sketches

normal on critical

~ jim clayton ~ 4 Comments

The house has no number, just a name in big white letters above the electric gates that’s either a composite of the people who live there or a tribute to a Klingon commander. I want to ask Ella where it comes from, but she’s so stressed there’s no opportunity. She’s waiting for me outside, still in her slippers, arms folded, glancing up and down the street whilst I lock up the car.
‘Hi Ella. I’m Jim, from the hospital,’ I say walking over.
‘I gathered that.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘No. Not really. Mum’s going downhill and no-one seems to care. Not the doctor, the hospital, no-one. She came to stay with us a couple of weeks ago for respite, and ever since then she’s been wasting away. She’s not eating, she’s not drinking. Crying out with pain all hours of the day and night. Honestly, Jim, I’m at the end of my tether. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I just can’t cope.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘She had an appointment at the Elderly Patient Clinic tomorrow but she’s just too unwell. I mean – how was I supposed to get her there?’
‘Well – there’s patient transport. They have a tail-lift on the back of the vehicle. They can take her in a wheelchair.’
‘Can they? No-one told me that. I’d better go and see if they’ll reinstate the appointment…’
She turns and hurries inside, and I follow.
‘Mum’s through there,’ she says. ‘Go and introduce yourself whilst I call the hospital.’

It’s a large, comfortable family house, racks of shoes in the hallway, richly patterned rugs on the floor. Ella’s mum Deidre has her own room, off to the left at the end of the hall. She’s lying in an electric bed with the back raised, propped up on half a dozen pillows and cushions, a warm zebra-striped fleece thrown over the rumpled sheets. When I shake her hand she squeezes it warmly and then resumes her original position, something like wistful forbearance, staring out of the french windows into the garden.
I start by explaining who I am, what my job is and why I’ve been asked to come. She nods, and twiddles her fingers, as if yes, this was exactly as she’d been expecting. I work through my usual questions to see how she is, and to clarify the problem; she answers as if there’s nothing the matter at all, or at least, nothing beyond what you’d expect of a woman of her age. She’s even a little bewildered to hear that people are worried about her.
I check her observations. Everything’s normal, unremarkable. I ask her about her eating and drinking, her bowel habits and so on. Again, she seems fine. She looks fine, too, a healthy colour to her cheeks, decent weight and so on. It’s difficult to see the dangerously ill patient that Ella described, even allowing for the possibility that Deidre is confused about everything. And she certainly doesn’t seem confused.
Ella comes back into the room.
‘They never answer the phone,’ she says. ‘So I left a few messages.’
‘A few?’
‘I kept thinking of other things I wanted to say. How is she?’
‘Well – she seems fine, actually. Sorry to talk about you like this, Deidre.’
‘That’s okay,’ she says, staring out of the window.
‘I’m not surprised,’ says Ella. ‘No-one can ever find anything wrong. They always say the same thing. They always say she’s fitter than they are. But they don’t have to live with her. Sorry mum, but it’s true. They don’t see you when you’re crying out in the middle of the night. The doctor’s bloody useless, excuse my French. The last time he saw her – which is a joke for a start, because he may as well have stood outside with a megaphone – the last time, he just upped her citalopram. But it’s not working and we can’t go on like this.’
‘You said Deidre wasn’t eating or drinking.’
‘Hardly anything. She just picks at her food. And I make all her favourites. I have to nag and nag to get her to eat.’
‘What about drinking? Because that’s more important.’
‘Again, nag, nag, nag. And I hate to do it, because she’s my mum, and I don’t want to go on at her like that. But someone’s got to. The carers don’t.’
‘She has carers?’
‘Three times a day. And all they do is put things in front of her, and clear them away again. That’s no good, is it?’
‘So how much would you say she is managing to drink?’
‘Cups of tea, beakers of juice, fortifying drinks. Everything with a straw, though.’
‘So that sounds – quite good, then.’
‘It may sound good to you but it’s not enough, is it? I mean – look at her…’
And I do, and from her throne of pillows and cushions, she looks comfortably back at me, too.

Deidre hasn’t had any bloods for the past two weeks so I run a set, just to be sure. I put them in as urgent. They come back normal. I ring Ella to let her know, and she tells me that – miracle of miracles – the Elderly Patient clinic has managed to reinstate the appointment.
‘Maybe they’ll find something wrong,’ she says. ‘I mean – something has to happen. Otherwise she’ll die and it’ll be too late.’

alice in the underworld

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Despite having to work in an office that looks suspiciously like a converted cupboard, Alice, the warden is remarkably upbeat.
‘Have you come to see Terry?’ she says, squeezing past a heap of junk out into the hostel landing. ‘Shall I show you the way? It’s a bit of a warren…’
Even though I have been before, I know how confusing the layout is, so I say ‘That’d be great, thanks.’
‘Poor old Terry,’ she says, locking the cupboard/office door behind her then marching off up a set of stairs so narrowly twisting and creaking it’s like being processed the wrong way through the guts of a dilapidated monster. ‘He’s had such a time of it. We’re a bit worried about him, to be honest. He’s wasting away. I mean – he barely eats a thing, and he’s not going out like he used to. Mind you…’ she says, pushing through a fire door and then on through a series of branching corridors, ‘…at least he’s not seeing Keith.’ She turns and frowns at me, as if to say You know – KEITH, then carries on down the corridor. I feel like I’m in one of those nightmares where the way gets smaller and smaller and you end up on your knees tapping with one finger on a door the size of your hand. But suddenly Alice stops, turns on the spot, raps smartly on the door to her left, and goes in.

She’s right about Terry wasting away. What makes his condition worse, somehow, is the contrast between his emaciated body and the dark luxuriance of his beard and hair, curling upwards and outwards with such vigour you’d think they were wigs, stuck on a cadaver for the contrast. Terry’s still in his green hospital pyjamas, an ID band around his wrist. It says in the notes he self-discharged, against advice. Quite how he made it home I’ve no idea, although maybe Keith helped.

The room is a mess. Someone has had a rudimentary go at clearing some space at least, the piles of trash and bags and boxes and clothes pushed to one side of the room, occupying every spare foot of the galley kitchen surfaces and sink, giving the bedsit a lopsided feel. A light breeze plays in from the sea just a fag-flick away through the window, dispelling to some extent the heavy atmosphere in the room.
‘Sorry it’s in such a two-and-eight,’ says Terry, struggling to sit up on the edge of his soiled bed and then picking at his nails. ‘I haven’t had a chance to tidy up.’
‘We’ll get it sorted, Terry,’ says Alice. ‘Anyway. Listen. There’s a support worker guy coming later with some supplies. So that’s good.’ She pauses a moment, raising her eyebrows and smiling, to let the good news percolate through, I suppose. Terry waves his hand; she nods emphatically again. ‘’Okay! I’ll leave you to it, then,’ she whispers, and quietly closes the door behind her.
‘Damond girl, Alice’ says Terry. ‘They all are.’
‘I like their office.’
‘It’s a cupboard.’
‘I thought so.’
‘They ‘ain’t got no money for nuthin’.’
‘No. I guess not.’
‘They do their best though.’

I’m halfway through the exam when there’s another knock on the door and Jack, the support worker steps inside. Jack’s enormous, a bear in a parka, check shirt and caterpillar boots, holding a carrier bag of shopping in either paw. He’s wearing a face mask, and looks startled to see me there without one.
‘Oh!’ says Jack. ‘We were told we had to wear them. You know – ‘cos of the – thing.’
‘It’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘As far as I can tell. Terry’s being treated so it’s not classed as active.’
‘Oh!’ says Jack again. I expect him to take the mask off, but he stands there a moment undecided. Eventually he carries on, ignoring the fact he’s wearing it, so Terry and I ignore it, too.
‘I bought you a selection of things,’ he says. ‘Honey nut cornflakes, bread, milk, biscuits, tea. Y’know. The basics. Alice gave me a list.’
‘That’s kind of you, mate. Thanks,’ says Terry. ‘I need fattening up.’
Jack looks at him, then at me, then at Terry again, then carries on unpacking. Although it’s hardly unpacking – more like stacking – in the one clear corner of the kitchen he can find. He hesitates before opening the fridge to put the milk and butter away, and I expect he’s glad he didn’t take the mask off.
‘There!’ he says, closing the fridge again. ‘All done! We’ll be back this afternoon to talk about some other stuff, but I’ll let you crack on for now.’
‘Okay mate. Thanks again,’ says Terry. Jack clumps out and shuts the door.
‘I can’t complain,’ says Terry, crooking one leg over the other and crossing his arms. ‘I ‘ain’t got no reason not to get better.’

He starts telling me about his recent past. How he fell in with some big time gangster who let him stay in the cottage in his grounds rent free for a little delivery work.
‘Man – you shoulda seen that place!’ says Terry. ‘The house was like a castle. Actually I think it was a castle. He had this pond in the middle of the lawn, and it was filled with these enormous fish, all flood-lit, swimming about like bastards. Each one of ‘em worth a monkey. And the cars he had. From little fancy Italian sports jobbies to big fuck-off landrovers, all of ‘em in temperature controlled stables.’
‘Didn’t have any horses then?’
‘Horses? Nah! He didn’t like horses. ‘Cept down the track. Anyway, one night I was in the cottage, minding my own, having a little puff, when there was all these flashing lights outside, and I know it sounds stupid but at first I thought some’ink had gone wrong with the fish pond. But then it was all like Police! Open up! And I’m like How do I know you’re the old bill? Anyone can shout anything. So they smashes the door down and they drag me outside. They were after my mate, ‘course. Same old story. They was always trying it on. But they didn’t have nothing. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t careless.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘It all went a bit Pete, I didn’t have no scratch, so I split.’
He shrugs, then leans forwards on his folded arms to inspect his leg as it kicks up and down.
‘Funny how it goes, innit?’

teeny, tiny sharks

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘We’re going to convert the laundry room into a downstairs bedroom for him. There’s a small bathroom next door, so that’s good. And I think it’s nice with the sun coming in like that, don’t you, Stelios? Plus he’ll be in the action – you know? The comings and goings.’
Elena is bright and charming and matter of fact about the whole situation, the matriarchal engine of love behind the family. Her husband Stelios is lying on a riser-recliner, his left hand draped over the side of his head in an attitude of great forbearance, his right reaching forward, as the nurse and I irrigate the fist-sized cavity in his side.
‘How is it looking?’ says Elena, leaning over. ‘Infection still?’
‘I think it’s improving,’ says Gill. ‘Look – see there…and there? A little sloughy, but not too bad. We’ll pack it out again and see you again tomorrow.’
Gill has a fantastically reassuring manner, easy as a mechanic up to her elbows in the bonnet, as happy to chat about where she went on her holidays this year as the way a post-operative wound should progress.
‘Here,’ she says, sitting back on her heels and smiling broadly at me. ‘You can do the next bit.’

The living room is a family shrine. Large, blurry portraits of babies and children, couples being married, couples on holiday, in boats, shops, university gowns, every portrait mounted in swirly, gold-leaf frames With all the ornate furniture, the marble tops and carriage clocks and yellow and green porcelain pot stands, and with the broad bands of sunshine leaning in through the patio windows, the effect is quite overwhelming, like trying to dress a wound in the Cave of Wonders.

‘That was the first place I ever went abroad, Greece,’ I say, gently probing the deeper recesses of the wound.
‘Oh lovely! Where did you go?’ says Elena.
‘Serifos. A beautiful little island. Nice ferry ride out. I couldn’t get over how clear the water was. I think it was the first time I ever swam in a sea where you could actually see fish.’
Stelios groans a little.
‘Is that okay?’ I say.
He waves his free hand.
‘Is good,’ he says. ‘Please – go on.’
‘Anyway – I remember when we got there, I pretty much ran into the sea and swam out as far as I could, and it was all wonderful. But then I stopped, because I thought oh my god, what about sharks.’
‘Sharks!’ laughs Elena. ‘Little tiny teeny ones, maybe.’
‘I had no idea. So I ended up swimming back really slowly, trying not to make a splash.’
‘That’s funny,’ she says. ‘Jellyfish, maybe. Sharks? No. The worst could happen maybe you get tickled by squid.’
‘Or hit by motorboat,’ says Stelios, groaning some more.
‘Your name’ says Elena. ‘Is Jim, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t think what this is in Greek, you know?’
She speaks quickly and emphatically to Stelios, who lifts his hands when and how he can as part of the argument, and it goes on like this for a minute or two, whilst I continue to pack the wound. Eventually, Elena turns to me again and says: ‘Okay. Okay. Is Dimitris for Jim, but Iakovos for James, and anyway some of this depends on what your grandfather was called. It’s complicated. Names can be complicated.’
‘I’ll settle for Dimitris, then. And maybe Iakovos when I’m in trouble.’
‘Are you in trouble a lot?’
‘Don’t get me started,’ says Gill. ‘All done, are we?’

the end of the line

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Eamon is too tall for the recliner, his pale legs extending beyond the foot rest, so that his slippered feet hang in mid-air.
‘We need to get you some support there, Eamon. It’s putting pressure on the backs of your legs.’
Eamon turns his face to me, the waxy skin taught across his cheekbones. And whether it’s the cancer, the opiate medication, the distress of his decline, or a combination of all of these things, but he smiles in an off-centred way, like someone trying to make sense of a dream.
‘I’ve always been tall,’ he says.
I improvise an extra footrest from a packing crate and cushion, then finish the rest of the assessment, writing a long list of all the people I need to ring. I’m frustrated that Eamon was discharged without everything in place, but the wards are impossibly stretched, I don’t know all the facts, and anyway, I haven’t got time to worry about things I have no control over.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘A cup of milk,’ he says, and looks down at a little porcelain cup on the cantilever table by the chair. I take the cup into the kitchen, rinse it out, then open the little fridge under the counter. There’s a huge, six pint carton of full fat milk in the door, a couple of microwave meals, a punnet of strawberries, and not much else. I pour him some milk, take it through and carefully hand it to him.
‘Ahh!’ he says, holding the cup with both hands. ‘Yes!’
Eamon’s chair faces a sash window that overlooks the backyard. In the yard is a clothes line with two white pillowcases gently stirring in the breeze. The sun is directly overhead now, and it blazes down on the linen, giving it a transcendent, brilliant quality.
‘I worked on the ferry,’ he says, staring at the washing line. ‘Then I left to nurse my parents. And here I am.’
‘I’ve always liked ferries,’ I tell him. ‘You really feel like you’re going somewhere. I remember we took the ferry back from France once and it was great. We had a cabin, and I was so exhausted from the long drive I just lay on the bunk and stared out at the sea…’
I almost say that it felt like dying and going to heaven, but I stop myself in time.
He nods, as if he knew that, then shakily swigs down the last of the milk and hands me back the cup.
It’s a small backyard with a limited space at the top between the buildings. The sun has moved only a fraction, but it’s enough to alter the angle of light so the line is now in shadow.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’ Then gently resting his hands back on the arms of his chair, he directs his attention to the window again, the washing on the line, and everything beyond.

little my and the bear

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Minton Green is a blandly perfect, municipal kind of heaven. A development for supported living so new and pristine it’s like I’ve been miniaturised and placed in an architect’s model. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the top of the building lift away and a cluster of gigantic faces peer down to see how I interact with the lobby; instead, what happens is an elderly woman wanders over and asks what I’m doing. She’s wearing a black and yellow square pattern dress that flares at the hips like a bell, her silver hair is swept up into a top-knot, and her face is so pale the intricate threads of her veins run in clear blue patterns across her temple like satellite shots of river courses from space. She has a serious expression, but there’s something hazily sweet about her, too, more a girl of five than a woman of eighty. She reminds me of someone, a fictional character, Little My from the Moomin books.
‘I’m waiting for my colleague’ I tell her. ‘She said she’d be about ten minutes.’
‘Well sit down and talk to me instead,’ she says, and without waiting to see what I think about that, marches off into a wide, communal lounge. There’s no-one else there, except for a large, caramel coloured teddy bear in one of the bucket seats in the window.
‘Come on’ says the woman, and she goes and sits next to the bear.
‘I had a lovely day today,’ she says, as I put my bag down and sit with her. ‘Me and my friends went out to lunch.’
‘Well it’s a nice, sunny day for lunch!’ I say. ‘Where did you go?’
‘The high street,’ she says. ‘Near the old pet shop.’
‘Famous’ I tell her. ‘Lovely.’
‘I want to get a parakeet,’ she says.
‘A parakeet! Wow! That’s exotic!’
‘Or maybe the other one. You know. Smaller.’
‘Budgerigar?’
‘Hamster’
I can’t help laughing.
‘What’s funny about hamsters?’ she says.
‘No, no. Nothing. It’s just – I can never see the point of them. They only come out at night. And then they run round in a squeaky wheel and drive you nuts.’
‘Oh – I wouldn’t mind that. I’m a good sleeper. What do you think of my bear?’
She reaches across and grabs the teddy, squeezing it to her. It’s so big she has to lean round to the side to look at me. The bear has an alarmed expression, its arms up left and right and its eyes bulging, as if she’s squeezing too hard.
‘I bought him in a charity shop. I’m going to give him a wash later, as a treat.’
‘He’ll love that. Just don’t put him in the washing machine,’ I say. ‘He’ll come out a cub’
‘Is that your friend?’ she says, suddenly tossing the bear to the side and leaning forwards to get a better view through the window.
‘No. I think that’s a postman.’
‘Oh. Where are they, then?’
‘I don’t know. She said ten minutes.’
‘It’s been longer than ten minutes, hasn’t it? Well – hasn’t it?’
‘Yes. I suppose it has.’
We sit there, staring through the window.
Two carers come into the lounge, each pushing a resident in a wheelchair. I half expect them to say something about me sitting there in the window with Little My and a giant bear, but they just nod and smile as if I’m a resident, too. And for one, dizzying moment I wonder if I am.

locked away

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It’s like the motorboat was dragged ashore some time ago to avoid a hurricane, and then forgotten.

The whole thing sits on two substantial wooden structures like trestle table legs. The deck is covered by a sagging, blue nylon tarpaulin secured by a single length of rope that crisscrosses from cleat to cleat like the threadbare lace of a giant boot, and the propeller is fixed in the up position, spotted, corroded. And if by some catastrophic tidal anomaly the boat suddenly found itself in the water again – and you found yourself in the water, too – and you tried to get on board using that aluminium ladder at the stern – well, who knows? You’ll try anything when you’re desperate. Scattered around the boat in the long grass are several heavy iron wrenches, lengths of rusting chain, and standing guard over the whole collection, a massive cylinder of pressurised gas the birds at least feel safe enough to use as a perch.

Judging by his beard, cable sweater and tan, I’m guessing it’s Henry who owns the boat. He’s so vague and repetitive, though, I have no doubt it wasn’t a hurricane that saw the boat laid up all those years ago, but a disturbance of a subtler though no less damaging kind.

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ he says. ‘It’s so kind of you to bother.’ He shows me inside to a wooden rocking chair, and then immediately asks again who I am and why I’ve come. Luckily, Henry’s wife, Jean hurries in, wiping her hands on her apron, her smile as taut as the tarpaulin on the boat.
‘Don’t you remember, darling? I told you. This is Jim, from the hospital. Come to see if we need any help.’
‘Well that’s so kind! Help, d’you say? I don’t think we do, though, do we Jean? I think we run a pretty tidy ship.’

Jean talks me through the key points of the referral. The long stay in hospital, the memory loss and other problems, the struggles of the last few years. And at every point in the story, she carefully includes her husband, who receives the information with a wistful expression, as if he’s hearing it all for the first time, the sad decline of a well-meaning but doomed mutual friend of theirs, someone he’d love to help if he could, but doesn’t know where to start.

One of my jobs today is to run a dementia blood screen. I chat to Henry as I locate the vein, taking his mind off the needle. He tells me he used to be a locksmith.
‘You’ll like this story then,’ I say. ‘Sharp scratch.’
‘Oh yes?’ he says.
‘I was brought up in a little market town called Wisbech. Out in the Fens.’
‘Yes?’ he says, as if it’s the most extraordinary thing he’s ever heard. ‘My goodness!’
‘I remember – years ago – there’s was a big fuss. They were renovating an old shop or something, and they found an old safe in the basement. Hadn’t been opened in years. So they got the local locksmith in, and HE couldn’t open it, because it was so old and fancy…’
‘Open what?’
‘This safe they found. In the basement.’
‘Goodness!’ says Henry. ‘Go on.’
‘But the locksmith knew this other locksmith who was an expert in old safes. And he came to have a look. And by this time it was quite an event. The local paper was there. Police. You name it. Because everyone wanted to know what they’d find when they finally managed to get it open.’
‘Well – fancy that!’ says Henry, flashing a look at Jean, standing in the kitchen doorway overseeing the whole thing.
‘So finally, after a lot of drilling and cutting and banging, they finally managed to crack the door and open it up. And you’ll never guess what they found inside.’
‘What?’ says Henry – commenting more on the fact I’ve stopped talking rather than anything to do with the safe.
‘Green shield stamps! Books and books of them!’
Jean laughs.
‘I remember them,’ she says. ‘You’d save forever and end up with a clothes brush.’
‘I suppose they were an early form of reward card,’ I say, withdrawing the needle from Henry’s arm and pressing down on the gauze for a minute or two. ‘There! All done!’
‘They used to have pink stamps, too,’ says Jean, taking her apron off and hanging it behind the door.
‘Did they? I don’t remember that!’
‘I do,’ says Henry.

a picture of aileen

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

‘I used to like doing puzzles until my hands got too bad and I couldn’t manage the pieces. Now I have to make do with giant sudoku.’
Aileen is sitting beneath a large colour studio photo of herself and husband Ian taken taken fifty years ago. Maybe Aileen is sitting there because of the light, or maybe it’s because she likes being as close as possible to an image of her life as it used to be. Whatever the reason, it would be difficult to imagine a harsher illustration of the effects of ageing. Portrait Aileen has a pile of golden hair banded at the cloudy peak with a tiara. She’s wearing a tartan skirt and sash, a silken blouse with ruffles, sparkling earrings and a pearl necklace. There’s a radiance to her that the blurry lens and the fancy drapes translates into something soapy but brilliant. Her husband Ian is just as enhanced, plump and red faced as a russet potato, packed into a kilt, waistcoat and bolero-jacket combination, medals and ribbons and pins, and one hand resting on Aileen’s shoulder, maintaining the transfer of power, one to the other. Real-time Aileen is somewhat reduced, of course. She’s sitting in a similarly demure posture, except now she’s in a fluffy blue dressing gown, the bouffant hair has collapsed into sparse threads of grey, and the rings on her fleshless hands hang loose.
‘We ran a restaurant together. For years – oh, way back,’ she says. ‘I loved it. Ian ran the kitchen side of things, I did the books. We both liked to entertain. Burns night we’d have the haggis piped in. You couldn’t wish for a better life. We had all kinds of celebrities. You wouldn’t have heard of them, of course. Then the lease got bought up by a city type, the rent doubled and we had to move on. Still – things change. No-one can help that.’
She coughs a few times. It sounds like someone shovelling rocks. When it passes, she settles herself again.
‘I get so terribly bored,’ she says. ‘Bored. Bored. Bored. Just sitting here.’
‘I bet. What about your family, though? Are they nearby?’
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘They’re spread about the place. They’ve got lives of their own.’
‘Here’s an idea,’ I tell her, warming to the theme. ‘Have you ever thought about putting your memories down? Writing about your grandparents, your mum and dad, that kind of thing? Not just the war – I mean how you and Ian met, all about the restaurant, who came in and out, what you got up to.’
‘I can’t hold a pen, love.’
‘You could get some kind of recording device. They’re pretty cheap these days. The thing is, I bet your grandchildren and great-grandchildren would love to read about these things, in a kind of family history way, with photos and everything. It’d be like one of your puzzles, only you’d be in all the pieces. It’s nice to know where you come from, how it all fits together. What do you think?’
Aileen is silent for a while.
‘No,’ she says at last. ‘Boring.’

smashing trucks

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It’s a complex family situation – as they often are – but the long and the short of it is, Jimmy’s been sent home to die.

Although the end has come quickly, it’s not entirely unexpected. Jimmy has had an alcohol problem for a good many years, as punishing to his family life as his liver. Nothing helped, not counselling, drug and alcohol rehab, surgical corrections, medication – it all turned out to be a grave but ineffectual chorus singing downstage of the tragedy.

At least Jimmy still has people around him, though. In fact, the house is pretty full. There’s his brother, Tom, Tom’s wife Stella, Jimmy’s stepson Al and Al’s little boy, Kevin. Kevin is about three years old I’d guess, a cheeky, tow-haired kid in a dinosaur T and red shorts, loving the drama of all these people, showing off by diving onto the sofa, smashing his toy trucks together, sneaking up behind you, touching you on the shoulder and then running away screaming, bending over for no apparent reason and looking at you from upside down.
‘Kevin? Why don’t you settle down on the sofa and watch the Formula One?’ says Al, although I’d guess that’s really what he wants to do.
‘No!’ says Kevin, diving under the table.
‘Don’t worry, Al. I don’t mind,’ I say.
Al shrugs, and carries on unpacking the shopping.

It’s the first time I’ve met the family. Truth is, I’d been blindsided by the whole situation. I thought it’d be an easy call, dropping off equipment and doing some obs on a patient before returning to the hospital to take care of all the referrals that’d piled up that day. When I got there I’d found a patient who was actively dying, and insufficient preparation made for any of it. I couldn’t figure out how it could’ve happened like this. After I’d made Jimmy as comfortable as I could, cutting off his hospital gown with my shears to avoid disturbing him too much, giving him a stripwash on the bed and so on, all helped by Tom and Stella, I’d spoken to the office to confirm we were putting in double-up care that evening, then called Jimmy’s GP, who was as confused and disturbed as I was. She’d promised to get clarification from the hospital, and said she’d call straight back.
‘You’ve been so helpful,’ I say to Stella and Tom as they sit down with me at the table with some tea. ‘I’m sorry it’s been stressful and messed up.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘These things happen. At least he’s not in pain.’
Tom puts his hand on Stella’s shoulder; she gives him a brave smile, then wraps both her hands round the mug of tea, to feel the warmth of it.
‘Our son Billy died this year,’ she says. ‘I suppose I’m getting used to it.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’
‘I was with him at the end. He was struggling, so I put my arms round him to help him sit up. He was trying to say something, but he couldn’t get it out, and I couldn’t understand what it was. So I held him like that, and I said I loved him, and then he fell back, and that was that. And that was the start of the year.’
‘I’m just going to sit with Dad for a while,’ says Al, heading towards the stairs.
‘Okay then’ says Tom. ‘Good lad.’
‘Now you be good’ says Al to Kevin.
‘Look at my trucks!’ yells Kevin, bouncing up and down on the sofa, smashing the trucks together, head to head. Peeyow! Pow! Kapooooof!

a cat and a dog

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

a cat

Anna’s bed is in the bay window, the sunniest spot in the house, a light breeze filtering in through an open window, gently filling and turning the curtains. Anna’s asleep, curled up on her right side with one hand crooked under her head; sunlight illuminating the linen sheets and multi-coloured crochet square throw with such intensity it’s as if I’ve been staring at a beautiful painting for so long I’ve found myself suddenly transported into it.
Aside from the bed, the rest of the living room is just that – a room for living. There’s a baby lying on its back in a baby gym, reaching up for the fabric toys hanging overhead, waving his legs and gurgling happily; a toddler, standing on the sofa with her arms draped over the back, staring at me with wide, brown eyes; their mother, kneeling on the carpet, talking into the phone crooked at her neck whilst she folds laundry from the trug, and then her mother, Anna’s daughter Jean, standing in her dressing gown in the doorway, smiling, overseeing everything, cradling a mug of tea.
To add to it, a plump tabby cat strides into the room with her tail in the air. The toddler on the sofa jumps up a little, points to the cat, says Dat! and looks at me even more intensely.
The cat raises its chin like a butler in an over-starched collar, looks right and left, gives one, long, imperious yeowl, then collapses at my feet and stretches out, using her claws on the carpet to increase the bend, until she’s one languorous curve from the tip of her tail to her nose.
Dat! Dat! says the toddler, bouncing up and down on the sofa cushions.
‘Molly!’ says Jean, shaking her head and laughing.
And for a second, I’m not sure which is which.

a dog

Getting in to see James this morning was like trying to solve a giant, unwieldy puzzle. His carer Leila was delayed, some kind of bus trouble, apparently (We didn’t crash she said Thank God! But he is learner driver I think and he clipped mirrors and we all stopped for a long time and eventually I said no, no, no this is not good I have place to go so I asked them to let me be free please, and he did, and so then I ran and jumped on number 5, and change at river…). Meanwhile, Wendy the scheme manager wasn’t answering the intercom button or her phone. Two other residents had come outside already, one to smoke, one to chat. Both had asked if I wanted to go in and I’d said no, thanks, but James’ door is locked so it won’t do much good. They tell me where they saw Wendy last, and that segues into what a great job she does, and how the fish and chip supper went last night. It’s a nice block. Everyone looks out for everyone else, like a vertical village, people coming and going, or hanging around, mostly. Even the contractors working on the underground garage are cheerful and friendly, raising their coffee cups and smiling, more like actors than electricians, sauntering over from the on-location, TV catering wagon in their laundry fresh check shirts and utility belts.

The main door opens again and this time I see Wendy, waving her phone from the mezzanine floor that overlooks the lobby.
‘Can you come up here?’ she calls out to me. ‘Barry’ll let you in to see Jimmy. Sorry about the intercom. They’re working on it… or so they tell me!’
She says this on cue, just as the contractors are passing through the lobby. They smile and raise their coffee cups again, and exit stage right.

I go up – but I don’t have to wait long before Barry appears, an elderly man so immaculately turned-out I can imagine his Spotlight photo in the casting directory alongside the contractors.
‘This way,’ he says, jangling a bunch of keys and pressing the button for the lift. Then he turns and calls out ‘Fred! Come on, mate! We’ll go without you!’
‘Come on Fred!’ I say, then I turn to Barry and ask him who Fred is.
‘You haven’t met Fred?’
‘No.’
‘You’re in for a treat.’
We both turn to look at the archway that leads from the TV room out onto the mezzanine. I hear him before I see him, a deep, wet, resonantly lumpy sound, like an old British motorbike firing on one cylinder. Then I feel him – or I think I do – the thump of him through the springy floor. The lift arrives behind us, the door pings open but we both ignore it, waiting for Fred to emerge through the arch. And then he does – a gigantic black labrador, his tongue lolling out, hauling himself along on arthritic hips, one vast pad after the other, his head bobbing up and down with the effort of it all.
‘Come on, Fred!’ says Barry. ‘Good boy! Let’s go see Jimmy! Hey?’

the stone queen

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There are warning signs tied to every lamppost: Road resurfacing. No parking. Tow-away zone. The silhouette of a truck dragging off a car, and a date scrawled in the space beneath. The date is tomorrow, though, so I figure I’ll probably be good to park here today. I’m prepared to take the risk. If I had to look for a parking space anywhere else I’d end up have to walk miles, and I’m behind on my visits as it is. I put my Parking Exemption ticket on the dashboard, grab my stuff and walk up the path to number 18.

Mina’s daughter, Sarah opens the door. She smiles bravely but looks exhausted, a fresh-looking perm accentuating the dark lines under her eyes, as if the energy it took to highlight and curl has used up whatever reserves she had left.

‘Mum’s upstairs,’ she says. ‘She hasn’t left the flat in a year or more – well, except for appointments.’

Despite the bright sunshine outside – or maybe because of it – the room is muted and still. There’s a large aquarium bubbling away against one wall, stunned fish drifting in and out of focus. The aquarium is so dominating, it seems to extend and occupy more than its own space, especially as the walls and the carpet are mottled green and blue, and all the furniture, too, soft and plump, making it feel like a state room on the Titanic, everything swollen with coral blooms. Mina is sitting in a scallop-backed armchair in the window, Queen of this Undersea World, except her robe of fish-scales is actually a fluffy blue dressing gown, and her trident is a walking stick.

I pull up a lobster, and ask how she’s feeling today.

She turns her sad eyes down on me, and with her knotty fingers draped over the handle of her stick, she sings me the sad, siren song of her back. A soft, sinking kind of song, as lulling as the bubbles. A song of osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, COPD, heart failure, and diverticulitis. Of degenerative changes to lumbar vertebrae that can never be corrected. Certainly not by surgery; she wouldn’t survive the operation. All they can do is control her pain with medication. But she’s sensitive to just about everything, and they’re running out of ideas. She has all the equipment she needs. She knows the maisonette is inappropriate, as she can’t easily manage the stairs, but she’s lived there so long she couldn’t face moving – not that there’s anywhere to move to, bungalows being in such demand.

Sarah is sitting on the opposite chair, kneading her hands as she listens, as if she’s working through it by some invisible mechanism, forcing it to a conclusion. She interrupts when she can: I’ve got my own problems she says. Work. Kids. Everything else.

The questions I manage to ask have all been asked before. Mina deals with them all in turn, scarcely pausing to think, wrapping them up in words, kelp around a propeller.

‘Well – I’m limited to what I can do today,’ I say, shaking myself into action. ‘I’ll do your obs – you know – your blood pressure and so on, just to make sure there’s nothing else going on that might be making things worse, like an infection and so on. Take some blood, too. And then liaise with the GP. How does that sound?’

Mina smiles sadly, then turns her head towards the window.
‘They’re fixing the road tomorrow,’ she says, as I open my bag and set out my things.
‘I saw that! I didn’t know whether it was safe to park or not.’
‘It’s safe,’ she says. ‘I can see your car from here. The little blue one. If anyone goes near it I’ll use my stick and turn them to stone.’

And she taps it, once, on the carpet, to illustrate.