Touch and Go

This conversation had taken place late that afternoon but the nurse had not found it necessary to mention the scene she had witnessed in the kitchen earlier in the day. She felt it was not her place to do so.

Now she relaxed and stretched out her legs to rest on a little tapestried stool. Despite all the running around she’d done in the course of her work her ankles were still slim and she was proud of them. She yawned again, and let the magazine slip to the floor.

She was roused by a restless movement by her patient. She glanced at her watch. She must have been asleep for about three hours. She got up and went over to the bed, adjusted the dim night light and took hold of the hand, stroking the fingers that twitched like captive mice.

‘It’s all right, madam. I’m here. Are you in pain?’

The pale blue eyes showed no sign of distress. ‘No … I don’t think so … No pain. I feel a bit light … floating, somehow …’ The sweet voice articulated slowly but clearly. ‘What were we talking about earlier? I can’t quite remember …’

The nurse poured some water, held the glass to the dry lips.

‘Don’t you try,’ she said, ‘just take it easy … Are you quite comfortable?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want to sleep. We were playing a game, weren’t we, Nurse?’

‘We had a little fashion show with your lovely dresses. It was fun, wasn’t it?’ Placating, pleasing, the words came easily to her as she felt for the pulse. Reassured, she seated herself by the bed still holding the thin, transparent hand.

‘I remember now … I was going to show you my rubies …’

‘Yes. Yes. In the morning you can show me.’

‘Not in the morning. Now. Bring me the case.’ There was new vigour in the voice, and a peremptory tone, so the nurse rose and went over to the dressing-table. In a top drawer there was a box—my trinket box, the patient called it—containing a jumble of pieces of jewellery. Sometimes she liked to have it brought to her and she would spread them out around her on the counterpane, trying on necklaces and playing with the rings.

‘Not that box. These are only trinkets. I mean my real jewels …’

‘Madam? I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.’ The nurse had turned with the pretty little japanned box in her hands.

The other woman gave a gesture of irritation. ‘Everybody knows what’s in that box. Costume jewellery, cameo brooches, paste and pearls. I don’t mean them,’ she said scornfully. ‘They’re rubbish and I don’t care who has them.’

The nurse replaced the box and closed the drawer quietly and without fuss as she did everything else. The whims of the dying were nothing new to her. Now she crossed to the bed and laid a cool hand on the patient’s forehead. ‘Don’t upset yourself, madam. Rest now. Such things are of no importance.’

But the blue eyes were wide open and alert.

‘My jewels are to me. I want you to listen …’

‘I am listening.’

‘In the bottom of the wardrobe, right at the end, there is a small suitcase. Will you get it for me, please.’

It is in the patient’s best interests to accede to any request so long as it is feasible. The nurse went over and opened the wardrobe doors. The interior was large enough for her to walk into and this she did, brushing past the silks and velvets, feeling their softness against her face and hair as she passed. She saw the rows of shoes, neat in their wooden trees, strappy sandals and silver slippers, patent-leather pumps and high suede boots. In the farthest corner under a tartan travelling rug there was a small brown suitcase. She hauled it out, and put it down on the floor, for it was heavier than it looked.

She adjusted the starched cap knocked awry in her passage through the avenue of clothes, then took up the case and brought it over to the bed.

‘How very careful you are, Nurse, about your appearance!’ The woman had pulled herself up on the pillows and was watching with amused eyes.

‘Must be the way I’m made, madam.’ She smiled back. ‘Shall I open it for you? It’s too heavy to go on the bed.’

‘No. Not in this house.’ The words came sharply and the effort made the patient breathless. After taking a moment to recover, she went on: ‘It must not be opened in this house … and you’re not to tell anyone. Just do as I say.’

‘Yes, madam.’ She would only want to touch it, that was all she had done with the other possessions she was leaving. Touching was still important to a dying patient, perhaps a kind of reassurance. The nurse was not one to analyse such feelings, her job simply to obey within her limits, to soothe and make things easy. So now she held out the suitcase in her own strong hands so that the fluttering fingers could stray across the locks.

‘My rubies,’ the woman murmured. ‘The keys are in my purse …’

‘Yes, madam, but you say you don’t want it opened?’

‘Not here …’ As suddenly as the strength had come, so it waned. The voice faded to a whisper and the nurse had to bend down to hear the words. At one point she straightened up …

‘But that wouldn’t be right, madam …’

‘Right or wrong, who cares? Never mind the papers, they’re not your concern … And nothing matters to me any more …’

The patient lay back, exhausted. The blue-veined eyelids flickered, then closed. She gave a deep sigh.

Startled, the nurse threw the case on a chair, leaned over the bed and picked up the hand now at rest on the coverlet. The pulse was slow but it still throbbed, the breathing was even, there were not, as yet, any of the signs of approaching death she knew to respect. Thank God, she said to herself, for a moment there I thought she’d gone. That sudden clarity of speech, the momentary return of vigour, she’d seen them before, often they heralded the end. As she adjusted the pillows and slid the frail body into a more comfortable position, the patient said: ‘I’ll sleep now, Nurse. I’ll sleep easy in my mind …’

Of course you will, madam.’ She touched the white forehead gently, smoothed back the once-bright hair. Even though she stooped low the nurse could not quite catch the next words. Anyway, they seemed to be in a foreign language. All she heard was: ‘He told me once.… a long time ago …’

The woman who had been beautiful died the next morning at nine o’clock. She died peacefully in her sleep with her doctor by the bedside. Correct in all she did, the nurse had called him at seven when she saw how things might be.

‘Did she have a restless night?’ he asked.

‘Not more than usual. She talked with me for a time, then she slept. Her pulse had weakened but she wasn’t in any pain. I’d given her an injection earlier in the evening when she’d had some discomfort but when she woke in the night she didn’t complain. After she’d talked a little she went off to sleep again and she was still sleeping this morning when I called you. I thought she might just slip away, and that you should be here …’

‘Quite right, Nurse. An easier death than I’d feared. She looks at rest. I thought she might have struggled against it at the end … She wasn’t old, and she must have been lovely once.’

By midday the nurse was ready to leave. There was nothing to keep her. The doctor had been satisfied with her meticulous medical reports, and pleased at the manner of her attendance. He thanked her, said he would be commending her to the agency which had sent her.

She was scarcely noticed in the household that morning. The hushed bedroom with the drawn curtains was no longer her rightful place. The arrival of the undertakers, the comings and goings on the stairs, the incessant ringing of telephones and doorbells, the procession of long-faced men in business suits treading softly through the empty rooms, all these passed her by.

She had packed her toiletries, her nightwear, her spare caps and aprons, her nursing equipment, her books and magazines, in the holdall she’d brought with her when she came. It was a lot heavier now.

She stood in the bare room that had been her home for six days, and was suddenly in a fever to be gone. But she must not appear to hurry. Meeting the housekeeper in the hall, she paused and was careful to express thanks to the staff and her condolences.

‘A sad occasion for you all,’ she said, carrying the bag in one hand as if it was a light weight though the handles were straining her wrist. ‘But in these situations when there is little hope …’

Mrs Hermanos hardly looked at her. She had other things on her mind.

‘Goodbye, Nurse.’

Then the door was closed behind her, and she walked over to the elevator at her normal pace.

She drew a deep breath. She would get a cab at the corner. It was a long way to Brooklyn but by now she was frantic to get there. The holdall bumped roughly against her knees as if to remind her of what she must do. She had to run … and run fast.

She seemed to have spent her life running. In hospital training, running with bedpans, running alongside stretchers holding IVs, running for doctors, running to the telephones … As a girl she’d run away from school, and run away from a home racked by quarrels, then run back to nurse her dying mother. She’d not run to her father when he lay at the last, fighting death with curses, though he no longer had the strength to hit her. She’d walked in stoically and treated him as she would any other patient in her care. When he died he left her nothing, and she took nothing from the battered frame house she’d once called home.

She’d run back to Brooklyn, back to the crowded streets and the squalid apartment block outside which the cab had just halted. She paid off the driver. She’d have to get another one to take her away … How long had she got? They traced cabs all too easily …

She ran along the passage, the noise of crying children behind closed doors following her up the worn stairs. Once in her own apartment she didn’t stop. She threw the holdall on the settee which also served as her bed, took out the caps and aprons and chucked them into the cupboard. She wouldn’t be wanting them again, that was for sure. She packed a suitcase with the few clothes she had, sweaters, blouses and skirts, a couple of dowdy dresses, underwear and shoes.