Final Day Blues

Norbert

15

Final Day Blues

My biggest fear about leaving St Kylie’s is the restocking of my emergency first aid kit.

You see, it is difficult to pretend I don’t have a disease I wish I did have just because I can’t get hold of the proper treatment. But on the plus side, if I can freely avail myself of a drug used to treat an ailment I don’t have, it becomes an exciting journey convincing myself I am developing the symptoms and acquiring the disorder, knowing full well I have the remedy at hand. I actually look forward to what might go wrong next. Am I developing a mouth ulcer or a rash on my arm? Is that a melanoma on my neck? I don’t think there is a name for what I’ve got. I am probably unique.

To satisfy my craving, obsession, call it what you will, I tried adding the medicines I required to the monthly list I submit to pharmacy for things like chemicals and tissues, but obviously the assistant pharmacist saw through this. ‘Either get a prescription or pay for non-preparatory items. You know the rules.’ I don’t have the money, so for a while I was in limbo, unable to acquire the drugs I needed to treat the diseases I couldn’t afford to have, but so desperately longed for. The stress made me ill, which was great, but I couldn’t get the proper treatment, which left me chasing my tail.

Very occasionally, when she wants some time to herself at weekends, Auntie gives me money to take Nunky to Macarbrough for the day. We go on the 32 bus and eat ice cream on the promenade and have fish and chips for lunch, and in the afternoon go for a walk along the high sea cliffs. We take turns with the binoculars, Nunky looking for fishing boats and planes to wave at and me for topless women sunbathing in the secluded coves.

Walking near the seafront one day we bumped into the assistant pharmacist. He was walking out of the clubhouse of Macarbrough Cricket Club dressed in women’s clothes, wearing make-up and a blonde wig. But he’d forgotten to change his shoes and I recognized the salmon-coloured brogues he always wears (a clue, if ever there was). He was arm in arm with a leg spinner in pink flannels. We followed them into the big park and Nunky took several photographs of the leg spinner demonstrating his googly. The agreement we came to the following week involved him not logging out of date medicines for disposal and passing them on to me instead.

One beneficial side effect of taking medication is it blankets depression. I’m aware of the constant sadness but too lethargic to care, which is probably why I’ve contemplated suicide only the once. I still have a considerable stockpile hidden away, but as yet no long term solution. Living a healthy life is not something I could cope with.

*

Auntie says that watching too much television, like compulsive masturbation, sends you blind. To me this is a challenge, something to aspire to, so it upsets me enormously that I am only allowed to watch programmes chosen by her for two or three hours a week. (When she eventually relented and took me to the opticians for new glasses, the opterompteromatist said my eyesight had hardly deteriorated in the last four years, which clearly proves I’m slacking.)

I recently saw an episode of Auntie’s favourite programme, Call the Midwife, where someone left to further their career, just like I am about to do. The man placed his framed photographs, favourite plant, card, present and chipped tea mug into a cardboard box and walked away with his head held high, holding back the tears. People assure me that this is always how it happens, so I decide to do the same. Leaving with a minimum of fuss is fine, but a new job is a life-changing milestone (like when I contracted malaria the first time I visited the Cornwall coast) and I am determined to mark the occasion.

Normally, whenever I put my name down on the list for a leaving do, a birthday bash or the Christmas party, it is scrubbed out. It hurts, of course, but I am socially inept and don’t do small talk. I therefore didn’t bother to arrange a leaving do. People would probably attend, if only to get drunk, but no one would bother to sign a card or contribute to a gift.

On my final Friday afternoon, the hospital is eerily quiet and mostly deserted. I rescue a cardboard box from the bins outside my lab, only to find I don’t have a single personal item to take with me. The tea caddy and mug I inherited from my predecessor, my lab coats are hospital property and a search of the desk reveals nothing of a personal nature. But I can’t leave empty handed. There has to be something other than an empty box in my arms as I walk away for the last time.

Then I remember the photograph.

For the first few months in the job, I had a framed photo of me with my parents in the top drawer of my desk. It was taken on Macarbrough beach when I was seven or eight. I am sitting on the sand bawling my eyes out and Mummy is wiping the seagull poo off my head. Daddy is doubled up with laughter, perhaps at something the photographer had said, or maybe because we were a happy family. Nunky said it was the only photograph of me he found whilst clearing out our house, and that he’d kept it hidden to prevent Auntie from throwing it out. He gave it to me as a present for getting the job, saying it was important to have something to remember them by. So I took it to work and hid it where Auntie would never see it. Every time I slid the drawer open there it was, an instant reminder of happier times. But instead of giving me comfort, looking at it dredged up memories of my early life and the accident, and made me sad.

(I’ve said that wrong so let me try and explain. I seem to suffer from a mental block when I try to remember my early life. Recollections from childhood come to me only in dreams, so I’m not sure if they’re real. I know for certain my parents enrolled me in all sorts of clubs and societies, like Sunday School, the Tufty Club and the cubs, where I did at least learn how to save lives and still to this day hold the record for the least number of badges earned, but it meant I hardly ever saw them. The cubs, the Sea Scouts and especially the SLO served as an apprenticeship for the years of bullying and misery that plague me to this day. [SLO stands for Sad Little Orphans. I tried to explain, without success, that I wasn’t an orphan, but as my parents never turned up to any open days, the leaders said I was in something called denial.] Because Mummy and Daddy didn’t attend church, I couldn’t understand why they loved celebrating religious anniversaries and going on pilgrimages. On average they went away for two weekends a month and left me in the care of my godparents. Nunky loved having me, but Auntie and Mummy argued continuously over the arrangement. Mummy said that Auntie, as her sister-in-law and my godmother, had to share the crippling burden, whatever that meant.

I don’t have any memories of the accident either, because I wasn’t there when it happened. Mummy and Daddy had met at a holiday camp thirty miles along the coast, which was popular with young people in those days. After they got married, going back to the resort once a year on their anniversary became one of these pilgrimages. They didn’t stay at the camp, which has now closed, but at a guesthouse. The train crashed on the journey home. It was on the news because eight people died.)

I think I turned the photograph over to begin with, but then started to place memos and papers on top until it migrated to the bottom, out of sight and out of mind. I open the drawer again, pull out all the papers and dump them in the bin, but there is no photo at the bottom. I empty the other drawers and find long forgotten pages torn from lingerie catalogues and a magazine I’d found in a bin behind the Porters’ Lodge, full of nearly naked ladies with their loolybells on show, the stiff and faded pages now all stuck together. No sign of the photograph anywhere. It had to be Auntie.

As ordered, I had disposed of the xylene and all the other harmful chemicals in the poison cupboard. I unlock it (the outcome of my inspection), remove the last remaining item and place it in my box. I lock the cabinet, wrap the key tightly in paper towels and dump it in the bin. A petulant thing to do, I know, but let me explain.

Last Monday, Baldy Warnetires-Skidmore brought over my replacement. Ermintrude Sootcase-Porter applied for the job because she lives in Spit, which is closer to Brundy than Macarbrough. She is too tall and has a big nose. I spent the entire week of training looking up her nostrils. By Thursday, she’d got well and truly up my nose. Florence took to her because she’s plain looking and no threat; the nurses on geriatrics love her because she cuddles the old people and makes them feel wanted; the domestics like her because she’s tidy and doesn’t moan; and Auntie adores her because she isn’t me. Locking the cupboard and disposing of the key will only be a minor irritation to her, but a bigger problem to Botcher John, who will have to replace it. It is immensely satisfying to have the last word for once.

I am just about to leave when the door crashes open and Nurse Blethyn pops her head through the hatch.

‘I suppose you’re bringing the list of patients for Monday morning, ready for your beloved Ermintrude’s first day?’

‘No, I came to say goodbye.’

‘I’m surprised you care.’

‘Everyone in the hospital cares. There’s a party going full swing in the staff room.’

‘How very caring of you all, not inviting me to my own leaving do.’

‘It’s more a celebration to be rid of you and to welcome Ermintrude. Your aunt is as pissed as a brewery rat. We’ve never seen her so happy.’

I look down, dripping tears.

‘What’s in the box?’ says Blethyn.

‘Nothing.’

She nods. ‘That just about sums you up. Only a pathetic loser would leave with an empty box. Don’t you watch Call the Midwife?’

I look up, listlessly. ‘Why are you here?’

Blethyn takes a tube of lipstick from her pocket and reddens her lips. She runs her tongue over them to make them glisten and shine. ‘Did you mean what you said? About fancying my nether regions?’

I see no reason to lie. ‘I dream about you all the time. Or rather I morph you with the Storm Temptress: the bottom half of you with the top half of her. I hope you don’t mind.’

Despite scrunching her face into a scowl, she smiles. ‘Would you like to kiss me?’

I am too much of a gentleman to say I would prefer to take her roughly from behind like a crazed beast, so I just say ‘Okay’ and lean forwards.

She pulls back slowly and my head follows her through the hatch.

‘Come on, a little further,’ she coos, puckering those enticingly moist scarlet lips.

I strain to the limit, searching for them with mine. I have one foot on the floor, both hands on the desktop for support and my right leg bent over the desk, my throbbing bendy bunny scraping painfully on the lip. Suddenly the door slams into the back of my neck. I scream in pain, lose hold and bang my chin on the shelf. I taste blood in my mouth and see stars.

When my vision clears, Botcher John is standing beside Blethyn, his arm round her shapely waist. They are both smiling.

‘I’m sorry it took me so long,’ he says, ‘but I think I know what is obstructing your hatch and causing the door to malfunction.’

‘It’s your ugly grannytickling head,’ says Blethyn.

She gives him my kiss and they walk away, arm in arm.

I snatch up my cardboard box and take the short cut home, running all the way.

Nunky is sitting at the dining table, polishing Krusty the Clown. ‘You’re home early, mi babby,’ he says. ‘And you’re covered in spit again.’