She circled the space. The art room was ready, it was waiting. The pencils were unbroken, the tables unmarked, the sink still bright white and the floor not covered in paint drips. One day soon, she thought to herself, this room would be alive with colour and buzzing with expression. It would give the patients somewhere to soothe their souls. Somewhere to be heard. A place they could stop being ‘ill’ people and just be people for a while. Before she locked the door, she breathed in the fresh paint smell of the walls and reminded herself that just a few months ago, this had been a badly managed stock room for IT equipment.
The morning of the grand opening, The Temp drove to work feeling as though she might be sick. She couldn’t wait to tell people about the art room, but more importantly, she couldn’t wait for the patients to see it. The one thing she hadn’t been able to imagine was what it would be like when they got in and started to use it. What stories would those first paintings tell?
When she arrived at the office in her specially bought outfit, she couldn’t understand why The Boss was so reserved, why he wasn’t meeting her eye and why the atmosphere felt so … low. She showed him the Twitter coverage on her phone and ran through the itinerary for the grand opening.
‘Look, I hate to put you on the spot, especially today,’ he said, running his fingers through what was left of his hair, ‘but we’re going to need an art teacher, and with the budget cuts, and temps needing holiday pay …’
The Temp’s heart was racing; she would be lying if she said that she hadn’t hoped he would ask. After all, it was obvious the art room would need a teacher and he had dragged his feet about hiring one. He knew she had a degree in art – who could be better? She squeezed her own hand tightly.
‘Anyway, the woman I’ve hired is going to cost more than I thought, so we don’t have the budget to renew your contract at the end of the month. But please do stay for the opening. And you’ll have three weeks before your contract officially ends.’
The Temp smiled for about three or four seconds while her stunned brain tried to communicate with her mouth that this was not a time to smile.
Then came the time for the TV interview. She led the journalists into the art room and helped them set up shots with the poorly children who had been invited to the grand opening. （‘Just broken arms and legs please, nothing too depressing, no cancer patients,’ had been the instruction from The Boss.） The news presenter arranged The Temp with the children, and the camera panned across as she demonstrated how to paint a star, the children copying with thick yellow poster paint on black paper. Then the camera zoomed in on The Boss, who had arrived with a sense of purpose, reeking of fake Gucci perfume and letting everyone know that he was the department lead on the project. He was microphoned ready for his interview, which would air on the evening news at 6 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. The Temp rose slowly from her seat and exited the room.
She held back the tears all the way to the office. Emptying a box of photocopier paper onto the floor, she hurriedly filled it with her possessions: her mug, her photo frame, her box of tissues. She had much less stuff than she had thought, and even her personal papers and paint samples for the art room fitted neatly into the box. She placed her staff card on her boss’s desk and shut the door.
Her head was blurry, stuffed full of emotion. She wanted to get out of the building before the TV crew and the children and the reporters came out into the corridor; she couldn’t bear them seeing her. But without her staff card, she had to use the public door rather than the staff one and she couldn’t remember how to get to it. As she made her way along the maze of hospital corridors, she broke into a run.
She didn’t see the girl in the pink pyjamas until she had crashed into her.
The Temp managed to regain her balance but the girl in the pyjamas didn’t. She tripped over The Temp and fell to the floor. A little heap of bones and pink.
The Temp tried to apologize, but all she managed was a strangled squawk. The nurse who had been walking with the girl crouched down beside her and called to a passing porter to bring over a wheelchair. The Temp didn’t even get a chance to see the girl’s face, but she noticed her thin arms as the nurse fussed her into the wheelchair and wheeled her away. She tried to shout an apology after them.
Those thin arms as the girl was lifted into the wheelchair were all The Temp could see when she tried to sleep, several glasses of Merlot chugging their way through her system but doing nothing to soften her thoughts. She couldn’t go back there. But she had to.