‘Can I go to the chapel now?’ I asked. ‘I’ll take myself if you’re busy.’
‘This isn’t The Lenni Show, you know,’ she said. ‘I know that there are certain members of staff who give you special treatment, but you are just the same as everybody else, except you make twice as much work for everyone.’
‘No I don’t,’ I said, but without providing any evidence to the contrary.
‘Ridiculous,’ she said under her breath.
Another tear broke free.
When security didn’t come at once, I wondered whether the hospital security hated Jacky as much as I was starting to. It was nice. It undermined her need to swiftly deal with me, so I stayed there, refusing to wipe the tears from my eyes. Clearly thinking the same thing, Jacky picked up the telephone again. ‘Yeah, it’s Jacky from the May Ward,’ she said, ‘I called for security …’
The door buzzer for guests, staff and other May Ward prisoners buzzed, and a tall figure emerged through the doors wearing a security uniform. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
The tears were out of my control now, rolling down my face and dripping onto my pyjama top. My nose decided to get in on the action too, leaking down my top lip.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Are you … okay?’
‘I want to go to the chapel, to see the priest,’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’ Jacky said to him sharply.
‘Sunil. But everyone calls me Sunny.’ He held out his hand, but Jacky didn’t shake it.
‘I’m the one who called you,’ Jacky said. ‘This patient is obstructing my nurses’ station.’
‘I want to see my friend,’ I said again, as more tears slid down my face.
Sunny looked from me to Jacky and back again. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said lightly.
Jacky looked like she was going to explode.
‘No,’ she said, ‘she has to wait. I’ve told her to wait.’
Sunny seemed perplexed. ‘It’s really no trouble.’
‘We can’t have one rule for her and a different rule for everyone else.’ She jammed the lid of her highlighter pen into the palm of her hand.
‘Is there someone else who wants to go to the chapel too?’ Sunny asked. ‘Cos I can take them all, I don’t mind.’ He smiled.
The cruelty of strangers never usually upsets me, but the kindness of strangers is oddly devastating. As Sunny asked me if I was okay again and offered to take me wherever I wanted to go, I really started bawling.
‘I called you so you could escort this patient back to her bed,’ Jacky said. ‘If you can’t do it, I’ll find someone else who will.’
Sunny glanced at me. He seemed unwilling to come and physically move me. He took a step towards me and said, ‘In that case, young lady, would you mind escorting me to your bed?’
I nodded and sniffed. I started walking and he walked ever so slightly behind me so that anyone else on the ward would think I was leading the way.
I reached my bed, from which Jacky and the nurses’ station were still visible. She had her neck craned round so that she could see if I’d made it. Like a heron searching for a worm in the grass. I sat on the end of my bed and she turned away, satisfied.
Sunny pulled the curtain so that Jacky couldn’t see me any more. ‘Keep your chin up,’ he said.
When I’d finally gathered the energy to draw the curtain the rest of the way round my bed, I drank almost a whole jug of water. I didn’t want to lie back on the bed because I didn’t want to be comfortable. Being comfortable would mean giving in. I didn’t want Jacky, who definitely couldn’t see me, to think that I was now at peace with her decision or my detention.
And I sat there for perhaps an hour or two trying to decipher the reason for my tears – was it the fact that I had my plans thwarted? That I didn’t get to see Arthur? The fact that Jacky didn’t care that I am dying? Or the fact that I’m dying? Or perhaps, I realized, I was crying because I live in a place where dying doesn’t make you special.
Then, a voice on the other side of my curtain whispered into the silence, ‘Lenni?’
‘Father Arthur?’
‘It’s Father Arthur,’ he whispered back.
‘Father Arthur?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come in!’
He crept into my cubicle as though he were on some sort of parody Second World War mission.
‘Sunny came to see me,’ he whispered.‘You know Sunny?’‘I do. We met at the hospital’s interfaith barbecue last summer. He’s a lovely young man, don’t you think?’‘I do.’‘Anyway, he came to see me because there was a patient from the May Ward who was upset because she wasn’t allowed to visit the chaplain.’ He hovered awkwardly near the edge of the bed and smiled. ‘I think there’s only one person in the whole hospital who would be disappointed if they didn’t get to see me; and it’s you, Lenni.’