I woke up to my great surprise. Mostly because I had no idea I’d fallen asleep. My dinner tray had been cleared away, as had yesterday’s newspaper. And something else too. What was it?
I was out of my bed like a flash. I pulled the suitcase from under my bed. I rifled through the pyjamas and cardigans, all the while knowing it wasn’t in there. I pulled my bed covers off and lifted up both pillows. I put on my slippers, pulled my curtain back and slippered over to the monogrammed lady.
‘Have the bin men been?’
‘I’m sorry?’ She pulled her glasses from her nose and squinted at me.
‘The cleaner. Have they, has he, taken away the rubbish?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘I’d say …’ I wanted to shake her to hurry her up. ‘About … a good while ago, certainly.’
I’m not sure I even thanked her. It was my first unsupervised walk in the hospital. I felt like a fugitive. A slow one, though. I tried to think like a porter. I remembered him now; he had a series of tattoos that, were they mine, would annoy me endlessly for being so crooked.
I wandered out of elderly care towards maternity, but they had a video link at the door so I turned back. Then I made my way down a long corridor that sloped just slightly, but in such a way that I felt like Alice in Wonderland shrinking down to fit through the keyhole. I tried to picture the envelope – the writing in black, several ink stamps from customs and air mail. The stamp itself, with a man on a green background. I faced a number of crossroads, and made my decision based only on the feeling that if I were the tattooed porter, this would be the route I’d take. His big bin was one of those on wheels that has four separate bins – medical, recycling, food and general waste. With any luck, my letter would have made it into recycling.
And then there it was. Waiting patiently, completely unattended. I crept up to it. I got onto tiptoes to see if my letter was in amongst the rubbish, but I couldn’t see. The porter with the bad tattoos was behind the closed door of the nurses’ office, so I climbed up onto the side of the bin cart. I stuck my hand in and tried to shake the tissues loose. I could see a pointed corner. There it was. Just a little further out of my reach …
I heard a noise behind me and I turned. On the other side of the corridor, a girl of about sixteen or seventeen with bright blonde hair and pink pyjamas was watching me. Then the door to the nurses’ office opened and I froze. I was most certainly going to get caught, but the girl started to speak. The tattooed porter and the grim-faced nurse turned their attention to her.
Just underneath a clump of white tissue was my letter. I leant over once again and I stuck my hand out. My fingers brushed the letter and I finally got it free.
Fully expecting to turn around and see the porter and the grim nurse staring at me, I turned to see that they were gone – heading into the May Ward. Only the girl with the pink pyjamas was still there. She smiled.
Clutching my letter from Meena, I headed back to my bed.
When I wrote my reply, I told her, I’d put my hand in a hospital bin to find a letter from you. That’s love.
And my answer to the question she’d asked me, of course, was ‘yes’.
~
Father Arthur popped in to see me yesterday. He visits a lot. And mostly we talk about you, Lenni, which I think you would enjoy.
I showed him the letter from Meena and I told him how you helped me save it from the bin. And I showed him your name – written in permanent ink on the little whiteboard that used to hang on the wall above your bed. Rescued by your nurse and now hanging next to mine.
And then I took a breath and I asked Father Arthur what he thought of the prospect of me and my rattling old bones and my damaged heart flying to Vietnam, to answer the question a soulmate of mine had asked with an emphatic ‘yes’. To let her put her handmade ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. Though, since Meena made it herself, I am fairly sure it will be made of copper and will turn my finger green.
He smiled sadly, looked about himself for some paper, and then pulled a receipt out of his pocket and wrote: Ecclesiastes 9:9.
And then he picked up his scarf, gave me a wave and headed home.
I asked a nurse to find me a Bible – they’re everywhere in hospitals so it wasn’t difficult. An American lady in the ward across the corridor lent me hers.
As I carefully turned the skin-thin pages, I steeled myself for what it might say.
Something about stoning and eternal punishment, I imagined. The horror of my love for her. Something so damning that Arthur had felt unable to say it to my face. I imagined that would be one of the harder parts of being a priest. The times when you have to remind the sinners of their fates.
I turned the page and read Ecclesiastes 9:9.
Enjoy life with the woman whom you love
all the days of your fleeting life
Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital, March 2014
I had just woken up from a nap when a woman appeared at the end of my bed. She was wearing a thick woollen jumper covered in dog hair and she had green paint splatters on the hem of her polka
