someone together.

The room was a strange thing. There was just the bed, the chair and a
cabinet, all standard issue matching, and then a built in wardrobe,
sink and mirror. I opened every drawer slowly in turn, finding nothing.
Then I opened the wardrobe doors. Nothing. I climbed on the chair to
look in the top cupboard of the wardrobe. A white blanket marked with
the hospital logo. I turned on the hot and cold taps and moved my
finger from one flow to the other, watching it go pink. There was
nothing of mine, but it felt OK. I observed my reflection sternly. My
lips were almost white.

Outside, in a low chair, there was a woman about forty. My door was
ajar, because it had to be, and she could see in because she was
watching over me. Marly, I thought, connecting with another room of
standard issue furniture which had been mine.

Marly had worked at Treetops, the second care home I lived in. I was
there for six years, from when I was ten years old, and Marly had
worked there all that time. The woman outside could have been her.
Sometimes the staff there had had to sit outside the bedrooms, too,
keeping us quiet or watching over someone disturbed. Marly was always
there, working the holidays or pulling double shifts. She was with me
for longer than my own mother, but I don't think she hardly ever spoke
to me. She is there, in my memory, sitting in one of those chairs, or
serving out my dinner. Even taking us to the swimming pool. But she's
just a faded backdrop. She never meant anything to me.

I watch the woman outside for a bit, but she doesn't look up. I'm
tired, so I lie down. Exhausted, but I can't sleep. It's been like this
in the flat, too. I just want to curl up somewhere warm and forget
about everything, but it doesn't work. Stuff inside me is restless and
won't go away.

Twice I have to get up and go to the toilet. The woman smiles agreeably
and wanders along beside me. The corridors are still lit, but it's more
subdued, somehow. There's no staff at the desk, now, but a lanky guy in
jeans is in a chair outside someone else's door. He raises his hand to
say hi to us, and yawns involuntarily.

Later, I remember the blanket, my one possession. I pull it down from
the cupboard and wrap it around me under the covers. It's warm and cosy
and I sleep.

She's there. I'm asleep in my cot - it's yellow painted and grand - and
she is watching over me. I can feel her fingers brush my skin and her
voice falters on the last line of a lullaby - what is that tune?
Peeking out from behind my eyelashes I can see her lean over me, then
feel her breath and her warm red lips kiss my cheek. And then I see
that she is going. She backs away from me, her smile fading, and the
last bit of her I can see is the swish of her blue going-out skirt. I
listen, panicky, for her to come back. The warm spot fades from my
cheek where she kissed it. She's gone and I have nothing left of
her.

I woke with my heart racing. There was tears welling up in my eyes.
Sitting up, I could see someone new looking in at me. Seeing me awake
she gently pushed the door wider open, casting light on my face which
must have looked panic-stricken. She came and sat beside me on the
bed.
"Hi, I'm Suzie," she said, in the softest voice I can imagine.
"Jenny." She must know that, though.
"Hi Jenny. Did you get to sleep for a while, there?"
I don't know why, but the tears overcame me then, and suddenly I was
burying my face in the covers to stem the crying and the mess, as if I
could push them back in. My fingernails were clawing into my face.
Suzie put her arms round me and held me. She softly prised my hands
away and I swear she almost rocked me. I melted into her, surrendering
to disgusting wrenching tears and floods of mucus.

We went to the smoke room together after that.
"You're sleeping in your clothes." Suzie said it matter-of-factly, but
it nearly made me go again. I couldn't look at her.
"I don't have any stuff with me." My voice wobbled with the admission,
which made me feel pathetic. I had stuff at home. So why did I feel
like I was back to square one again? I sat with the blanket wrapped
around my shoulders, though. She promised she'd ask someone to go home
with me to fetch a bag. Suzie didn't smoke, but she sat with me as
though she didn't mind. Becky had told me the staff can just watch from
the door if they don't smoke. The colour of the sky said it was nearly
morning, and I wondered if we could stay here until it was. Suzie
didn't really ask me anything - she didn't seem to need explanations -
but we chatted.

I told her that I dreamt about my Mum.
"How weird is that?" I asked, realising that it might not seem so
strange to someone else.
"I don't remember her being in my dreams before. And that wasn't how I
picture her. We were in this lovely house, and she was all dressed up
to go to a party or something. I was a baby, and I felt like a baby
might feel when its mother walks away, but I was like an adult, too. I
saw things like an adult."

The lanky boy walked past, then poked his head in asking if we'd like a
cuppa. Joe, which turned out to be his name, joined us for a cigarette,
and cradling hot mugs in our hands, the three of us talked about
dreams.

Chapter 6
Later, I found a bar of soap, some squished up toothpaste and a clean
flannel beside my sink. There was a towel on the bed with two huge
own-brand bottles of shampoo and conditioner respectively. Suzie, I
thought.

The ward was quiet. After my shower I was kind of waiting for everyone
else to get up, but hardly anyone did. Margaret appeared about eight,
wrapped up in a pink patterned dressing gown and matching towelling
slippers.
"Sunday," she explained. "They're all either out on leave or nothing to
get up for. Always quiet, Sundays." I made her a coffee.

To my surprise, Jon was back on duty. My guardian angel, I couldn't
help thinking.

Margaret was in a chatty mood. I asked if she was married and she told
me all about herself. Four kids, she had, and three of them had
children, so she was a proud grandma. She said she babysits for them
regularly, but I wondered how if she's in hospital. Her husband works
in a garage and she had a job too, three mornings a week in a
newsagents. I got the impression she'd had to give that up for good,
though. When she started talking about her sister, who lives down the
road, and her goddaughter who pops in now and then, I wished I'd
counted up everyone she'd mentioned. Her family sounded like the
Waltons.

At nine o'clock quite a few stragglers appeared from various rooms down
the corridor and queued outside what looked like an office door.
Margaret got up to join them, so I went too.

"What's this for?" I asked.
"Drug round," she said. "Nine o'clock, One o'clock, Five o'clock, Nine
o'clock. Oh, and night meds but I think they wake you up for those. You
on anything yet?"
"Don't think so," I said, remembering the chart the duty doc had
scribbled in. Just then Jon appeared from inside the room, which turned
out to be the clinic.
"Jenny. I'll see you in a minute, when I've done this. Shall I get the
doc to write you up for something to help you sleep? I heard about last
night." He looked concerned.
"That's normal for me," I shrugged. Matt had given me Temazepam to
crash out a few times. I liked the feeling. "Might help, I
suppose."

I saw him in a proper interview room this time. The chairs were low and
comfortable, and no one could see in. He wanted to know about my past.
It was easy to start with, just telling him about my Mum, and then
about care homes. I was used to saying that stuff, and joking about it
to circumvent the pitying eyes. They could still get to me if I came
slap bang against them.

You see, I just decided at one point that that was it. I must have been
twelve, I guess. That was it. I'd lost my Dad (before I'd even found
him), my Mum, my home. When they moved me on from Stanley House, the
place I'd mainly grown up in, to Treetops, that was definitely it. I
knew then that it was me. I was a self-confessed expert on loss by the
tender age of twelve. I'd had the bereavement sessions, belatedly, when
the staff at Treetops decided my behaviour was a delayed grief
reaction. A woman with spiky bleached blonde hair came and sat with me
in a room for two hours each week, trying to get me to draw things to
represent my feelings. I infuriated her, I think, by drawing pretty
pictures entirely in pink and silver glitter most of the time. She
persevered, though. Nearly two years, she came for, and I quite missed
her when she'd gone. I knew the stages you were supposed to go through,
and that it was supposed to be better to cry and scream and get angry
than to just get on with it. I knew all that, but I never did. Somehow
it seemed too late. I think I just decided in the end that I would
always have to be on my own, and that was that.

Someone came and knocked on the door and Jon had to go out for a
moment. There were all these boxes on the form he left behind, and I
couldn't help noticing how empty the one marked 'family' looked. Stupid
that I'm not used to it yet.

When he came back in he asked about significant events in my life and I
told him about getting beaten up at school and about meeting Matt.
Meeting Matt messed up the whole being on my own forever thing.

I got a job in his caf?. Well, his parents' caf?. It started out just
as casual - the work I mean, not the relationship. But then he asked me
to start as a regular, and we got to hang out together more. I used to
manage the place when he wasn't there, but because he only lived
upstairs he was always popping down to bug me anyway. That's where I
live now, above the caf?.

He asked about Matt's death, and I just about managed that. Then he
asked me about the overdose, and why I didn't go through with it. That
question again. It still felt too hard to explain, although I had
thought it through more now. I certainly couldn't tell Jon this, but
somehow I had realised that even though no one else would know, I
didn't want the last moments of my life to be like that. There was no
glamorous 'falling asleep' looking pale and beautiful. Just a dry
retching into a filthy bucket and the tv on because I got bored of my
own dying company. And then the nagging fear it might go on for days. I
might change my mind and think I was OK and then collapse, ironically
at that moment, a tragic victim of my own indecision. If it had been
quick I could have stood it.

Just after Jon had asked me this question and I'd failed to answer it,
he was called away again.
"Sorry, I'm co-ordinating today," he said, "Won't be a mo,
honestly."

He was quite a long time, and I was still stewing about what to say
when he came back. Because I couldn't stand thinking about it on my own
any more, I got up and left. He was nowhere to be seen. I discovered
that the french windows in the patient lounge had been unlocked, and
outside there was a little garden with some plastic chairs. I pulled a
chair over to the wall, so that I couldn't be seen from inside, and
pulled my jumper over my knees. It was cold, so I knew no one else
would come out here. It felt nice, I realised, finding a place to be on
my own. But cold. And I wondered if Jon would be looking for me yet.
The guilt nagged at me a bit, but I felt indignant, too, that he'd left
me just like that.

"Heh, I'm sorry," he said when he found me, touching my shoulder gently
and squatting beside me, "I didn't mean to abandon you like that." I
couldn't think of anything to say that didn't sound stupid, so I
didn't. He said that he'd like to talk with me more at some point, and
gave me a form with some questions on. He said it might help me to
organize my thoughts, and make sure that we didn't miss anything that
was important for me to tell him. I folded it up smaller and pushed it
into my jeans pocket.
"Shall we go to your place and pick up some things?" He asked. I
nodded, almost involuntarily, as I had been suddenly struck by what
this would actually mean. Going to the flat would be hard. Seeing
things just as they were, but in the harsh light of day would be bleak.
But going to the flat with someone, that was scary. I'd been there
alone since Matt. It wasn't the mess. I mean, sure, I hadn't cleaned up
for weeks, and if you had high standards of domestic hygeine it would
probably rank as pretty squalid. But no, it wasn't that. Some crazy
part of me was afraid he would actually smell the loneliness and fear
I'd felt surrounded by there. He'd know, somehow, all the nights I'd
blubbed and wailed. He'd realise how pathetic I was. And I didn't want
that. I liked him.