Edna Eglinton
Notes from Bed 13
Mrs Lee received her death sentence today.
The doctor walked slowly up the ward, told her he wanted to talk with her son - we all know he’s not easy to reach (we suspect in prison). But he gave her the results of her tests gently, as gently as he could amongst these listening, watching beds.
When he stood up to leave we all looked away.
In the Day Room, Arthur complains he is dying piecemeal, part by part, one arm, one leg, sight fading, paralysis gathering against the fight of pill and measured nursing. ‘Why’, he asks, ‘do they
bother? They should stop it all and let me go - give their time to
someone they can save’.
Maureen covers up her symptoms. She wants to go home; wants to die in her own bed, not here among us strangers. She writes cheerful cards to her children in New Zealand. ‘They don’t have to know until the very end; there’s nothing they can do, and they’ve the future of their own to think on’. She needs her dignity to justify her self-appraisal. I speak platitudes, tell her to keep fighting, but feel a hypocrite. I know my stay is temporary.
I shall soon be going home.
Page(s) 19
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