People LIke Her(43)

I did suggest once to Emmy we drop her a line and see how she’s doing, and my wife asked me why we would do that in what looked like genuine bafflement.

Twenty-three years. That is what people kept saying to me, reminding me of. Twenty-three years in the same hospital, the same department, for the last ten years the same job. It seemed to be hard for some of my younger colleagues to get their heads around. Sometimes, to tell the truth, I would find it hard to get my head around it myself.

I was not sorry to be retiring. It is tough work, being an intensive care nurse. That is the first thing most people say when I tell them what I do for a living. What I did for a living. That it must be tough. It’s certainly intense, I would sometimes tell them. Knowing that when someone comes around from major surgery yours will be the first face they see. Knowing that you are going to be dealing all day with people who are scared, confused, in pain. Knowing that for every one of the people you are looking after, your diligence, your experience, your sense of when something is not quite right, could literally mean the difference between life and death.

That is something, isn’t it? Not everyone can say that. That the work they do, every day, every shift, literally saves lives.

Sometimes when I think about all the people I have kept alive over the years, professionally, and of all the people who have been taken from me, personally, it almost feels like I would be within my rights to even the score a little with the universe. Just by one or two.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I wonder what I have become, what kind of person thinks like that.

Sometimes I feel like it was actually my job that was holding me together, all that time. When George died. When we lost Ailsa. When I lost Grace. Maybe that was what gave me the strength to get through the days: being able to go to work and focus on dealing with someone else’s suffering, someone else’s pain. There’s not a lot of time for moping and introspection in an intensive care unit. There’s not a lot of time to think about your own problems.

Which is not to say the sadness or the hurt or the anger go away.

I had repeatedly told everyone I did not want a retirement party. For weeks and weeks I kept dropping hints that I did not feel like a big thing, with speeches and balloons and a cake and all that. I have always hated being the center of attention at the best of times, and I had my own very good reasons for wanting to avoid the spotlight in those last few months.

They did it anyway. A surprise party, no less. Or that was the plan, anyway. I had just finished scrubbing out at the end of a shift, and someone messaged me and asked if I would pop up to the big meeting room on the seventh floor, and my heart sank and I knew before I opened the door that a load of people were going to be sitting there in the dark, all poised to turn the lights on and shout, “Surprise!” And so it was. And, as I had expected, they had all gone in together and bought me some flowers, some chocolates, a mug with a joke about retirement on it, something to do with gardening. There were speeches. And all through the speeches, as people were talking about how “kind” and “thoughtful” and “patient” and “sweet” and “lovely” I am, as they were saying things about never having seen me flustered, how they had never seen me lose my temper, never heard me snap or say a cross word about anyone, I kept looking from face to face to face, and I kept thinking, If only you knew.

If only you fucking knew.





Chapter Ten


Dan

There are some days when everything just seems to go wrong from the start. Take this morning. For some reason, completely out of character, Bear decides to wake up at four thirty and start screaming. I go through and check his nappy and settle him. Fifteen minutes later, he starts screaming again. Emmy goes in. For about half an hour I can hear her through the wall, jouncing him and shushing him and soothing him back to sleep. The instant she tries to put him down, he starts screaming again. From Coco’s bedroom, through the door, I can hear a plaintive voice asking what’s going on. It’s now five fifteen, and since Emmy has a photo shoot later I get up and offer to take the baby for a few hours.

Before Bear came along I think I had forgotten what it was like, having a very young baby. The relentlessness of it. The constant stream of things to worry about. The never-ending to-do list of baby-related tasks. The amount of pressure it puts on you as a couple even at the best of times.

When I get tired, I get cranky and I get clumsy. Not a great combination. The first thing I do when I go down to the kitchen is open a cupboard door to get a bottle out to decant Bear’s milk into, turn to grab something out of the fridge, then turn back to bash myself on the open cupboard door, right between the eyes.

Emmy shouts down to see what is going on. I shout back, “Nothing.” She asks what all the swearing is about then.

It takes me about five minutes to find the empty plastic bottle I got out of the cupboard, which seems to have immediately vanished. Eventually I find it, right in front of me on the counter.

By this time Bear is getting hungry and whiny and irritable.

It’s mornings like this when I find myself reflecting in amazement on how little childcare they did, the men of my father’s generation. Did he ever change a nappy, my dad? Perhaps once, badly. I know he used to complain sometimes about the smell of the nappy bucket, the one by the back door, and there was a family story about the time he was leaving for work in his best suit (I picture it flared, acrylic, with wide lapels) and managed to kick the bucket over or step in it. But I can’t remember ever hearing about him getting up in the night to do a midnight feed with a bottle or pushing a pram around the block to get me to sleep. Or even taking me to the playground or park on his own. And this is the early eighties we’re talking about, not the fifties. My mum had been to college and read The Female Eunuch and had her own full-time job—and she still cooked all the dinners too. I just can’t understand how they used to get away with it, the men in those days.