Chapter Seven

RHYS

Nurse Kat has gone. With a sudden, panicked waft of her hands, which I assume is supposed to encourage us to chat amongst ourselves, she’s disappeared. Through the slightest gap in the curtain, I see her rush to the more important emergency and out of sight. Shit.

‘So, Susan,’ I start, then realise I’ve prepared nothing to follow up with and my small talk is notoriously poor under pressure. I catch another flash of Kat hurrying past, before she’s gone again. It draws my attention to the gap in the curtain and I take inspiration from that. ‘Shall I close these?’ I ask, pulling the fabric together, layering them one over the other to eliminate any gaps to the outside. Pleased I’ve reinstated her privacy, I then wonder if I really want to be cordoned off with her, or her with me, so push my hand back between the curtains, wiggling them apart a little. ‘I’ll leave it like that,’ I say. ‘Best of both worlds.’

Susan blinks from me to curtain, curtain to me.

This was a bad idea.

Maybe I should leave.

Her hazel eyes are fixed firmly on mine – one more so than the other, where bruising spreads from eye to cheek to jawline. I want to ask her if it hurts. She watches my every move: hands out of pockets, back in. A roll to the balls of my feet, then back to rest on my heels. I hug my arms in tight. She sees it all, just like Mum used to when she was suspicious of me in the garden, back in the days I’d sneak tomatoes from the shed. I make a tiny movement to the left, a change of weight, she follows it. They didn’t teach this kind of situation at plumbing school. The art of mute customers was not a module between back boilers and shower installation. Nor was extricating yourself from a customer who may have the answers to all your questions, but not the voice to share them.

And yet, I’m still here.

I go to rest my arm on the contraption from which her leg hangs, but let my arm do a weird hover in mid-air as I think better of it. She watches that too. I opt for perching on the tip of her visitor’s chair instead. ‘I guess Kat will be back soon,’ I say, nodding my head too many times. We sit in silence for a few seconds. The rescue mission continues outside with shouts, an alarm, lots of squeaks of shoes on lino and orders echoing down the corridor outside – occasionally punctuated by a cough from the bed next door. There’s a window open; in a pause from the panic, a child shouts down below, a tantrum maybe. I don’t know. I was never any good at kids. I pull at my T-shirt and blow my hair from my face. She’s still watching me. I remember now, how she stood in the window upstairs, watching as we drove the van away from that last visit.