‘What are you doing in my room?’
Emer swung round, her face colouring as she got the first glimpse of her new patient. A small, slender woman with a bob of silver hair, Susannah Olsen didn’t look sick. In fact, she was carrying a big basket brimming with groceries. It must have weighed quite a bit.
Emer found herself feeling strangely shy. She had no idea why she should be. She’d been employed to help Susannah Olsen.
‘I’m Emer Feeney, the nurse,’ she said. ‘Did your niece Lynsey not tell you I was coming?’
‘I know who you are all right, young lady, but I just wondered what you were doing snooping in my room?’
‘I thought you might be in bed,’ Emer explained. ‘I was looking for you.’
‘Well as you’ll see, I’m quite all right,’ Susannah said tartly. ‘Don’t know why those girls are fussing over me so.’
‘They want to make sure you’re cared for.’
‘Been managing just fine on my own for years,’ Susannah said.
They looked at each other. Emer smiled awkwardly, feeling fake, but Susannah didn’t return the smile.
‘Well, seeing as you’re here now you may as well make yourself useful,’ she said, passing Emer the basket of vegetables. ‘Come on downstairs and we’ll have some tea.’
Emer was taken aback by the older woman’s gruffness, but then what had she been expecting? Susannah was hardly going to be over the moon at the arrival of a nurse who by her very presence was going to remind her every day that she was dying. Lynsey had told Emer that Susannah had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which would be terminal regardless of whether Susannah chose to have chemotherapy. Emer had felt sorry for Susannah being so alone at the end of her life. No family nearby. Her closest living relatives were Lynsey, who lived a good five-hour trip away in Salem, and the other niece, Rebecca, who lived in England.
But clearly Susannah did not view herself as a victim. She turned around and walked out of her bedroom. Emer followed her down the stairs. Nothing about Susannah seemed to give the sense she was weak and frail. It was only when the older woman got to the bottom of the stairs and straightened up that Emer noticed her flinch in pain. Slightly. She was thin, too.
‘Don’t think you can stuff me with drugs now,’ Susannah snapped at her, as if she knew Emer was appraising her. ‘This is my home and I’m going to carry on exactly as I want. Got it?’
‘Well, my job is to make you comfortable,’ Emer said carefully.
‘I will tell you when I need help. Right? Don’t you be doping me up so I can’t think right. If I can’t read my books I may as well be gone anyway.’
It wasn’t too late. Emer could call up Lynsey. Tell her she’d changed her mind. Apologise. Explain she’d not been herself when she’d signed up as a private palliative care assistant. They always said you should never make big life changes when you’re grieving. How could she possible stay on this remote island in this woman’s dark, depressing house and witness her end? Watch her in pain? And know that was what it had been like for her own flesh and blood?
Because you owe me.
Orla’s voice inside her head. She heard her all the time now she was gone.
Emer took off her rucksack and put it down on the ground with shaky hands.
‘Of course, whatever you wish.’ She was surprised by how steady her voice was, and how calm she sounded. ‘My role is to help you, Susannah. You call the shots.’
Susannah crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at her.
‘We’ll see,’ she said, scowling. ‘I know how you nurses like to take over!’
She picked up the kettle to fill it with water and Emer saw her grimacing in pain again. She reached forward to take the kettle from her, but Susannah pushed her away.
‘See, you’re already at it.’
Emer felt a flash of irritation, bit back a retort. But then, she’d seen behaviour like this before in cancer patients. Emer knew it came from fear, and denial. She of all people should understand those emotions. If she could help Susannah, if she could do this right, at least, maybe the weight on her heart might press less heavy. Would the guilt ever go away?
Susannah
July 1951
She was going to make Mother angry again. Her job had been to bake the bread this morning. Simple enough. But she’d burnt it. Kate did the baking most days no problem, while Susannah collected the eggs from their neighbours. But this morning her sister had to help their mother finish up the fine lacing for the cuffs and hems of Sarah Wilkinson’s wedding dress. Even at ten years of age, Kate was the ‘best little lacer’ on the whole island. It filled Susannah with awe to watch her sister’s nimble fingers at the lacing stand, sitting on the other side to their mother, as they wove the shuttles through the threads to create perfect miniature lattices or bigger looping nets. It took Susannah an age just to thread a needle, and then she always managed to prick herself. She hated lacing, along with sewing, cooking, cleaning and all the domestic tasks she should be good at because she was a girl.
She hadn’t even smelt the bread burning because she’d been lost deep inside Daddy’s boyhood copy of Treasure Island. It was Kate who came tearing into the kitchen and flung the
