Sundown

SUNDOWN

Her name was May, but she called herself  June. She was the kind of woman who dated buskers and tourists and giants.  The daily slog to the hospital was wreaking miracles on her bathroom scales.  One day she had arrived in the orange side car of a Harley Davison  to much amusement while she tried to fluff up her helmet hair.  August was a scorcher and the car park was as full as an egg.   She passed the open ambulance with only a cursory  glance and spotted the usual suspects in the covered  porch. The deaf man slumped sideways in the wheelchair had prevailed on yet another unwitting stranger  to wheel him up for a  fag.   The people in pyjamas with the bags of blood and liquids still attached-  some with nasal tubes and oxygen  - sat companionably smoking  on the window ledges swapping horror stories about their injuries and operations.   June eased herself through them, smiling and enquiring and sanitized her hands. In the foyer the procession of anxious faces remained a constant even though the clothing changed. Stoic faces sitting under the signs and arrows. She liked to get the talking started in the waiting room. She palmed a magazine from the hatch of the shop as she bought a cold drink which she’d drop  back later when she had regaled the ward with titbits.   Hatching and dispatching in spades but no matching.  So many tears shed here that they dripped down the walls and made the receptionists mascara run.  It smelt of antiseptic and onions from the vending machine sandwiches, and the discarded cartons were littered across the plastic tables.   One day she had met an actor from Fair City buying a packet of Tayto and a Twix and mortifyingly called him by his characters name.  June observed the customary etiquette and ran down the 3 flights of stairs on the outside.   The handrail was for people pulling themselves up.

Dolly was standing inside the glass doors in her blue suit. Anyone meeting her would assume she was a visitor, the hanging boy’s grandmother maybe. He had a tracheotomy when they cut him down and only grunted now. She linked him around until her ankle tag called a halt to her gallop. Her look of surprise never varied when the alarms went off and the doors closed in her face. She would stand smiling and waiting for someone to come through so she could get out.  She wandered all the livelong day from ward to ward, getting into the wrong beds, picking up trinkets from lockers and re-distributing them all over the gaff like a geriatric magpie.  June stood calmly waiting while the carer in her purple tabard waddled up sighing to release the magnetized clip. 

“Jesus, she’s at that all day” she complained ,blowing her fringe up from her red face. June wondered what size her pants were as she watched her lead Dolly away with the promise of a nice cup of tea.   At the nurses station just outside the ward there was the standard frenetic activity. Phones, beepers, pagers and tags sounded a constant cacophony of rings. The only time June had realized how quiet the hospital could be was when she went up to the hospice room on the top floor to say goodbye to her friend.  The one who had once paused  momentarily in the application of red lipstick in a  pub toilet to show June her stoma and the bag. That room was as hushed and still as a marshmallow cloud. And the breath of air blowing in from the bottom of the open window had softly rippled the white billowing curtain and made her believe there WAS  a waiting presence. June had laid her banging head down on the cool chrome bars surrounding the cot and allowed herself to exhale and feel and cried quietly and without  fuss  or drama  as the woman with the white turban breathed her last.

When June walked into the semi-private 4 bedded  room her Mother shared with Betty her bed was empty.  The bathroom door was closed and Betty was sitting in a vast pink satin nightdress scoffing chocolates from a ribboned box. She indicated the closed door with a nod of her head and still chewing announced that they had been in there for a while.   

“Ah, sure they gave her a stool softener this morning, the craythur.” She picked out a caramel and offered the sweets across the tea tray.

June resisted with ease. The sweets had a  sheen on them from the heat and were melting fast. Which may have explained the speed with which she was consuming them.  June had heard the Doctor  prating away that blood pressure,  high sugar levels and obesity were dangerous from behind the screens. Did he not know they were fabric, and not soundproof? The whole nation could hear what was being said. Despite all of this Betty was constantly rustling wrappers under the pale green hospital blanket.  June busied herself fussing around her Mothers  bed , and placed the bag of laundered nightwear  into the wardrobe and watered  the one plant the H.S.E. would let them keep on the sill. Flowers and bouquets were forbidden but it was ok to leave all the lights and heating on day and night and the hot water running in every bathroom in the whole building. Betty picked up her phone which had begun to beep with a text and answered it instantly. June watched her fat hands fiddle with the tiny keys and then lay it down on the mounds  of her ample chest and  sigh.

“Well Betty,  isn’t it another beautiful day. What I wouldn’t give to be outside” said June staring longingly at the reflection of the dappled green shadows from the line of trees at the window.  

“I remember the time I was up in Queensland, or the Northern Territories, I can’t be sure of which. Oh, the heat, girl. T’was atrocious. I thought out of it I’d never get. My son rented this house, and as true as I’m lying here -  may I never get up  - this lad appears at the foot of the bed in the middle of the night”.

June was only half listening as she read her Mothers chart and noted everything on it. She had pocketed 2  Xanax and a Stilnocht one day to prove  that she was being sedated. It had been a pleasant evening.  She looked across at Betty who was heaving herself up in the bed with the hoist in preparation for the business of the tea she had ordered at 7am. Cold meat salad, tea with brown bread and jam.   

“What lad?”

“The height of him – he must have been about 7ft tall. An Angel, or a spirit or something. I’ve a great belief in all that though. The husband  slept through the whole thing.”

June arched a freshly tinted eyebrow.

“Did he have a message for you?”

“Divil a bit, just smiled “  Betty stacked her ever increasing pile of magazines on the tiny locker where she had hidden the stash of contraband sugar. She smoothed the sheets around her and sat complacently waiting for a bit of diversion. June dined out on the stories from this and other wards as she was as familiar in this space as the furniture having been a daily visitor now for 6 months. She had seen things that no-one should see. Or everyone.   

“How did Mam do at lunchtime , Betty?”

“Jelly and Ice-cream, that little Indian nurse ladled it into her” said Betty.

June eyeballed the Arisept and Ebixa in the plastic cup on the trolley and checked that the crusher was still hidden In the corner of the window sill, although she was adept at using the back of a spoon to make a fine powder to sprinkle through strawberry yoghurts. There was a noise at the ward doors and the women looked over to see two orderlies come in and unplug one of the stripped beds and nodding hello push it back out through the double doors. As they left carers came in pushing a bed on which was piled clothing and a pair of black shoes. They left again, laughing. One, with the blonde ponytail, discreetly pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the screen.

“What’s this?” said June after the doors swung closed.  She marched over to read the name tag on the headrest.  “These are men’s shoes, for sure”

Betty was beside herself in the bed. She jiggled excitedly. This was just too good to be true.

“Maybe it’s the healing priest back in again. I knew he was sent out too soon”.

June was peeping in the plastic bag on the bed. There were razors at the bottom.

“He could know the 3^rd secret of Fatima for all the good it will do him here”

She wondered how much longer her Mother would be in the bathroom with the nurses, and who exactly was in there. She could hear the sound of gloves being pulled from the dispenser on the wall and the sounds of water running when she put an ear to the door. A soft mumble of voices but nothing distinct.   It would be useless to ask Betty as she only ever said the “little dark one” and never knew  -  or cared to ask -  their names. She sat down in the padded chair to watch the proceedings unfold. In minutes the ward was busy with the admitting of not one, but two patients. One who came on a trolley, and one who was wheeled in.