Writing for Fun
January 2019
Reflections - Pete Norman
I can hear her.
With few other sensory perceptions to interfere, my ears have the complete and undivided attention of my brain and they are functioning with abnormal acuity. In this challenging situation, throughout the long days and the unendurable depths of the nights, my ears are my life-line, my only link to reality.
I can hear her as she walks slowly down the ward, even though her voice is hushed and conspiratorial. These clandestine moments are so precious to me because they are the only time that I can actually learn what she truly thinks. These whispered confidences to Elizabeth out in the corridor, where she believes she cannot be overheard, offer the cold hard truth of my situation, a world away from the supportive platitudes that she whispers into my ear.
As she finally turns the corner and enters my room – my prison, my sanitised sarcophagus – her voice changes in an instant to one of encouragement, of forced optimism and false hope. Soft footsteps approach my bed and she brushes her warm vibrant lips across my own unresponsive mouth. A familiar perfume fills my nostrils, overwhelming my senses. I want nothing more than to engulf her in my arms and to return her kiss as I have done every day throughout our years together but that is now an impossibility. A warm tear drops onto my cheek. In embarrassment she quickly wipes it away with a tissue but I wish only that she might have left it there for me to treasure, a tangible manifestation of her love, of her grief, her desperation.
I hear the sound of a chair being pulled towards the bed. She fluffs up my pillows and straightens my pyjama top. A warm hand lifts mine from the bed, her thumb traces my fingers.
‘Hello, my darling and how are you today?’ Her hand slowly pumps mine in an effort to elicit some physical response from my useless flesh.
‘Can you squeeze my hand, Richard?’ With every fibre of my being I concentrate on the atrophied muscles, demanding their cooperation, for some physical sign to show her that I am still with her, that there is a fully functional brain trapped inside this dysfunctional body. Her grip softens, her disappointment is evident but she seems reluctant to release my hand, she maintains that intimate contact as she lets out an almost inaudible sigh.
Seamlessly her mood lifts and Susan begins to regale me with the minutiae of her day, the progress of those I hold dear and her plans for the future. I am disturbed to hear her say that my sister is planning to visit me in a few weeks’ time. I want to tell her most emphatically that there is no way this should happen. I love my sister but she lives on the other side of the world and she can afford neither the time nor the expense to come here just to see me. I was certain that any local supermarket would oblige her if all she wanted to do was to see a vegetable.
She chats freely with Elizabeth about the price of the weekly shop, the interminable progress of the Brexit negotiations and various feminine trivia which I would – in a previous incarnation – have probably ignored but in my present situation such social intercourse holds a disproportionate importance to me.
She has no way of knowing that her visits are the highlight of my day, that I use the various routine sounds in the ward to count down the hours until she is with me again and every day I bless that angel in a blue uniform who, in the early days, had encouraged her to maintain a conversation as if I could really hear her, to treat me as if I was a sentient being and not simply a breathing cadaver.
The afternoon is drifting along at a pace and I know from past experience that the visit will soon be over and that I will be left to my own reflections once again with nothing but the ministering of my blue angels and the daily visit from the doctor to look forward to. Today, however, the doctor arrives early, while Susan is still with me and it is not the usual one – this voice I don’t recognise.
My usual doctor has a very good bedside manner despite the fact that, as far as he is aware, his patient is away with the fairies. On every visit he takes my pulse, he pricks my finger with some sharp implement in a futile attempt to stimulate response, he opens my eyelids and shines a bright light onto my retinas. I can hear every word he confides to the nurses and his tone is always mildly optimistic, sympathetic to my situation and concerned for my physical wellbeing.
This doctor, however, is nowhere near so compassionate. His prognosis contains not a grain of comfort. He tells Susan that in such a severe form of ‘locked in syndrome’ – the likelihood of any kind of recovery was miniscule and that as I have showed no discernible progress, even if I did manage such a miracle, being able to communicate with her by eye movement alone was the most optimistic outcome she should expect. His professional recommendation was to terminate the life support systems and to allow me to ‘die with dignity’.
For one heart stopping moment I even found myself wondering whether his cold impersonal logic did in fact make sense, whether a removal of life support and a slow decline into oblivion would be the sensible option, not just for me but for Susan who could re-start her life in some different direction. However, the cussed, determined and belligerent part of me soon buried these morbid thoughts where they truly belonged.
Through listening to the doctor’s comments I had learned that I had been incarcerated in here for six months but my own recollection of the passing of the days was a mere fraction of that. This must surely mean that I had been unconscious for the greater part of that time and I drew comfort from the discernible progress I must have already made from total oblivion to my current perceptive state. I was going to recover. I was going to regain my motor functions. I was going to be me once again . . . it might just take a little while longer to accomplish that ‘miracle’.
Bless her, my Susan railed angrily against his pessimism, arguing that hell would free over before she would ever allow that to happen and that she had only one purpose and that was to allow me to ‘live with dignity’.
I was in complete agreement with her on that one. No thank you doctor, I am not ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet a while.
I screamed at the doctor in mute defiance, using words I had almost forgotten, dredging them to the surface in honour of the occasion . . . but to no avail. If he was only able to hear the abuse which I hurled at him I am certain that he would not be seeking permission to slip something deadly into the drip.
As always, despite the fact that she has spent a significant part of her busy day entertaining me, when she says her farewells and leaves me it is far too soon and the hours following her visits are spent in sad and silent reflection on the life that has been torn from me – torn from us – and, as always, a leaden despair settles in, threatening to engulf me.
Throughout each day my thoughts are disturbed by the kind and gentle ministrations of my blue uniformed angels, washing me, changing me, rearranging my bed and I guess, from the familiar sounds, changing the life giving fluids that the doctor might soon be depriving me of.
In the night-time the ward settles into a silence which is only broken by the occasional conversation of the nurses at some far off bedside or the clattering of some trolley along the ward. It is during these times that, with minimal stimulus to fill the time, I try to sleep but the pattern of sleep in a hospital bed is a cruel and inconsiderate friend and many of my night-time hours are spent in silent and solitary reflection.
In the morning I hear the ward awake as usual. My sheets are changed, my hair is combed, my teeth are brushed and I am cleansed in a manner which, were I otherwise, would be a source of great embarrassment but I have long since abandoned the luxury of that concern. I wish that they would shave me but there is only one nurse who performs that task and it appears to be her day off today. Nevertheless I imagine that I will still be somewhat presentable for my visit this afternoon.
I can hear her.
I can hear her as she walks slowly down the ward but the tone of her conversation with Elizabeth is far more sombre than usual. My heart sinks – I hope to God that she is not seriously contemplating conceding to the doctor’s terminal advice.
As she enters my room her voice lifts and for a fleeting moment it is almost possible to be fooled into thinking that today is just an ordinary day and that life will go on as it always has.
Almost possible.
I listen to her conversations with only half an ear, my mind is trying to come to terms with the enormity of the threat that hangs over me.
After what seems to be another hour I hear the sound of the doctor approaching. All thoughts of bedside manner has been abandoned. He immediately launches into Susan, almost demanding a definitive answer to his proposal. My darling sweet wife resists bravely but I can hear subtle changes in the tone of her voice as if a dark resignation has settled upon her, as if she is weakening in the face of this so called expert’s opinion.
Once again I scream uselessly at them both, to hear me, to consider my feelings in such a devastating decision but nothing has changed and I am forced to listen helplessly as my very existence is being negotiated.
The doctor performs his usual tests, he takes my pulse and he pricks my finger but my muscles are atrophied, my nerve pathways forgotten. I am helpless to respond. As he opens my eyes and shines his bright light on my retinas I make one last herculean effort and as I stare blankly at my own reflection in the doctor’s glasses . . .
. . . I blink my eye.