‘Not bad,’ she said when we were both done. ‘Not bad at all.’
By the time New Nurse came back, we had hung up the sign and applauded the newly named art therapy room of the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.
Even if she never came back, even if she spent many years searching for a job, even if her degree proved useless and she never got to make art, The Temp would always know she had a friend here, and that she had made a mark on the hospital. She deserved recognition, because it was she who created the Rose Room.
Runaway
IN HOSPITAL, THE day, as it normally functions, is distorted – bent like a straw seen through a glass. Bigger in some places than others, disconnected and yet whole. In the outside world, the day starts when the sun comes up. In hospital, the busiest hours can be the middle of the night. People sleep through the sunlight; they wake in the darkness and go for walks, for coffee, for a crafty cigarette, only to find it’s several days later than they thought and actually half past nine in the morning.
The hospital itself never sleeps. The lights of the corridor are never switched off, which is something I realized several weeks after I came here. It’s the same with the lights in the main entrance, and everywhere else. I imagine that occasionally a porter will come along to change a bulb, but the light is relentless.
I’d been lying awake since two, but it felt like the middle of the afternoon. I hadn’t been able to get this one memory out of my head. It was a memory of a TV advert I’d seen on a hotel television in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. It was an advert for an adventure company, and in it a group of children were white-water rafting on a river. The children wore fluorescent orange helmets and they were paddling themselves through the moving river and screaming with delight. I told myself that one day I would go there and do that.
So, I decided it was time I made good on the promise and took myself rafting. I closed my eyes and walked with bare feet on the rubbery grass towards the edge of the water. I climbed into the inflated orange boat. It rocked a little, but the instructor held it steady for me. I pushed away from the riverbank and paddled. Once the boat had gained some momentum, I let my hand run along the surface of the cool water. It splashed up my sleeve, an icy but refreshing surprise. I could just about hear birds if I strained my ears over the sound of the rushing water.
As I paddled further down the river and past the lines of conifer trees on the cliff above, I realized I was alone. I’d forgotten to imagine having friends, and now I was in the boat by myself and it was too late to conjure anyone up.
In some of the daydreams, I would drift successfully to the end of the river. In others I would fall out of the boat, and in some of those I would be rescued by the handsome rafting instructor. Other times I would hit my head on a jagged rock and slip slowly into the dark water, blood swirling up above me.
At some point, the sun had started rising in the May Ward and I heard The Girl in the Corner’s friends arrive. There were at least five of them and they had all adopted the gentle, hushed language that people reserve for the dead and the dying. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tune out their voices, and I couldn’t get back to my white-water rafting. I supposed it was just as well; I had been at it for hours. If I wasn’t careful, my skin would prune.
They knew everything. They shared stories and jokes. They brought her presents they knew she’d love. They took selfies with her. They missed her.
The girls I knew at my second Glasgow school weren’t like that.
They were sweet to tolerate me for as long as they did. They let me come on nights out with them, allowed me to go to their parties. But they weren’t mine. Just borrowed. I didn’t get their jokes and they didn’t get mine. I kept saying things that weren’t right, even though I know my English is fine. And when I stopped going to school, it was easy.
I imagine they were relieved.
I know I was.
I listened to The Girl in the Corner’s friends trying to talk without pity in their voices, trying to play down the significance and the fun of the group holiday The Girl in the Corner had missed. But I heard her voice shake when she spoke.
So, I tried to block out her friends and I stared at the curtains that surround my bed. They are green and awful. But no matter how hideous they may be, what always cheers me is the thought that for someone, somewhere, these are the ideal hospital curtains. That person had the responsibility of ordering curtains for the whole hospital and they chose these curtains from a catalogue, had the order approved. The order was placed and the material shipped, the curtains assembled, and all of the May Ward and most of the rest of the hospital was adorned with green chequered curtains featuring navy flowers with an odd number of petals.