Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

We found Ivy in the back bedroom. The stench was formidable. The woman was covered in open sores and lying in her own faeces, severely dehydrated and malnourished. Her sight and hearing had gone. Vomit rose up my gullet, scalding my throat and the back of my nose. I forced myself to swallow it. Rang the ambulance and the police.

Ivy died an hour after reaching hospital. A court case found the couple guilty of manslaughter. The hearing was intended to assess what lessons if any might be learned from the event. Should there have been professionals asking questions when Ivy disappeared so comprehensively? The sister’s enquiries had not been taken seriously for several months. And it appeared that there had been a breakdown of communication between the hospital and the community nursing service on Ivy’s discharge after her stroke. Why had that happened? And how could it be avoided in future?

You never forget something like that and there was no way I could tolerate the thought of missing the hearing and not contributing what I could.

Naomi

They are moving me to a different ward. I’m no longer hooked up to all the tubes and stuff. I’ve not been out of bed yet, though; even turning over is agony still, because of my collarbone and ribs, and I’ve got a cough. I try so hard not to cough. Now I can eat and drink, they let me have tablets for the pain instead of a drip, but they ration them out.

I smell awful. This sickly, sweaty smell. And my teeth are literally furry. How can the nurses bear it? If only I could have a shower. They took one of the other women yesterday. She couldn’t walk but they had her in a wheelchair and she was smiling when she came back. Said, ‘That’s done me the world of good.’

Along the corridor the light is blinding and we hit patches of cold fresh air. The porter wheels the bed along. I wonder where Alex’s ward is. Mum and Dad said he was here still. I’m so glad he’s all right. I want to see him. We’re soulmates. We have the same birthday, like twins. We look a bit alike too, the same height, both with dark hair, but his eyes are green, this amazing electric green. I could almost see Alex as my brother, not in a pervy incest-type way or anything, but we squabble sometimes like I did with Suzanne growing up, though not so viciously. We play-fight and then one of us catches this look, like a glint in the other’s eye, and then we’re in stitches. I’ve never laughed as much as I do with Alex. We’re friends as well as a couple. We like the same stuff.

He likes to argue. It’s his legal side. He’s really quick to spot things he sees as stupid or contradictions. Like how if it’s wrong to kill someone, then capital punishment is wrong too.

And the job! At last one of us with a job. A real job. It was getting pretty bleak there for a while. Sending out a million applications and not getting any replies. Slobbing off to the Jobcentre to be patronized by some idiot who keeps suggesting you update your CV or widen your options. What options? In the last six months I have gone for jobs at call centres, a packaging warehouse and a care home. Some options.

Mum’s face fell at the care job. ‘Oh, Naomi, it’s awful terms and conditions. They treat most of the staff like dirt.’

I told her not to worry. I wouldn’t get it. I was right. But then I got the classroom assistant interview. I’ve missed that, but at least I did get one. It’s not totally impossible.

Alex hates the whole circus, too. He did economics at A level as well as politics and law and Spanish. And the economics means he’s always arguing with the Jobcentre people about unemployment and the deficit and that.

‘They want to blame us,’ he said to me, ‘pretending that if we only had a bit more about us, nicer suit, brighter smile, we’d find work. Totally ignoring the numbers. Over a million out of work under twenty-four. Where’s the jobs?’

Him getting a job is our salvation. Even if I don’t find anything for a while, we’ll still be able to get a place of our own. He always wanted to do law, from high school, he says. He got a first at uni – really keen. He was chair of the law society and the debating society. I still don’t know what I want to do. It’s not like I’ve got a particular thing that I’m brilliant at. Or a passion like Dad and his music. They all had a career in mind: Mum, Suze, Jonty. Me – zilch. That’s why I did tourism and leisure. It wasn’t too specific. I was so sick of it by the end, but by then I’d met Alex and didn’t want to mess up and leave, and so I scraped by with a pass, a third class in my degree.

He went round firms in Newcastle trying to get an internship or a training place, unpaid if necessary. He was determined to get something, and when he didn’t receive any offers it drove him mad. I’d do anything just to pay the bills, but for Alex he also wanted it to be a stepping stone to achieve his real ambition, to be a lawyer. Things got a bit scary with money; there was no way we could manage on jobseeker’s and housing benefit. Didn’t even cover our bills. Alex had a credit card and he maxed it out. His mum ended up clearing it. Lucky sod. We were both pretty stressed out and we had a few rows, mainly about money.

When the nurses have gone, after I’ve had my checks and used the bedpan and got over all that and the throbbing pain has settled a little, I close my eyes and think. How hard can it be to remember? If I just focus properly… I tiptoe back along the tunnels of my memories, like exploring underground. Here is the moment I woke up in hospital. I was in the ICU. But behind that, before that, it’s a hole, like a bomb crater with ragged edges. I skirt around it. It’s a dangerous place; the ground is crumbling at the rim and I might fall in. It is a bullet hole in my brain, the flesh torn, the matter missing, a smudge of blood. Edging round the gap, I try from different angles, but my teeth are on edge and there’s a jittery feeling in my stomach. Any moment something could rear up and bite me, devour me. Am I too scared to remember the crash? Because it was frightening? I can’t remember any of it, sights or sounds, what the accident felt like; it’s like catching smoke.

And earlier, further down the dark corridor? Outside their house, Alex kissed me – yes. Were we coming or going? And food. Piles of food, lots of colours. So beautiful you’d think it had been airbrushed for a magazine. Was that the same day? It could have been some other time. Suzanne always goes all out for it; the way it looks is as important to her as how it tastes. I see the food and try and touch on something either side of that recollection, but there is only space, empty space, grey and swirling in mist. It’s like blind man’s buff, fumbling my way further back with my arms outstretched, fingers stiff, holding my breath. All the other players have gone and left me there, blindfolded, flailing like an idiot. I give up.

I try a rational approach: if we were at the barbecue, then we must have got ready beforehand. This thought produces sweet FA. No glimpse of what I wore or when we left or whether we took a bottle to contribute.

I remember hearing about the job, though! There like solid ground, land ahoy. I remember Alex getting back to ours, his face all bright, and yelling at me with excitement. Punching the air and shaking his head. And me running at him, launching myself at him, wrapping my legs around his thighs and clinging on, kissing. Kissing him. That’s it. Kissing him at home and then again at Suzanne’s… then the ICU. No stepping stones in between. The film stops running and there aren’t even any snapshots unless you count the food, and I don’t count it, it tells me nothing. Some crappy product placement: here is Suzanne’s feast! Cut and pasted on a blank page. So there is nothing until service resumes at the hospital.