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Red roses on a white fleece dressing gown
Violet sits upright on the dusty middle seat, Isobel gazes out of the window and Martin keeps his eyes on the road. The antiseptic smell of cleaning fluids swirls around the cab. Violet has bluetoothed her mobile to the speakers, the sun shines brightly into the cab and illuminates the grey ribbon road, Martin winces a bit as they bob and bounce their way down the M5, singing to Born in the USA.
Violet needs to touch up her roots, grey spiky strands fight their way through the golden highlights, today though she feels that the grey reflects the road ahead and the sun adds an extra sparkle to her gold bits. It will do, she is hospital visiting and has thumbed a lift from Martin at short notice.
Abruptly the music stops and Violet’s mobile changes to ‘I do like to be beside the seaside,’ stupidly optimistic and nearly always a lie. Violet is not very often by the seaside and doesn’t particularly like it when she is. I should change the tune.
“Mum, you really need to answer that, you can see it’s the hospital, that’s the fifth ring.” Isobel reaches across the dash board and grabs the phone, handing it to Violet, who starts to feel queasy. She carefully slides her finger across the bar and puts the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Oh hello Mrs Sanderson, I have good news, your mother is ready to collect, she has been freshly bathed,” a voice on the other end informs Violet.
“Oh, thank you.”
Violet thinks this sounds as if she has been shopping for a mother on ebay and one has become available, maybe a reconditioned one, with all her parts in working order. However receiving her mother as some sort of gift is not in the plan today and Violet feels a deep flood of rage, it makes her hot and bothered and could easily be confused for the frequent flushes she is experiencing. Breathing in deeply, all her words for once come out in the correct order.
“But I have no clothes for Mum, I’m in a van, I’m just visiting. I was told yesterday there was no chance Mum would be discharged today, I can’t take her home in the van she can’t get up the step.”
“Could I remind you that as a member of staff I do not expect to be shouted at, please do not lose your temper Mrs Sanderson, this is good news for you, your mother has made a good recovery and she is in the process of being discharged from hospital today.”
The phone clicks and there is silence. During the brief call Bruce has climbed out of the window, taking his tune with him, being born to run in the USA doesn’t cut it with the NHS. The cheery, sunny mood of five minutes ago has gone .
“At least we brought Granny a new dressing gown,” announces Isobel brightly. She can see her mother disappearing into one of the many black holes she has fallen down this year and she had been enjoying sitting next to her singing mum just a few minutes before, it reminded her of when she was little. Isobel steps up a gear as she tries to work out how to get her Granny back to the care home safely.
“Mum, do you think we could haul Granny up the two steps into the van, maybe I could push and Dad could pull, she doesn’t weigh very much any more.”
“Of course she can’t, don’t be ridiculous, you know how much Mum has deteriorated, that’s why she is back in hospital,” Violet snaps at her daughter, then looks straight ahead as the familiar stab of tears gather.
Martin is quiet, feeling relieved that he has deliveries to do so has a legitimate reason for not following them into the hospital.
“Umm, send me a text, give me a call, if worst comes to worst I can go home and collect the car after I’ve finished today.”
The van pulls up at the delivery and collection of poorly people area and Violet slides her chubby, too short legs out of the van, plops onto the chewing gummed pavement and slowly follows Isobel into the hospital entrance. She wishes she could go and deliver napkins or whatever it is Martin has to do today. The disinfectant, floral smell which overlays the smell of illness hits Violet as she enters, I will never get used to that smell.
“Do you think they made a mistake, I mean it may be that they have the wrong mother/daughter combo and when we get up to the ward Mum will be all wrapped up in bed?” Violet tries to talk to Isobel, miserably knowing that she has blown her chance today by snapping at her teenage daughter. Isobel walks just slightly too fast for Violet who has to scurry to keep up. Up the stairs, along the corridor, down another corridor and into the ward. Violet is breathless and red in the face, Isobel young and serene.
Violet’s mother, who is known by hospital staff as Patricia, is surprisingly in the same place as Violet left her just under 24 hours ago. She has not been moved in the constant Jenga game that hospitals seem to specialise in. Patricia sits beside the bed with her buffering face on. Violet call it this as it reminds her of trying to log onto a computer, waiting for google to pop up. It can take quite a while when the connection is slow. For Patricia, this is about computing where she is, how she got there, what will be happening next, all through the fog of dementia and chronic illness. Her lungs, legs and brain are all engaged in a relentless battle with an irresistible force.
“Hello Mum.”
“Hiya Granny.”
“Oh hello, how lovely to see you, why are you here?” Patricia smiles, she always smiles and everything is a constant surprise to her.
“Mum, we have to take you home and nothing has been arranged, you have no clothes in here to wear and we don’t have any transport.” Violet uses Patricia’s increasing deafness as a reason to loudly tell her, and the ward, about their predicament.
Patricia, to her credit is unflappable when faced with this outpouring, “well we will have to get a taxi.” This flummoxes Violet, only yesterday Patricia was informing Violet in a very concerned way about the people who were living under her bed, how they needed to eat and which hotel was she actually in? Today Patricia is making the decisions that would have been way beyond her yesterday. The overnight date with an oxygen cylinder and mask has pulled Patricia back into reality.
You’ve also spoilt all my plans, a day out with my precious daughter and I’ve upset her, this was just supposed to be a courtesy call, god knows how we are going to get you in a taxi. Violet pushes these thoughts out and pulls her face up into a smile. You can smile without smiling, she had discovered if you think about your cheek muscles and pull them up. The queasiness threatens to launch into full scale vomit, get a grip, its not Mum’s fault that the place smells of cabbage urine and decay.
“Mum, shut up, Isobel glares across the bed, we can sort something out.”
We have all swopped roles, I’m now the daughter of my daughter, my daughter is my mum and my mum is my child, how has it come to this?”
Dementia has stripped Violet and Patricia of the usual social etiquette and the way they had always communicated. They make it up on a day by day basis. Good days mean Violet is still a daughter, on bad days Violet slides into the parenting role. It messes with her head and puts her easily into ‘those who drink too much,’ bracket.
With her mother sitting at the side of her bed, in a hospital gown and green plastic bag of possessions at her feet, probably pants and one nightdress, Violet realises the hospital mean what they say and her mother is being released for repatronage into the wild, or as some cynics might observe, this one has a care home to go to so can safely be released on Friday afternoon. Violet stomps off to find a nurse and double check identities.
“Look Granny, look what I bought for you, isn’t it lovely and soft. You will look marvellous in this when we leave.”
“Ooh Isobel, what a nice present, all those red flowers, it’s really pretty, shall I put it on?”
“Yes, come on Granny, lets get it on you, good job it’s quite big, we can wrap it around twice, then you will be decent when we leave here.”
Violet watches from the other side of the ward marvelling at how her mother can be so pleased about the dressing gown when at the moment there is no apparent way to get her from this smelly horrible hospital ward to her home. This mother of hers, who when Violet was little, had such a strict clothing strategy. Colours that were never worn together, outfits for the morning and different ones for the afternoon, they never swopped places. Her mum is a stranger to her, yet still so familiar. Is this simply a side Violet had never seen, a remnant of a child who grew up in a long war, where adapting was how you survived.
God help me, I want to run out of this hospital and never come back.
Isobel eyes her mum across the lilac linoleum with a, ‘you need to get your shit together,’ look. Violet pulls her brain back into first gear, lines up her eyes, lifts her lips into position and smiles nicely at everyone around her.
“Come on then, lets get going, see if we can ring for a taxi.”
It dawns on Patricia that she is about to leave the hospital. “I must say goodbye to all the friends I have made here.” Concepts of time have deserted Patricia and these are long standing friends, of only 24 hours.
“Goodbye, I hope you are able to leave soon, yes I am so lucky, I have a wonderful daughter who always takes care of me, yes my daughter is quite the best anyone could wish for.” Patricia has years of speaking to her deaf husband and so her very loud voice rings with enthusiasm about Violet all around the ward.
Violet stands and watches, guilt and confusion battling in her head. Patricia carries on with her ward round, rather like a respected consultant, in her new white fleecy dressing gown with red roses patterned all over. This is going to be a two large glasses of sauvignon night tonight.
“No my Granny is not able to walk out of here, she needs a wheelchair, she has pneumonia, dementia, copd and a urinary infection, or at least she did yesterday, and is being discharged two days earlier than we thought.” Isobel busily informs a nurse, which results in a wheelchair being swiftly produced. The sheets on the bed are already off and new ones fluttering over the mattress, after a quick disinfectant wipe down, the bed is urgently required, no going back now. Patricia has reached the end of her ward round and sits down elegantly in the wheelchair, crossing her legs and tucking in her feet, looking as if she has just sat down for dinner.
Isobel searches out the lifts, navigates the buttons and the trio head out into the blazing sunshine. She has found a number for the local taxi service, “ok 15 minutes, that’s fine we will be waiting on the pavement.”
Violet looks at her surroundings, over to their left stands a patient, judging by the dressing gown, although maybe not as a dress code doesn’t seem to matter any more. Cadaverous to look at and taking what must be one of his final drags of a fag, ironically as if his life depends on it. He looks to the deep blue sky, coughs and looks down again.
It’s so hot that the patches of chewing gum threaten to unglue themselves from the pavement and stick onto the soles of their shoes, Violet carefully moves herself away. Seeing and hearing life so obviously near its end, makes Violet very nervous and her right hand reaches across to her mother, while she attempts to make eye contact with Isobel. She glances down at the clasped hands, traces the veins and contours with her other hand. She could never have enough of these hands, and as her eyes fill with aching tears, she tries to commit the landscape of her mother’s hand to memory, so smooth, so soft and so very old.
The taxi arrives and it is Patricia who takes charge, leaning into the window, “I would like to go to Worlebury please, shall we sit in the back together Isobel?”
Violet sits in the front, its all been too much today, she know she has been grumpy, ungracious and snappy. Guilt floods in, how long will this go on, I so desperately want Mum to live but I can’t bear this slide, how am I going to get through it.
She swallows the lump in her throat and keeps up a steady stream of inconsequential chatter with the taxi driver, during which she learns that he is an avid Glastonbury Festival fan, and in two weeks time will be sunning himself in Ibiza. He does load of these trips and doesn’t seem to find anything odd in one of his passengers being in a dressing gown.
“Hey Mum, once we have dropped Granny off, lets go for a beer, we deserve it!” Isobel grins at Patricia and turning around Violet smiles properly for the first time that day. I really should discourage her from drinking.
“I would love to, thank you so much Isobel.” Violet’s tears dry and her queasiness eases, enough to get through another day.
