Street station three months ago? First thing in the morning he’d be back asking lots of questions. That was for sure.
There were swing-doors at the end of the corridor, hooked back against the walls on either side, and Lorimer could see that the main part of the building lay beyond this area. Large cupboard doors lined one side of the corridor walls. Lorimer opened them, only to discover shelves and shelves of hospital linen.
There were two doors opposite and Lorimer saw that one was ajar. He left it for the time being and tried the other. It was locked. Frowning, he pushed the other door, hearing it creak. Then he stood in the doorway.
Here was a patient and a very ill one at that. There were tubes protruding from the body and a machine that seemed to be pumping her mattress up and down. Was this where they nursed the terminally ill patients, perhaps? Lorimer had never seen anything like it. He was about to tiptoe away when a tiny movement caught his eye. The patient’s head had moved the slightest bit and Lorimer found himself staring into a pair of bright eyes that were very much alive.
Phyllis had heard it all. The clang of a door in the distance, then nothing until the swing-doors had been swept open and that awful screaming had rent the air. During all the commotion, unseen hands had quietly closed Phyllis’s door. The sounds were muffled after that but she’d been aware of voices and had heard enough to let her know something of what had taken place. Did they imagine she wouldn’t hear them behind her closed door? They were wrong. This disease had robbed her of much, but her sense of hearing was heightened as never before. She knew when the police had arrived. She also knew that some unspeakable horror had taken place not far from her own room.
As she lay listening intently, she recalled the terror of that footfall. Her eyes had shut against the shadow entering her room. She didn’t want to think about it any more. But now she found herself staring into a different pair of pale eyes. Were they blue? She couldn’t make them out in this light. The man was staring back at her.
He was taller than average, built like a sportsman. Even though he stood quite still, Phyllis sensed a restless energy about him. His hair was dark against the outline of light from the corridor. She could see that much. He was the sort of man she’d once desired, she suddenly realised. Strong. Not the type to be indoors for long; always on the move. She’d always liked that in a man.
‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said at last.
Phyllis liked the voice. It was a recognisable Glasgow accent but he spoke clearly and didn’t mumble. How she wished she could reply. Carry on a conversation. A peculiar moan broke from her lips and she tried to move her head again. There was nothing she could do except widen her eyes to communicate her fear, her desperation. He looked at her harder and for a moment Phyllis thought he was going to step towards the bed. Just when she thought he was coming towards her, he seemed to change his mind and stepped back into the shadows once more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, but whether he meant he was sorry to disturb her in the middle of the night or that he was sorry for her, Phyllis couldn’t tell. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.
Chapter Nine
Phyllis woke early every day. The night nurses always came to the laundry cupboard outside her room, pulling out the sheets, clattering the stiff doors and gossiping in their loud voices. Bored and wanting their shift to end so they could go home, they didn’t give a thought to who might hear their raucous laughter. They always reminded Phyllis of the magpies outside her window, loud and rude. The cupboard door was banged shut at last and the voices disappeared down the corridor. Her door was deliberately left ajar and the wedge of light from the corridor shone dingy yellow through the gap. The venetian blinds shut out the daylight until other hands came to pull on the cord. Until then, Phyllis had to content herself with this half of her world. She thought of it as Inside now. Never as home any more. Inside was normally boring and predictable.
Her room lay swathed in darkness, only the corridor light picking out familiar shapes. The high bed dominated the room with its special mattress that moved in constant undulations to prevent bedsores. A hissing sigh from the pump mechanism below the bed repeated itself over and over, a sleepy rhythmic sound that Phyllis didn’t notice any more. On her left was a chrome stand holding a plastic bottle that dripped fluids into her unresisting body.
The tubes disappeared below the white sheets. Other tubes led outwards and away, discreetly hidden by the folds of bedding. To the right of the bed a grey plastic chair gathered dust. It was for any visitors who might come at the appointed times. Phyllis no longer expected visitors from the outside world. Only the nursing staff attended her needs with monotonous regularity.
The window was on Phyllis’s right. In the daytime she could see her lawns and flowerbeds, some shrubbery and the sky. Birds came pecking around the borders, friendly chaffinches or the robber magpies. Sometimes a robin trilled its distinctive note, and Phyllis tried to remember what cold, frosty days were like. The birds were highly satisfactory, but she liked the sky best of all. For hours she watched the cloud shapes slither and change; her imagination creating Gods and chariots, characters from mythology, maenads with streaming hair. She rarely saw the stars except in winter when Venus rose in late afternoon on a velvety blue sky. Then hands pulled the blind cord, shutting off her Outside with a sharp metallic snap. For now the sky was dark and shuttered from her sight.
In a corner of the room a small wardrobe held Phyllis’s few clothes. They were all cotton for she never left the heat of this room any more. In earlier days when she could still move her arms and turn her head the nurses would heave her into a wheelchair and push her down the corridor to what they now called the day room. There she had been parked in her old lounge with its egg and dart plaster coving around the ceiling. The other residents had upset her with their staring or feeble attempts at one-sided conversation and she’d always preferred the relative peace and quiet of her own room.
Nowadays there were directives about lifting patients. It took two nurses to sit her upright. And they were always short of staff. So Phyllis was left with the television for company. She rarely permitted the staff to switch it on these days. They always asked first, thank God, and her tiny shake of the head allowed her room to stay silent. Once, long ago, she had watched the quiz shows, but nobody came to switch the thing off and she had tired of the interminable soaps that followed, invading her space. The programmes had been punctuated by advertisements reminding Phyllis of so many things she would never need again.
The yellow light flooded across the linoleum floor as the nurse pushed open the door. It wasn’t Kirsty, her designated nurse, but one of the others whom she rarely saw.
‘Morning, Phyllis. Time for your pills.’ The nurse barely made eye contact with Phyllis, turning her attention instead to the glass of yellow goo and the plastic phial of assorted tablets. Phyllis watched her face as the woman concentrated on tumbling all the pills onto a spoonful of the thickened liquid. The nurse’s eyes never left the outstretched spoon on its journey to Phyllis’s open mouth. She felt the metal spoon then the saliva began to ooze from beneath her tongue. One swallow and it was over.
‘Right, then.’ The nurse flicked the residue from Phyllis’s lips, leaving a smear behind that would feel sticky and uncomfortable until someone else came to wash her face. It was strange, she reflected, that she could still swallow a mouthful of medication like that in one gulp when a few drops of water would have set her choking. This disease had taken its toll on her throat muscles as well as so much of the rest. Speech was impossible now, and she rarely tried to communicate beyond a shake or nod of the head.
With a clack, the blinds were opened and weak daylight fell onto the objects in the room. Now the daily routine began. The first nurse was joined by a small, stout auxiliary with dark hair.
‘Morning, Phyllis,’ she swept a practised eye over the bedclothes, resting for a moment on the patient’s face. Phyllis was heaved into a sitting position to participate in the ritual of blood pressure, temperature and removal of her bodily wastes. She watched, detached, as if it was happening to someone else. She endured the harsh wet flannel on her face and body while the two women carried on an earlier conversation as if she wasn’t there.
‘Did you see her being carried away?’
‘Sh!’ the nurse frowned at her, nodding her head towards Phyllis, belatedly acknowledging her
