The Nurse(30)

I also couldn’t get her words out of my head, I followed you.





22





I’d only worked a few shifts for the agency before I moved to my new apartment in Bathford. There were several nursing homes within a few miles radius who were always crying out for staff, so as long as I could manage on the bus, I wouldn’t bother with a car. When it came to winter, the chilly wait for a bus might change my mind. I hoped by then, I might have money to spare. I’d asked to do night shifts, to bring in even more money, and I’d signed an opt-out disclaimer with the agency that allowed me to work more than the recommended forty-eight hours. Most of the time I’d be working twelve-hour shifts. If I did five days, a sixty-hour week, I should be able to pay the top-up fee for my mother’s care and be able to squirrel away enough to buy a decent car.





Two weeks after that mandatory training day, I was surprised to get a message from Carol.

Hope you’re well. Fancy meeting for coffee?





I looked at it for a long time without responding. If there was a hidden meaning in the words, it was lost to me. I remembered the unease she’d triggered… that strange sense that I knew her from somewhere. But even as I thought I shouldn’t, I was tapping out a reply to say I’d love to meet.

Living in Bathford, I was now on the same side of Bath as she, so I suggested meeting in the café in Alice Park. It was convenient for me, the bus stopped on the London Road immediately opposite, but it was in Larkhall, her patch of the woods, and I wondered if she’d suggest going elsewhere. To my surprise, she responded almost immediately.

Perfect, it’s near me. How about tomorrow?





Tomorrow? Her eagerness to meet puzzled me. More… it worried me. Was I paranoid to think she must have a hidden agenda? A very well-hidden one, I couldn’t see any reason for her interest in me. Unless she knew something about me – but I’d been careful in the Bath United. At least I thought I had.

Anyway, the following day didn’t suit me, I was starting the first of three twelve-hour night shifts.

I’m working. How about on Tuesday?





Perfect. Midday in Alice Park?





I sent her a thumbs up, and dropped the phone on the table beside me.





If it hadn’t been for the extra money, I would have avoided working nights. The shifts tended to be hours of boredom punctuated with brief spells of activity. It left too much time to think.

Depending on the home, I might have one or two care assistants working with me. They liked to watch TV or witter on about their boring insignificant lives. I avoided sitting with them and instead, made a vague excuse about reading patient files that I didn’t care if they believed or not, and sat at the nurses’ station. Usually, I’d read whatever book I’d brought with me, but on that first night the words on the page kept sliding out of focus. My thoughts insisted on drifting back to Carol, convinced as I was that she had to be up to something.

The nurses’ station was well lit, but outside, along the corridors, subdued lighting created dark places where anything could be hidden.

Like the dark spaces in my head. But now, instead of Jemma and Olivia calling to me, it was Carol’s voice I heard. But try as I might, I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say.

Over the three nights, I alternated between being determined to cancel my meeting with her and my need to find out what, if anything, she was up to. It weighed on my mind, making me irritable. I could see the care staff looking at me and muttering to each other when they thought I couldn’t see or hear. I could, but I didn’t care much. I wasn’t paid to be nice to them, and I never made the mistake of being irritable with the residents, the female residents especially. How could I be, when in each I saw shades of my mother? And as I tended to them, I was tending to her, and when they responded with a ‘thank you’ or a smile, or sometimes a pat on my cheek, I imagined my mother’s voice, her hand, her love.

My imagination. It was all I had.





23





The quality of sleep after a night shift is different. Sleep comes with startling immediacy and departs in the same way. No matter how irritable, stressed or angry I might be, as soon as my tired head hit the pillow, I was gone and a few hours later wide awake. After the first night, I was asleep by eight forty-five and awake by eleven. The following day, I did a little better and slept till twelve. After my third and final night, when it didn’t matter, I slept till two.

One night off, then I was back working four nights. Two in one home, and one each in two other homes. Not the best, but it was important to take the shifts when they were available because it was impossible to tell what might happen in the future. Plus being obliging went down well with the agency, and I hoped that would pay off eventually with the pick of the best shifts. Or better, work in a private home with one patient to care for.

By the Tuesday when I’d agreed to meet Carol for coffee, I was exhausted. I’d finished the last of the four nights that morning and had slept till ten thirty. Almost two hours sleep. It’s no wonder that when I looked in the mirror, I laughed at the face I saw. I kept my hair short for convenience, trimming the ends when they started to feather over the Nehru collar of my uniform. My first grey hair had appeared when I was seventeen and now, at twenty-nine, there was only a hint remaining of the brown hair I’d once had. Between the grey hair and the pasty skin, I looked like a ghost.