Thursday, 18 April 2013

Passage on a passage


I walk down the long white passage, crossing other long white passages. 
I know not if this is the right way, but it is the logical way. 
The way an architect would have designed it, or perhaps an engineer. 
Architects aren't always logical, come to think of it, it might have been a doctor, thinking he is an architect..
However, I keep on walking, it turns out to be the right way, if not the only way, for me to get to the central command centre. The place where the nurses sleep, it turned out to be, on the tables. It is their main job nowadays, me thinks. The black skin contrasting with the white uniform and white walls and white patients. There are some nurses that are awake, it seems. They are dressed in blue, somehow their skin does not seem so black. It must be the lack of contrast with the blue. Dark blue, mixed with lighter blue, a few specs of turquoise. Blue on black, it doesn't matter much. She recovers with a sigh from the open-eyed sleep; perhaps one is issued blue once the open eyed sleep has been mastered...
Mrs S.., ... Or perhaps she is known as Dr K......?
"Yes, come, I will show you.." The blue nurse, she was in her own office, so perhaps she is the matron of this wing, walks down another passage. As I leave the office I see my mother's name on the wall: Mrs S****** / ward 6...

"She is sleeping", the blue one says. 

There are six beds in the ward. Five were steel cots with railings to prevent the patients from falling out, 
one is a low wood frame bed. My mother's bed is the one on the left, behind the door. 
She is sleeping, a frail woman with spectacles, dressed in brown slacks and wearing blue slippers and a light blue cardigan.

I touch her gently, shake her lightly:

"Ma, hello ma.."
As she wakes up, she looks confused, then her face breaks into a smile:
"Good to see you.." She does not say my name, but she is glad to see me, I ask how she is, 
she replies with a standard saying: "Fat and healthy" ... Although she probably has never been fat in her life. 
I hold her hand, I do not really like emotions, or perhaps it is that I am not truly able to control my emotions..
"I brought chocolate." I open the slab of dark albany, the type she so used to love, and hand her a piece.
 "It is nice." She sucks and chews it, then gets up:"Where is the bathroom? I have to go!" 
I am caught on the wrong foot, "I don't know.." 

However, she goes past me, into the first door on the left, a wide door. I can see the walls are tiled and in the corner I see a bath and a toilet, so this must be it. I turn around to wait by the bed, she returns in about four minutes, we stand there, next to her bed. 

I have nothing to say, holding her, I cannot hide my tears. 
"I will come and visit again," I lie. "I still have a few things to do in town," (I do) 
"Goodbye." 

I kiss her and start walking down the long wide passage,

turning right at the office of the blue nurse, 
keep walking towards the light, 
on the other side of the barred steel security door. 
The door is locked and I have to put my hand through it to reach the intercom button on the outside wall. 
Pushing it, the door unlocks. As I go through the gate, closing it, I look back along the passage. 
I can see a figure standing at the cross of the passages, waving at me. 
I think she is smiling, 
she must be smiling, 
I am in the sun, 
she's in the shade, 
I can't see clearly. 
She is happy, so she said.

I am not, but that's just me.

1 comment:

  1. http://www.poetfreak.com/text/210064/passage-on-passage.-altzheimer-in-perspective.html

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