It is 2am in the Palliative Care Ward
and Sheila’s serrated-edged breaths, increasingly staggered, increasingly laboured, pulse from the lips Claire so gently lathered in Vaseline. Their synthetic shine, along with her newfound gauntness lends Sheila a hungry look and Claire’s body screams to feed her, but the doctor said feeding Sheila now would be like feeding a newborn baby a sirloin steak.
Claire understands this but will forever feel guilty that she doesn’t at least try.
When she cradles Sheila’s hand, it stings her heart that it is no longer the crepe papery softness Claire expects. It is now a daffodil-wax texture, yellowing and perfumed decay-sweet with baggy skin slipping like gloves off her fine bones. It is a doll’s hand in the way that it no longer feels real, it does not belong to Sheila, it no longer feels like her mum. The skin around Claire’s own hand is starting to loosen and crinkle, so she squints in the half-light and through tears pretends it is Sheila’s.
The air is inky-thick away from the bed and Claire thinks of the solo conversations Sheila was having before she lost her voice. It gutted Claire that she couldn’t remember this expressive joy in her mother, the watermelon slice smiles she sent gladly into the dark corners of this foreign room. The smiles Claire remembered were mere slivers of onion in comparison. Claire wonders if her mother was happy with how her life turned out. She is sure she never asked, but is certain she now knows the answer.
Claire wraps herself in the dressing gown Sheila will never wear again. It isn’t the dressing gown she wants to snuggle in, that one hangs on a hook in Sheila’s bedroom, it is navy blue with threadbare patches peeking white at the elbows and burnt-orange streaks of bleach spattered like fireworks along the front. This one is thick and lush and red. It smells of hospital disinfectant and the moisturiser the nurses recommended to shoo itches from Sheila’s drying skin. It will be the first thing Claire throws into the bin when Sheila’s gone.
Somewhere down the corridor a patient is crying the type of hopeless scream Claire associates with a horror movie, frantic and loud but without conviction that help is coming. She pulls her chair closer to Sheila and strokes the wispy hairs from around her cool-crisp ears. She hopes to God that Sheila is deaf to the bodily torture of her fellow patient and has already found her peace, but there is no way of knowing. She will be gone soon, the doctors say and when she asks the nurses, they say 'not long'.
Claire pulls the dressing gown tighter around her body knowing this shade of red will be the colour of grief and pain and a sadness that will eat its way out from the depths of her consciousness for the rest of her life. But she’ll be grateful for the gown again tomorrow, if she is here tomorrow, because each night in the Palliative care ward is colder than the last.
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