sketches

drishti’s miracle

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Ella’s son John is furious. Not with us, he says, every now and again, like a cartoon bull kicking and raging around the ring, stamping his hooves, blowing smoke through his nose and ears – then stopping in a cloud of dust to bow to the rodeo clown.
‘Look at her! They may as well have fly-tipped her by the side of the fackin’ road. Like a fackin’ fridge or some’ink.’
‘I know it’s stressful, John, but just try to ease it back a little if you can…’
‘I’m not ‘avin a go at you, mate,’ he says. ‘It’s the fackin’ hospital. And the ambulance. I mean – what was they thinkin’? We’re back to square one. This is exactly the fackin’ situation she was in when she went in in the first place.’ He suddenly seems tangled up in all those ‘ins’ and stands there, breathing hard.
Even though John makes you want to take a step back, and maybe even pick up a cushion or something, I have to admit I can see his point. Ella is a bariatric, self-neglecting patient who’d been admitted after being stuck on the sofa for several days. And even though the flat has had a rudimentary ‘deep clean’ whilst she’s been away, it’s still pretty awful, and here she is, back on the same sofa. The two ambulance crews must have sweated and struggled hauling her in their carry chair up that crooked flight of stairs. And I suppose gravity and the relative height of the chair to the sofa must have worked sufficiently in their favour to make the transfer. But since we’ve been on scene to do the initial assessment and see what Ella needs in the way of therapy, nursing and care support, she hasn’t been able to get up, even with the most enthusiastic, hands-on encouragement. To all intents and purposes, John is right. She’s landed back where she started. If Ella can’t get up from the sofa we’ll simply have to send her in again, as a failed discharge.
It’s a difficult situation, made worse by the fact it’s already six o’clock in the evening. If we call for an ambulance they’ll mark her as low priority. We could be here till midnight.
‘Well I can’t stay,’ says John, reading my mind. ‘I’ve got my own family. I’ve got work in the morning. I’m fackin’ Hank Marvin’ and there’s fack all in the fridge. I mean – where’s the thinkin’? Where’s the planning? Hey? It’s fackin’ pathetic. I told ‘em this’d happen. I told ‘em exactly what’d happen. And what happens? This! This happens! Fackin’ unbelievable.’

I’m here with Drishti, the physio. I know how busy she’s been today, and lately. How much it would mean to her today to finish work on time and get home to her family.
‘There’s no point in us both staying,’ I say to her. Drishti is so essentially kind, though, she won’t have it.
‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Let us remain together and see what we can do. It’s never too late for a miracle.’

The thing I need to do with the most urgency now is redress Ella’s leg. She has varicose eczema. At some point she’s pushed the dressings down and been working away at the scabs. From time to time she reaches down, absent-mindedly pulls off another bloody scrap, and puts it in her mouth. It’s difficult to keep an eye on her to stop her doing it, especially with John ranting around the place.
‘Please don’t do that!’ says Drishti, gently guiding her hand back down and wiping it with a tissue. ‘It’s really not a good thing to do,’ she says.
I clean the leg with saline and re-dress it whilst Drishti calls for an ambulance.
‘Four hours minimum’ she says with a sigh, hanging up. ‘They say it is a busy night. When is it NOT a busy night?’
‘I don’t suppose you’d be able to stay with your mum…?’ I say to John.
‘What? You’re havin’ a laugh, mate? Four hours? I’ve been ‘ere too fackin’ long already. I’ve got my own fackin’ life, y’know?’
‘Has you got anyone else? Any siblings?’
‘I’ve got my sisters, but they’ve washed their hands. They don’t want to know.’
‘What about friends? Neighbours?’
‘There’s no-one. That’s what I told ‘em! She hasn’t been out o’ the flat in seven years! I fackin’ told ‘em all this! I can’t stay, mate. I gotta get up early.’
‘Okay,’ says Drishti. ‘That’s fine. You can go.’
And it’s only when he turns to hurry out of the door that she gives me a steady, sorrowful look.

I call the office to let them know what’s going on and to see if they have any brilliant ideas.
Lawrence is co-ordinating.
‘Ah!’ he says. ‘Oh dear. Erm….Well! Yes. I see the problem.’

If I’d written a film script set in the eleventh century, and there was a scene where a troupe of marauding knights were riding towards a monastery, and the monks were frantically running around, and one of them, a particularly tall and ascetic looking monk, was desperately loading up a cart with armfuls of ancient books and scrolls and things, tripping over his habit, cursing mildly, and then the ass gave a jolt and a wheel fell off, splashing the monk head to sandals in mud, just as the knights came clattering into the yard, swinging their swords, and the monk turned to deliver his line straight to camera: ‘Well. Isn’t that just bloomin’ typical!’ – I’d be sure to cast Lawrence as that monk.
(He already has the haircut).

‘Oh dear!’ he says. ‘Damn and double-damn. Okay. Right. Well. I suppose I could relieve you when the office closes. If you like? I live nearby, so it wouldn’t be so bad for me…’
‘That’s kind of you, Lawrence,’ I say. ‘Maybe it won’t come to that.’
I tell him we’ll keep in touch, and ring off.

We settle in – as best we can, given the environment.

Ella says she’d like to watch some TV. We give her the remote and she flicks through the channels, eventually landing on a reality show about a couple looking to buy a house. They’re standing on a terrace overlooking a fiercely blue harbour dotted with yachts.
‘You won’t see that in Bradford,’ the presenter says.
The couple smile but they look uneasy, shielding their eyes from either the sun or the presenter, it’s hard to tell. I suppose the idea is they could live anywhere. Maybe the next place they show them will be underwater or something.
‘That looks nice’ says Drishti. ‘Hot, you know?’
Suddenly a mobile phone rings somewhere. Drishti locates it in Ella’s hospital bag. She hands it to her.
‘Hello…?’ says Ella, still watching the TV. ‘Yeah. About an hour ago…’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘Ella?’ I say. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Would you mind if I had a quick word with them?’
‘It’s the nurse’ she says into the phone. ‘Okay. Jes’ a minute…’ She hands me the phone, then leans to the side to carry on watching the TV.
The caller is a woman called Stella. She works for a befriending service. Apparently Stella had been expecting Ella home and was planning to come round to see she had everything she needed and so on. I explain the situation, and ask if Stella might be able to stay a little longer until the ambulance arrived.
‘Medically she’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s just she needs someone to keep an eye on her.’
‘That’s fine’ says Stella. ‘No problem. I’ll be straight round.’
‘Thank you so much,’ I say, then hand the phone back to Ella.
‘Who was that?’ says Drishti.
‘That was your miracle!’
I go to the window, draw the net curtains aside, and look out at the night sky, fully expecting to see a star detach itself, glide gently and magnificently down to earth, hop pointedly across the lawn, and ring the bell.

ETOH

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It’s quite a contrast to see the two of them together – Alex, wraith-like, matted hair, scooped eyes, shivering, hugging his legs in bed with a filthy duvet piled up around him; and Graham, the support worker from the alcohol and substance abuse team, shaven-headed, gym-fit, in a smart grey reefer jacket and leather man bag, perched on the arm of the sofa with his hands in his pockets. It could be a fashion shoot for an edgy magazine.
‘You’ve got this far, yeah?’ says Graham. ‘Hats off to you, mate. It’s no easy thing you’ve done there. Don’t go and spoil it now. After all we’ve been through. You got to realise – this is a disease we’re talking about, yeah? There are all kindsa toxins and shit floatin’ around your body right now. You can’t just expect to jump up and be cured. It’s a long, hard process. And you’re doin’ great, man! Isn’t he? This guy’ll tell ya…’
‘You are. Graham’s right. Alcohol addiction’s the hardest thing.’
‘See what I mean?’
Alex doesn’t seem convinced. He draws his legs closer to him, gives his head a peremptory shake.
‘I don’ know, man. I jus’ feel like I’m wastin’ everyone’s time. I mean – I brought it on myself.’
‘You can’t afford to think like that,’ says Graham. ‘Everyone’s different. You’re totally worth it, man.’
‘Is there a social worker involved?’ I ask Graham, flipping through his folder.
‘No,’ he says. ‘When they see they’re still drinking they pull out.’
He shrugs, scuffs his shoes in the trash.
‘It’s hard, but it’s just the way it is.’
‘It’s not like I’m not trying,’ says Alex.
‘Yeah – but there’s trying, and there’s doing, Alex. You’ve got to be in a position to accept the help. It’s just how it works. You know that.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’re here for you, though.’

There are several bottles within easy reach of Alex’s bed – a two litre bottle of cider, a couple of quarter bottles of vodka, some other, less obvious stuff in bottles with the labels torn off. A dull yellow light filters through the filthy windows. The flat is an apocalyptic mess; it looks like an extemporary shelter somebody hollowed out with their hands in a landfill site. Here and there you can just make out traces of the orderly life Alex once used to live. There’s a mountain bike in the hallway, quietly fossilising under a press of junk; over by the window-ledge, a tool box, some work boots.
‘We’ve got to find a way to keep you out of trouble long enough to detox properly,’ says Graham. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ says Alex. He doesn’t sound convinced.
Graham shrugs, pushes his hands deeper into his jacket.
‘How long’ve we known each now?’ he says. ‘Gotta be nine, ten years.’
‘Is it?’ says Alex, rubbing his face. ‘Fuck, man! Nine years? No! That’s like…’ He screws up his face to figure out what percentage of his life that represents: ‘…that’s like… a fuck of a long time, man!’
‘I think so,’ says Graham. ‘First time I met you you’d just been beaten up and taken to hospital. You were in a bad way, my friend.’
‘Was I?’ says Alex. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Yeah – well – you don’t remember much, to be fair. You didn’t remember I was here yesterday, so maybe that’s not headline news.’
‘No. You’re right. Probably not.’
‘I’ve seen you in and out of hospital a hundred times. Lost sight of you for months on end when you took yourself off somewhere. You’d always turn up again, half dead, some new injury. And now look.’
He’s right. I’m reading through the latest discharge summary. For someone so young, Alex has a terrible list of things wrong. In fact, it’s a miracle he’s still here at all. Looking at him on the bed, though, it would be easy to think that maybe he wasn’t – that maybe he’d died that last time in hospital, but his spirit was so cussed it dragged itself back across town to find rest in this cold, cold bed.
‘It’s like training, yeah? You can’t just jump on a treadmill and bang out ten K. You might feel great at the end of it, but the truth is, if you don’t get the intervals right you can be setting yourself up for a lot of trouble. It’s all about the interaction between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, the way your body metabolises the shit and tries to get straight again. Jim’ll tell you. Hey?’
They both look at me – Graham as if he’s about to pick me up and bench press me, Alex with a haunted, shivery look.
‘That’s right,’ I say, ‘Uh-huh.’

the works

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There’s a builder’s truck blocking the mews. It’s up on hydraulic stabilisers as the driver operates the winch, dropping off enormous bags of sand and gravel, the engine labouring as the next load gets taken up, the back of the truck lurching with the sudden change of weight. I can’t imagine what building project would require such a massive delivery – maybe one of those basement excavations you read about, an underground pool and cinema and gym, perhaps. A lift shaft to a cocktail bar and viewing platform at the earth’s core. Whatever the reason, the contrast with the ancient backstreet couldn’t be more extreme. Two hundred years ago these would have been a row of stables with offices, lofts and basic accommodation above; now they’re a mixture of chi-chi businesses, full-scale conversions, and the cobbled street curves down right and left not to straw and manure-heaped gutters but expensive planters, artisanal signs and cutely painted old bikes with geraniums in the basket.

We’ve had to park at the far end by the equipment van that’s here to deliver a hospital bed. They could only have beaten us by fifteen minutes and yet they’re already half-way through. Once again I’m in awe of their efficiency and sheer work ethic, like scaled-up ants in yellow jackets. A hospital bed is no light thing. It comes in sections, of course, but the main frame is pretty heavy. A feature of the flats in these mews is a steep and narrow staircase running straight up from the front door – no doubt originally to a hay loft. To make things even more awkward, the house we’re visiting has a stair lift, so really there’s hardly any room at all to get the bed in. When we stroll up, though, they’ve already got the frame delivered, and all that’s left are the mattress, a cantilever table and a few other bits and pieces.
‘What did you do – commandeer the truck?’ I say to one of them, who is so red-faced I want to lean in and loosen his collar.
He laughs, slicks his antennae back.
‘Maybe you could take the table?’ he says.

The whole thing is something of a rush job. The GP had visited George late last night. George is a ninety-five year old man with a recent palliative diagnosis who has declined rapidly and unexpectedly straight into an End of Life scenario. He was refusing hospital, so the GP had prescribed anticipatory meds, made referrals to the District Nurse and Palliative teams, and to us for urgent review first thing in the morning. Katrina had gone straight there from home and was busy by eight. By nine she’d phoned in to make her report: it was bed care only, so George needed a hospital bed with pressure mattress and slide sheet to be delivered the same day, with someone to be there to help with a pat slide; George needed care support four times a day, double-up; he needed pads, pressure cream, foam lollipops for mouth care – the works. I said I could meet Katrina there at lunchtime to get the whole thing done.

George’s wife Valerie greets us at the top of the stairs.
‘Forgive my hair,’ she says, patting it. ‘I must look a fright. But as you can imagine I’ve had quite a night.’
Both Valerie and the flat have the shocked look of something hit by lightning. Everything is essentially as it was – the pictures, the chairs, the collections of antique pill boxes and books, the Moroccan rugs and tables and lamps, the family pictures on the walls – everything so perfectly placed and orderly the housekeeper must have a tape measure in their pocket. But the furthest end of the flat – the main bedroom end – has a sprawled, disrupted appearance, with a wreckage of discarded packaging, plastic strapping and so on spilling across the hallway, whilst through the open door the sound of construction and the movement of heavy furniture adds to the feeling of emergency. The noise from the builder’s truck outside sounds like a fire engine.
‘What a business!’ says Valerie. ‘But you know, everyone’s been so kind. We really are most grateful.’

There’s a large tabby cat staring at me from the middle of the living room rug. It’s as perfectly groomed as Valerie, and I half-expect it to reach up with a paw and pat itself delicately on the head, as she did.
‘Grammaticus is very put out,’ says Valerie, walking over to him. ‘He’s nineteen, you know? Like us – old and worn out. He can’t tolerate the fuss.’
She bends down stiffly and painfully, scooping him up to cradle him in her arms, just exactly as you would a baby, pressing her nose to the top of his head, rocking him up and down, swinging her hips a little from side to side. He maintains his stare, making little adjustments to accommodate the motion.
‘He looks good for his age,’ I say.
‘Do you think?’ she says. Then – still rocking the cat – she looks off towards the window. Down in the street, the noise from the builder’s lorry has eased. It sounds as if all the deliveries might have finished, and instead there are shouts and raucous laughter, the plaintive whining of hydraulic legs being lifted, the off-kilter clattering of a concrete mixer.
‘Good God,’ says Valerie. ‘When will it all end?’

holy bananas

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’m sorry to have to say this, but it’s all Pete’s fault.

‘There you go! Thought you might want something big and hot inside you!’ he says, slopping a huge Arsenal mug of builder’s strength tea onto the desk, then walking off, laughing in that filthy way he has, high and wild and raucous as a drag tea lady in a pantomime.

Pete is the world’s best tea maker – a county-level performer, meticulous, prolific. It doesn’t matter how much I resolve to be the first in with the drinks round, somehow he always manages to beat me to it. It’s in his blood. His DNA sequence is PGT. His mother was a teapot and he was born under the Constellation of the Great Urn. If you x-rayed his torso you’d see two tea bags where his kidneys should be. Pete is the Caffeine King, the Tannin Chief, the author of the Beverage Report. He put the tea in terrific and the milk and two in you. And so on. I have no doubt one day they’ll raise a statue by public subscription (mostly funds re-streamed from tea clubs across the world). A life-size bronze in the marketplace: Saint Peter of the Kettle, mug raised high for seagulls to perch on and provide the laugh.

Anyway. Nobody’s forcing me, I don’t HAVE to drink it. I know it’s going to be a busy morning so if I finish the whole mug I’ll be busting for the loo half way through. But Pete’s tea isn’t something you can pass over easily. Rational thinking doesn’t come into it. By the time I’ve left the department to start my visits, the mug is empty. I rinse it clean, put it upside-down on the draining board, and leave.

 *  *  *

By the time I get to Ralph, my second patient, my bladder is as taut as a helium balloon with Arsenal printed on the side. I finish dressing Ralph’s wound, doing his obs and so on, and I’m just about to ask him if it’s okay if I use his loo, when he says his daughter is due back any minute. She’s just popped out to get a repeat script of antibiotics. I don’t want to be in the loo when she comes in because I think it might look odd. But then I think – maybe it doesn’t matter, because I remember there’s a rehab unit in the next street. They have toilets there. I can use them. Everything’s fine. I pack up my things, say goodbye to Ralph, and leave.

It’s only after I’m parked up and walking to the unit that I realise it recently closed. (A political decision; don’t get me started). But there’s a car parked outside, and I think maybe there’ll be people there packing up or something – even just a security guard. In fact, standing up against the door and shielding the glass with my hand, I can see a mug of tea (how ironic) and a fluorescent jacket dumped on the counter. I ring the bell, knock, ring again. No-one comes. I’m tempted to find some nook or cranny, somewhere discreet I can go without being seen. But I worry the security guard will suddenly appear, doing their rounds, and besides, the unit is surrounded by flats that overlook the place as closely as watchtowers round a prison.

My next visit isn’t for another hour – a double-up with a physio at The Pines, an extensive, sheltered housing place the other side of town. I decide to get there early and use the visitor’s toilet.

The Pines is a busy, friendly block. There are always residents sitting in the gardens, wandering in and out, things going on. A manager in the office. Today, though, it’s eerily quiet. The fact that it’s Sunday means there’s no-one on duty. The weather is bad, sharp and autumnal, so no-one’s sitting out. I can’t buzz the patient’s flat – we’re doubling-up because they have a history of mental health issues and need careful handling. All I can do is wait to see if anyone appears in the lobby. After ten minutes of nothing, I buzz the remote site office. Eventually, after a twenty millilitre pause, they answer. I explain my predicament, trying to sound as warm and authentic as I can.

‘Well – as we have no camera on the door…’ the voice says, ‘… and there’s no way of verifying that you are who you say you are, I have no alternative but to say no. I’m sorry. Goodbye and good luck with all your endeavours.’

The intercom clicks off.

I rest both hands flat on the console, wondering whether to buzz again and try begging. Then I pick up my bags and hurry back to the car. I figure if I drive fast enough I can just about make it back to base, use the loo, then turn around and drive straight back in time for the visit.

For some reason, there is a stationary queue of traffic on the road heading in. I’ll never get there at this rate. I see myself exploding behind the wheel like a hyper-inflated space hopper, and when the emergency services force the door they’ll jump back in horror as my idiotic grin floats out on a torrent of piss.

As soon as I can I make a u-turn and head back to The Pines. It occurs to me that there’s a clinic just round the corner from it: they’ll definitely have a public loo. I can use that, then relax for twenty minutes until the appointment.

I’m forgetting it’s Sunday. Of course the clinic is closed. There are plenty of attractive bushes in the landscaped quadrant just in front of it, but unfortunately they’re overlooked by a community hall, and in the hall are lots of elderly people gathered together for a meeting of some kind. I toy with the idea of banging on the window and asking if they’ll let me in to use their facilities, but it’s just too public and humiliating, so instead I go back round to the main entrance of The Pines, hoping beyond hope there’ll be someone to let me in this time.

There is. An elderly man in a black felt, flowerpot hat, wearing so many disparate and ill-matching clothes it looks like he’s put on everything in his wardrobe at once, for a bet. He is sitting on a bench in the foyer facing the doors, methodically peeling a banana. I stride up to the doors, smiling as warmly and reputably as I can. Put my ID card flat against the glass. Wave and nod for him to come over.

He takes a cautious bite from the very tip of the banana, and stares at me.

I wave at him again, going through such a pantomime of encouraging shrugs and winks and nods I must look crazy.

He takes another bite of the banana, then carefully replaces the skin flaps – one, two, three, four – like he wants to fool someone into thinking it’s an untouched banana. He places it on the bench beside him, stands up, brushes the front of his mac, licks his lips, touches the corner of his mouth with his finger – first the right, then the left – repositions his hat – then makes the four thousand mile journey across the carpet towards the door. I hope he might come via the big silver door release button on the wall, but instead (and – to be fair to the man – quite correctly) he walks in a straight line to the door and pushes his face up close to the glass to read the card, his banana breath fogging on the pane. Then he looks round the side of the card and glares at me. I smile. He looks back to the card again.

‘I’m early for an appointment,’ I say, overly pronouncing my words in an effort to be heard. ‘I’m waiting for my colleague so we can go in together. The thing is, I’m desperate for the loo, and I wondered if you could let me in so I can use the facilities?’

He raises his eyebrows, lowers them again, turns around, and starts walking slowly back. For one, terrible minute I think he’s just going to sit down and carry on eating his banana, but at the last minute he changes course and touches the silver button. The doors slide open.
‘Thank you SO much!’ I say. ‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that!’

He shrugs, waves his hand in the air. I hurry round the corner to the loo, and a few minutes later float back out.

The old man has gone. He’s finished his banana and left the skin of it on the bench. It’s peeled into four large petals, white flesh up, yellow skin down, like a sloppy lotus flower blooming on the green baize. It’s a rapturous image. A holy relic. I could kneel before it, kiss it, put it on display in a glass box.

But I don’t. I’m over it. I throw the peel in the bin, and head back out to wait in the car.

large caliber

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘Shall I take my shoes off?’
‘Oh no!’ says Rita. ‘This is a real home – not a show home!’
I’m conscious that my shoes are sopping wet, though, so I slip them off anyway.
‘I do it at home’ I say. ‘I’d feel bad otherwise.’
‘This is a real home, not a show home!’ she says, repeating herself – whether because it’s a catchphrase of hers, or because she likes the sound of it, I’m not sure.
‘Follow me!’ she says, and leads me through the house.
It certainly has the feel of a show home. Or even a gallery, given the number of paintings of stags on snowy crags and jugged hares lying among bunches of grapes, all in heavy gilt frames. Ernest, Rita’s husband, sits in a chair at the far end of the house, like a decrepit attendant who dozed through his lunch break and on into his nineties.
‘Darling? There’s a nurse to see you!’ says Rita. She waves me over to him, then lowers herself very correctly, debutante-style, into a Louis Quinze chair, her legs angled to the right, her hands folded in her lap.
‘What happened to your shoes?’ says Ernie, peering at me over his glasses.
‘They were soaking wet. I didn’t want to make a mess on your carpet.’
‘I said to him, darling,’ says Rita. ‘I said to him: This is a real home. Not a show home!’
‘Hear that?’ he says. ‘So now you know.’

* * *

All Ernest’s observations are within normal range – his blood pressure, temperature, heart rate and so on..
‘What were you expecting?’ he says. ‘I’m perfectly fine. It’s this damned back.’
‘Let the gentleman do his job, darling,’ says Rita, absentmindedly playing with her wedding ring, slipping it off, then on, then off again. ‘He used to be a sniper, you know. In the war, of course,’ she adds, hurriedly, to clear up any misunderstanding.
‘A sniper?’
‘What of it?’ he snaps.
‘No. Nothing. It sounds fascinating.’
‘Hmm,’ he says, and watches me closely as I fill out his obs chart. To cover the silence – and to find out more about his sniper years – I dig deep for some personal story I could use.
‘I had a go at skeet shooting once,’ I say. ‘It was a work’s outing. I really liked it.’
‘Skeet shooting?’
‘Yes. Clay pigeons.’
‘I know what skeet shooting is.’
‘It was really good! That bit where they chuck the clays along the ground, and they bounce around all over the place. That was fun. You know. Picking them off.’
‘Fun?’ says Ernest, horrified. ‘Fun? If by fun you mean waving your weapon around like a lunatic, blasting in the general direction of where you think something’s going to end up, well, then, perhaps. But I’m not talking about some random spread of pellets. I’m talking about the precise placing of a single, large caliber bullet. I’m talking about controlling one’s breathing, slowing one’s pulse. Taking a clean shot.’
And he glares at me over his glasses again, eyebrows quivering, drawing a bead.
‘It’s my second marriage’ says Rita. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

spit spot

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’m in awe of the equipment company. They have an uncanny ability to put a hospital bed into the most inhospitable place. I’m sure one day we’ll be called to a lighthouse with a bed seesawing on the roof just above the lamp. Looking around Eileen’s small and cluttered bedroom, it seems to me they would only have had two options: lift the roof off and drop it in with a crane, or beam it into position from the transporter deck of the Starship Enterprise.

Nobody needed a hospital bed more than Eileen, though, so it’s great they persevered.
Eileen is rapidly approaching the end of her life, her flesh falling away, the most vital thing about her the glassy shine to her preternaturally large eyes.

‘I want to sit out,’ she says, gripping the sides of the bed. ‘I’m sick of this.’

It’s no small ambition. Aside from Eileen’s general frailty, we’ll need to consider the two lines from the morphine drivers feeding in to her right and left, her catheter, the nasal specs for her oxygen. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, there’s the practical difficulty of the bedroom itself. We had trouble getting in the door, let alone negotiate a complicated transfer. Still, Eileen won’t be dissuaded, and (incredibly) her observations are strong enough.

‘Hmm,’ says Vihaan, looking around.

I’m standing on Eileen’s right, squeezed in between a stack of pads, bedclothes, boxes of stuff, a cantilever table, a floor-standing aircon unit, a wicker bath chair piled with towels and things, a life-sized porcelain dog – really, it’s more like a storage cupboard than a bedroom for the terminally ill. Vihaan is to her left by the window. A little clearer his side, but not much.

‘Actually, Eileen, you know, I think it’s not going to be all that easy,’ says Vihaan. ‘Okay? I think it would be safer for all concerned if you stayed in bed and rested there.’

Eileen stares at him, a little hypnotised. It happens a lot. Vihaan is so striking, with a Bollywood intensity and perfect, crow-black quiff, standing with his hands on his hips, glancing around the place, speaking so rapidly and so musically it’s easy to get distracted, like standing by a stream fascinated by the play of light, utterly forgetting you’re supposed to be catching fish.

‘What?’ says Eileen.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t want to stay in bed a while longer?’ he says. ‘Okay? You’re absolutely sure about this?’
Eileen turns her head slowly to stare at me, then turns back to Vihaan.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she says.
‘Okay, then, Eileen. Whatever you say. You’re the boss, actually. We’ll give it a go and we’ll do our best,’ he says. ‘But we’ll take things slowly, one thing at a time – okay? – and then if anything changes, actually, we’ll stop and think it over again. Okay? Okay.’

The hospital bed is in the only possible place it can be, in the centre of the room, the feet towards the door. The best we can do is to cheat it more to the right, making enough space to the left for the wicker chair and a zimmer frame to help with the transfer. It’s a spatial puzzle, where you have to move everything in strict order, this then this, or that over there first, to move these, and that there temporarily, whilst you hand over these – careful – back up a bit, then that can go there…

Eileen watches it all pass backwards and forwards over her bed. She’s on so much morphine I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought the room was reordering itself, flying through the air in a magical, Mary Poppins kind of way. Spit spot. A clap of the hands. Vihaan would make a great Mary Poppins. Not so much the outfit – although he’d be a sensation in that – more his brisk but warm practicality.

‘Okay,’ he says, when at last the thing is done. He leans on the zimmer, one foot up on the strut. ‘So now the room is better arranged for you to sit out from your bed actually,’ he says. ‘The wicker chair is a good height for you and we’ve made it comfortable with cushions and what have you. So let us begin to raise you up on the bed, okay? And we’ll take it very slowly, Eileen. Step by step. And we’ll help you to sit out in the chair for a while.’
She turns her big eyes up to him, and although she doesn’t smile or say anything, you can see her gratitude holding there, at some depth, but poised, and delicate, and perfectly true.

what more can I say

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting with my daughter in a large and crowded waiting room at the health centre. No-one’s talking much, just the occasional appointment confirmation and instruction at the reception desk, the rustle of magazine pages, some self-conscious throat clearing, whispered conversations. What dominates the room is an elderly woman in a wheelchair. I’m guessing she has some form of dementia, because she keeps saying the same two sentences, over and over again.
There’s a carer with her, one hand on hers. She’s doing her best, but the elderly woman is relentless.
‘I’m not well’ she says. ‘I’m not well. What more can I say?’
Now and again she clears her throat with a vigorous, dredging cough, making as much of it as she can, like a cartoon voice-over artist vocalising the scene where a rabbit vomits up a grizzly bear, gives itself a shake, then blithely hops off as the bear stares after them.
‘I’m not well. I’m not well. What more can I say?’
In the context of the waiting room it’s strangely hypnotic, especially with the carer making periodic shushing and soothing noises, the whole thing coming together like the libretto of a spare modern piece: The Waiting Room, maybe. The Poor Patient.
‘I’m not well. I’m not well. What more can I say?’
Actually, I like the way she says what more can I say. She falls into it, high to low, in a helpless, rush, landing flat on the say.
‘It’s okay, Fenella’ says the carer. ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. We’ll see the doctor soon.’
‘I’m not well. I’m not well. What more can I say?’
When I chat to my daughter, Fenella takes it as a cue to speak more loudly. The receptionist peers round the stack of folders on her counter, and frowns.
The carer is doing her best, but it’s difficult for her and I wonder about their situation. I’m guessing Fenella is an inpatient in a nursing home. Normally they have a GP who visits regularly through the week, to spare the patients – and the staff – the stress and risk of an outpatient appointment. I can only think that they’ve come to see a specialist holding a clinic, someone who won’t make individual trips. I’d like to ask the carer about it, but I’m not at work, it’s nothing to do with me, and anyway, she’s got her hands full.
‘I’m not well. I’m not well. What more can I say?’
I look over my shoulder and smile at the carer, who gives me a polite but slightly wary acknowledgement. I can see she’s stressed.
‘Don’t worry, Fenella,’ she says. ‘Here – let me rub your shoulders.’
She turns in the chair, reaches round and starts gently massaging the back of Fenella’s neck.
‘Oh – that’s lovely!’ says Fenella.
The whole waiting room relaxes.

Enid vs. the CIA

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Enid stares at me from the hospital bed with a wide and fixed expression, like an old Morris Minor up on the ramp. There are two other cars come to visit her in the rehabilitation unit: me, a battered old Toyota, well-maintained but worried about the next MOT, and the unit GP, an old Volvo people wagon, boxy, unkempt, a little clumsy, perhaps, but still good for a few thousand miles.
‘Tell me more about the man you saw this morning,’ says the doctor, leaning forward in his chair. ‘The man from the CIA’

Enid isn’t the most obvious recruitment target for the Central Intelligence Agency, but then you’d have to think they’re probably a little underrepresented in the eighty year old, retired bookkeeper demographic. Still, Enid’s taking it well. She waggles her mirrors and begins.
‘It was early in the morning,’ she says, folding her hands in her lap and giving her shoulders a settling shrug, ‘… about half past five, I should think. I heard someone cough, and I thought That’s odd. And when I sat up, there he was, standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at me.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Oh – about forty, I should think. Pleasant chap. Short blond hair. Wearing a sports jacket but no tie. Smart casual, I suppose you’d say. And he stared at me a good long while, and then he said: Enid? You’re not who you think you are.’
‘How extraordinary! And he was from the CIA?’
‘Yes. He said they wanted to recruit me for a mission. I said I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be much good to you like this. I’m really not up to any mission. And he said You’re on our list. And I said Well, I can’t help that. I’ve just had a pacemaker fitted.’
The doctor smiles, nods, writes something down.
‘It’s happened a few times before,’ she says.
‘The CIA?’
‘No. Last time I woke up in a Burka. There was an enormous man with a big black beard, and he pointed at me and said I had to go to the mosque. And I told him I didn’t want to go, because – well – I wouldn’t know what to do. And he said I’d soon pick it up.’
‘So it’s all about identity?’ says the doctor. ‘Fascinating!’
‘I don’t know about that,’ says Enid. ‘I’d sooner just wake up and have a cup of tea like normal people.’
‘And this has only been happening since the operation?’
She nods.
‘Do you think that’s what’s caused it?’ she says.
‘Possibly,’ says the doctor. ‘I think we need to take some blood and check for a few things. So – do you get any kind of warning before you see these people? Any strange smells, funny sensations? Sounds? Odd visual effects?’
She shakes her head.
‘Do your limbs feel heavy or frozen?’
‘No. I’m sitting up talking to them just like I’m talking to you now. I get a little frightened.’
‘But you don’t feel unwell in any way?’
‘No.’
‘Hmm’ says the doctor.
‘It’s not always people who talk, though. The time before that it was an alien.’
‘Like ET?’
‘I don’t know about that. He wasn’t very friendly. Pacing up and down. When I asked him what he wanted he picked me up and threw me in the cheeseplant.’
‘Well! That’s aliens for you! Look – Enid – I’ll leave you with my colleague here who’s very kindly agreed to take some blood, and we’ll have a look at that and see if there’s anything causing these hallucinations. They may just be lucid dreams, of course. You’ve been through a lot recently and you’ve had a disrupted routine and everything else. But we ought to rule out organic causes first. Okay? Lovely to see you.’
And he leaves.
‘Do you think I’ve lost my marbles?’ says Enid as I get my kit out.
‘No! Not at all. I think like the doctor says, you’ve got a lot on your plate.’
She stares at the toast cooling on the table beside her.
‘I don’t fancy much,’ she says, then turns her attention back to me.
‘I don’t bleed,’ she says, brightening. ‘Everyone struggles. There’s only one person who can get it – a girl who works at the surgery. Ever so nice, she is. Lovely teeth. She chats away a mile a minute, and the next thing you know she’s waving a tube in your face. I said to her, I said you’re a vampire, you are. And she said yes, and that’s why I like my job so much.’

We chat about the whole lucid dream thing whilst I tap around for anything vaguely resembling a vein. She’s right. It’s Slim Pickens and that’s a fact.

‘I’ve had a couple in the past,’ I tell her. ‘Dreams where I’ve woken up in the middle of it all and thought: This is a dream. And I knew if I concentrated hard enough I could make things happen. There was this one time, I’d gone to America and I was due to fly home that morning. Well I woke up in the dream, and I was standing on a wide prairie plain. So I thought I’d see what I could make come over the horizon. I concentrated as hard as I could, and I tried to summon one of those old western coach and horses – you know – like you see in the films. And then I could get in and see where it took me.’
‘Oh yes. That would be nice.’
‘But it never came. Instead there was this tiny figure running towards me with its arms outstretched. A woman, in ceremonial robes, Japanese robes, all flapping out behind her. And when she got a bit closer I could see it was my mum, and she had this expression on her face, like she was shouting out and trying to warn me. And I got so scared I turned around and woke myself up. And I was so freaked I rang the airline to change my ticket, because I thought maybe she was trying to tell me the plane was going to crash. Sorry – that vein disappeared when I went in.’
‘They do that. They can hear you coming.’
‘So later on I thought I’d better ring the airline again to check the new arrangements, and they told me they had no record of my previous call.’
‘Did you catch your plane?’
‘Yeah.. It was fine.’
‘I see.’
She reaches out and takes a desultory bite of her toast and chews it without much relish. I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed with my story, too. It sounded like a straightforward dream. The mystery of it had rubbed off over time; now it just seemed like the kind of thing you might get with jet lag.
‘I wonder what your mum was trying to tell you?’ she says, looking for the positive.
‘Who knows? I asked her about it later and she said she hadn’t had any premonitions. There we go! You have got blood after all…’
She sighs.
‘Yes. Well. Everyone struggles,’ she says.

the battle of don’s deep

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Donald sits low in the armchair, his left leg bouncing up and down like a jackhammer, his left arm in a sling, his right hand restlessly picking at the chair fabric. However neutrally or sympathetically I try to phrase my questions to gauge what he needs since his discharge home, it’s impossible to get a straight or reasonable answer. I’m not making  progress.

I have to say I’ve never met anyone quite so burned-up with fury – or anyone whose eyebrows angled up in the middle so perfectly. It’s like his nose is the prow of a bony ship, and the eyebrows are the arms of a cantilever bridge raising to let it through. His eyes are in sync, too; closing as the eyebrows go up, as if he’s reading his diatribes back of the eyelids, like an autocue.

At least Don’s environment is fine. Potted plants. Laminate flooring. An enormous flat screen TV. Donald muted it when we came in, but the show he was watching continues to play. I think it’s one of those how things are made programmes, this episode all about buttons. Pastel buttons, tartan buttons, spotty buttons, two-holes, four-holes…. The manufacturing process is complex and fascinating. About a million buttons pouring into some kind of steaming bath, then rolling out on a conveyor belt. What for? Do we need this many buttons in the world…?

‘…all you bureaucrats, trying to reduce everything to a simple yes or no, clicking your little keys, ticking your little boxes. Life doesn’t work like that. Pain certainly doesn’t. Pain doesn’t conform to your pissy rules. If I say yes I can do that, you’ll put down yes, and you’ll say he can totally do that – he’s fine, we can leave him alone. But the fact is sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. It costs me enormous levels of pain and suffering just to get out of the chair. You don’t know what it’s like. I used to be a bodybuilder. I used to be fifteen stone, built like a brick shithouse. I’ve got a toleration for pain your brain could never conceive of, never conceive. I’ve got an IQ that’s in the top one percent. I know what you’re talking about, so don’t try to fool me. I know what’s behind your words. I can’t be bought off like the rest of them. And just because I refuse to be bullied into accepting things that aren’t right, I get stigmatised and put down as difficult…’

I’m so glad I’m doing this assessment with Agnes. She’s so experienced and battle-hardened, I couldn’t feel better about it if I was an elf on the ramparts of Helm’s Deep watching the orcs approach with ladders, and Gandalf was holding my hand.

‘I’m sorry to have to ask you these things,’ I say to Don. ‘I know it’s a bit one size fits all. But we need to get a rough idea what we can do to help. Like physiotherapy, for example. Do you think you might benefit from some?’
The eyebrows flick up; the eyes close.
‘Oh? Yeah? Physiotherapy? You try living with the pain I’ve got. You try doing their little exercises. Me just scratching my head is like you running a marathon. Physiotherapy! And what will they do? They’ll come and they’ll sit where you are and they’ll say Oh, Donald, if you don’t do anything you’ll get this and that. You’ll get muscle wastage, deconditioning, ligament contracture…. Bullshit! They don’t know what it’s like to suffer like this. They wouldn’t last five seconds.’
‘And where was your fracture again? It’s on the system somewhere, but if you could just tell me…’
Eyebrows up.
‘What’s the point? You wouldn’t understand. I’ve got a better understanding of anatomy and physiology than the surgeons. That’s why they didn’t like me. They couldn’t get rid of me quick enough. I knew their language. I knew what they were up to.’
‘Try me. Just – you know – the basics.’
He sighs, then winces, fiercely and dramatically, as if that simple exhalation of breath was the most exquisite form of torture. And then when he’s recovered from that, and re-found the energy and the deep spiritual reserves required to continue talking, the eyebrows go up again, and the eyelids come down.
‘I have a type two coracoid process fracture distal to the coracoclavicular ligament. Yeah? Know what that is? Thought not. Just put busted shoulder. What’s the point of talking about physiotherapy if you don’t even know what it is I’ve got?’
‘The thing is, Don – I know this is difficult for you…’
‘Oh! You know, do you? How do you know? Been through it yourself, have you?’
‘What I mean is – I can see how distressed you are and from that I can guess how difficult you’re finding it…’
‘This is the problem,’ he says, eyebrows up, lids down. ‘This is the problem, right there. Everyone thinks they know but everyone in fact doesn’t know. Everyone knows precisely jack shit….’

I’m struggling to make any headway at all with this assessment. And because Don’s speech is so overwhelming and so full of invective, and because his eyes are closed and I can get away with it, I can’t help glancing at the screen again. Another batch of buttons are going through some kind of electroplating bath, in plain, out golden. They look great. A bit showy, maybe. Still. Nice to have gold buttons….

Agnes takes over. The fact that she’s Scottish seems to help. There’s a broad warmth to her voice that deflects Don’s sniping more successfully, for a while at least. But after ten minutes or so of her best attempts, even she begins to waver. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she starts to sound a little snappy – but then her phone rings.
‘Sorry!’ she says. ‘Do you mind if I take this…?’
And she ups and leaves the room.
I couldn’t feel more abandoned than if Gandalf suddenly waved a bony finger in the air, produced a phone from his cloak, and stepped back from the ramparts just as the orcs came over the top.

I turn to face Don again.

His eyebrows go up.

the wrong end of the brush

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

When I walk into his room, Ted is leaning forwards in his wheelchair, dabbing energetically at a canvas on an A-frame easel. He’s wearing gold lame running shorts, a lime green sports vest and a leopard print bandanna to keep his wild white hair out of his eyes and – presumably – out of the paint.
‘Whaddya think?’ he says, leaning back.
He hasn’t got much done so it’s hard to tell what it is. In fact, to be honest, it’d be clearer if he’d just splodged the paint on directly from the tube. It also doesn’t help that he’s working from the top down, like someone drawing a primary coloured cover over a blank space. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a picture of ivy growing down a wall – maybe at a cafe, because I can just about see the pencil outlines of a round, cafe-style table and two chairs immediately beneath all the green. I’m not sure though.
‘Van Gogh’ he says, chewing the end of the brush and tipping his head to the right.
‘Oh! I see it now!’ I tell him, throwing my bags down on his bed. ‘Yeah – that’s great! All you need to do now is practice the signature and you could totally pass it off.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean – it looks like the real thing.’
‘Well I should know, shouldn’t I? I’ve been there. I took photographs.’
I think he means the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
‘I’d love to go!’ I say, trying to steer things back into safer waters.
‘Why doncha then?’ he says, dabbing on some more green. ‘It’s just a shame the flight takes so long.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yeah. Expensive, too. But cheap when you’ve landed. And so hot! And lush!’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What – Amsterdam?’
‘No. Bangkok.’