The next day, The Temp telephoned the children’s ward of the hospital to try to track down the girl in the pink pyjamas. All she could tell them was that she estimated the girl was about sixteen or seventeen and she had blonde hair and pink pyjamas. After nearly forty minutes of being on hold and being transferred and being interrogated about her intentions and several lies about how she was related to the girl, the hospital gave The Temp the name of the ward where the girl could be found.
And that was how The Temp came to be standing at the end of my bed, a look of remorse on her face and a posy of yellow silk roses in her hand.
Lenni and the Art Room
THE TEMP IS probably prettier than you imagined her. Taller, too. She was more nervous than she ought to be, though. She seemed surprised that she could sit on the edge of my bed without my bones shattering like glass. We have shared heritage, she believes, her father being Swedish too. Or Swiss. She couldn’t remember. And that mattered, of course. But not as much as what she told me next.
New Nurse said that if I wanted to go to the art room, she would need to ask Jacky’s permission. Jacky said it wasn’t up to her, so New Nurse had to find a doctor who could confirm whether I was allowed in the newly built patient art room and that I wouldn’t be at risk of disease or infection or rabid wolves gnawing at my drip tube.
But New Nurse didn’t come back. While I waited, I read that morning’s out-of-date newspaper. Paul the Porter sometimes leaves them for me on my bedside cabinet. I like the local newspapers best – where the rest of the world doesn’t exist, and all that matters is the local primary school’s new nature garden and an old woman who knitted a quilt for charity. Children are turning one year older, teenagers are graduating and grandparents are being laid to rest. Everything is small and manageable and everybody waits their turn to die.
When I’d finished reading the newspaper, I waited some more. At first I waited patiently, but then I started to think about it properly. A room, a cuboid space to which I had never travelled, existed. There’d be paints, pens, paper and （Vishnu willing） glitter. I might even be able to get my paws on a permanent marker for the graffiti I’ve been planning. Right above my head, on the shelf made out of sockets and switches, is the hospital’s kind reminder of my impermanence. A whiteboard that says ‘Lenni Pettersson’ in red marker with a smudge near the final ‘n’。 The thing about whiteboards is that they’re so easily wiped clean. They’re designed to be used again and again and again for the names of the unlucky few who find themselves in the May Ward. One day, in just the briefest stroke of a dry whiteboard eraser, I’ll be gone. A new patient with skinny arms and big eyes will take my place.
I waited some more.
I had a watch when I first came here, and even when I was wearing it, I spent most of my time asking people what time it was and then asking again because I didn’t believe the reply. I thought I’d been in the May Ward for two months, only to find out it had only been a couple of weeks.
But that was several years ago.
After that morning, I waited for seven weeks for New Nurse to get back to me about the art room. I became anxious, frustrated, desperate, and then at peace with her absence. In that order. Twice. In the fifth week that I was waiting, I mentally designed the art room in my mind, using The Temp’s descriptions. I never forgot the windows. The Temp had said there were large windows on either side of the room. In the weeks that I waited, the windows became larger and larger until the whole back wall of the art room was one huge open window. The other side became a wall constructed entirely of paintbrushes – hundreds of them sticking out from the wall, just waiting to be chosen.
By the sixth week, I started to get excited again. I rehearsed in my head what I would say when New Nurse arrived to take me there. I deliberated over which pair of slippers I would wear （Everyday Casual or Sunday Best?）。 By week seven, I was calm and ready. With every day that passed, my confidence grew. I no longer needed to plan or imagine. She would come. New Nurse would come for me.
‘Sorry I took so long,’ New Nurse said when she came back. ‘I hope you weren’t waiting all this time?’
‘I was,’ I said. ‘But it’s okay, you’re here now.’
New Nurse checked her watch. ‘God … two and a half hours. Sorry, Lenni.’
I smiled and shook my head. The hospital is a cruel mistress. The International Date Line runs somewhere between the end of the May Ward and the nurses’ station. The only way to fight Hospital Time is to never fight it. If New Nurse wanted to claim that she had only been gone for two and a half hours, then I would let her. People start to worry if you fight Hospital Time. They ask you what year you think it is and if you remember the name of the Prime Minister.