Non fiction

Mari

i.
It is early evening.  A woman sits on a plastic chair, by the side of a hospital bed.  She looks like she has been sat there a while and has a half drunk bottle of Coke on the floor beside her and a rucksack  – the bed is in shadow/you can’t see who is in it.  There is the sound of hospital equipment bleeping periodically in the background, and the hiss of an oxygen mask.  The woman is sat with a ball of red wool in her lap and a French knitting dolly in her hand, slowly winding the wool around the pins as she speaks.

(Lights Up)

She’s sleeping now, her breathing more regular with the oxygen tube clipped to her nose.  I’m sitting here French knitting.  It keeps my hands busy, gives me something to do.  I was about 5yrs old when my Nan first handed me a big wooden bobbin with four nails hammered into the top.  She taught me how to wind the wool around the nails to make a spider’s web, how to use a needle to pull the loop over each nail.  Then, magically, the long worm of wool would start to creep out of the end of the bobbin.

Her chipped nail varnish is bugging me, I meant to bring some and give her a manicure to cheer her up.  But somehow I don’t think she’s bothered right now.  She kept gripping my hand earlier, her long nails digging into my flesh.

I prefer being here on my own, without other people sitting around in hard plastic chairs trying to make polite conversation.  My brother staring into space and glancing nervously at the bed, Mum wincing every time she hears the muttered (pause-  look straight ahead) ‘Please let me die.’ (she places the knitting into the rucksack, stands and stretches as if stiff/tired, then sits back down with a sigh)

It took a bus ride, two trains and two more buses to get here yesterday.  Past the smokers in their dressing gowns at the entrance, a wrong turn into the canteen to see tables of patients and visitors sipping cups of lukewarm tea.  Along a winding corridor and over the footbridge, down some steps and into the basement of the old hospital building.  The ward has eight beds, four on each side.  She was lying in the first bed on the left, as I walked through the door.

(she looks towards the bed) I wish she’d eat something.  But her appetite has disappeared, like the flesh on her bones.  At home when I visit her I usually take a cream cake.  She always refuses the proffered sandwich, saying ‘I’m not hungry.’  But her face lights up when she sees the cake, (half laugh) and I smile as she devours it, leaving a spot of cream on her cheek.

The worst part is not when her breathing becomes shallow, or the times she grips at the sheets, shifting up and down the bed to get comfortable.  (she grips her hands tightly in her lap and looks down at them briefly) The worst part is when she says ‘I want to go home.’ (looks directly at audience)  Because it’s the one thing that will never happen.  And I hate every time I lie to her and say ‘You will, we just need to get you back on your feet first.’  The truth’s a bitch.

To see my brother kiss her as he was leaving, and say ‘I love you’ killed me.  It was so out of character.  It killed me more that I couldn’t do the same when I kissed and hugged her.  (She gets up and walks to the bed, as if checking on the person lying there, smooths the blankets and sits back down)

One day, a year or so ago, she told me how she’d lost her first child.  The family secret, that we vaguely knew, but she never spoke about.  June she was called, and just eighteen months old when she contracted meningitis.  She sat with her for two days straight, becoming so exhausted the nurses sent her home to have a bath and get some sleep.  She was drying her hair when the policeman knocked at the door.

It was still dripping when they led her into the hospital room, forced the limp little body into her arms, and made her hold her dead daughter.  She told me how she’d tried to keep her hands behind her back, shut her eyes.  Shut out reality.  She looked down at the cold, lifeless body, screamed, and ran from the room.

(Blackout)

ii.~
Woman stood looking out into the audience.  She has her coat on and her bag is clasped to her chest.  She looks tense.

(Lights Fade up)

I walk down the corridor, see Mum at the end of it, stood near the window.  Rushing over to her, I hear the words ‘You’re too late.’  And I just stand there. 

A million questions run through my head.  Why didn’t I come over yesterday?  Was she alone?  Was it quick? (pause) ‘Can, can I see her?’ I manage to croak.

I am led to a curtained off bed in the middle of a busy ward.  And there she is.  Not looking like she is sleeping, or at peace.  But with her mouth stretched open in a silent, never ending sigh.   It’s really unsettling. (stares out into space)

I take a deep breath, (pause) remember her sawing branches off the garden tree to make me and my brother bows and arrows, our trips on the bus to Manchester Airport to watch the aeroplanes taking off.  And I think about the young woman, who lost one daughter, and brought up another one on her own.

Then I bend down and touch her hand, stroke her hair as I kiss her forehead.  ‘Goodbye Nan, I love you.’

(Go to Black)

Hayley Alessi © 2013

Hayley Alessi