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The sound of her mobile phone jolted her from her thoughts, and she saw her mum’s number flashing. Elda picked up.
“I’ve had a heart attack. It was all too much with your nan, and I’m in the hospital.”
“What?” She focused on the concrete wall in front of her and picked at the peeling paint while her mother croaked on.
“It was the middle of the night when they brought me in. I’ve just woken up with wires coming out my nightie.”
A nauseating dread leeched through Elda’s body. She ran her hands across her dry lips, imagining the worst waiting for her back home. She made her way back to Charlie’s house on autopilot and threw the contents of her top drawer into a rucksack.
Two hours later, she drove Jack’s mini towards a red and white barrier at the hospital and screeched into the first parking space she spotted.
She grabbed her bag and marched towards a set of revolving doors. There were figures hovering outside, pushing wheelie drips and flicking cigarette ash. She shuddered, grateful for her own vitality.
Elda braced herself. Her mum’s cardiac episode, as the doctor had described it, had been serious enough for a hospital bed. But her mother’s tone on the phone had been entitled. Elda pictured her laying in a bed, barking at the poor staff.
She stopped at the shop for chocolates and a magazine, putting off the climb up to the ward. As she emerged into a vast atrium, she stood, still and insignificant, as trolleys bustled past, and families held each other’s hands. Everything, and everyone, towered above her.
A robotic voice announced the ground floor and a pair of lift doors opened. An elegant stranger entered, and they both reached to press floor six at the same time.
At the cardiac ward, Elda approached the front desk and was shown to her mother’s cubicle. A pale blue curtain shielded her from the other patients.
The room was stifling, a stench of cooked dinners and bleach hanging in the dead air. Elda became conscious of the sound of her footsteps, and the weight of her coat.
Her mum was awake. “Hello, love.” She looked almost grateful, underneath her grey hue.
“Fill up the water, love. You can help me to the loo in a bit?”
“Of course. How’re you feeling?”
She was jittery. “Will you fetch some milk for my tea. The old biddy didn’t leave me any. And they’ve left my clothes all over. Can you fold them?”
Elda couldn’t bear it. “Mum, I can’t stay long. I need to go and check on Nan.”
“She’ll have been okay, because Aunty Cath was coming in this morning, and she’ll have got her breakfast and a bit of lunch.”
Aunty Cath wasn’t a real aunty. She was a lady down the road, and Elda wasn’t convinced that her flying visit was adequate care for her frail grandmother.
“How are you feeling, Mum? Have you seen the doctor?” Elda wanted to understand what had happened.
“The doctor came this morning. He said I need to rest and can’t take on too much at home.”
Elda was sure her mother would have spun the doctor a real yarn about the pressures of her caring role.
“I told him there’s your nan to look after, but he was having none of it. He said I needed to stop doing all the lifting and all the running around shopping and cleaning.”
This was pretty simple advice for someone who’d just had a heart attack. But her mother’s words gnawed at her.I’m never there. I don’t help. I’m selfish.Elda had a soundtrack in her own mind, and none of it was kind.
“You do need to ease off, Mum, if you’re not well yourself. We’ll have to look at what support we can get for you. I’ll have to come home a bit more and take care of you both.”
“Oh, Elda, you’ve got your own life to live. I don’t want to burden you with all of this. It’s enough for me, and you don’t need to worry too.”
Her mother’s sing-song voice didn’t ring true, and Elda remembered that beyond the curtain her fellow patients and the staff could hear everything.
Elda knew, deep in her stomach, that this was a moment that everything changed for their family. Her grandmother needed someone to look after her, full-time. She was dying, very slowly, of all sorts of things.
She rose to pull back the curtain at the other side of the bed and took in the ward. There were six beds in the room, each identical. Two elderly women were asleep. Their names were scrawled above their heads. Two more women were lying in bed, dozing in and out. One was reaching for her water jug and pulling her face into strange shapes.
The last patient was surrounded by family. More visitors than were allowed on the ward, but no one was complaining. They’d dragged plastic chairs up to the bed. Their voices mingled, and warm laughter erupted. The woman was being lifted from the bed and onto a comfortable foam chair. Her son was pouring fresh water and tidying away old snack wrappers. Her daughter, the elegant lady from the lift, was stroking her mum’s arm and talking to her in a soft voice.
