‘Can I bring the boys in tomorrow? It’s Sunday, Sundays are boring and they’d love to see you?’ Alex asked, softly.

‘Who? The kids? Are you mad? Look at them all, Alex,’ I said, ‘look across at them, talking yesterday, unconscious today. I can’t have the kids here. They’re young, I don’t want this to be …’ I said. ‘They’re too young to have to watch this. This is not OK, they shouldn’t have to be here …’ I paused. ‘To see this.’

I could see him thinking – about leaving it, pushing it – forming a sentence.

‘I can’t think straight in here,’ I told him.

‘But you’re getting, so, so …’ He paused. ‘Fast.’

‘Fast?’

He left out Worse. Or Incontinent. Perhaps Unbearable. Or Thin.

‘Alex, if you don’t help me, I swear I will throw myself from the window.’

He looked aghast.

‘Sinéad, please … I’m trying.’

I attempted to change the subject.

‘Michal’s very fresh with Molly.’

‘He’s a player,’ Alex said and laughed.

‘Ah, he’s not,’ I said.

‘He certainly is. And you’re right, you are in that bed too long.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to convince you of, see you’d go mad yourself in here.’

‘Right. Fancy a walk? I’ll push if you sit. Deal?’

This was a test.

‘Deal. But just to the loo?’ I motioned, feeling queasy.

I could see he was ahead of me, plotting.

‘I’m taking my wife to the corridor and we will stop off at the loo upon our return,’ he said, formally. ‘Now, isn’t this like our good pub days? Me pushing you along in a shopping trolley?’

The corridor was apricot too. Nurses moved fast with clipboards and cans of Coke. Patients shuffled along, keeping close in to the walls, some were holding onto a railing with both hands. It was too busy, even for Alex, negotiating the chair. We came back past the loo.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Need to go …’

He opened the door inwards, and awkwardly dragged my chair in after him.

First he put down the toilet seat, and held my elbow as I lifted myself up and out, and crouched over the loo. I vomited, he held my hair back at the nape of my neck, cold and clammy, and when I was finished he wiped my face with those thick paper hand towels.

‘Shit. Can I help?’

I gawked, and blew my nose.

‘Sorry, but I still … I still need to … go.’

‘Yeah … OK, right, sorry.’

He lifted me onto the loo.

I sat there and he tried to be discreet, checking out the mechanics of the showerhead and running his hand along the uneven grout and over the sink. Hhhhhmmm. He went. Then he hummed. Next he played with the SOS cord.

‘Pull it.’

‘No.’

We laughed.

But nothing.

Stranger fright. Performance anxiety.

‘Run the tap,’ I said.

‘What? You finished?’

‘No, just turn it on. The tap.’

And he did.