She called me bunny

Her mouth was open in awe of the cranes and how tall they were. She never knew buildings could climb that high. She had seen them, of course, on the tv, but she never knew that to be reality, it was just a picture in a box to her. The familiar undulating hills dotted with cows seemed like a distant memory, a memory she would soon forget.

As the car drove over the Liffey, Larry, obviously trying to make light of the situation said, ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!’ referring of course to her favourite book ‘The Wizard of Oz’ by Lyman Frank Baum. She saw herself as the scarecrow in the beloved book, the one needing a brain. She brushed off his comment and continued to look out the window in awe.

When they stopped in the slipway of the turn they needed to make, a tram dinged its bell as it sped by. She had only ever seen them in the box as well. She sat up in her seat and noticed that there were a lot of people standing on it. Commuters she presumed but then looked at the clock and saw that it was only half past three. As the light turned green, Larry, followed the track of the tram halfway down a hill before coming to the opening to the place who promised to make the scarecrow in her whole again.

Due to covid restrictions, Larry had to just drop her in the lobby of the place she would call home for the next few weeks. She whispered in his ear as she hugged him goodbye, ‘please don’t leave me here!’ Larry fought back the tears as the receptionist was chastising him, telling him he needed to leave. He kissed his sister on the forehead and they said their goodbye’s.

An antigen and PCR test later, she was left in the waiting area to become admitted. She had never been to a place like this before and didn’t know what to expect. She looked around the sparsely decorated room, the ceramic tiled floor had yellow stickers on it, a chair in each square. She was welcomed with smiles and asked questions she had no answer for, her expression blank. She was trying to form words but they just would not come.

She was given a physical exam and escorted into a ward where you needed a fob to enter, and then into another ward inside of it which she realised had a door the same as the bank in her small town, one door had to close before the other opened and all with the same fob. She looked around for her belongings, they had been taken off and she had no idea why. She made a noise, but none that resembled a word or phrase. She was placed on a bed which was freshly made with starchy bed linen. The smell of bleach coated her nostrils.

She looked out of the glass wall in front of her and saw what resembled her luggage being rifled through by the nurses. She wanted to get up and stop them, but she was paralyzed. She heard a cough behind her and immediately thought that this was where they brought the covid patients. Of course she was wrong, but having ended up in hospital with the infectious disease not six months before, she was wary about catching it again.

The nurses placed some of her clothes in square cubbies on the back wall of the room. She could see two other beds and became anxious. One of the nurses, Sally, sat beside her on the starchy linen and began to speak. She could hear the words, but her head was jumbling them all up and making them into threats. She stood bolt upright and ran for the door that wouldn’t open, Sally following her. She screamed at the nurse, ‘leave me alone. it’s my brain, I will decide its fate!’ Sally began to try and talk her down but all she heard were more threats.

The next thing she remembered was bells ringing from all directions and hands reaching towards her pulling and pawing at her. She saw a big needle and couldn’t move to knock it out of the hand that possessed it, there were just too many hands on her.

When she woke, she noticed she was still in the clothes she arrived in and was offered a fist full of pills. She swatted them away where they flew onto the ground falling haphazardly around the bed. More alarms, more hands, another needle.

The next time she woke she heard her tummy rumbling, but there was no food to be seen. She was asked by a nurse if she wanted to go to the dining room that lunch was ready. She heard lunch is there to kill you in the dining room. She began to scream, she was petrified. She had the strength this time to swat off the hands and sat in what she believed to be safety, under a table with her back to the wall, a chair blocking one side as she watched carefully for the inevitable hands on the other.

She was pulled from her hiding spot by her ankles, the nurses sliding her out of the cave she had made where she thought she could scream in peace. She was wrong…. another needle.

As she began to be aware of her surroundings she was met by a woman with purple hair. Her eyes were kind but her mouth was covered. She began to scream again, when the woman took off her mask, her kind eyes staring into hers. She blinked slowly, tears falling down her porcelain cheeks. As the doctor talked to her, she alternated between looking into her eyes and looking at her mouth as it formed words. The doctor begged her to take her medication and to eat something but she refused. This time however there was no needle, only the kind blue eyes of the doctor. She noticed the colour of the doctors eyes to be darker nearer the pupils and brighter the bigger the iris got. She was trembling.

The floral scent of the doctors perfume was intoxicating. She had never smelt the fragrance before and was intrigued. The kind eyes were talking to her and she was trying her best to understand, but the voices in her head crept in and sabotaged her kind words. She pleaded her to take her medication and finally she swallowed the fist full of pills offered to her. The kind eyes smiled and she mirrored their reaction. She sat on the bed, her eyes focused on those eyes when a tray of food was offered to her. She graciously accepted as her tummy rumbled loudly and after the kind eyes left her, she finished every morsel on the plate after which she lay down and slept for hours.

She woke to more pills and the cycle repeated itself for days. As soon as she was beginning to make sense of what they were saying the phone calls started. Larry had been ringing the ward every day at eleven o’clock and seven o’clock. When she heard his voice on the other end of the line, she wept. They weren’t quite tears of joy, but they weren’t tears of sorrow either.

xxxx

Since the death of their mother three years ago, Larry had stepped up and moved home to look after his sister. He believed that’s what you do for family. He began to work from home so he would be there every day for Sinead if she needed him, but she mostly spent her time sitting under the kitchen table with their dog Toto, named after Dorothy’s dog in her favourite book.

The decision to put her into hospital did not come easily. It had come to a stage where he just couldn’t manage anymore, he was afraid of what she might do. The last straw before picking up the phone was when they were making dinner together and she asked him what if would feel like to have a knife plunge through your hand so she could be more like Wolverine. She was clearly off the reservation and deep in the forest. He only just grabbed the knife off her before she put it through her hand.

All it took was a letter from the GP and a phone call to her psychiatrist and they were off the next day leaving the undulating hills dotted with cows behind and making their way to the big city. He knew deep down that it was the best thing for her but he still doubted himself. It felt like he was cheating, asking for someone else’s help…handing her over to the professionals.

He cried the whole journey back to the country and rang the ward she was put on every day at eleven o’clock and at seven o’clock. It was ten days before she was stable enough to accept his call, but the nurses filled him in on what was happening every time he rang. When he finally heard that sweet innocent voice say ‘hello’ into his ear, he punched the air with delight. Granted, she didn’t stay on the phone long, but the conversations became more in depth and lengthier with each passing day.

Larry booked himself in for a visit the following Thursday, the first slot he could get, and he was delighted when Sinead saw him that she lept into his arms. He cried then just as much as he cried as he left her but for a whole different reason. He could see that she was returning to the sister he once had, the sister who blew bubbles in her milk and ate ice cream so fast that she always got brain freeze.

He handed the nurse a bag. It was full of clean clothes and then the other bag was full of her favourite treats. He didn’t know how a hospital like this ran, but he had seen on tv that people always bartered with food so he did what their mother would have done and brought a bag of food with him.

‘The house is quiet without you!’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, trying not to show weakness. He wanted to be strong for her, be brave.

She smiled at him and told him she missed him too.

‘How are they treating you? Are they nice?’

‘Oh everybody is lovely!’ she said before her eyes glazed over for a minute, she was disassociating.

‘Everyone is asking for you!’ he said smiling through his pain.

She asked about Toto. He took out his phone and showed her some pictures of him. ‘I printed out some pictures I thought you could put on your wall!’ he said in a bubbly tone, ‘something to make your space yours!’

He noticed her eyes glaze over again. He moved his chair close to hers and embraced her in a hug, a hug that was reciprocated graciously. That was how they spent the remainder of their thirty minutes, him holding her.

Upon saying goodbye he held back the tears as the nurse took Sinead out one door, he was to go out the other. He left the ward and broke down in the hall. He didn’t care who saw, he was just grateful that she was doing so much better than she was at home. He was glad he had gotten her in when he did and after the wave of emotions passed by, he stood up straight and made his way to the car. He looked up at the visor above him on the drivers side where he had the last picture where the three of them were together and touched it fondly. He smiled because, despite the disassociations, he saw a glimmer of the Sinead he knew before their mother passed, the one he could laugh with and talk to.

Just as he turned the key in the cars ignition, the phone rang. It was the hospital.

‘Hello,’ he answered tentatively.

‘Would you take a call from Sinead please?’

‘Of course!’ he said a kaleidoscope of butterflies soaring through his veins as he didn’t know what she was about to say to him.

‘Hey bunny,’ her pet name for him before their mother passed was bunny. He hadn’t heard that in a long time!

‘You, ok?’ he asked beaming.

‘I just wanted to thank you for coming in to see me today. I know it’s a long drive for only a few minutes and I really appreciate it!’

His heart filled with joy. He smiled and closed his eyes, the tears running down his cheeks.

‘I really enjoyed the visit too!’ he said trying to choke back the tears.

‘Safe home bunny, ok.’

‘Oki!’ he said and the phone went dead. He took the keys out of the ignition and sat with his head in his arms on the steering wheel for what must have been the guts of thirty minutes before setting off on his journey home once more, delighted that he had admitted her when he did and proud that his sister was coming on in leaps and bounds and back calling him bunny.