Page 33 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
You are everything to me, Shelley Woodhouse.
19
NOW
I’m moving out of Intensive Care and onto the Brain Injury Unit. Angela tells me when she does my first obs check of the day. My first thought is that it’s a step towards getting out. And my second is that Matt won’t know where to find me.
‘We’ll miss you up here,’ Angela says. ‘But it’s always good news when we lose a patient to another ward.’
The way she phrases it makes me think of the alternative. I wonder what the ratio is of people who leave to go to another ward and people who go to the morgue. The thought makes me shudder.
‘When will I move?’ I ask.
‘As soon as I’ve done my rounds. There’s a bed ready and waiting for you.’
I feel a bit lost, then. It’s not like I’ve bonded with the people who are sharing this unit with me. The beds are too far apart for patients to have a conversation and half of them aren’t conscious, but I have a bit of new-girl anxiety about being in a new bed, surrounded by new people.
‘You know that volunteer, Matt, who’s been visiting me?’ I ask.
Angela smiles and nods.
‘Will you tell him where I’ve gone, if he comes again? It’s just, he was going to bring me some food from the restaurant…’
‘Oh, it’s his food you’re interested in, is it?’ Angela says. ‘Yes, I’ll tell him. Of course I will.’
I don’t know what to say, so I’m silent while she checks my temperature and writes it down on my chart. Because she’s implying that I fancy him, isn’t she? And what am I supposed to do with that? When she walks away, saying she’ll be back soon and giving me a cheery wave, I try to examine my feelings for Matt. When he visits, I get a squirmy kind of feeling, the good kind of squirmy, but I thought it was because I’m bored and alone here and he’s funny and nice. Or did I? Did I know there was actually more to it than that, and pretend I didn’t? It’s too confusing. Too much to hold in my damaged head.
Before the move, Hamza comes to see me. ‘Do you remember me? I’m the psychiatrist.’
‘Hamza,’ I say, to prove that I’m with it, that I know what’s going on.
‘That’s right. Wow.’
‘What?’
‘Well, no one ever remembers my name.’
‘I have to remember a lot of names in my line of work. If people come in once and introduce themselves, and then they come in every week for five years, they get annoyed if you don’t know their name, and they rarely tell you a second time, so I’ve got good at storing that kind of information. Names, favourite drinks, that sort of thing.’
‘My favourite drink is…’
‘Orange juice,’ I cut in.
He looks astonished.
‘You said you knew my pub, the Pheasant. Last time you were here. You said I might have served you an orange juice.’
‘Okay, well I think we’ve established that some parts of your short-term memory haven’t been affected,’ he says, pulling up a chair and sitting down. He crosses one leg over the other and then behind the first, so his legs are curled like a corkscrew.
‘My memory is fine,’ I say. ‘Both long and short-term.’
And it is, isn’t it?
‘What are you thinking about?’ Hamza asks.
‘Just, what happened. It doesn’t matter. What did you want to talk to me about today?’
He clears his throat, looks a bit wrongfooted. Perhaps he doesn’t like the patient trying to take control. Perhaps he doesn’t like a woman being in control. Men don’t, do they?
