Submerged in the cloakroom, hiding behind voyeuristic coats. After weeks of my nagging, we’re clutching hands. Clumsy kisses make me want more but I’m too young to fathom what follows. Playground swagger drains from him as I persist. Maybe I come on too strong. Our parents receive a phone call.
Impacted
The sterilised smell and lighting of hospitals put me on edge. As soon as I step inside I know rooms are filled with bad news and long stay patients. The very air stifles and numbs. It’s no comfort my mother’s health is at the mercy of this humourless environment.
Her room is too small for its massive, automated bed, and even that seems unable to support all the medical paraphernalia attached. She’s lost in a mess of wires and sweat-drenched bed sheets and for the first time in my adult life, I’m truly frightened. She’s out of her mind on morphine and starts to scream at my father for wearing bandages only she can see. In the agonising moments that follow, my dad tries his best to keep my mother calm. He adopts an unnaturally measured voice but his stress and strain are evident. Neither of us can recognise the woman in the bed. Watching my mother’s pained, hysterical out burst take the last ebb of energy she has, watching my father grow unnervingly quiet, faced with the room’s soulless décor and its view of a muddy, unremarkable car park, I suddenly understand what mortality might amount to -anonymous defeat.
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