By Ken Bruen
Someone close to me has been in hospital for the last 2 weeks and is in an open ward….private rooms are not so much expensive as just impossible to get
And ok………..they do cost
We have the trolley situation here, that means, if you can be admitted to a hospital, you’re on a trolley for 2 days , in a public corridor and lucky to have it
The new Ireland, just after we’d been declared the 2nd richest country after Japan, we treat our nurses and hospitals like total shite
Most days, I sit by her bed and am ……….just there, as she is heavily sedated and I dunno if she even knows I’m there
I know
So, I’m a writer, I do what writers do
I listen
Wish I didn’t
There is a woman across from us, aged 80……….I know, she told me
And she has had two strokes
She doesn’t know that
She tells me, as I hold her beautiful weathered, worked line hands
“Amac ( son), you have ferocious cold hands”
I say
Cold hands……………..
And let her finish
Her whole face lit up
“Warm heart.”
Every day, I try to bring her some small trivial item and she grabs my hand when I bring the Claddagh angel, says
“You’re a lovely man.”
I look at my friend opposite and wish she could have heard that
Better, probably, she didn’t…………..she’d have said, in the way only Irish women can
“And you’d have believed that?”
The woman, of the strokes?
She spent 50 years working in Croydon as a bar lady and said
“Tis a wicked place, I hated every moment of it.”
But she did it
Paid to put her family through college and she smiles, that Irish melancholy, not one trace of bitterness, adds
“They don’t talk to me now”
Now Croydon is a bad Detroit and if you live in Detroit, I mean no offence, it’s just a place where they chew you up and spit you out, the English version is worse, all cement and coldness and as I don’t expect to be doing a reading there anytime soon, that’s how it is
Her husband Larry…………I swear, on me child’s head is ninety, and looks like an Irish Clint Eastwood, all lined face, gravitas, and dignity and he is going deaf, so he has a hearing aid
He sits by her bed, I think, nine hours a day and holds her hand and she’s yapping away, he can’t hear much but looks at her as if he is hanging on her every single word
Now fuckit…………….that is love
What do I know about it?
Indeed……….when you’ve lost your marriage, you’re hardly the expert on the topic
I do know when I see such care, warmth and affection, I’m seeing something rare, I look at them, with ok, yearning and
They kill me
I’m downstairs in the coffeeshop, grabbing some respite when Larry comes along, sees me and adjusting his hearing aid, asks if he might have the honor to join me?
Aw fook
Honor?
I say of course and go and get him a cup of tea…………..I just know he’d never have drank coffee his whole life and I add a slice of Danish
He looks at it when I put it down and reaches for his wallet
I say, not shouting , but clearly
“My treat.”
He nods
Tries the tea and I know he thinks it’s shite, a weak tea bag and piss poor water……….he says
“Isn’t this grand”
No irony
He really means it
He has the most amazing blue eyes I ever saw, full of knowledge, and deep, deep sorrow.
He’s wearing an impeccably white shirt, not a speck on it, a carefully knotted tie, blue blazer, a little the worse for wear, and grey pants with a crease you could shave yer own
self with
I’m wearing a t-shirt with the logo Head Games
And me faded blue jeans
Guess how I feel?
He says, adjusting his hearing aid to max
“You were very kind to Mairead”.
I mutter she is easy to be………..kind to
He tries the Danish, his false teeth having trouble with all the sugar, say’s
“She thinks she is going back to Croydon.”
And I say nothing…………..not one word
He adds
“She hated the feckin place.”
After my friend is released from hospital, I buy a large bunch of flowers, go to see Mairead and her bed is vacant, I ask the nurse where they moved her, she says, her whole body screaming
knackered !
from too many shifts and without any malice or bitterness, just the facts, the words
“Oh she died.”
She is too tired to be nice
Moves on
I stand there
The flowers in me dead hand
Tom Russell’s rendition of Bukowski’s Crucifix in a Dead Hand unreeling like a slow snake in me mind
I remember when Craig Mc first introduced me to TR………..and how blown away I was by him…………without music, there is no heart, only the void
Think of Mairead, think of that smile when she saw the tiny angel
Thank god she’s not in Croydon
I give the flowers to another nurse who says
“I have a boyfriend.”
Right
Let’s hope he has half the stuff of Larry
I get outside of the hospital and it’s pissing down, like teeming, I have me hat but you know, for one moment, I just stand there, the rain lashing down and I’m not going to go deep…………..say………gee…….it was cleansing or I felt I knew the answer
Mainly I was thinking
Now and again, you get the chance to meet people like them………….is it a blessing or a curse?
Base a whole doctorate on that.
A man passing says
“You’re getting fucking drenched there”
I give him the look, say
“What’s it to you?”
Wonderful man……………right, I’m so relieved that Mairead never got to know me, the temper, the insecurity, the depression…….yada yada………..who I really am…………. she saw a simple surface , I’m so glad she never knew I was a writer and all that entails …………… Maybe I’ll move to Detroit
And yes, me hands are cold
Seems fitting
KB