Mr Yelnats talks with an unending cadence, running one sentence into the next. It wrong-foots me, because when it sounds like he’s coming to a full stop and I’ll be able to answer some of his anxieties, he picks up steam again and carries on. The result is that I spend the next five minutes occasionally drawing a breath ready to speak, then letting it out slowly again, nodding sympathetically, trying to keep a hold on the points I’ll need to cover to calm him down. In the end, though, I’m driven to talk over him a little, and ease him to a stop, like intercepting a bolting horse by standing in its path, holding my hands out and stroking its nose.

‘Well first of all – has anyone told you who we are?’ I say.
He changes his position on the sofa again, throwing his right arm over his head to scratch the opposite ear, then changes back again.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No they haven’t. What they did say is that all this would be done. I mean – I wasn’t expecting brass bands and flags in the street. I mean – I’ve been away a long time but I’m not stupid. I know how these things go. But why did they say it’d all be done? I’d have the things that go over the toilet. I’d have the stair rails. I’d have the thing that goes over the bath. A perching stool, whatever that is. I mean – I wasn’t expecting a team of workmen drilling holes in the wall as I walked in the door. This isn’t the movies. But still – a promise is a promise. Why did they say they’d do these things if they weren’t going to happen? I mean …’

‘I’m sorry you were given the wrong impression about how it all works, Mr Yelnats,’ I say. ‘But let me just explain…’

‘I’m not as bad as some. I’m pretty bad, as you can see. But I do my best. I can get about – of sorts. I’ve been away three months and things are a bit difficult at the moment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m an independent sort of chap. Still. My wife died six years ago and I’m still getting over that. Not that you ever do.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It’s as well to know your limits. I want to get better. I think I can get better. In fact I’d go as far as to say I expect to get better. But I’ll need a little help. As things stand I’m not sure what I can do and what I can’t do. Let me tell you something. When I was on that ward…’

He holds out his hand, spreads his fingers and taps them one after the other with the other hand, listing all the things he was told on the ward. And – actually – it comes down to five things. He’d have a toilet aid, a walking frame for upstairs, a bath board, a perching stool, and care support all waiting for him when he got home.

‘Okay,’ I say, as evenly as I can. ‘Okay. First things first. Let me quickly tell you who we are. We’re an NHS community health team. We’ve got lots of people on the team – physios, OTs, nurses, pharmacists – you name it. It’s a pretty big team. We’ve also got a small bank of carers who give emergency support to patients. Our job is to either support people being discharged from hospital – like you – or to stop them being admitted in the first place. So the hospital has referred you to us, and I’ve come round on a kind of fact-finding mission to see exactly what it is you need.’

‘Let me stop you there…’ he says.

‘Just one more thing,’ I say. ‘And this is pretty key. We’re a short-term service, so we work very very quickly. We like to move things on as fast as we can. If someone needs longer term help, we refer them on to the District Nurses or any of the other specialist teams. And if they need longer term care, we refer them on to full-time care agencies.’

‘Yes, yes, I get all that,’ he says, as I nod and gesture for him to continue. ‘But why did they say it’d all be in place when it wasn’t?’

‘I don’t know. There are two types of arrangement. One is an access visit, where an OT from the hospital comes to the house to put in essential equipment ahead of the discharge, and then there’s a referral to us.’

‘What – coming to my house when I’m not here? I wouldn’t want that.’

‘Okay – so that’s probably why they referred you to us. But as I say, we work pretty quickly.’

‘How quickly?’

‘I could call the office now and see if they’ve got availability for an OT to come out with the stuff. They’re horribly busy, but it’s worth a shot.’

He frowns at me.

‘What are you like with toilets?’ he says.

‘Toilets?’

‘My toilet won’t flush.’

‘Oh. Well. I’m not a plumber. But I could have a look…’

He struggles up out of the sofa, waving me away when I go to help. It’s like watching a daddy long-legs trying to free itself from a glob of treacle.

‘That’s quite low for you,’ I say.

‘It’s comfortable,’ he says, puffing and straining. ‘I’m used to it.’

Eventually he manages it, and after taking a breath, straightening his cardigan and swiping his hair to the right, he staggers out of the room with me following behind. We pass along through a narrow kitchen, Mr Yelnats using the counters and cupboards for support, me with my hands out like an anxious parent ready to catch.
‘I need some rails here,’ he says, slapping the wall.
‘I can see that.’
‘It’s in there,’ he says, chinning me in the direction of the loo.

A creamy green toilet with one of those cisterns with a push-button flush. I’ve really no idea, but I take off the heavy lid and look inside. The water is up to the top. There’s a strange looking plastic box on a push-fit over the handle spindle. I pull it off, flip the lid open and try to figure out how it works. When you push the button on the outside of the cistern, a rod pushes a sprung thing that tugs on a wire that feeds down a tube into some other thing that operates the flush. The sprung thing is sticky, so I wiggle it. Eventually – miraculously – it seems to work again. The water empties with a gratifying rush.

‘Don’t it?’ says Mr Yelnats, waiting outside the door.
‘All done! Seems to be fine now.’
But … when the flush is finished and the water starts to come back into the cistern again, the water level doesn’t go beyond a couple of inches, and all the excess runs off into the toilet bowl. No amount of wiggling makes any difference.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘What?’ says Mr Yelnats.
‘I can’t stop it filling.’
‘Let me see…’ he says, and comes into the toilet. There’s no room for both of us at the loo, so I squeeze past him. Eventually he supports himself on both hands, staring down into the noisy cistern.
‘What have you done?’ he says.
‘Like I say – I’m not a plumber…’
‘It’s going to run like that without stopping now.’
He tries some wiggling, too, but nothing makes any difference.
‘Let me have one more look,’ I say. We go through the same elaborate manoeuvre as before, and swap places.
In the end, for want of anything else, I get a Toilet Duck and wedge it under the ballcock, stopping the water about half-way up the cistern.
‘It’s only temporary,’ I tell him. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to get a plumber in.’
‘Where am I going to get a plumber?’
I shrug.
‘Do you have any family nearby? Any friends, or…?’
‘No.’
‘The internet?’
‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘There’s a plastic bucket back in the kitchen. Fetch that in here, would you? I can use it to flush things through.’
‘Okay.’

I find the bucket on a stool beside the fridge. The fridge is covered with a grid of fridge magnets – a Picasso portrait, an abstract pattern, hokey one liners with cartoon illustrations: My wife might not always be right but she’s always the boss or There’s nothing wrong with me that a little chocolate won’t fix. A Fender Stratocaster. A Triumph.
‘Where’s that bucket?’ shouts Mr Yelnats.
‘Coming!’