‘Ruthie Ruthie Ruthie.’ His dry lips graze my neck, old skin on new skin. ‘Wishing and hoping … Thinking all the time, but no faith in yourself. Have you?’ In his headlock, I am perfectly still. I think he is going to eat me. He whispers into my ear. ‘I wouldn’t fuck a girl like you these days, let alone when I was your age.’ The meat of his torso pushes into my open mouth.

I jerk back and the tap of his IV drip hits the floor. The stand rolls away and crashes against the tiled wall. Blood spurts out of his arm like the needle pulled the whole vein along with it. He flops back on to the bed. His head hits the headboard and his arms go limp. Did he really have me in a headlock a moment ago? I am perfectly still standing next to the bed. He is unconscious. His discoloured eyes are staring at the ceiling. I turn to look away from him. My clog squeaks in a puddle of saline solution.

It takes an effort to walk and not run, and I make it. I compose myself. I straighten my smock. The tap of his IV drip hitting the floor. Take the lift. Ting, stand, ting. Walk not run the three steps down to the Bowl. Mona is back behind the desk. She looks up sternly, then her expression changes.

‘Are you OK, Ruth?’

‘I’m breaking for lunch now,’ I say. It is ten in the morning. I am panting.

She stares at me through the glass pane.

‘It’s my elbow,’ I say. ‘I’ve hurt my elbow.’

Mona doesn’t say anything. I am nearly out of the door when I turn to take a look through the thick glass of reception. All the lights on the switchboard are off.

BLEACH

Ruth

Now

6:30 p.m.! It’s Monday! It is customary for the staff of the care home to hold a small function when we lose a long-term patient. Sudden deaths aren’t usual, more often there is plenty of time to make the essential preparations. Most of them die at home. At the eleventh hour, conscientious relatives will finally consider reintroducing a patient to their original household. Unfortunately, death in old age is as much of a gamble as it is throughout life. We keep our patients monitored where we can – anything short of wiretapping their rooms – to keep the family informed. We can’t record the images in their room; privacy comes first in private structures like ours. So sometimes we miss the exact moment of their passing. It’s nobody’s fault.